Industry Books

Is your company working hard to deliver value to customers?
Are you facing increasingly tough competition, possibly from new competitors?
And are you struggling to address cost pressures from your suppliers?

If you answered YES to one or more of these questions then you probably need some help with your pricing. Many studies show that of all marketing variables, pricing has the most impact on the bottom line. But where should you look for advice so you can make your pricing decisions with confidence? The answer: Pricing with Confidence by Reed Holden and Mark Burton. Holden and Burton have written a highly readable, practically oriented book for making pricing decisions; their 10 Rules of Pricing can vastly improve your decision-making. Think about this question: Why is pricing so hard and why do most companies mess it up? Holden and Burton pose this question in their Introduction. Could your firm be one of those they are talking about? If you believe that pricing is hard in your firm and that you don't always get it right, then pick up Pricing with Confidence; you'll be glad you did.

Noel Capon
R.C. Kopf Professor of International Marketing and Director of the Executive Program in Strategic Pricing, Columbia Business School, New York, New York.

As a forum leader for a group of CEOs of small, growing businesses, we used this book to help us in understanding whether the pricing strategies each of our businesses used were optimizing their market and sales successes. Since many of these small companies compete with some of the largest players in their respective industries, it was revealing to each of them to see their realities detailed so clearly by the authors. It has led each of them to engage in more thinking and analysis relative to a pricing strategy that matches their value offering. This is a must read for any small business up against the big guys.

Pricing with confidence

I have heard Reed Holden speak in a number of venues. I was happy to hear he was contemplating a book on the practical end of the spectrum for a selling organization. This endeavor revolves around easily understood concepts that a selling organization can apply.

Reed constantly says "Don't be a victim", apparently a phrase he learned many years ago, which ties in with the thrust of the project. Don't be satisfied with what the market place gives you. You can price your product and the services you offer at a level consistent with the value you bring. Far from just cheerleading, you must have done your homework before hand and this will give you the confidence to overcome the objections you will receive.

In the book are simple methods to organize your thoughts to understand your value, which may change with different classes of trade. You can then set your price points and defend them successfully. If you are not successful there is a unique chapter to characterize the type of buyer you are facing. Price buyers, Value buyers, Relationship buyers, and Poker Playing buyers all have different agendas and your defense of your value may be valid, but not successful with each of the above types. Just the recognition of this is valuable to the salesman and may point to different strategies or more importantly not confusing strategies.

In my organization I know the publication is making a difference when a proposed price point strategy is being justified by a thought process described in the book. The sales person in the meeting is defending his stance among his peers who can be rather harsh to test his logic.

A good read that should be placed on the shelf for extensive use as a reference book.

Buy the book. It's a good read for sales, customer service and yes, even accounting.

I liked this book a lot. I thought it was well outlined and well written. The book's overall message is that the small business owner should link prices to the value delivered. The reader should be able to optimize pricing for her services or products after considering the 10 rules of pricing presented in this book:

1. Generally, don't let the customer talk you down in price
2. Price your service or product at a level that a customer is willing to pay if they understand the value of your service or product
3. Know which of three pricing strategies you are using and stick to it
4. It's OK to negotiate price with customers, but make sure you win
5. It's OK to lower prices, but only in order to increase profits
6. Expand your offerings so you aren't locked into one price for one product
7. Great pricing will often force your competition to react to your pricing
8. Your company's sales force has to be expert at why and how you priced your services or products
9. Set prices based on value - not on cost-plus
10. Always keep in mind you are in business to make a profit without leaving money on the table

I loved the instruction that the author provides regarding how an owner of a small business has to be willing (and able) to fire unprofitable clients and customers. Business people who compete on price are playing a fool's game. Smart business owners understand that value is the basis for business exchange and that to be successful at business one must FULLY understand value. This book puts forth a pretty good effort to help the reader fully understand value, or at least how to go about fully understanding value after doing a little investigation and research of the market.

Pricing goods and/or services is far from simple. And setting an optimal price is one of the most difficult decisions to make when starting a business. Furthermore, as a business grows and matures pricing at an optimal level continues to be difficult. Prices never stay the same because demand never stays the same. To do this well one must know the market (competitors & customers), know the costs, know the perceived value, and know the actual value.

Getting a handle on all this is not particularly easy. This is especially true because customers are often times very hard to figure out. Some are price buyers, some are value buyers, some are relationship buyers, and some are poker-playing buyers. Knowing these four types of buyers is a heads up for the small business person. But he or she still has to read the customer and figure out which one of these four the customer is before negotiations can be performed in favor of the seller. Read this book and start on your path of being a better pricer of your services or goods. 5 stars!

This book is more than worth its money in culinary gold. I recently graduated from culinary school and have started a catering business with my husband. I've read a number of books on how to start a catering business and have found this to be the best one yet. Lots of information and very good detail. Every caterer needs to have this copy in their reference library.

