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Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win, Foreword by Clay Christensen |  | Author: Steven Spear
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Seller: hackwe
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 110019
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0071499881
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4
EAN: 9780071499880
ASIN: 0071499881
Publication Date: September 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Winner of the Shingo Prize for Research and Professional Publication, 2009 How can companies perform so well that their industry counterparts are competitors in name only? Although they operate in the same industry, serve the same market, and even use the same suppliers, these “rabbits” lead the race and, more importantly, continually widen their lead. In Chasing the Rabbit, Steven J. Spear describes what sets high-velocity, market-leading organizations apart and explains how you can lead the pack in your industry. Spear examines the internal operations of dominant organizations, including Toyota, Alcoa, Pratt & Whitney, the US Navy's Nuclear Power Program, and top-tier teaching hospitals--organizations operating in vastly differing industries, but which share one thing in common: the skillful management of complex internal systems that generates constant, almost automatic self-improvement at rates faster, durations longer, and breadths wider than anyone else musters. As a result, each enjoys a level of profitability, quality, efficiency, reliability, and agility unmatched by rivals. Chasing the Rabbit shows how to: - Build a system of “dynamic discovery” designed to reveal operational problems and weaknesses
- Attack and solve problems at the time and in the place where they occur, converting weaknesses into strengths
- Disseminate knowledge gained from solving local problems throughout the company as a whole
- Create managers invested in the process of continual innovation
Whatever kind of company you operate--from technology to finance to healthcare--mastery of these four key capabilities will put you on the fast track to operational excellence, where you will generate faster, better results using less capital and fewer resources. Apply the lessons of Steven J. Spear's and leave the competition in the dust.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
 Creating a Practice April 30, 2009
Chuck Wisner (Boston, Ma)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Steve's in-depth look at how high velocity organizations do what they do, takes the mystery out of why Toyota and others outdistance their competitors. It gives anyone interested the critical skills required to get started today in order to create sustainable change. His hands on experience and love of story telling weave together the technical and human aspects of the hard work of defining and continuously refining our work.
With the 4 capabilities defined the leader is left with the challenge of creating an environment where everyone can learn from mistakes, be problem solvers and challenge the status quo. No small feat. Like anything we want to learn or habit we want to change it means we have to practice. And practice is a cycle of act/fail/learn/adjust/act. It is also takes time and patience. In our western business culture a problem is seen as failure and patience for the long term pay off is not the norm.
Steve's examples illustrate that we need an attitude/mindset adjustment top to bottom. We need to think and behave differently. When we lead as learners and mentors we create emotional safety. With emotional safety everyone participates in seeing problems or breakdowns as an opportunity. With that possibilities and creativity emerge. Everyone benefits from being part of this continuous cycle of practicing. Everyone is engaged.
So, soak up the lessons in the book and then set a practice in place. Most importantly as a leader at any level you have to walk the talk. The standard of arrogant top down management does not align with the lessons Steve lays out in the book. A fresh humble look at "how we lead" would be a good practice to start.
Do not let the bow tie on the inner cover picture scare you away! May 25, 2009
William C. Zeeb (Geneva Switzerland)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Especially useful for the leader who may not yet realize how important bringing "not knowing" and "failure" to the forefront are to his or her success and that of the entire organization.
Another new book on business performance? Steven Spear, a rare "dirt under the fingernails" process thinker with Harvard academic credentials has spent enough time on Toyota and US Big 3 assembly lines to condense succinctly the differences. His concise summary of performance improvement builds upon 4 simple capabilities: 1)specify design to capture existing knowledge and force the process to reveal more knowledge through forcing and following problems, 2) "swarming and solving" problems, 3) spreading learnings rapidly throughout the organization and 4) leadership's role in driving points 1) to 3).
For the thousands of lean and six sigma practicioners who have suffered the lack of leadership understanding that can stall or even insure failure of lean six sigma business performance efforts, this book offers a refreshing view of the important role of executive leadership, without dwelling on methodology.
