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.

Book Review: Guts: 8 Laws of Business from One of the Most Innovative Business Leaders LUTZ

GUTS

Book Review:  GUTS
Author:            Robert A. Lutz
Language:        English
Format:            Hard Cover
ISBN-10:        0471463221
Topic:              Leadership


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Publisher's Note
"Read it for no other reason than to learn Bob's Seven Immutable Laws of Business. . . . This is vintage Bob-contrarian, thoughtful, and he's really fun to read."-Forbes

In this edition of Bob Lutz's bestselling account of the business philosophy with which he revolutionized Chrysler and much of the automotive industry, Lutz reveals his unique brand of creative management. Readers will learn many lessons herein, including why the key to success in any business is maintaining a positive tension between the creative minds and the buttoned-up financial minds, and how to attract, motivate, and strategically deploy each type throughout an organization. This book features a new introduction and an epilogue in which Lutz introduces an eighth law that helps today's business leaders put his famed Seven Immutable Laws of Business into sharper perspective.

Robert A. Lutz (Scarsdale, NY) is General Motor's Vice Chairman of Product Development and Chairman of GM North America.

REVIEW:

Excellent book and well written.  I enjoyed the tough talk about taking things seriously.  The chapet about fear spoke to me and motivated me.

Book Review: The New Strategic Selling (Updated)

NEW STRATEGIC SELLING

Book Review:       NEW STRATEGIC SELLING
Author:    Stephen E. Heiman & Robert B. Miller
Language:    English
Format:        Paperback
ISBN-10:    044669519x

Topic:      SALES


SPONSOR:  Business Books


Publisher's Note:
UPDATED 


The Book That Sparked A Selling Revolution.  In 1985 one book changed sales and marketing forever. Rejecting manipulative tactics and emphasizing "process," Strategic Selling presented the idea of selling as a joint venture and introduced the decade's most influential concept, Win-Win. The response to Win-Win was immediate and helped turn the small company that created Strategic Selling, Miller Heiman, into a global leader in sales development with the most prestigious client list in the industry. The New Strategic Selling This modern edition of the business classic confronts the rapidly evolving world of business-to-business sales with new real-world examples, new strategies for confronting competition, and a special section featuring the most commonly asked questions from the Miller Heiman workshops. Learn: * How to identify the four real decision makers in every corporate labyrinth * How to prevent sabotage by an internal deal-killer * How to make a senior executive eager to see you * How to avoid closing business that you'll later regret * How to manage a territory to provide steady, not "boom and bust," revenue * How to avoid the single most common error when dealing with the competition.


By eliminating "fickle luck" from the sales process and replacing it with proven, visible, repeatable skills, this book offers a sure-fire method for making the sale every time. This expanded edition features the basic tenets from the first book, plus a valuable array of new features.

Presenting an effective method for making the sale every time, an expanded edition features the basic tenets of Buying Influences, Red Flags/Leverage from Strength, Response Modes, The Sales Funnel, Win Results, The Ideal Customer, and much more. Original.

The back list bestseller that demystifies methods for consistently and successfully "closing the deal" is now updated and expanded to address changes in client demand and the market.




REVIEW:

The company I worked for in 2009 used this method with much success.  Later when I started my own business, I used many of these concepts to open up larger accounts.  The section on defining the ideal customer was crucial.  It helped me to avoid wasting time and other resources pursuing inappropriate deals.

Statistics Revolution - THE LADY TASTING TEA

The Lady Tasting Tea

Book Review:  The Lady Tasting Tea (How Statistics Revolutionized Science In The Twentieth Century)
Author: David Salsburg
ISBN:  0716741067
Topic:  Economics
Format:  Hardcover
Language:  English
Publication Year:  2001

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At a summer tea party in Cambridge, England, a lady states that tea poured into milk tastes differently than that of milk poured into tea. Her notion is shouted down by the scientific minds of the group. But one guest, by the name Ronald Aylmer Fisher, proposes to scientifically test the lady's hypothesis. There was no better person to conduct such a test. For Fisher had brought to the field of statistics an emphasis on controlling the methods for obtaining data and the importance of interpretation. He knew that how the data was gathered and applied was as important as the data themselves.

In The Lady Tasting Tea, readers will encounter not only Ronald Fisher's theories (and their repercussions), but the ideas of dozens of men and women whose revolutionary work affects our everyday lives. Writing with verve and wit, author David Salsburg traces the rise and fall of Karl Pearson's theories, explores W. Edwards Deming's statistical methods of quality control (which rebuilt postwar Japan's economy), and relates the story of Stella Cunliff's early work on the capacity of small beer casks at the Guinness brewing factory.

The Lady Tasting Tea is not a book of dry facts and figures, but the history of great individuals who dared to look at the world in a new way.

REVIEW:

The book is friendly to those who are intimidated by numbers.  After reading this, I went back to my business thoughts and began implementing new ways to view my data.  The goal is to increase sales by finding the story the stats are telling.

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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

Book Review: THE ART OF STRATEGY - A New Translation of Sun Tzu's Classic The Art of War

Book Review: THE ART OF STRATEGY - A New Translation of Sun Tzu's Classic The Art of WarAuthor: R.L. Wing

ISBN-13:  9780385237840

THE ART OF STRATEGY

Topic:  Strategy
Format:  Paperback
Language:  English
Publication Year:  1988

SPONSOR:  BUSINESS BOOKS

REVIEW:

"The Art of Strategy" takes the classic Chinese strategy to a level that modern Americans can easily relate.  This is a good book to remind you that it is the goal that is important to achieve, not the emotional turmoil that your adversary may create within you.  The material is timeless.  Sun Tzu was a masterful observer of human nature, and what was true then is true now.  This book is excellent and took me out of my current troubles and gave me insight to victory.  You to will learn how to analyze a situation, plan actions, obtain an advantage, make use of information, and gain a favorable position.

INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLISHER: 
More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu composed his masterpiece The Art of War which has been used by the world's greatest leaders including Napoleon. Here, Wing makes the influential philosophies of the Orient accessible to all seekers of professional achievement and personal excellence. 20 halftones, 35 illustrations.