In 12 new essays, ranging from the provocative to the practical and written specially for the second edition of Gemba Walks author and management expert Jim Womack reflects on the past 30 years of lean, and assesses the current state of lean today.He also shares thoughts on how lean thinking and practice can continue to make the world a better place by gaining traction in areas such as government and healthcare, provides practical guidance for how leaders everywhere can realize the full benefits of a lean management system, and shares hope for continued improvement on the path to better work and more value.Over the past 30 years, Womack has developed a method of going to visit the gemba at countless companies and keenly observing how people work together to create value. He has shared his thoughts and discoveries from these visits with the lean community through a monthly letter. With Gemba Walks second edition, Womack has selected and re-organized his key letters, as well as written 12 new essays.Gemba Walks shares his insights on topics ranging from the application of specific tools, to the role of management in sustaining lean, as well as the long-term prospects for this fundamental new way of creating value. Reading this book will reveal to readers a range of lean principles, as well as the basis for the critical lean practice of: go see, ask why, and show respect.Womack explains: - whatever happened to Toyota and what happens next to lean?- how lean got its name 25 years ago; a special essay co-authored by Jim and John Krafcik, president and CEO, Hyundai Motors America- work, management, and leadership -- what is the real work of the lean leader?- don't offshore or reshore -leanshore- why companies need fewer heroes and more farmers (who work daily to improve the processes and systems needed for perfect work and who take the time and effort to produce long-term improvement)- how "good" people who work in "bad" processes become as "bad" as the process itself- how the real practice of showing respect comes down to helping workers frame and solve their own problems- how the short-term gains from lean tools can be translated to enduring change from lean management.- how the lean manager has a "restless desire to continually rethink the organization's problems, probe their root causes, and lead experiments to test the best currently known countermeasures"By sharing his personal path of discovery, Womack sheds new light on the continued adoption and development of the most important new business system of the past fifty years. His journey will provide courage and inspiration for every lean practitioner today.

The life of lean is experiments. All authority for any sensei flows from experiments on the gemba [the place where work takes place], not from dogmatic interpretations of sacred texts or the few degrees of separation from the founders of the movement. In short, lean is not a religion but a daily practice of conducting experiments and accumulating knowledge." So writes Jim Womack, who over the past 30 years has developed a method of going to visit the gemba at countless companies and keenly observing how people work together to create value. Over the past decade, he has shared his thoughts and discoveries from these visits with the Lean Community through a monthly letter. With Gemba Walks, Womack has selected and re-organized his key letters, as well as written new material providing additional context. Gemba Walks shares his insights on topics ranging from the application of specific tools, to the role of management in sustaining lean, as well as the long-term prospects for this fundamental new way of creating value. Reading this book will reveal to readers a range of lean principles, as well as the basis for the critical lean practice of: go see, ask why, and show respect. Womack explains: * why companies need fewer heroes and more farmers (who work daily to improve the processes and systems needed for perfect work and who take the time and effort to produce long-term improvement) * how "good" people who work in "bad" processes become as "bad" as the process itself * how the real practice of showing respect comes down to helping workers frame and solve their own problems * how the short-term gains from lean tools can be translated to enduring change from lean management. * how the lean manager has a "restless desire to continually rethink the organization's problems, probe their root causes, and lead experiments to test the best currently known countermeasures" By sharing his personal path of discovery, Womack sheds new light on the co

Big Agile leaders need an empirical, "high-trust" model that provides guidance for scaling and sustaining agility and capability throughout a modern technology organization. This book presents the Agile Performance Holarchy (APH)—a "how-ability" model that provides agile leaders and teams with an operating system to build, evaluate, and sustain great agile habits and behaviors. The APH is an organizational operating system based on a set of interdependent, self-organizing circles, or holons, that reflect the empirical, object-oriented nature of agility. As more companies seek the benefits of Agile within and beyond IT, agile leaders need to build and sustain capability while scaling agility—no easy task—and they need to succeed without introducing unnecessary process and overhead. The APH is drawn from lessons learned while observing and assessing hundreds of agile companies and teams. It is not a process or a hierarchy, but a holarchy, a series of performance circles with embedded and interdependent holons that reflect the behaviors of high-performing agile organizations. Great Big Agile provides implementation guidance in the areas of leadership, values, teaming, visioning, governing, building, supporting, and engaging within an all-agile organization. What You’ll Learn Model the behaviors of a high-performance agile organizationBenefit from lessons learned by other organizations that have succeeded with Big AgileAssess your level of agility with the Agile Performance Holarchy Apply the APH model to your business Understand the APH performance circles, holons, objectives, and actions Obtain certification for your company, organization, or agency Who This Book Is For Professionals leading, or seeking to lead, an agile organization who wish to use an innovative model to raise their organization's agile performance from one level to the next, all the way to mastery