A must have book for a new Caterer starting their own business.

"THE PROFESSIONAL CATERER'S HANDBOOK: HOW TO OPEN AND OPERATE A FINANCIALLY SUCCESSFUL CATERING BUSINESS" by Lora Arduser and Douglas Robert Brown.

This book is an indispensable addition to any would be caterer's library. If you have thought about turning your catering skills into a full time business this book will open your eyes to all that is involved in starting and operating your own catering business.

Any and every aspect of operating your own successful catering business is included in this fabulous book. The authors start by talking about the skills needed to open and operate your own catering business, the give you a step by step planning guide to developing your business goals and plan.

Each chapter of this text skillfully builds on the last one to provide you with a comprehensive handbook to answer all your questions. Should you own or lease, what laws should you be aware of, how to market your company, how to set up the event, staffing, which equipment to purchase, and should you start as a home based catering company? These are only a few of the thousands of answers you will get from reading this handbook.

From the very first page of the book the author's are getting you excited about opening your own catering business. The tone of the book is uplifting and positive and will make you feel like you could do this!

The book also comes with a companion CD-ROM that will provide additional resource material including tons of business forms to get you started. This book is great for anyone in the catering business, weather a seasoned business owner or just in the contemplation stages of owning their own business; this book will be an invaluable source of information.

If you want to enter the catering business, there are plenty of lighter guides on the topic on the market - but if you're really serious about professionally entering the business, you can't be without THE PROFESSIONAL CATERER'S HANDBOOK: HOW TO OPEN AND OPERATE A FINANCIALLY SUCCESSFUL CATERING BUSINESS. A cd-rom supplements the weighty exploration which is actually a detailed manual of step-by-step instruction on all the basics. From bookkeeping and handling profits and loss to considering the pros and cons of professional equipment, there's no better guide on the market. College-level culinary schools in particular must have this reference.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

The Professional Caterer's Handbook: How To Open And Operate A Financially Successful Catering Business (With CD-Rom), expertly co-authored by Lora Arduser and Douglas Robert Brown, is an informative introduction and comprehensive guide to properly establishing and managing a catering business. Comprehensively mapping out an easy-to-follow, "user-friendly" compendium of strategies and tactics for establishing a company name and reputation, The Professional Caterer's Handbook presents logical and effective advise vitally important for all aspiring catering entrepreneurs. The Professional Caterer's Handbook is very strongly recommended as instructional reading for all small catering business developers, those hoping to create a professional catering business, and for those seeking to expand their catering business.

A smart, fast read, but also practical and frank. Usable advice on query letters, proposals, networking, when to self-publlish and how to negotiate.

This is a nice place for prospective non-fiction writers to start investigating the process of what it takes to get published. A quick and easy read, the book's main benefit is as a reality check to knock the naiveté out of prospective authors. To be sure, pretty much everything Brown discusses is covered by other books on the topic, however, these often spend far too much time getting to the point and/or offering various bits of writing advice that aren't really germane to the nuts and bolts of getting a book deal. Quite properly Brown assumes you can write; and while his brevity is often a good thing, sometimes the rapid pace and flip tone leads to broad generalizations that can be slightly misleading.

He comes at the topic with a wealth of personal experience, having published some twenty or so books with a variety of major publishing houses. Despite this, his perspective is rather limited -- as a former financial writer (for Inc. and Forbes), all but one of his books are business titles. And the reality is that business non-fiction is a slightly different beast, and the lessons learned there can't necessarily be extrapolated to other nonfiction genres. Business books tend to be what Hollywood calls "high concept", that is, all about a central, easily grasped premise, and generally not particularly nuanced. So while much of this "insider's guide" is certainly useful for all prospective writers, some of the advice is very hard to apply to other nonfiction genres.

Similarly, Brown downplays the extent to which his existing position as a journalist smoothed the path to the book world. He advocates a stepped process to approaching editors with one's pitch: start small with a query letter, then if you get a nibble, send a brief (around 3 page) mini-proposal, and then, only as a last resort, put together a proper full-scale proposal. While there's certainly logic to avoiding the substantial work of putting together a full proposal, a writer with his background (especially when working with a "name" co-author) can get away with the approach. whereas 99% of the readership for this book cannot. Probably the worst advice in the book is on page 52, where he argues against sending a full proposal even when an editor has responded "tell me more in writing." If an editor tells you this, you'd better come back with as complete and polished a pitch as possible, because if they're not impressed, they may not give you another chance.

The other aspect of full-blown proposals Brown doesn't acknowledge is that the process of creating the proposal will help you immeasurably in honing your idea and pitch -- and may well lead you to realize you can't write the book. Which is not to suggest that Brown doesn't like proposals -- he includes a complete one of his, and has annotated it with copious footnotes pointing out areas for improvement. This "peering under the hood" is a very strong part of the book, and is well worth examining (even though I actually don't like some of the proposal's arrangement).

