Book Store

Lean Culture – The Leader’s Guide:

This guide provides a road map to implementing lean culture within your organization. This guide represents the knowledge gained through thirty-five years of field experience implementing large scale change in the culture of organizations. This guide presents the principles and process of changing organization culture to capitalize on the competitive advantages of lean.

Lean culture is a lot more than the tools and techniques of lean. It is the framework of values, daily habits and relationships within which those techniques can succeed and be sustained. Without the support of the culture, the techniques often fail. The sustainable value is in the culture and management process in which continuous improvement becomes a daily habit at every level. The purpose of this book is to help you build this culture.

Reviews on Amazon:

“Definitive book on the subject: For those seeking an easy to understand book on what Lean Culture is and what it takes to establish and maintain, this is the book to read. Larry Miller’s book captures his years of experience in leading and interfacing with Lean organizations and boils down those experiences to reveal the essence of how and why a truly Lean organization functions the way it does. Jargon-free, clear and concise, Larry gets to the meat of the subject and addresses every aspect head on in a very straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is way. He explains what to do, how to do it, and why it works, and relates it all to real life experience. There is no theoretic mumbo-jumbo in this book. Hands down, the best book on the subject to date.” B. Ziskovsky, Senior Lecturer, Operational Excellence, OSU

Now available as a Kindle ebook:

Lean Team Management

The team in an organization is like the family in a society. It is the fundamental building block of trust and competence in an organization. As companies attempt to follow the efficiency of companies like Toyota or Honda, they often focus on the technical things and bypass the hard part – the culture, the human skills, style and systems of the organization. At the heart of that social system is the small work group, the team, both at the front line level and at all levels of management. The most effective organizations are built on the foundation of effective teams. This workbook presents the most essential practices and skills of effective workgroup and managing teams.

Lean Team Management takes the reader through the vital steps of managing process and performance to customer needs. This is the result of thirty years of hands-on experience implementing Team Management in organizations of every kind.

Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies

There is no one right leadership style. The longer one spends studying successful organizations and their leaders, the more one is struck by the diversity of leadership style. There is a common thread among successful leaders. Style matches strategy. The style of the leader is linked to the behavior required of employees and the strategic response to the environment.

Many books have been written on the situational nature of leadership. One, which I wrote a few years ago, is Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies. The book defines different leadership styles and their relationship to stages of an organization’s life cycle. Largely based on Arnold Toynbee’s epic study of the rise and fall of 23 civilizations, the rise and fall of cultures, I have over-laid that pattern over the rise and fall of corporations and found the parallels in leadership styles, behavior and culture.

Reviews

“Excellent provocative thoughts about leadership, which prod the reader to think for oneself rather than accept a simplistic, Atilla-the-Hun — like answer.” Dallas Times Herald

“Thought-provoking . . . . Anyone in a position to influence the direction of their company should make this book a No. 1 priority on his or her reading list.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“One day your sluggish company will taken to the sound of a beating drum and the sight of a competitor approaching at ramming speed. On deck will be a jut-jawed Barbarian….He will hardly blink as his target is ripped asunder, sending Aristocrats, Bureaucrats and their unfortunate shipmates to their corporate death….So goes Mr. Miller’s tale, from which we can all profit.” The Wall Street Journal

American Spirit: Visions of A New Corporate Culture

Written at the time of the greatest fascination with Japanese management, this is a look into the culture and soul of this country and a search for the key principles that led to a vibrant economy. I suggest that a return to these core principles is still a basis for sound management and leadership. American Spirit was used by Honda of America for many years as a definition of the Honda Way and the principles in the book were used to evaluate their management practices.

Team Management

This manual, co-authored with Jennifer Howard was the core training material for the Miller Howard Consulting Group, my former company. This manual was revised many times in a collaborative effort by all the consultants who were on-the-spot implementing Team Management. It covers the basic skills and concepts of implementing teams as the core management strategy in the organization. My more recent team manual is built on this experience but also incorporates more recent understandings of lean management and culture.

Change Management: Creating the Dynamic Organization through Whole System Architecture

This manual is a step-by-step guide to re-engineering and re-designing the “whole-system” of an organization. It is a practical guidebook to the process of managing change in the organization.

From Management To Leadership

This little book was published by Executive Excellence publications and is a brief distillation of some of the key concepts of team management and whole-systems thinking.

Spiritual Enterprise: Building Your Business in the Spirit of Service

Lessons in Moral Leadership and Management from the Teachings of the Baha’i Faith: This book takes a decidedly different direction than any of the books above. Spiritual Enterprise was written based on my religious views and my Faith’s writings about organization, wealth and leadership and attempts to integrate those with my knowledge and experience of management. It was written for those with some knowledge of the Baha’i Faith or those with a particular interest in exploring the more spiritual and moral aspects of leadership and management.