Lean Strategy is the modern-day successor to books such as The Machine That Changed the World and Lean Thinking.
Co-authored by two longtime lean researchers and two C-Suite lean practitioners, Lean Strategy offers the best insight from both the academic and practical application world.
Lean Strategy is another lean leadership book intended for Senior Management. It starts by outlining much of the lean principles covered in past books with new updated stories of success and failure but quickly turns to how lean can be used to gain competitive market advantage. One thing that this book does not do, that many lean leadership books have relied on, is Lean Strategy does not focus entirely on what Toyota did or does. It does briefly acknowledge Toyota's role in the development of the system of lean, but the stories and studies come from companies other than Toyota, which I found refreshing.
The second half of this book moves from the tactical to the strategical benefits of embracing lean. Using lean to gain market share, and ultimately losing market share, and employees, when a new regime abandons lean. There's a good deal of discussion how one of the author's worked for a company that sustained more than a decade of growth using lean as a strategic plan, however, when it was sold the company lost much of its advantage and talent as the new management decided to take it decisively non-lean approach.
This was a good book, but it's another book authored directly to senior level management. I understand that to be truly successful in a lean transformation senior management needs deep involvement, but a lean environment is not only senior managers.
From an audio standpoint, Lean Strategy was well-read; however, I would recommend turning up the playback speed by 25%. The narrator did well. he's just somewhat monotone. Perhaps he was reading to takt!