Generally, whenever I read a book on this topic, I will jot down the few ideas from it that I found particularly unique or compelling. I didn't do that once with this book -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've already read a lot on the topic, and thus have a good store of material. But this would make a great first book to read on the topic, as long as one recognizes its limitations and reads a few others for more perspective and depth.

I bought this book last Friday afternoon, and had read it entirely by the late evening - I could not put it down.

Not only is it filled with information to help get your first non-fiction book published, it is written in a thouroughly approachable and enjoyable style.

That "memo" is mentioned in the appendix about how this particular book came to be, and I thought it was cool to title a review like that.

Not mentioned in the above little summary is the "snide editorial comments by Ellen Kadin" (on the cover) which are dispersed throughout the book. Ellen Kadin is AMACOM's editor, an independent (and funny) voice to let you know how accurate Paul B. Brown really is. Most, but not all of them are affirmations...but they are all funny. If someone (like me) got the book from a library right next to all those traditional Chapter 6-1/2 books, you might want to skip the her annotations if you are actually reading it _in_ the libary, because you are likely to make enough noise (laughing, cussing, or both) to get dragged out by security...fortunately, I am good friends with my library's security.

With insight and irreverence Paul Brown lays it all out for aspiring writers. He takes you from book proposal to agent to publisher to promotion.

That's all that a would-be nonfiction author could want. He'll tell you things you don't want to hear, but must know in order to make your foray into writing a success.

Brown has endured book ideas that were rejected and books that didn't sell, along with a perennial best-seller Customers For Life.

If nothing else Brown knows his trade when it comes to publishing nonfiction books.

I'd like to point out errors in his 'Nontraditional Approaches' but from my observations, Brown is correct more than I'd like to say.

And, when he has a question, he knows where to go to find the answers, which, of course, he shares with readers.

If you don't like the idea of pitching book ideas to publishers, then maybe being an author isn't for you.

If you don't like the idea of a 40 to 50 page book proposal, Brown will explain why it's in your best interest to get through it, or scrap your idea of a nonfiction book deal.

If you want a bigger advance - and why you should try to get the most you can (besides the obvious reason) - are nailed by Brown in Publishing Confidential.

If your idea is to write a nonfiction best seller, then Brown's book will save you a lot of time, and serve as your tour guide.

You may not write the next top selling business book, it's not a guarantee, but Brown's book will help you get through it with his `insider's guide to what it really takes to land a nonfiction book deal.'

Brown delivers.

A lot of it is common sense, but you won't notice it until you read about it.

Very practical, trustworthy, hand on insight. Gives you a lot to think about, and unfortunately also some "deja vu" experiences. Should be mandatory reading for all managers in companies doing well!

My favorite section of this entire book, and that is high praise indeed given my opinion of the rest, starts on page 200. Sheth mentions how academics are often criticized for existing in an ivory tower and how the accusation is false; the real inhabitants of an ivory tower are corporate CEOs and their immediate minions. It is the job of academics to interact with raw beginners and to do the best they can to teach their students the breadth and depth of skills needed to survive in their chosen profession. From the first day they step on a college campus, students are interacting with their professors; there are very few barriers between the student and the head of a department.
However, the executives at the highest levels of a corporation are much more sheltered, which is a significant part of the problem. Many fly on private jets, have their private elevator, washroom and cafeteria. So many of them interact with only a few of their employees and almost never with their customers. The information they receive is carefully filtered and in the most rigid of organizations, it is unthinkable that a line worker would ever exchange meaningful words with an executive.
Sheth also describes many of the other problems that good companies face, although I don't believe he is complete in his analysis of why companies fail. He is quite correct that many of the companies initially succeed largely due to luck and being in the right place at the right time. However, the eventual failure of so many companies is due to the creative destruction that is an inherent feature of capitalism. The advance of technology and social mores cannot be predicted or stopped; so many companies simply outlive their economically effective life. In my opinion, that point is not stressed enough.
Sheth is quite correct in pointing out that the greatest point of failure is when companies become "fat cats", content to bask in their success and believe that the good times will continue indefinitely. Or at least as long as the current executive team remains in their positions. He also commends companies who have the policy of term limits in executive positions. By rotating executives from position to position on a regular basis, no person has an opportunity to build a "protective silo", where it becomes more important to protect their executive turf than it is to advance the company.
Another very amusing point that I agree with; is when he points out that there is less of a cultural divide between Christians and Moslems than there is between engineers and marketing people in the same company. As a former software developer, I remember some of the very hostile barbs that went back and forth between the marketing people and the programmers. We spoke a different language, not only in how the product should be built, but we strongly, vehemently disagreed about what should be said to potential customers.
In conclusion, Sheth does an excellent job in describing the history of some of what used to be the most powerful companies on Earth. Now, many of those companies no longer exist, some are in serious trouble and the successful ones are nothing like they were when they were at the peak of their power. The common theme leading to their downfall was an inability to see or even acknowledge that the world associated with their products was changing. The first step in any attempt to keep your company from being added to the list of failures is to recognize that it is possible for yours to fail. Sheth drives that point home with an effectiveness that may make you wince and take an honest look at the state of the company you work for.

