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For more than half a century, Peter F. Drucker's landmark essays have inspired and educated managers—and influenced the nature of business. Now, the learning continues with the Harvard Business Press release of the new Drucker Library Series.

In Managing in a Time of Great Change, the first book in the series, Drucker offers advice to executives for thriving in the global business environment of the future, covering such topics as team building, cutting costs in retail, changes in the U.S. economy, and doing business in Japan.

For effective execution in today’s complex global arena, your organization needs people from different areas and functions to interact and collaborate effectively. And this is not always easy, given that participants may be geographically separated, belong to different cultures, and speak different languages. Misunderstandings related to these factors can contribute dramatically to unbudgeted costs and, on occasion, deal a heavy blow to your bottom line.

Like most managers, even if you recognize the risk that bad communication may negatively affect your finances, you may tend to opt for a quick fix or a technology solution—perhaps because you are under the impression that this “soft” problem can be solved with an approach normally used for other problems.

The reality is that once these patches fail, it’s left up to people on the front lines to interact effectively and manage day-to-day issues as they occur.

This book offers a better alternative: address communication as a process, and apply familiar Lean methodologies to uncover the underlying factors that can impact the quality of any interaction. While Lean may have originated for the factory floor, today’s global supply chains that extend for thousands of miles have become the new factory floor, requiring more than ever clear and lean communication among all players.

Watch the book trailer: http://youtu.be/L9TBEocWVBU

Excerpt Review by Shingo Examiners:

Lean Potion #9 addresses communication in a very positive way, …the authors integrate messages from other thought leaders like Goldratt or Covey… This book is filled with thought-provoking stories and examples that demonstrate the various concepts. There are numerous examples of office lean materials that focus on improving communication flow. The book presents thoughts in an engaging manner…. For those who have not considered communication flow improvement … It’s a nice read since quality communication is basic change management for any lean journey.

--SHINGO EXAMINERS

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. —Sam Walton
What do your customers really want? "More for less," of course! They want more value, more service, more consistent delivery, more accuracy, and ever more responsiveness.They want less hassle, less bureaucracy, less sales pressure -- and, they want to pay "less" for this "more." Unless you can provide your customers with "more for less," you can be assured they will find someone else who can, and sooner rather than later. There’s no magic to providing more for less, but it requires a management mindset that’s different from the norm--and that’s precisely what this book is about. The findings in the 2004-2005 Mindset Study, based on exclusive interviews with frontline executives, went into the making of this book. With clarity and insight, Spanyi has penned the definitive guide for business leaders who are determined to deliver more for less to their customers and shareholders.

We live in a complex world. People and organizations often don’t believe they have the time to perform the in-depth analyses required to solve problems. Instead, they take remedial actions to make the problem less visible and implement a patchwork of ad hoc solutions they hope will prevent recurrence. Then when the problem returns, they get frustrated—and the cycle repeats.

This book provides detailed steps for how to solve problems, focusing more heavily on the analytical process involved in finding the actual causes of problems. It does so using a large number of figures, diagrams, and tools useful for helping make our thinking visible. The primary focus is on solving repetitive problems, rather than performing investigations for major incidents/accidents. Most of the terminology used is everyday language and can therefore also be used for applications in their personal lives. Many of the examples will involve situations with which the reader will likely be familiar.

The focus of the book not on statistics but instead on the logic of finding causes. It has sometimes been described in training workshops as “Six Sigma lite”…problem solving without all the heavy statistics.

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas, which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC), developed by Eli Goldratt.

What the business schools don't teach you to survive and flourish. Putting management theory into practice faces some major challenges. Some of the raw realities of modern work environments require a high level of intuition and judgement over and above scientific methodology alone. This book sets out the hard learnt experience of a senior Scotland Yard officer and centres on three themes: How to develop and look after yourself as an individual manager; how to make operations happen and work successfully; how to develop a high performance team around you. This book has many important messages for new managers, enabling them to survive and eventually flourish whilst guiding more experienced Directors to secure the holy grail of truly exceptional performance. It has equal relevance to those in the public, private and voluntary sector who have to translate strategy into action