Look Before You Lean

There's a lot of pain going down in American business these days, and much of it is coming down on the heads of American workers. Surprisingly much of it is caused by corporate witlessness rather than wickedness. Look Before You Lean: How a Lean Transformation Goes Bad--A Cautionary Tale chronicles two years of lean-driven turbulence at the author's employer of 15 years. Lean, the management methodology which started in the 1950s in the manufacturing environment of Toyota, has slowly but surely been making its way into the office environments of the Western world. The book pivots off the question of why lean thrives when it appears to turn people off almost as quickly as it turns them on.