Never too late to learn more, even if you've been in the business for decades. I feel like translating this book into Korean language, provided that the author and publisher would agree.

During the early 1980s, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman penned a business classic named In Search of Excellence. In it, they cited 62 "excellent" companies. Many, including Sears, Xerox, IBM and Eastman Kodiak, have faced serious problems since.

Some recovered; some struggle to recover. Some are dead; others soon will be. Although the word "institution" implies permanence, Jagdish N. Sheth argues the average life span of a corporation is plummeting. The genius of Joseph Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction," is becoming widely understood.

The author, a business professor at Emory University, argues that companies that rise to the level of great often sow the seeds of their own destruction. He argues the following kernels soon blossom sapping the "great one's" potential:

1. Volume Obsession - rising costs and falling margins.
2. Denial - substituting myths, rituals and orthodoxy for vision and insight.
3. Arrogance - Need I say more?
4. Complacency - success breeds failure.
5. Competency Dependence - the curse of incumbency.
6. Competitive Myopia - a nearsighted competitive view.
7. Territorial Impulse - culture conflicts and turf wars.

The careful reader is forced to shine a light into every corner of his or her organization. Using insightful illustrations, Sheth urges business leaders to identify their self-destructive behaviors before they lead are destroyed. I particularly enjoyed the description of a company in his chapter on the Territorial Impulse described as "complex of 50-story office towers, connected only by common areas at the bottom and the top."

This is an entertaining and insightful book. Management and executives will ignore its lessons at their own peril.

Christine West writes the ubiquitous guide on how to train your wait staff or be the best darn wait-person around. Humourous, witty and chock full of tips, your tips will increase and you will be the employee of the month or manager withing weeks. (Seriously). Even if you are NOT in the trade, you will learn if your wait-person deserves a tip or not (as I did) ... or learn if you need to complain or not.
I have seen Christine in action and she is the best waitress on the planet and the ultimate resource for writing this book ... her columns for the "W Network" and in syndication on being single (via the London Free Press) show her great and witty talent and promise more amazing work is due to come. This book is just the beginning of an illustrious career --- not to miss if you are working ANYWHERE in the hospitality industry: from the kitchen right up to being a trainer/supervisor or teacher at the college or university level.

Christine West writes the ubiquitous guide on how to train your wait staff or be the best darn wait-person around. Humourous, witty and chock full of tips, your tips will increase and you will be the employee of the month or manager withing weeks. (Seriously). Even if you are NOT in the trade, you will learn if your wait-person deserves a tip or not (as I did) ... or learn if you need to complain or not.
I have seen Christine in action and she is the best waitress on the planet and the ultimate resource for writing this book ... her columns for the "W Network" and in syndication on being single (via the London Free Press) show her great and witty talent and promise more amazing work is due to come. This book is just the beginning of an illustrious career --- not to miss if you are working ANYWHERE in the hospitality industry: from the kitchen right up to being a trainer/supervisor or teacher at the college or university level.

I've always thought of myself as a great hostess to my guests. But now I know I will be.
This book is not just for restaurant people. It's an invaluable tool for anyone who ever entertains guests.

Everyone in the service industry should read Service With A Smile. It is a true must!
I keep a copy at work, and my wife has been using it to fine-tune her hostessing skill when it comes to entertaining guests at home.
Great writing! Lots of research! I'm impressed!

An easy read with a fountain of knowledge.
I'm already seeing an improvement in my tips.
This is a book that I'll refer back to often.

Smart Videoconferencing is a must read for anyone who is going before a camera. The authors give simple tips which can maximize your presence on camera. It is a quick, simple read. Well worth the money.

This is a concise, direct, very practical handbook for organizing a videoconference and communicating effectively on camera. The tips on organization, preparation and choosing the right medium for your meeting are especially helpful and new. Many tips, especially about grooming, makeup and clothing, are so simple they border on simplistic, but for those who have no experience in media or performing (such as corporate executives), these clues could make the difference between success and failure. Authors Janelle Barlow, Peta Peter and Lewis Barlow back up their pointers with real-life anecdotes which reinforce their ideas quite convincingly and provide the book its only real entertainment value; otherwise it's relentlessly practical. We from getAbstract found this book useful for anyone who is organizing or participating in a videoconference. When you're on the air, you want to be in the know.

