Working Great!: Lean Leadership Lessons for Guiding Your Organization to Excellence

Significant sustained Lean success depends almost solely on leaders and the culture they foster. Unfortunately, many embark on their Lean initiative with a focus on tools observed during a benchmarking tour, disclosed during a short symposium presentation, or peddled by their chosen Lean partner. These leaders are thus ill-equipped to understand the critical behavior and attitude changes required of them and their staff to sustain tools-based improvements and, more importantly, to effectively promote and harvest their employees’ innovation to remove waste. Some area-specific and short-term gains can be realized via a top-down, tools-based approach, but broad, ongoing, and organic improvement that is embraced by all employees requires a unique environment-one carefully defined and nurtured by leaders.

Working Great! shares author Rick Brimeyer’s most important lessons learned while leading within an employer’s successful Lean transformation and later as a consultant guiding several other organizations through their own makeovers. Unlike travel brochures and websites created by a tour company or the local visitors’ bureau for the sole purpose of promoting a highly predictable vacation trip, Working Great! strives to provide an honest, clear, culture-first handbook of leadership skills and techniques (with some tools) required to effectively guide one’s organization through a Lean expedition.