Second Edition of a Shingo Prize Winner Based on the author's personal experience with Toyota‘s master teachers and with companies in the midst of great change, Andy and Me: Crisis and Transformation on the Lean Journey, now in its second edition, is a business novel set in a failing New Jersey auto plant focusing on the tribulations of Tom Pappas,

Based on the author's years of experience working with Toyota’s master teachers and with companies in the midst of great change, this book follows the story established in the Shingo Prize-winning book, Andy & Me: Crisis & Transformation on the Lean Journey. In a cool and readable style, Andy & Me and the Hospital: Further Adventures on the Lean Journey follows Tom Pappas's relationship with Andy Saito, a reclusive retired Toyota guru. Tom and Andy are pulled into a major New York City hospital in crisis. Can they translate and apply Toyota’s powerful methods and thinking to save the hospital from disaster? Using a compelling novel format, the book demonstrates how to apply Lean thinking in a healthcare setting. It illustrates the situations, characters, and plant politics you will most likely face as you progress through your Lean healthcare journey. As the story unfolds, you will discover the way of thinking and behavioral changes required to implement proven Toyota Production System (TPS) methods, tools, and thinking in healthcare. You will learn: What a Lean transformation in a hospital should look like The overall approach you need to take The leadership and behavioral changes required How to improve processes and better develop and engage people How to build and sustain a Lean management system How to translate and apply Deming’s "profound system of knowledge" This book provides clear and simple guidance on what it takes to successfully implement Toyota methods in healthcare settings. It shares helpful insights on how the different elements need to fit together to deliver measurable process improvement results. Just like its bestselling predecessors, this book includes study questions after each chapter to support learning and to facilitate discussion in workshops or classroom settings.

A wild and wacky journey inside the world of sports settles dozens of long-standing sporting debates as it answers such burning questions as Are pro golfers good at miniature golf? Would an all-midget baseball lineup be unstoppable? and How much of a head start would the average Joe need to beat an Olympic sprinter? Original. 40,000 first printing.

A remarkable memoir by one of the most popular and beloved entertainers of the twentieth century When in the mid-1950s Andy Williams reached a low point in his career, singing in dives to ever-smaller audiences, the young man from Wall Lake, Iowa, had no inkling of the success he would one day achieve. Before being declared a national treasure by President Ronald Reagan, Williams would chart eighteen gold and three platinum albums, headline at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for more than twenty years, and host an enormously popular weekly television variety show whose Christmas specials still occupy a tender spot in every baby boomer’s heart. Williams knew everybody who was anybody during his seven remarkable decades in show business (including Judy Garland, John Huston, Jack Lemmon, John Lennon, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, and Barbra Streisand, among others) and was a close friend of Bobby Kennedy for many years, and he shares memories of them all in Moon River and Me. His millions of fans guarantee a huge audience for the autobiography of the plush baritone who— at the age of eighty-one—still draws thousands of fans to his Moon River Theater in Branson, Missouri.

Gene Lees, author of the highly acclaimed Singers and the Song, offers, in Meet Me at Jim and Andy's, another tightly integrated collection of essays about post-War American music. This time he focuses on major jazz instrumentalists and bandleaders. Jim and Andy's, on 48th Street just west of Sixth Avenue, was one of four New York musicians' haunts in the 1960s--the others being Joe Harbor's Spotlight, Charlie's, and Junior's. "For almost every musician I knew," Lees writes, "[it was] a home-away-from-home, restaurant, watering hole, telephone answering service, informal savings (and loan) bank, and storage place for musical instruments." In a vivid series of portraits, we meet its clientele, an unforgettable gallery of individualists who happen to have been major artists--among them Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Art Farmer, Billy Taylor, Gerry Mulligan, and Paul Desmond. We share their laughter and meet their friends, such as the late actress Judy Holliday, their wives, even their children (as in the tragic story of Frank Rosolino). We learn about their loves, loyalties, infidelities, and struggles with fame and, sometimes alcohol and drug addiction. The magnificent pianist Bill Evans, describing to Lees his heroin addiction, says, "It's like death and transfiguration. Every day you wake in pain like death, and then you go out and score, and that is transfiguration. Each day becomes all of life in microcosm." Himself a noted songwriter, Lees writes about these musicians with vividness and intimacy. Far from being the inarticulate jazz musicians of legend, they turn out to be eloquent indeed, and the inventors of a colorful slang that has passed into the American language. And of course there was the music. A perceptive critic with enormous respect for the music he writes about, Lees notes the importance and special appeal of each artist's work, as in this comment about Artie Shaw's clarinet: "A fish, it has been said, is unaware of water, and Shaw's music so permeated the very air that it was only too easy to overlook just how good a player and how inventive and significant an improviser he was."

