The Challenge:
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

The missing link to long-term Lean success! Despite the fact that companies worldwide have adopted Lean production, none has sustained the same levels of excellence as Toyota. Why? Leadership. In The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, Jeffrey Liker and Gary L. Convis, a former executive V.P. and managing officer of Toyota, help executives and senior managers get employees to refocus their efforts–from simply performing their singular function to continuously improving in collaboration across the organization. Case studies from Toyota clearly illustrate the methods that create powerful, effective Lean leadership. Jeffrey Liker, author of the popular Toyota Way books, is the acknowledged expert on Toyota processes. He is professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. After his executive leadership at Toyota, Gary L. Convis became the CEO of Dana Holding Corporation, a $6.1 billion supplier to the global automotive, commercial vehicle, and off-highway markets, and helped lead it to a successful turnaround from bankruptcy.

The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development

True leadership isn’t a matter of having a certain job or title. In fact, being chosen for a position is only the first of the five levels every effective leader achieves. To become more than “the boss” people follow only because they are required to, you have to master the ability to invest in people and inspire them. To grow further in your role, you must achieve results and build a team that produces. You need to help people to develop their skills to become leaders in their own right. And if you have the skill and dedication, you can reach the pinnacle of leadership-where experience will allow you to extend your influence beyond your immediate reach and time for the benefit of others.

The 5  Levels of Leadership are:
1. Position – People follow because they have to.
2. Permission – People follow because they want to.
3. Production – People follow because of what you have done for the organization.
4. People Development – People follow because of what you have done for them personally.
5. Pinnacle – People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

Through humor, in-depth insight, and examples, internationally recognized leadership expert John C. Maxwell describes each of these stages of leadership. He shows you how to master each level and rise up to the next to become a more influential, respected, and successful leader.

Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management, Second Edition is an in-depth revision of this renowned, bestselling guide. The book is now expanded with 50% new material, including specific case studies tracking success stories from a wide variety of industries and practitioners worldwide. Since its publication by McGraw-Hill in 1997, the book has introduced the concepts of Kaizen to hundreds of thousands of people and their companies as they search for ways to survive and prosper. This trend will only grow amid increasingly intense global competition.

Masaaki Imai is a leading authority in the field—the man who introduced the concepts of Kaizen to the English-speaking world. Fourteen years since the publication of Gemba Kaizen, the world sees the wide application of Gemba Kaizen going far beyond its manufacturing origins, and now carried into hospitals, government offices, hotels, ports, retailers, mining operations, software development, construction, and even universities. The Kaizen Institute, the consulting firm founded by Masaaki Imai, is at the forefront of this movement to adopt and promote Gemba Kaizen around the world. This new edition features global case studies from a wide range of sectors, sharing the keys to successful implementation of Gemba Kaizen.

Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management, Second Edition