I enjoyed reading the book. Even easy to read for me who is no‚Ž-native speaker of English or intermidiate learner of the language. I did not have to look up dictionary so often.
Anyway,I think that this book will be good especially for those novice end users who have just started using the video technology and who want to use it in more effective and productive ways.
I think that this is a kind of a book that end users desire.@Basically they are not intersted in how technology works behind but more and more they are interested in benefits and effects that they anticipate to get from using the technology. Not intersted in features and capabilities etc.. Some may, though.
However, I would like to point out one thing.
There is a paragraph in page 10 regarding Japanese video market graph. What is written is not correctly translated into English.
The numbers in the year 1998 and 2000 are based on a prediction by unidentified source according to the web page.But numbers in the year 1988,1993 and 1995 are actual numbers.
The graph was a part of a presentation made for doctors in Saitama to understand the status quo of videocommunications in relation to medical activities. But it does not show the source.
The numbers includes all kinds of video equipment from room or board type to set-top to PC based to surveilance. It does not mean one product category.
But it is true that the first video service was launch in 1984 by NTT, but it was actually not as popular as expected. Just a handful of big companies in Japan used the service to slash costs associated with travels, and the service cost per month as running cost was unjustifiably quite high to smaller businesses, so it did not go hit. And after that, audio service introduced also by NTT that offers relatively inexpensive service which could be accepted by smaller businesses.

This is a wonderful book, but I think it's titled wrong. It should be Media Savvy Videoconferencing. I bought the book thinking it would be about videoconferencing exclusively, but actually it's filled with information about how to look good whenever you are in front of the media. This book should be read by all PR people and anyone who has to do television appearances. There really are tricks to the trade. Why do media savvy people generally look good on television? Because they are using the techniques described in this book.

Last month, after our company installed a new videoconferencing system, my boss asked me to assume responsibility for our first trial meeting with a midwestern customer organization. I was very excited about the promise that this new technology could afford our business. But, I must confess, that the actual videoconference event was a big disappointment. Even though the equipment worked as promised, the meeting felt like Ted Mack's "Original Amateur Hour." That's when I began browsing around for a book that might address the weaknesses I perceived in our interaction. And, I discovered that only one book - of the dozens available on videoconferencing - actually dealt with the human communication issues involved.

After my first experience, I can attest that these are, indeed, the most important.

Our next videoconference event is scheduled in a few days - and I think our company is now much better prepared, thanks to the helpful, practical tips in this book, Smart Videoconferencing This book emphasizes the significant differences that exist between a face to face meeting and a videoconference. There is a paradox involved, because the videoconference demands both greater care and professionalism, while, at the same time, there is the necessity for a sense of relaxation and authenticity. I can tell you that our first event lacked both of these qualities - and our company lost some business as a result. Now, I think I we can avoid the mistakes we made last time.

I highly recommend this book for anyone engaged in videoconferencing when the stakes are high.

I loved this book. It covers the history of Open Source and explain WHY people do open source and HOW they make it happen!

The Success of Open Source in a not a just wistful paean to Linux as the title would suggest. Rather, it is two books in one.

The first book is one of the very best recapitulations of the open source movement and all of its predecessors. The second book is about how something that just seemingly shouldn't work, works so well, and how those principles behind its working extend to more than just the open source movement.

The author, a university professor, draws liberally from the traditions of historians, economists, sociologists, and psychologists to paint a compelling picture of why the forces behind open source are not going to go away any time soon. Read in best companion with The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which IS a bit of a wistful paean to Linux, it illuminates its subject wonderfully.

Steven's book brings a rich articulation of the social practices innovations unleashed by the Open Source collective: a new understanding of private property that better fit the tech forces and the challenges of the present. His book it is not a model; it is not the list of the 10 reasons why...; it is not the defense of an emerging theory; but an historical account in which anecdotes, facts, historical moment, tentative hypothesis, set the background to allows the reader to reshape her/his own questions. The book gave me a perspective I have been testing with IT architects, programmers, software designers...I feel myself much more prepare to engage in conversations about the future in a meaningful and effective way. Thanks to the author!

For the serious reader (and who indeed thinks open source is hilarious?), Weber provides a detailed history of how this idea developed. He traces it from the advent of unix in the 1970s, and the generous (ie. low fees) licensing terms by ATT. Which led to the BSD Unix that flourished in the 80s. Also during this time, GNU took off.

But the bulk of the book deals with the 90s onwards. Especially as linux grew from Torvalds' seminal contribution. Its intellectual roots in unix and GNU are studied. We also see the rise of the Free Software Foundation and Apache, as articulate enablers and promoters of open source. All of which was aided by the invention and meteoric growth of the Web. This played a vital role in enabling a global audience of programmers to hear of and contribute their efforts.

