Getting the Right Things Done: A Leader's Guide to Planning and Execution

By Pascal Dennis

Book Overview

For companies to be competitive, leaders must engage people at all levels in order to focus their energy and enable them to apply lean principles to everything they do. Strategy deployment, called hoshin kanri by Toyota, has proven to be the most effective process for meeting this ongoing challenge. In his new book Getting the Right Things Done, author and LEI faculty member Pascal Dennis outlines the nuts and bolts of strategy deployment, answering two tough questions that ultimately can make or break a company's lean transformation: * What kind of planning system is required to inspire meaningful company-wide continuous improvement? * How might we change existing mental models that do not support a culture of continuous improvement? Getting the Right Things Done demonstrates how strategy deployment can help leaders harness the full power of Lean. Organization leaders at all levels and the management teams who are responsible for strategy deployment will find this book especially insightful. It tells the story of a fictional (yet very real) midsized company, Atlas Industries that needs to dramatically improve to compete with emerging rivals and meet new customer demands. Getting the Right Things Done chronicles the journey of the company and its President/COO, an experienced lean leader who was hired five years ago to steer Atlas in the right direction. While Atlas had already applied some basic lean principles, it had not really connected the people and business processes so that the company could dramatically improve. Atlas' challenge: "Something was missing: a way of focusing and aligning the efforts of good people, and a delivery system, something that would direct the tools to the right places." Enter strategy deployment. The book is designed to provide readers with a framework for understanding the key components of strategy deployment: agreeing on the company's "True North," working within the PDCA cycle, getting conse

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976315262
• ISBN13: 9780976315261
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc.
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Planning that drives continuous improvement!

I have applied the forms, principles and tools described in this book and they work great. The key, as expressed in the book, is to get the whole leadership team involved.

Practical, hand held way to define and implement operations strategy

This book teaches a practical, step by step way to define and deploy operations strategy. It is very easy to follow the logic presented in this book and easy to apply. At the same timeit is really useful, at any type of operation independent of its complexity or size.

Great Book Club item for a Management Team

I really enjoyed this book not as a read, but as a workbook tool to use with a management team as we added discipline to our planning process. We had good rhythm, but this help us be much more scientific in our approach. It has help us avoid just grabbing at the urgent items. We went Chapter by Chapter, week by week to prepare for our next quarterly planning efforts.

Outstanding book - very practical & powerful!

After reading this book I got a lot of great ideas to plan next year's goals & also improve my overall department's effectiveness.

Strategy Deployment Simplified

Pascal Dennis covers the basics of strategy deployment extremely well. He explains the concepts, methods and tactics used by Toyota to maximize improvement. His extremely practical description of strategies "as stories that engage" and his clear explanations of similar concepts make the complex subject matter accessible to everyone. The book is easy to read and the words he uses are very effective. For example, when he explains how "translation" makes strategies "real" to employees at every level of an organization or when he describes the "Catchball" process as a "scrubbing" process where teams "toss ideas back and forth" to create plans that are realistic and acheivable. Mr. Dennis is a former Toyota employee and accomplished author. I find his advice highly credible and recommended his book.

A Clear and Concise Introduction to Strategy Deployment

In "Getting the Right Things Done" Pascal Dennis offers an introduction to Strategy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri). The book is written as a "novel" with plenty of information sidebars. It is clear and easy to read (a feature of Mr Dennis' books) - a brilliant introduction for the beginner. What is more, the book is packed with example "A3" strategy and action plans to give you a real feel for the system (with blank copies available to download). Interestingly, and in contrast to a number of lean consultants I know, Dennis suggests leaving organising into Value Streams until after the framework of Strategy Deployment is successfully implemented. This is to get people used to the PDCA structure before the upheaval of reorganisation, I guess. Not a bad approach, though, to my mind, Value Stream mapping and other tools will also provide lots of valuable input to the Strategy Deployment process, even if people aren't yet formally grouped into Value Streams. Nevertheless, this book provides the ideal introduction to Hoshin Kanri in a clear, straightforward and readable manner. It is suitable for beginners at all levels in the organisation.