Gemba is a Japanese word meaning the actual place where value-creating work happens. Many leaders use gemba only for solving problems, visiting only when there is an issue. Others practice gemba walks on a daily basis to follow up and monitor the situation. However, Toyota believes that leaders truly develop through daily experiences at the gemba. In reality, gemba is a principle for managing, developing and improving people and processes. It is a valuable tool that helps lean practitioners learn the true facts so they can base management decisions on the actual situation.

Taking a Gemba Walk to Go See, Ask Why, and Show Respect is a key way to more actively engage people in performance improvement activities. Even if you currently do Gemba Walks in all likelihood you fall short of what the best companies do. This

Your customers have become increasingly sophisticated and more connected than ever—broadcasting real-time feedback to a cloud of followers who are watching your every move. As savvy customers continue to demand more for less, organizations that choose to rest on their laurels will quickly see their market share evaporate. Gemba Walks for Service Excellence: The Step-by-Step Guide for Identifying Service Delighters guides readers on a journey towards organizational effectiveness that supports a culture of service excellence. It provides a fresh perspective on how to apply Gemba Walks—visiting the areas where the service provider interacts directly with the customer—to identify new service delighters and make a lasting positive impression on customers. Using an abundance of color pictures and hand-drawn graphics, Robert Petruska builds on his considerable experience implementing Lean and quality systems to demonstrate how to create the infrastructure required for service excellence to flourish. Presented in an easy-to-follow format that anyone in the service industry can enjoy, this workbook: Shares proven techniques used in Lean manufacturing that can easily be applied to the service industry Guides new employees and veterans alike through a journey filled with real-life stories that inspire confidence Contains hands-on exercises that allow you to immediately apply the ideas to your own work Includes downloadable resources with innovative "placemats" designed to provide stepping stones on a development path for your team to achieve a competitive advantage Filled with real-world examples and stories of service excellence, the book will help you develop the counterintuitive thinking needed to discover new sources of customer delight. Designed to be used with your entire team, this workbook will guide your organization, step by step, through a plan for assessing, prioritizing, and implementing innovative ideas that will lead to unprecedented levels of service excellence.

Excerpts of Advance Praise for Lean Selling “Lean Selling is the most important sales management book of the last 25 years. It shows us why 90% of today’s sales processes are broken. This book will change forever the way you sell and manage.” Al Davidson President, Strategic Sales & Marketing, Inc. “Most sales leaders struggle to get their entire sales team to perform at the level of their ‘A-Players.’ Too many sales books focus on trying to change a salesperson’s behavior to achieve this. Robert Pryor’s book focuses on defining a sales process to yield consistent sales results for your company’s product or solution. Lean Selling provides the tools you require to define then refine your sales process as market and competitive conditions change. The end result is achieving both predictable sales and customer satisfaction.” Craig Jack Former Managing Client Partner, Verizon Enterprise Solutions Former Managing Director, KPMG Consulting “Robert Pryor has written a book on a subject already covered by tons of books over the years but managed to give it a twist that makes it very engaging and relevant. The book is well written, insightful, and timely; the emergence of internet commerce has had a profound impact on the sales profession as we know it.” Ake Persson Retired CEO, Ericsson Wireless Communications, Inc. “Lean Selling, by Robert Pryor, really woke me up to how complacent some of us are about our sales processes, and how that complacency connects directly to those sub-optimal results. It’s a ‘must read.’ ” J. Jeffrey Campbell Brinker Executive in Residence and Director, Master of Science Program, San Diego State University School of Hospitality & Tourism Former Chairman and CEO, Burger King Corporation “Lean Selling? I love it. I’ve been using lean principles with my inside sales organization for a year now to improve customer fit and the buyer experience. The result has been astronomical growth in sales for my company. Kevin Gaither Vice president of Inside Sales, ZipRecruiter, Inc. President, Los Angeles Chapter of the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals Complete quotations start on page 1 of this book.