Real Lean: Strategies for Lean Management Success (Volume Five)

REAL LEAN (Volume Five) Answers a focused question: What strategies actually separate successful Lean leaders from the rest? Drawing on decades of practice, teaching, and historical study, the book identifies five recurring executive failings – indifference to history, ignoring others' failures, detachment from ground-level reality, poor use of people, and low confidence in self-reliance – and turns each into a concrete strategy, illustrated by sharp, practical essays. As always, the tone is direct and the facts are laid bare.

This book helps readers by:

• Paying Attention to History. Shows how today's problems mirror those solved a century ago by Taylor, Gilbreth, Ford, and Woollard so leaders stop assuming their experience is unique.
• Learning from Others' Failures. Examines where even Toyota faltered, and teaching executives to study others' mistakes rather than repeat them.
• Seeing Reality at the Gemba. Confronts executive detachment, showing how to surface the deep, hidden problems that abstraction and distance conceal.
• Working Together, Non-Zero-Sum. Tackles the failure to use internal and external human resources well, reinforcing the "Respect for People" principle and collaborative, win-win improvement.
• Changing Your World Through Self-Reliance. Builds the confidence and capability executives need to lead their own Lean journey rather than outsourcing it.

Rounded out with final thoughts and appendices on the growth imperative, Lean writing and publishing, and creativity, this volume reframes Lean success as a matter of strategy and mindset, not tools. For practitioners and executives who want a practical, historically grounded set of strategies, Volume Five offers five clear paths to becoming a more successful Lean leader.

Dr. Bob Emiliani has been a progressive management practitioner and researcher for over 30 years. He worked in industry for 15 years and had management responsibility in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain management at Pratt & Whitney. Bob was part of a team responsible for implementing TPS principles and practices in both manufacturing and supply chains at Pratt & Whitney. Subsequently, he was full-time professor for 23 years. He now holds the honorary title of Professor Emeritus. Bob was the first academic to establish a research agenda focused on Lean leadership, resulting in numerous publications and varied leadership development workshops. Bob is a prolific, versatile, and award-winning writer whose publications span engineering, business, social sciences, and humanities. He has authored or co-authored 28 books and 45 peer-reviewed papers across six different disciplines (leadership, management, management history, supply chain management, higher education, and materials engineering). His work is widely recognized and he is praised for being a unique voice and a creative thinker.