Book Review: How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons From the World's Greatest Car Company

How Toyota Became #1

Book Review:       How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons From the World's Greatest Car Company
Author:       David Magee
Language:    English
Format:        Hardcover
ISBN-10:    1591841798
ISBN-13:    9781591841791
Topic:          Business Management


SPONSOR:  Business Books


Publisher's Note:
What we can all learn from the strategies that have made Toyota the world’s best car company

Everyone who follows the auto industry knows that Toyota has had an amazing twenty-five-year run, rising from humble Japanese start-up to thriving global giant. But the big puzzle is how Toyota did it while so many other car companies have struggled or failed.

Journalist David Magee dug deeply into Toyota’s past and present, interviewing senior executives who rarely talk to the press, along with many other sources. And he found that the company’s famous mastery of lean production is only part of the story. Magee explains the surprising power of Toyota’s corporate culture, which includes:

• Focusing on the long term: While most companies worry about the next quarter, Toyota is thinking about the next quarter century

• Jumping beyond the current trend: When Ford was still ramping up its gas-guzzling SUVs, Toyota was very quietly taking a huge lead on hybrids

• Making quality everyone’s responsibility: Toyota expects people at every level to think and act like quality-control inspectors

• Managing individual strengths: Toyota is revolutionizing the way people are managed, to maximize their strengths instead of criticizing their weaknesses

The lessons that Magee explains here will be valuable for managers in all disciplines and industries.

REVIEW:

This is book designed to help the management student (employed or otherwise) develop along their skills to achieve success.  If you aren't already a student of Toyota and its production system or the principles that make up its culture, you will find this book an informative and well written overview of what the company is trying to do each and every day. There are indeed dozens of valuable and useful leadership lessons for the reader to learn from the material the author shares.  I found it fascinating the way Toyota introduced the philosophy of Buddhism and implemented it into the company.  Toyota calls this kaizen and the aim is to continually correct and improve the system an incentive program was created to reinforce kaizen.  Toyota refers to this as a self-regenerating internally combustive enterprise.

Saddam Hussein on eBay - Looted Loot gets Returned to Original Looters

Officials in New York have returned to Iraqi diplomats dinnerware once belonging to Saddam Hussein and the family of King Faisal II that was looted, then illegally imported to the United States and sold on eBay.

Looted Plates

Nineteen dinner and salad plates, some which contained the official seal of Iraq, were being used at the Park Avenue Autumn restaurant as part of an art exhibit. The plates, officials say, were returned to Iraqi representatives at the United Nations on Tuesday.

"After being advised of the illegal status of the Iraqi Plates, Creative Time, the owner of the Iraqi Plates, agreed to voluntarily relinquish them to the custody of the United States Attorney's Office, so they could be returned to their rightful owner, the Republic of Iraq," the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Wednesday.

News of the discovery comes on the same day President Obama marked the end of the war in Iraq with an address to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Wednesday also marks eight years to the day that Saddam Hussein was discovered hiding in a spider hole and captured by U.S. forces.

The items are just a few among a large collection of artifacts that were stolen from Baghdad palaces and museums when U.S. tanks rumbled into the country's capital back in early 2003.

For some legal plates and glassware go here

Book Review: CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN

CONFESSIONS from John Perkins

Book Review: CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN
Author: John Perkins
ISBN:  0452287081
Topic:  Economics
Format:  Paperback
Language:  English
Publication Year:  2004

REVIEW:

SPONSOR:  Business Books

John Perkins gives a first-hand account of a world in which US corporations wildly over predict the growth that will follow big infrastructure projects in the developing world, convincing aid organizations to give big loans for these projects, resulting in big projects (and big money) for American firms and crippling debt for poor nations.

Part of the book tells of his own experiences, generating false predictions and both giving and receiving bribes.  Having had a similar experience while running a business unit overseas, I empathized with the weight of situational ethics.

I enjoyed the travel details but found some of his conclusions contrived.  Perkins adopts a confessional tone and does an excellent job of transporting me to the scene.  Perkins provides extensive references for those who would like to read more.

If you are going to work abroad, I recommend Confessions of an Economic Hitman, if nothing else, to rid you of being naive.  This will help with your mission.

Sponsor:  Rare Books