Real Lean: Strategies for Lean Management Success

by Bob Emiliani

REAL LEAN (Volume Five) Answers a focused What strategies actually separate successful Lean leaders from the rest? Drawing on decades of practice, teaching, and historical study, the book identifies five recurring executive failings – indifference to history, ignoring others' failures, detachment from ground-level reality, poor use of people, and low confidence in self-reliance – and turns each into a concrete strategy, illustrated by sharp, practical essays. As always, the tone is direct and the facts are laid bare.

This book helps readers

Paying Attention to History. Shows how today's problems mirror those solved a century ago by Taylor, Gilbreth, Ford, and Woollard so leaders stop assuming their experience is unique.Learning from Others' Failures. Examines where even Toyota faltered, and teaching executives to study others' mistakes rather than repeat them.Seeing Reality at the Gemba. Confronts executive detachment, showing how to surface the deep, hidden problems that abstraction and distance conceal.Working Together, Non-Zero-Sum. Tackles the failure to use internal and external human resources well, reinforcing the "Respect for People" principle and collaborative, win-win improvement.Changing Your World Through Self-Reliance. Builds the confidence and capability executives need to lead their own Lean journey rather than outsourcing it.
Rounded out with final thoughts and appendices on the growth imperative, Lean writing and publishing, and creativity, this volume reframes Lean success as a matter of strategy and mindset, not tools. For practitioners and executives who want a practical, historically grounded set of strategies, Volume Five offers five clear paths to becoming a more successful Lean leader.

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010