What separates excellent organizations from the truly ordinary? What allows some organizations to rapidly change and continually reinvent themselves while others have trouble making even modest improvements? the fundamental ingredient is the presence of change agents. Change agents are individuals who have the knowledge, skills and tools to help organizations create radical improvement. They achieve results through their keen ability to facilitate groups of people through well-defined processes to develop, organize, and sell new ideas. They are the invisible hands that turn vision into action. The Change Agentes Guide to Radical Improvement is a comprehensive how-to book, packed with all of the information and tools necessary to make any improvement project a rousing success. Its unique methods integrate the best practices in organizational development, team building, voice of the customer, reengineering, problem solving, creativity, innovation, and project management. the systematic change agent model introduced in this book will help you: Pick the right improvement projects to work on, by diagnosing the real issues effecting the organization. Organize the project so that it has the best chance to succeed, by uncovering the projectes success criteria, securing management support, and building the right team. Select the best change process to improve customer satisfaction, reengineer a process, solve a problem or develop a plan. Generate innovative out of the box ideas that dramatically impact the bottom line. Navigate the politics of change; ensuring radical ideas become radical improvements.

There are many techniques and a variety of tools available to improve or change an organization, but how do executives and senior management decide which are right for their organizations? The Executive Guide to Improvement and Change is designed to help managers and executives understand the many different approaches to organizational change and improvement. The book explains that there is not one technique that works best for any organization, but rather that the managers and executives need to develop their own strategies with a blending of different methods. The authors share the tools and techniques that they have used to successfully make changes and improvements in their own organizations, which include examples from manufacturing, healthcare, service, government, telecommunications, education, and more. The Executive Guide to Improvement and Change covers a variety of techniques ranging from auditing to teamwork, Six Sigma to Customer Satisfaction, and more. The book will assist executives and managers lead improvement and change initiatives within the organization and the larger business community, as well as educate those who aspire to senior positions of leadership.

This book argues that the vast majority of errors and system failures are the result of ineffective leadership. Most of the shortcomings of leadership stem from the lack of a unified and structured system that incorporates resources, accountability, culture, understanding, and leadership into one synergistic formula that will help drive consistent success. This synergistic system will help lead to consistency throughout the organization - leader to leader and department to department - which will lead to better communication, greater reliability, and ultimately more success. Author Michael Dreikorn introduces the concept of Integrated Performance Leadership (IPL), which combines various academic theories of management, performance, and leadership into one single stream of thought. Dreikorn cites examples from successful organizations, and provides numerous charts and graphs to help emphasize the points made.

As the face of business continues to change, organizations are looking for new ways to remain competitive and profitable. Many businesses have succumb to the "program du jour" management trap, jumping from one management philosophy to the next looking for the ultimate solution. ISO 9000, Baldrige, Six Sigma...which is the best program for your company? From Quality to Business Excellence: A Systems Approach to Management demonstrates how these and other management philosophies compliment each other and form the basis for a new systems approach to management. By better understanding how these approaches all potentially fit together, managers will be able to use these tools more effectively in a much more integrated approach. From Quality to Business Excellence will show how to integrate a management approach using a variety of methods to bring the most out of your business. COMMENTS FROM OTHER CUSTOMERS Average Customer Rating: (5 of 5 based on 2 reviews) "This is a great book! It does a very effective job of integrating quality concepts into the notion of Business Excellence. The book recommends a systems approach to management systems design and covers a broad range relevant topics. The author backs up his recommendations with a fair amount of actual cases. End notes itemize a broad range of references that can be used to gain more in-depth knowledge about the topics. The book is loaded with figures and tables to make the material understandable. This is good reading for business professionals. If you want to get your line managers hooked on quality get them a copy of this book." A reader from New Hampshire" An excellent book for the new direction of quality implementation. Quality is becoming part of business that is responsible for improving its bottom line results rather than policing its activities. I found the book easy to read and very informative." Ahmed Almaziad – Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Benefits: Shift from a narrow, compliance-orientation to Quality Management to a high-impact, continuous improvement orientation that drives business resultsliLearn how to apply the right management tools to your situationliCreate your own high performance management system to last for decadesliUse Information Technology More Effectively to Drive Business ResultsliBuild in the capability to absorb new techniques as they emergeliAvoid gut-wrenching (and costly) restarts to accommodate new methods and standards. Contents: Introduction (Historical Backgrounds and Trends, A Vision for the Future), Quality Systems Background (ISO 9000, Baldrige, Compliance vs. Continuous Improvement), Management Approach, Designing Integrated Management Systems Strategic Planning, Alignment, and Metrics Integrated Process Improvement Approach, The Role of Information Technology Other Enablers and Constraints Putting it All Together Keeping the Process Moving Overall Summary (Integrated Systems Approach, Business Systems Engineering)