I'm a commercial software developer, and found the author's history of the UNIX culture and the story of its evolution into what we now call Open Source to be fascinating. That alone made it a good read for me. Add in the thought provoking analysis of the "whys" (the real point of this book), and it's a killer combo.

Warning: the book is *full* of sentences like "Pluralism at many different levels is being enabled by communications technologies and by experimentation with property; together, these are reducing the marginal cost of adding voices toward an asymptote of zero." Despite that, I've been able to read it at the pace of a thriller, not a textbook.

This is again a Jeffrey Liker book (although probably mostly written by Michael Hoseus). And that means that you can learn, but also that you will suffer. Because you have to understand the 'living' meaning behind the words. And that is not gooing to be easy ...
Learning items are for example:
- what is lean culture and what is the impact on business
- how to hire/select/train people and what to train
- people and organisation as work teams, team leader. But also visual management and the role of management
- HR processes including Hoshin Kanri
and so on.

This book again cannot bring you anything unless
- you have read The Toyota Way, The Toyota Way Fieldbook, Learning to see, Kaizen (Imai) and ...
- and most important, you have to be active in finding your own lean path in your organisation for at least a couple of years.

If you only read this book in your chair within practical experience, it is all time lost.
If you read it, because you are struggling within your organisation with very real issues, then this book will become alive. This is a book (as The Toyota Way is) that will be a good friend on your journey to Lean (but this friend will also ask attention and you will have to invest time for him!).

Jeff Liker has done an absolutely wonderful job of explaining the Toyota way and the cultural aspects. I worked at Nummi early on as the Program Manager for the 1989 Prism and Corolla. I could see and feel the Toyota Way but myself and my peers could not articulate it as well as Jeff has.

This is a very good book for understanding. It gives you the vision and what your organization could be. Toyota has an advantage over most compnaies because their new places do not have a legacy culture that needs to change. That is a much bigger challenge than Toyota has. You need the vision and understanding of "Why they do it" and it can fule your improvement. Hat's off to Jeff and mike.

John Casey

While more 'quality' orientated this book should be read by every safety manager too as it has application outside the production line.

Lean is not sustainable without the culture to support it. This culture is a complex amalgam of leadership values, open communication, training and development, and measures to build trust. People are the key and, indeed, the early name for the Toyota Production System was the "Respect for Humanity" system. "Toyota Culture" describes how a supportive and continuously improving culture has been developed at Toyota's American plants. The book goes into considerable detail of the "People Value Stream" at Toyota and how it is sustained and developed. It is a long book packed with insights and case studies, but there are no quick fixes here - no "do this and you'll be sorted in a year" magic pills. It's a slow process of building trust and working together. That's what lean is all about and this book is essential reading for any manager aiming to build a continuously improving lean organisation for the long term. It is true that there are no quick fixes but surely the results, and the joy of working in such an organisation, make the effort worthwhile.

Toyota Culture is the 5th book in "the Liker Toyota series". After Toyota Way, Toyota Way Fieldbook, Toyota Product Development and Toyota Talent, you would expect that there is less news to write about Toyota. Well, not true. Toyota Talent is the thickest book in the series with it's almost 600 pages of Toyota info.

Toyota Culture mainly covers HR practices and related policies. It describes this as "the people value stream". How does Toyota hire and train people (the detailed training processes are described in Toyota Talent). How do they grow inside the company. How does Toyota work with the local communities.

The book is separated in five parts:
- What is Toyota Culture?
- The Quality People Value Stream
- People Supporting Process
- Organizational Supporting Processes
- Learning from Toyota

The first part is some-of an introduction. It explores what "company culture" means by referring to the work of Ed Schein. Then it introduces "the people value-stream" which the rest of the book is organized around. Part 2 is about the value stream itself while part 3 and 4 are the supporting processes of the people value stream.

Part 2 talks about how Toyota does hiring and how they grow the people within the company. It starts with the hiring and from there onto the training part (which had some duplication with Toyota Talent) and then moved into problem solving, one of the essential parts of the Toyota culture. It ends with how Toyota builds its image and works with the local communities to improve the life of its employees.

The third part starts by looking at the Toyota organizational structure, work teams and the team leader role. From there it moves to safe workplaces and how the standard problem solving is also applied to workplace safety problems. The last 2 chapters are about visual management and servant leadership. How management acts as servants and teachers to the workers, enabling the value-added work.

The fourth part looks at organizational supporting processes and especially HR processes. Toyota still want people to have a job for life, even though this is not common outside Japan. It talks about how Toyota deals with ups and downs in resourcing and moves to HR policies and rewarding policies (an very interesting chapter!). Chapter 15 is a short introduction to Hoshin Kanri.