When You Talk, Are People Changed? Whether you speak from the pulpit, podium, or the front of a classroom, you don’t need much more than blank stares and faraway looks to tell you you’re not connecting. Take heart before your audience takes leave! You can convey your message in the powerful, life-changing way it deserves to be told. An insightful, entertaining parable that’s an excellent guide for any speaker, Communicating for a Change takes a simple approach to delivering effectively. Join Pastor Ray as he discovers that the secrets to successful speaking are parallel to the lessons a trucker learns on the road. By knowing your destination before you leave (identifying the one basic premise of your message), using your blinkers (making transitions obvious), and implementing five other practical points, you’ll drive your message home every time! “Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” “Once upon a time…” “In the beginning…” Great stories capture and hold an audience’s attention from start to finish. Why should it be any different when you stand up to speak? In Communicating for a Change, Andy Stanley and Lane Jones offer a unique strategy for communicators seeking to deliver captivating and practical messages. In this highly creative presentation, the authors unpack seven concepts that will empower you to engage and impact your audience in a way that leaves them wanting more. “Whether you are a senior pastor with weekly teaching responsibilities or a student pastor who has bern charged with engaging the hearts and minds of high school students, this book is a must-read.” -Bill Hybels, Senior pastor, Willow Creak Community Church “A very practical resource for every biblical communicator who wants to go from good to great.” -Ed Young, Senior pastor, Fellowship Church, Grapevine, Texas “To communicate effectively, you have to connect. Andy has been connecting with people for years, and now he’s sharing his insights with the rest of us.” -Jeff Foxworthy, Comedian Story Behind the Book Andy Stanley and Lane Jones are on staff at one of America ’s largest churches, North Point Community. Leaders of thousands of people, they regularly speak in front of large groups. They also listen to numerous speakers and know the disastrous effects of a poorly delivered message. This book is the result of their efforts to make public speaking—one of the most common fear-inducing activities known to mankind—simple, easy, and even enjoyable, so that God’s messages will readily produce the life-changing results they should.

When Andy opened the door on his seventeenth birthday, he was expecting an awesome present, maybe the car he wanted. What he actually got was the news that would rock his world—his beloved parents had been killed that morning in a car accident. The death of Andy's parents is the start of an intense battle for control of the teenager. Their deaths could be the catalyst that destroys his relationship with God and pulls him to the dark side. That's what Haphak, a servant of Satan, wants. And Haphak has the perfect tool to help him—Andy's Aunt Margaret. Margaret loves her money and her lifestyle, but she doesn't love God. When she learns Andy's parents have left him a millionaire, she is convinced it will be best for her to get custody of Andy—and control his money. But God will fight for Andy. He sends his angels to protect Andy and fight Haphak and his helpers. Andy's papa, a strong Christian, comes as well, and he is who Andy's parents have put in charge. He's determined to protect and guide the hurting Andy. But he's also hoping to reach his daughter. In the midst of all this, Andy must sort through his own feelings and choose a path. Will he continue to follow God, or will Satan win control? What will the outcome of The Battle for Andy be?