Why does progressive management keep starting over? Every generation or two rediscovers what the prior ones knew, then lets it slip away. It's holding business and society back.
Improvement sets out to break that cycle. Drawing on five centuries of management innovation - from the Venice Arsenal to Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management to Toyota and Lean - the author delivers the first multi-generational blueprint for advancing leadership beyond the zero-sum thinking of classical management.
Inside, you'll find a frank diagnosis of the scores of preconceptions that keep classical management entrenched, an original teleological and ateleological analysis of Scientific management, Toyota's management system, and Lean management, a pioneering social theory of the Lean movement, and a practical "Improvement Mindset" you can carry forward.
For executives, Lean practitioners, scholars, and reformers - a strategic guide to the mindset and conditions needed to making progress that finally sticks.