The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance (JOSSEY-BASS BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT SERIES)
by: Gerald J. Langley, Ronald Moen, Kevin M. Nolan, Thomas W. Nolan, Clifford L. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost
The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance (JOSSEY-BASS BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT SERIES)
By Gerald J. Langley, Ronald Moen, Kevin M. Nolan, Thomas W. Nolan, Clifford L. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: 2009-04-20
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0470192410
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780470192412
Product Description:
This new edition of this bestselling guide offers an integrated approach to process improvement that delivers quick and substantial results in quality and productivity in diverse settings. The authors explore their Model for Improvement that worked with international improvement efforts at multinational companies as well as in different industries such as healthcare and public agencies. This edition includes new information that shows how to accelerate improvement by spreading changes across multiple sites. The book presents a practical tool kit of ideas, examples, and applications.
Summary: Simple on the Other Side of Complex
Rating: 5
The authors have done a tremendous job of codifying a great amount of knowledge into an elegant model for improvement. It can be used with equal success to improve your golf game or guide your global business transformation. Rife with examples and method. A must for every improvement bookshelf.
also read Superperformance
Summary: Very helpful. One omission distresses me.
Rating: 4
Clear, practical, and empowering. The authors are ambivalent on whether or not they will keep the focus on business operations; from the start they're keen to promote to a fully generic application, but the examples veer to and away from the business world, finally settling there a bit awkwardly.
The Change Concepts index near the end is a great idea, but the scope is confused along the lines I've already cited, and you might feel stuck in the QC department by the time you get through it. That's a bit of a shame, because one wonders if the challenges so elegantly met by the improvement model couldn't be cast in a more universal mode. (One also realizes one doesn't have the time to pursue this thought to fruition.) More pertinently, I'm trying to learn business process engineering, and it's easy to see a list dedicated to that discipline would be different. So despite the book's opening claims to a generic application, I felt stranded in one small tributary of the mighty River Improvement.
Nonetheless, I feel enabled by the book to succeed in my company where others have failed. It's so easy now to see how attempted improvements went wrong, through poor planning or inappropriate opening scope or simply through a failure to acknowledge real benefits when they happened. These pitfalls can be avoided, and the book shows how.
Now, I will mention an important omission. In my workplace I have to test and pilot and implement changes that are complex because a single change has no effect -- rather, two or more changes must be made at the same time, because they are mutually contingent. Management is not sure about A, nor about B. I would like to test A and get a decision, and I would like to treat B as a separate decision path. But they depend on each other, so things aren't so simple. (This is a point where Darwin's theory of cumulative biological mutation fails, if you care to know.) A mechanic troubleshooting your car's ignition system could give you concrete examples, but unfortunately, I couldn't find any in this book. My sense of empowerment has suffered correspondingly.
Summary: I just read the Philippy review...
Rating: 5
...and feel compelled to write in response. I must say it is hard to believe that Mr. Philippy and I are looking at the same book. I wrote an extensive review of this book already some time ago (it is listed below) and still feel the same way, even stronger. The Improvement Guide has continued to be, for me and my students/clients/mentees the "here's how" of Dr. W. Edwards Deming's philosophy. I am at a loss to find any hint of self-promotion of the authors in the book, save what one could reasonably infer about the competency and knowledge of the authors given the wealth of useful, in depth examples it contains. These could only come from deep knowledge of the theory and extensive successful experience in its practice. This book is as devoid of self-aggrandizement as any I have ever read.
I take considerable comfort from the fact that given the principles exemplified by the book, it is unlikely that the authors will over-react and over-adjust their professional aims in response to a single review, and will instead continue the fine work that has been done in this volume. My only question is, will there be a second edition? I would love to see it. In tenor and tone, I for one hope that it is exactly like this one....
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