Lean is about building and improving stable and predictable systems and processes to deliver to customers high-quality products/services on time by engaging everyone in the organization. Combined with this, organizations need to create an environment of respect for people and continuous learning. It’s all about people. People create the product or service, drive innovation, and create systems and processes, and with leadership buy-in and accountability to ensure sustainment with this philosophy, employees will be committed to the organization as they learn and grow personally and professionally. Lean is a term that describes a way of thinking about and managing companies as an enterprise. Becoming Lean requires the following: the continual pursuit to identify and eliminate waste; the establishment of efficient flow of both information and process; and an unwavering top-level commitment. The concept of continuous improvement applies to any process in any industry. Based on the contents of The Lean Practitioner’s Field Book, the purpose of this series is to show, in detail, how any process can be improved by utilizing a combination of tasks and people tools and introduces the BASICS Lean® concept. The books are designed for all levels of Lean practitioners and introduce proven tools for analysis and implementation that go beyond the traditional point kaizen event. Each book can be used as a stand-alone volume or used in combination with other titles based on specific needs. Each book is chock-full of case studies and stories from the authors’ own experiences in training organizations who have started or are continuing their Lean journey of continuous improvement. Contents include valuable lessons learned and each chapter concludes with questions pertaining to the focus of the chapter. Numerous photographs enrich and illustrate specific tools used in Lean methodology. Assess and Analyze: Discovering the Waste Consuming Your Profits explores the tools used to assess and analyze the process. It starts off with Learning to See waste and follows with the three analysis tools: mapping the product flow, documenting the full work of the operator, and implementing SMED or changeover reduction and closes with exploring Lean and change management.

Despite the popularity of organizational change management, the question arises whether its prescriptions and dominant beliefs and practices are based on solid and convergent evidence. Organizational change management entails interventions intended to influence the task-related behavior and associated results of an individual, team, or entire organization. There is a perception that a lot of change initiatives fail and limited understanding about what works and what does not and why. Drawing on the field of psychology and based on primary research, Reconsidering Change Management identifies 18 popular and relevant commonly held assumptions with regard to change management that are then analyzed and compared to the four specific themes laid out in the book (people, leadership, organization, and change process), resulting in their own set of assumptions. Each assumption will have a brief introduction in which its relevance and popularity is explained. By studying the scientific evidence, in particular meta-analytic evidence, the book provides students and academics in the fields of change management, organizational behavior, and business strategy the best available evidence for the acceptance or dropping of certain (change) management assumptions and their accompanying practices. By exploring the topics people, leadership, organization, and process, and the related assumptions, change management is restructured and reframed in a prudent, positive, and practical way.

While there are numerous Lean Certification programs, most companies have their own certification paths whereby they bestow expert status upon employees after they have participated in or led a certain number of kaizen events. Arguing that the number of kaizen events should not determine a person's expert status, The Lean Practitioner's Field Book: Proven, Practical, Profitable and Powerful Techniques for Making Lean Really Work outlines a true learning path for anyone seeking to understand essential Lean principles. The book includes a plethora of examples drawn from the personal experiences of its many well-respected and award-winning contributors. These experts break down Lean concepts to their simplest terms to make everything as clear as possible for Lean practitioners. A refresher for some at times, the text provides thought-provoking questions with examples that will stimulate learning opportunities. Introducing the Lean Practitioner concept, the book details the five distinct Lean Practitioner levels and includes quizzes and criteria for each level. It highlights the differences between the kaizen event approach and the Lean system level approach as well as the difference between station balancing and baton zone. This book takes readers on a journey that begins with an overview of Lean principles and culminates with readers developing professionally through the practice of self-reliance. Providing you with the tools to implement Lean tools in your organization, the book includes discussions and examples that demonstrate how to transition from traditional accounting methods to a Lean accounting system. The book outlines an integrated, structured approach identified by the acronym BASICS (baseline, analyze, suggest solutions, implement, check, and sustain), which is combined with a proven business strategy to help ensure a successful and sustainable transformation of your organization.