ASQ Quality Press

How organizations learn; investigate, identify, institutionalize.

Townsend and Gebhardt detail the three step learning cycle of organizations: investigating the situation, identifying failures and successes, and institutionalizing the lessons. They consider how the cycle is used by the US Army, which has influenced companies such as General Electric, Motorola, Harley-Davidson, and Amoco. They discuss the army's After-Action Review method that examines an event and focuses on performance standards, draw parallels between the army's experience and the quality movement, and describe the work of CALL (Center for Army Lessons Learned). The authors both grew up as military dependents and Townsend spent 20 years in the Marine Corps. They have published other books on quality, leadership, and recognition, and conduct seminars on leadership and the definition and implementation of the continual improvement process. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Lean for service organizations and offices; a holistic approach for achieving operational excellence and improvements.

Service companies sometimes struggle with lean implementation due to the absence of a holistic approach to embed lean methods into the organizational fabric. Sarkar, author of several previous books on organizational excellence programs, addresses that potential shortcoming by providing an original lean organizational model. Built around systems thinking, the model requires a lean architecture to be hardwired around five anchors: people, processes, partners, promotions, and problem solving. Though specifically designed with service organizations and offices in mind, the model can also be used in manufacturing companies. The author holds a business improvement leadership role in ICICI Bank. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Recognition, gratitude, & celebration.

Consultants Townsend and Gebhardt give managers and executives solid ideas about finding the right way to recognize the work of employees. They believe thanking employees is a necessary act of leadership, and that the right ways to say thank you is both rational and emotional. They also advocate caution, because recognition can come across very badly (too little too late, inappropriate for the kind of work done, or even inappropriate for the person. They offer alternatives for individuals and groups and a number of options so recognition will not become stale or an empty exercise. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)