AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Lean Leadership : From Chaos to Carrots to Commitment by William Lareau ISBN: 1-57167-472-1 Publisher: Tower II Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $29.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: A Violation of Lean Principles
Comment: In this book, as well as "Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage," William Lareau provides some of the rudimentary tools and theories of Lean practices. However, both books fall seriously short of providing the comprehensive, straight-forward lean techniques and philosophies that both management and their employees require to introduce, improve and sustain lean processes over the long-term. In short, I found that his books actually violate Lean principles in that they contain hundreds of pages of "Munda" (waste)!

Lareau correctly argues that for any business to successfully integrate a Lean program into its structure, it needs to develop and sustain overwhelming employee acceptance and involvement in the program. Unfortunately, Lareau's psychological foundations for his theories on human motivations are outdated. Much has been revealed in the field of psychology in the past 15-20 years with which Lareau clearly needs to acquaint himself.

Lareau makes repetitive attempts to motivate the reader to his way of thinking through tiresome war characterization analogies and often unfounded attacks to minimize or discredit past business improvement programs and their proponents in favor of his own.

He attempts to develop and reinforce the belief that Lean requires such levels of training and business restructuring, that the reader must conclude that to successfully implement and sustain Lean, they must invest heavily and for a lengthy duration, in an outside Lean consultant. His books are essentially marketing tools for his own consultant firm.

Incidentally, this book lacks both an index and a bibliography. Perhaps Lareau finds that citing his sources and crediting the specific works of others are an unnecessary inconvenience.

Similar Books:

	Title: Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage by William Lareau ISBN: 0873895568 Publisher: American Society for Quality Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00
	Title: Value Stream Management for the Lean Office by Don Tapping, Tom Shuker, Don Shuker ISBN: 1563272466 Publisher: Productivity Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00
	Title: Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, James Womack, Daniel Jones ISBN: 0743249275 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00
	Title: Real Numbers: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization by Orest J. Fiume, Orest Fiume, White Lisa Truit, Jean E. Cunningham ISBN: 0972809902 Publisher: Managing Times Press Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50
	Title: The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton ISBN: 1578512506 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95