BETTER THINKING, BETTER RESULTS answers the question: "How do you conduct a Lean transformation?" It is a detailed case study and analysis of The Wiremold Company's enterprise-wide Lean transformation from 1991-2001, notable for the integration of both technical and human aspects. It is an authoritative and practical Lean implementation manual that will help guide managers on their journey. You will learn how the management team at Wiremold applied Lean principles and practices to human resources, finance, sales, marketing, engineering, operations, acquisitions process, and throughout the value stream with suppliers, intermediate customers, and end-use customers. You'll be amazed at the financial and non-financial results they achieved. The second edition brings the story up-to-date with a new chapter that describes what happened to Wiremold's Lean management efforts since 2001. You will learn vital lessons about the challenge of maintaining continuity in Lean management practice over the long term. BETTER THINKING, BETTER RESULTS won a Shingo Prize in 2003 as the first book to describe an enterprise-wide Lean transformation in a real company where both principles of Lean management - "Continuous Improvement" and "Respect for People" - were applied. There is no other book like this one. "Everything you need to know about a Lean transformation is explained between these covers..." - James P. Womack, Chairman and Founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute

This is the first book to document an actual company's Lean transformation over a ten-year period. It presents, in detail, what The Wiremold Company did to achieve its transformation and their amazing results, both financial and non-financial. The book vividly shows how Wiremold applied Lean principles and practices to the entire enterprise and throughout the value stream. The Wiremold Company achieved outstanding success in a short period of time by using Lean as a comprehensive management system, rather than as a group of tools. The leadership lessons are invaluable for anyone involved with making the Lean management system come alive in their company.

Silver Award Winner -- Nonfiction Authors Association Book Awards Stress and our overloaded brains are two of the underlying causes creating conflict, tension, and drama in the workplace. They also result in poor decision making and less-than-optimal thinking by leaders at all levels of the workforce. Daily juggling of data, reports, email, meetings, decisions, and way too much information has leaders operating in "mind full" modes. This is not good. A more effective method is to make decisions in a mindful mode, a skill that can be learned. As a leader, the decisions you make and execute shape the lives of team members, colleagues, direct reports, customers, suppliers, and the communities in which you operate and live. Unfortunately, the majority of leaders are unaware of how stress, multitasking, and overtaxed brains trigger poor decisions, thinking, and outcomes. This book will help readers become more cognizant of when stress is triggering them toward poor decision making. It will also help leaders become more aware of the many benefits that mindfulness practices will bring to their decision-making and thinking capabilities. Key topics include: How stress leads to poor decision making The impact and benefits of mindfulness for leaders Steps for reducing stress Techniques for shifting into mindfulness at work and elsewhere Brain facts and myths Tips for improving brain health Mindfulness techniques that can be used at work and elsewhere Mindfulness meditation techniques that can be used at work and elsewhere Additionally, Better Decisions. Better Thinking. Better Outcomes. delves into some of the latest neuroscience research on the steps that all of us can take to protect our brains and manage the health of our brains well into our elderly years. Unfortunately, we are entering an era when increasing dementia, Alzheimer's disease and stroke are going to hit individuals, families, and society hard. Current estimates predict the United States will see a 60% increase in Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia by 2030 from today's already staggering levels. Fortunately, using the techniques and tips in this book, such an increase is preventable. But only if the right actions are taken now, by you, your family members, your work colleagues, and everyone else. By helping ourselves, and one another, take the proper steps to enhance brain health, we can reduce the financial costs to society - and the brutal emotional costs to families - of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. This book shares some of the new scientific research that shows how mindfulness, stress relief and management techniques, meditation, and better dietary habits could slow and even postpone the debilitating effects of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. You will also learn about new neuroscientific studies showing that neuroplasticity -- the ability to grow neuronal connectivity across the brain -- can continue well into our 70s. The techniques described in this book will help you make better decisions and improve your thinking prowess. They will also result in you becoming a less stressed and far healthier person. Those are four great outcomes that will benefit you immediately, and for years to come.

