Four Practical Revolutions in Management : The Development of Skill in Managers, Teams, Individua

In Four Practical Revolutions in Management: Systems for Creating Unique Organizational Capability, authors Shoji Shiba and David Walden significantly revise their classic text on leading management systems -- A New American TQM. This book is a comprehensive approach to business management that goes beyond business operations improvement.

The authors demonstrate a program for establishing a sophisticated, state-of-the-art management system that creates unique organizational capabilities. Containing new methodologies and case studies, the book is one of the most extensive in the management field and provides a step-by-step program for implementing leading management techniques.

To create a successful management system, the authors argue that companies must be organized around four major areas of practice called the "four revolutions." They are customer focus, continuous improvement, total participation, and societal networking. For each of the areas, the book presents proven methods that enable dynamic implementation strategies.

Customer Focus

Any effective management system begins with the customer. Companies must learn to integrate a customer's concerns into their own. The book presents how to embrace the "market-in" concept and integrate the other skills in the book into a management strategy that focuses on the customer.

Continuous Improvement

For a company to be successful in the 21st century, it must continually improve its processes to meet the ever-changing needs of the customer. This book introduces important tools for process discovery, management, and improvement. In the process, it moves beyond "reactive improvement" methods to "proactive improvement" efforts.

Total Participation

The key to creating a dynamic management system is employee participation. Employees are the ones who work on the issues of quality and customer satisfaction on a daily basis. This book presents skills such as hoshin management, team-building, creating structures for mobilization, and leading change and breakthrough.

Societal Networking

Besides a company's internal audience, another source of business improvement ideas is societal networking. This is the set of companies, customers, and suppliers associated with any organization, that can learn from the experiences of these groups. To develop these valuable resources into a comprehensive management strategy, the book covers "mutual learning" methods, as well as keys for integrating various management methodologies.

This book includes:

• Hoshin management
• PDCA (plan, do, check, act) cycle
• 7-step method of reactive improvement
• Proactive improvement to develop new products
• Engaging people in a changing environment
• Focused strategies for phase-in
• Leading process improvement
• The practice of breakthrough
• Over thirty thorough case studies

1. The Evolution of the Customer Satisfaction Concept
2. Survival in a Rapidly Changing World
3. Developing a Unique Organizational Capability
4. Change in the Work Concept
5. Evolution of Customer Focus and Its Challenges
6. Improvement as a Problem-Solving Process
7. Process Discovery and Management
8. Process Control and Variation
9. Reactive Improvement and the 7 Steps Method
10. Management Diagnosis of the 7 Steps of Reactive Improvement
11. Process Management Mobilization Case Study -- Teradyne
12. Planning Projects or Tasks
13. Proactive Improvement
14. Applying Proactive Improvement to Develop New Products
15. Engagement and Alignment of Organization Members
16. Coordination Behavior
17. Leading Change
18. Self-Development
19. Teamwork Skill
20. Initiation Strategies
21. Infrastructure for Mobilization
22. Phase-In
23. U.S. Focused Strategies for Phase-In
24. Hoshin Management
25. Leading Process Improvement
26. Further Case Studies in Mobilization
27. The Practice of Breakthrough
28. Networking and Societal Diffusion: Regional and National Networking
29. Ongoing Integration of Methods

To visit David Walden's website, click here.