The last part is about learning from Toyota, the "what can you do" part which many books end with. The first two chapters describes a couple of Toyota Way implementations within Toyota itself, to try to learn from that. The last chapter (probably the best) looks at lean implementations and wonders why they fail. It tries to find general change recommendations to try to learn from Toyota while creating your own company culture.

Parts of the book were extremely good and, at other times, parts of the book were somewhat long and boring. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I had that possibility and decided to go to 5 stars since I felt the last chapter was really very good.

A couple of things that I didn't like. Most of the book talks about Toyota in the US and seldom talks about the Toyota culture in Japan. It's obvious the authors are most familiar with the Toyota US situation. Also, most of the book still has a manufacturing focus. There is very little about other functions (e.g. product development) within the book itself. The culture in the different functions is probably similar, but will also have differences. Things like organizational structures and teamwork will be different in the different functions and thats not covered.

All in all, another great Toyota book. Highly recommended for people who are interested in how Toyota works and why. I wouldn't recommend it as your first Toyota book, I'd probably then start with the Toyota Way book and move to this one after that.

Some of the stories are only four star, and that says a lot about the standard to which I hold Tim Winton. "Only four star." I've been writing for years and publish three-star work sometimes. This collection, meanwhile, is five stars overall.

This is a collection of thought-provoking stories which are loosely linked, always excellent, always natural, never showy or forced, always observant, and a pure pleasure to read. He's such a gifted author that you're actually not always aware of how gifted he is.

If you are looking for writing that takes your breath away and stories that make you look deeply into yourself and your life and the lives of others, then read this book. You will not be disappointed.

Sometimes Mr Winton seems to be straining to be profound riddling his books with impressive literary devices - or maybe I'm too dumb to recognise great art. But with THE TURNING he seems completely at ease and as a consequence the stories ring with a truth - an emotional and spiritual truth firmly set in a believable landscape. The title story about Raelene's physical and spiritual journey, is in the patois of we Australians - a ripper! Mr Winton's great contribution to world literature may indeed be the way in which he is liberating the Australian language and bringing the voice and stories of our caravan dwellers, fishermen, and other inhabitants of small town Australia - working and otherwise - to the fore.
The Lockie Leonard trilogy and THE TURNING I expect have joined or will be joining our collective memories much as Blinky Bill, Ginger Meggs and Voss already have.

Tim Winton has created a Western Australia community, which remote as it is, portrays a commonality of human spirit instantly recognizeable. The scruffy town of Port Angelus, whose whale-processing history is laid out in his book THE SHALLOWS, is as original a concept as the communities of Faulkner or Louise Erdrich or T. R. Pearson, and with each book, Winton continues to expand the community of Port Angelus while limning out the human condition. The people in these stories could live anywhere, but are still ineffably Australian. In this latest book, each story is complete within itself yet linked to one another. Each story could be a springboard for an entire novel of its own. And each story makes you care about its characters and wish you could know what happens long after you've closed the book.

There's a special appeal to the "linked" short story collection. Although the same names and places appear, each is new with the next story. The desperate men, the battered wives, the confused and bewildered children. They interact in their own ways, coming together and breaking apart over the years. In the hands of a master storyteller like Winton, each tale is a spark of reality. Every individual comes almost startlingly alive in but a few pages. As the sequence unfolds through the view of the protagonist, you gain fresh insights on circumstances. Absolute values have no place here, a lesson most of us would do well to remember.

The tales are set in a coastal town in Western Australia. Angelus is a fishing community - often under stress from unemployment, it is a contained locale. Children grow up as neighbours, move through school together, and interact in almost wildly varying ways as they mature. There are mysteries - why was a boy left broken and battered on a beach? Who was the girl found dead in a school loo and how did she die? Who escaped the almost desolate town and how bound do they remain to it in later years? These are common situations and questions in a small town, and the economic pressures add intensity to the expected conditions we all endured in adolescence. It is a credit to Winton's outstanding prose skills that beauty emerges within this forlorn community. A coastal location always provides a sense of expanded view lacking in inland towns. Yet here, as almost everywhere in Australia, the desert looms as an ever-present menace, poorly understood and a block to escape even mountains fail to match.

Vic Lang, the character around whom these stories weave, emerges first as a young child at a beach party. His life is complex. While in school, a girl with a facial birthmark fascinates him, but that's not the girl he marries. His attachments are intense and sometimes offbeat. He takes up with "Boner" McPharlin [the term comes from his job in an abattoir], the Huckleberry Finn of his time and place. Totally without ambition, Boner's presence gives Vic a basis for comparison with his own life. It's a shaky foundation to launch into adulthood. Vic symbolises the small-town outlook with his sense of being under constant scrutiny. In "The Long, Clear View", Vic reflects on his life and how the town imposed so much of itself on his later life.