Knowledge workers create the innovations and strategies that keep their firms competitive and the economy healthy. Yet, companies continue to manage this new breed of employee with techniques designed for the Industrial Age. As this critical sector of the workforce continues to increase in size and importance, that's a mistake that could cost companies their future. Thomas Davenport argues that knowledge workers are vastly different from other types of workers in their motivations, attitudes, and need for autonomy--and, so, they require different management techniques to improve their performance and productivity. Based on extensive research involving over 100 companies and more than 600 knowledge workers, Thinking for a Living provides rich insights into how knowledge workers think, how they accomplish tasks, and what motivates them to excel. Davenport identifies four major categories of knowledge workers and presents a unique framework for matching specific types of workers with the management strategies that yield the greatest performance. Written by the field's premier thought leader, Thinking for a Living reveals how to maximize the brain power that fuels organizational success. Thomas Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is director of research for Babson Executive Education; an Accenture Fellow; and author, co-author, or editor of nine books, including Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (HBS Press, 1997).

Better critical thinking can transform your life and help you improve every decision you make! Now, in just 30 days, master specific, easy-to-learn critical thinking techniques that help you cut through lies, gain insight, and make smarter choices in every area of your life -- from work and money to intimate relationships. World-renowned critical thinking experts Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul show how to overcome poor thinking habits caused by self-delusion or out-of-control emotions... clarify what you really want... recognize what you don’t know… ask better questions... resist brainwashing, manipulation, and hypocrisy... critically evaluate what you’re told by advertisers, politicians, your boss, and even your family… avoid worrying, conformism, and blame. Every day, you'll focus on a specific thinking habit, mastering practical strategies for achieving results, tracking your progress, gaining confidence, and getting smarter! Expanded, improved, and easier to use, Discover the Power of Critical Thinking, Revised and Expanded edition offers today's most complete, practical plan for using critical thinking to build a better life. This edition adds five new "days" of critical thinking workouts, delivering even more powerful "life improvement" ideas. Brand-new illustrations and diagrams help you see the direct relevance of critical thinking in your own life, and you'll find a practical new introduction to the authors' Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking, which is now being used by critical thinkers worldwide!

Using examples from his long career, a legendary basketball coach outlines the benefits of negative thinking, which helps build a realistic strategy that takes all potential obstacles into account.

This quick, 25-day plan for thinking more clearly and effectively in every area of life shows readers how desires and emotions distort thinking and how they can correct such situations.

*Major New York Times Bestseller *More than 2.6 million copies sold *One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year *Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year *Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient *Daniel Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's best-selling The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.

Do you think as well as you can? Does the quality of your thinking even matter? In this tool-packed practical guide, Cathy Lasher presents an exciting new way to get better results through focused thinking. Discover EDGE-it, a new approach that helps you sharpen your thinking in virtually any situation, leading to getting more of what you want, more easily. Benefit from your personal and professional experiences in a new way. Learn how to prevent that 'why did I just do that again?!' feeling. Achieve your future goals with greater ease and more control. Navigate the turbulent waters of the 21st century workplace with robust, research-based tools.

Better Learning Solutions Through Better Learning Experiences When training and development initiatives treat learning as something that occurs as a one-time event, the learner and the business suffer. Using design thinking can help talent development professionals ensure learning sticks to drive improved performance. Design Thinking for Training and Development offers a primer on design thinking, a human-centered process and problem-solving methodology that focuses on involving users of a solution in its design. For effective design thinking, talent development professionals need to go beyond the UX, the user experience, and incorporate the LX, the learner experience. In this how-to guide for applying design thinking tools and techniques, Sharon Boller and Laura Fletcher share how they adapted the traditional design thinking process for training and development projects. Their process involves steps to: Get perspective. Refine the problem. Ideate and prototype. Iterate (develop, test, pilot, and refine). Implement. Design thinking is about balancing the three forces on training and development programs: learner wants and needs, business needs, and constraints. Learn how to get buy-in from skeptical stakeholders. Discover why taking requests for training, gathering the perspective of stakeholders and learners, and crafting problem statements will uncover the true issue at hand. Two in-depth case studies show how the authors made design thinking work. Job aids and tools featured in this book include: a strategy blueprint to uncover what a stakeholder is trying to solve an empathy map to capture the learner’s thoughts, actions, motivators, and challenges an experience map to better understand how the learner performs. With its hands-on, use-it-today approach, this book will get you started on your own journey to applying design thinking.