Recommended Reading
World Class Manager: Olympic Quality Performance in the New Global Economy
Gerhard Plenert (MainStream consultant)
World Class Manager
World Class Manager by MainStream consultant Gerhard Plenert discusses the qualities of a top manager who has a global perspective and understands the needs for change, quality, and productivity. Focusing on strategy development, the book is an insighful read. Besides being endorsed by MainStream, this book won rave reviews from Black & Decker, Federal Express, AT&T, and numerous other industry leaders.
Reinventing Lean: Introducing Lean Management Into the Supply Chain
Gerhard Plenert (MainStream consultant)
Reinventing Lean
Most books on Supply Chain Management that focus simply on how to move materials and key resources throughout an industrial enterprise. Reinventing Lean by MainStream consultant, Gerhard Plenert, shows how SCM can be made 'Lean', leading to much more reliable, cost-effective and competitive SCM. In this book, the reader will find a collection of management tools that will help to implement Lean principles, and to understand the components of an integrated Supply Chain Management system. Moreover, the book will show that to make Lean SCM effective, both the functional management tools as well as an enterprise-wide cultural readiness are needed in order to lay the groundwork for a world class Lean supply chain.
7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis
Bill George
7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis
There are lots of books about the current economic crisis written by financial reporters. There are also lots of books prescribing formulas on Leadership by professional authors. The staff at MainStream found this book to be entirely different. It's a thought-provoking guide to leading in crisis by someone who is on the inside and who has actually led. Mr. George illuminates the "dos" and "don'ts" of crisis-time leadership. Through the use of case-study analysis, he sidesteps the ambiguity that so often plague “how-to” business books and strikes at the heart of the issues that are particularly pertinent in today's leaders.
Better Thinking, Better Results
Bob Emiliani
Better Thinking, Better Results
MainStream recommends this book to organizations that have made a commitment to continuous process improvement and Lean and want to gain a deeper understanding of how a large organization executes CPI and Lean to improve their bottom line and sustain a culture of continuous improvement. Emiliani provides an in depth look inside Wiremold, one of the most successful implementers of Lean. This book is an excellent resource for executives and practitioners.
Lean Thinking
James P. Womack & Daniel T. Jones
Lean Thinking
MainStream recommends this book as one of the better books to get a basic understanding of Lean and how it has been applied in several organizations over the years. We believe it is a great foundation book for organizations in the early stages of utilizing continuous process improvement methods and Lean tools, as a well as a great resource for leaders to check back and reference to see how they are doing relative to the concepts contained in this book.
Leading Change
John P. Kotter
Leading Change
MainStream frequently recommends ‘Leading Change’ to our clients, and in fact we are seeing an increasing number of corporate executives reference this book. In this book Kotter takes readers through a proven model, 8 steps for leading change in large organizations. Kotter’s ‘Leading Change’ and the ‘8 steps model’ is particularly timely as many organizations confront the business challenges facing them today.
Good to Great
Jim Collins
Good to Great
MainStream embraces many of the concepts in this book by Jim Collins and shares them with our clients in leading them towards realizing the company’s maximum enterprise value. Collins’ concepts around ‘level 5’ leaders, ‘getting the right people on the bus’, ‘the hedgehog concept’ and ‘the flywheel’ have helped many organizations achieve the transition from ‘good to great’. Many of the topics are directly applicable to privately held and publicly traded, middle market companies.