North American readers often balk at the "culture shock" of Australian conditions and language. Winton's deft touch softens the shock to what might be deemed a "culture tickle". His character portrayals and the manner in which he deals with the passage of time among what become familiar people, guide the reader effortlessly through some unfamiliar terms and conditions. What does "shoot through" mean? It has nothing to do with weapons. It means "escape" or "desertion" depending on the protagonist's viewpoint. A "jacaranda" turns out to be a tree, ugly when not blooming, but a stunning array of colour in the proper season. If a blossom falls on while walking underneath, it is said to be a sign of good luck. Does that happen in Angelus?

Winton's realistic view of people and events is at odds with much of today's literature. His voice, while grim and sometimes even bleak, doesn't overwhelm the reader with despair. His people aren't crushed by events, they remain battlers even in the most seemingly desperate circumstances. You must, however, traverse the entire sequence to understand how they accomplish that feat. While each story stands entirely on its own, like a brick-built building, they must all be taken together to perceive the entire stunning edifice. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

The Wal-Mart behemoth-beast's unchecked onslaught on our landscapes and local economies continues, but now there is more help to at least momentarily stymie the beast. With small victories here and there (the meatcutters' union win, for one, and that decision rendered right there in ARKANSAS, no less), this is one of the books that shows how we can be as good a friend to Wal-Mart as that it is to us, and we can learn from that very intelligent, mutating virus. This book helps a person think about retailing in the shadow of Wal-Mart the way an FBI profiler thinks about a criminal. It's not fighting fire with fire, but learning the weapons of the opponent and then thinking beyond them, to a more advanced level. It's an escalating fight. But it's a fight the little guy will win because Wal-Mart is now TOO big. The little guy is far more agile.
Learned about this book at sprawl-busters.com, a very helpful site (Al Norman's book is great as well!).

Don Taylor and Jeanne Smalling Archer explain how to prosper "in the shadow of the retail giants." This is quite literally a "how to" manual, filled with hundreds of specific examples, suggestions, strategies, and cautions which can be of substantial benefit to literally any small-to-midsize retail operation which is currently struggling to survive and then succeed. Of course, the David and Goliath metaphor is invoked. The co-authors stress the importance of courage, ten survival strategies, and "about 500 stones." (David needed only one well-placed stone. Today, he would need more "ammunition" because there are so many different "giants" to conquer. It is worth noting that David did not wrestle Goliath.) Interestingly, the "Big Three" (Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Target) all opened their first stores in 1962. They were not the first discounters but they had learned a great deal from pioneers such as Ann and Hope, Korvettes, Zayres, Arlands, and Gibson's. Once "Davids" themselves, they eventually became "Goliaths", demonstrating (in process) the importance of the ten strategies which are examined in Up Against the Wal-Marts.

The authors organize the material according to three overriding themes: change, improve, and succeed. In the 1990s, change has been the only constant. Improvement is not an option; it is an imperative. With regard to success, the co-authors leave their reader with this final statement: "Many small businesses are going to be successful competing with the giants, and we can't think of any reason why yours shouldn't be one of them."

I can see that this book may have added value in 1994, but it is entirely out-dated at this point. The copywrite itself is from 1994, and the examples are dated back to that point. I am interested in seeing if the customer examples they list are actually still in business. Although I am sure they are, the techniques recommended in this book are only 1/2 the story for a modern day business. Perhaps the authors could update the book, with new statistics for the Wal-Mart's of the world, along with strategies to succeed on the Internet. It is a little strange to read a book that talks about how important it is to fax, and to trim phone bills by dialing after 11pm... as I said, this book is for the dinosaurs.

The Wal-Mart behemoth-beast's unchecked onslaught on our landscapes and local economies continues, but now there is more help to at least momentarily stymie the beast. With small victories here and there (the meatcutters' union win, for one, and that decision rendered right there in ARKANSAS, no less), this is one of the books that shows how we can be as good a friend to Wal-Mart as that it is to us, and we can learn from that very intelligent, mutating virus. This book helps a person think about retailing in the shadow of Wal-Mart the way an FBI profiler thinks about a criminal. It's not fighting fire with fire, but learning the weapons of the opponent and then thinking beyond them, to a more advanced level. It's an escalating fight. But it's a fight the little guy will win because Wal-Mart is now TOO big. The little guy is far more agile.
Learned about this book at sprawl-busters.com, a very helpful site (Al Norman's book is great as well!).

I have no relationship with anyone connected with this book - it just sounds like I do. We stumbled across this book- and have now bought more than 12 copies for our key staff over three years. IT IS the BEST TRAINING BOOK for RETAIL MANAGERS I HAVE EVER SEEN. Whoops - sorry I get excited - but you get my point.

It is NOT about Wal-Mart - it is about being smart in operating your own business - and when you are smart - you have a much better chance of success.

Every chapter is solid with good info -- no fluff.

Try it