Although they make for a long read, the health care examples after page 323! are very close to each of our hearts. If you get a chance to see Steve present, be prepared for many sleepless nights, as he goes deeper into his examples, burning them into your memory banks.
For organizations looking to succeed in an ever more competitive world, the message Mr. Spear communicates is clear: make certain leaders learn and drive the learning process. (which can only happen in the blameless search for FAILURE or NOT KNOWING)
An instant classic: read it! September 19, 2009
Michael Balle (Paris, FRANCE)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Steven Spear has probably contributed singly more than anyone to the emergence of "lean management" from the field fo lean manufacturing and lean production. Three of his seminal contributions have been around different angles-of-view. In Toyota's DNA he has focused on the level of detailed specification of the operatiosn processes, specifying outputs, pathways, connections and activities. Taking a different tack, he has opened our eyes to the double-loop learning system at the core of Toyota's success in his Learning to Lead at Toyota paper. Finally, his Healthcare article provides a blueprint of how Toyota-like problem solving can be applied in a completely different field.
In this breakthrough book, Spear brings these three different insights together and blends them into the most powerful and elegant buisness theory yet to come out of the lean field (imagine Good to Gtreat with substance). This is a landmark book because it finally creates a bridge from lean mavens to business thinkers - and it offers a splendid opportunity to talk to CEOs about HOW to change their operations system in order to improve both strategy and execution.
I've already read the book twice, and have immediately started applying the core framework to my own work. I have to confess also stealing some detailed images and expressions to try to sound clever in public speaking. The description of the worker who knows he's going to fail today, because he's failed yesterday and the system will ensure that he fails tomorrow as opposed to the worker going to work with the possibility of success every day is priceless. I've used it to great effect at my boy's school to explain to a teacher that giving every day kids opportunities for success and reward was more productive than continuously pointing out their defficiencies against a list of 32 criteria (there's no way you can't get at least one wrong in the course of the day).
Read it! Offer it to your boss and your staff. Require your consultants to have read it carefully. This is one of these rare frame changing book that, with some luck, could also become a game changer in the way senior executives see their role, their mission and their organizations.
Insights from the Gemba October 29, 2008
John Muka (New Jersey)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book. Gemba is a Japanese term indicating being present where the work is being done. While this is hugely important it can be difficult to make sense of what is happening there. I've had the good fortune to have Steve Spear as a coach in the Gemba of a large Aerospace organization. He stood looking over my shoulder, helping me and the people doing the work right in front of us make sense of what was happening and how it could be done better. I have the same sense in reading this book - that Steve is right there helping me make sense of my own work as a Lean Six Sigma professional. Insights that I have been groping for in trying to gain insight on my own are spelled out clearly and directly with examples from all types of business situations. Steve can't design your own work for you but he can certainly make it much easier to discover the best things to do in your own process. Get this book!
Critical linkages in applying TPS January 13, 2009
D. Geoffrey Webster (Pittsburgh, PA USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Steve Spear has once again produced a critical work for leaders of organizations grappling with how to transform their performance. By looking beyond Toyota at the other organizations that have used some of the principles (some with good success, others not), Steve has continued to do what he does best; DERIVE truths about leadership and performance from observing what is there to be learned.
This is not a technical book about TPS, though it certainly provides many important technical insights during the observations of the contrasts between Toyota and the Big 3. What it does best is ground successful improvement in some of the preconditional steps that only leaders can establish - goals of perfect performance, a professionally safe environment in which to call out and rapidly solve problems, transparency of problems so everyone can learn, and a relentless effort by the CEO to be a lead learner and teacher whose most important role is to coach better and better problem solving each day from each person in the organization. If every CEO had the courage, self-confidence, and training to lead this way, coupled with the TPS principles ("Rules in use"), we would not have a health care crisis or an auto manufacturing crisis in the United States today.
Fortunately there is this book as a partial guide for courageous leaders to help lead us out of these messes we are in.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
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