Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels

2016 winner of the SHINGO RESEARCH AND PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATION AWARD, Developing Lean Leaders at all Levels: A Practical Guide is a management Must Read. The Lean Leadership Development Model (LLDM) presented in this book is intuitive, and aligns well with accepted principles of operational excellence. It expands significantly on the elements of Lean, structuring them in a more specific way that can be operationalized by lean practitioners. You can learn everything you want about the Toyota Way; you can implement the tools they have created, but if you do not have the behaviors established within your culture, it will not be successful for long-term sustainment of operational excellence. Leadership must walk the talk of true north in every aspect of the Lean Leadership Development Model (LLDM) as conveyed in detail by Dr. Liker in this recent Shingo Award Winning Book. In The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, for the first time, Jeffrey Liker and Toyota-Veteran Gary Convis unveiled the secret of Toyota's success in developing leaders who live the values and constantly improve the company and adapt to the rapidly changing environment. There is a core set of skills required of all Toyota leaders focused on the right way to improve delivery of value to customers in whatever part of the company they are stationed (sales, supply chain, human resources, operations, R&D, finance). This process is sometimes confused with the results of that process which are the artifacts you see when touring a Toyota plant. The reality of any Toyota operation is that it houses a culture of people deliberately taught a method of defining, analyzing, and solving problems to continually drive the company forward. Toyota summarizes this as respect for people and continuous improvement, but the way to achieve this is through exceptional leadership developed not over weeks and months but over years and decades. In Developing Lean Leaders at all Levels we build on the theory in the original book and answer the questions: How can I apply this in my organization? What concrete actions can I take to begin the journey of becoming a lean leader? How can I spread this learning to all parts of the organization? What critical tools are needed to turn the theory to practice? This book adds examples from over twenty years of experience by Dr. Liker in working with companies outside of Toyota. The book treats you as a student who will be actively engaged in developing lean leader skills as you read. It acts as a tutorial for beginning the journey! We build on the original four-stage model of leadership development by Liker and Convis: self development, developing others, supporting daily improvement and aligning people throughout the entire enterprise using a common strategic planning process called hoshin kanri. These steps are guided by five core Toyota Way values: challenge, kaizen, go and see first hand, respect, and teamwork. The method for training is one part concepts in a classroom and many, many parts on the job development with an experienced mentor. Lean leaders are the executives and managers of the operation, not outside improvement specialists. Every leader becomes a teacher developing others. We began with an online course broadly accessible to large numbers of people. The challenge was to make a course that is engaging, feeds information in bite-sized pieces, tests understanding of the bite-sized pieces, and relates conceptual learning to practice through actual improvement projects with a coach. This book arose out of the online course. First, Dr. Liker and George Trachilis developed the course with a lot of piloting and improvement. Second, the course was translated verbatim into this book. Third, Dr. Liker rewrote the book to enhance it and improve the flow. The goal in writing the book is to help you learn, practice, and grow your lean leadership skills. Jeffrey K. Liker University of Michigan Author, The Toyota Way