Sustaining Operational Excellence: Leadership Strategies for Mastering Lean Success

By Al Grainger

Al Grainger is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with over 20 years of hands-on experience driving operational excellence across industries and countries, transforming organizations through practical, proven methods that deliver measurable results. With more than 9,500 print and eBooks in circulation across four continents, his work has become a trusted resource for leaders, professionals, and teams seeking clear, actionable guidance. Al distills decades of real-world problem-solving into simple, effective frameworks that empower readers to improve performance, build capability, and create lasting change.

Sustaining Lean: Turn Your Launch into a Daily Management System That Lasts

Most Lean transformations fade after the initial push. The real differentiator is the management system that keeps improvements alive-every day, at every level.

In Sustaining Operational Excellence, Lean expert Al Grainger shows leaders how to install the habits, visual controls, and accountability loops that prevent backsliding and build a culture that improves on its own. With field-tested templates and examples across manufacturing, services, and the public sector, you'll turn Lean from a project into a durable way of working.

You'll learn how to:

Build Leader Standard Work that actually gets doneRun tiered daily huddles and a fast help chain that fixes issues before they growMake performance visible with boards and KPIs that drive the right behaviorUse Gemba walks and coaching kata to grow capability, not dependencyReinforce accountability without blame-and celebrate wins to lock in momentumConnect daily improvement to Hoshin/strategy deployment so teams see the "why"

What's inside: checklists, board layouts, meeting cadences, example metrics, anti-backsliding countermeasures, and guidance to adapt for frontline, support, and leadership teams.

This is the capstone to Al Grainger's Lean Leadership trilogy (following Root Cause Analysis - A Leader's Guide and Lean Thinking for Leaders)-a practical blueprint for making Lean stick.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G6KMV3Z7
• ISBN13: 9798278142089
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"