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Summary: Tom Johnson, financial heretic!
Review: Comments on Profit Beyond Measure by Tom Johnson:Tom Johnson's overview of business thinking is astoundingly clear, the beginning of the revolution that Dr. W. Edwards Deming demanded for so many years. The Toyota story is told beautifully in chapter 3; now I begin to understand what happens in that Kentucky facility. Chapter 4 is the weakness of the book; there is no there there. The Scania "secret" is not in the same universe as that at Toyota. What more evidence do we need than the sale of the company? Chapter 5 is fascinating. Tom Johnson the heretic! A modern day Martin Luther! No one on Wall Street will want to know about orderline analysis. However, if those using it prosper... The stock market vanish? That is precisely what will happen if Tom Johnson's thinking catches on. And that can't happen too soon. It may already be too late to preserve our culture as we know it. But then, it may be time. Most in business will not want to hear the last two chapters. But no one wants to hear that they have cancer either, right? This patient (the world economy) has cancer, and no one knows if survival is possible. I can't wait for the next iteration of this "stuff." The books that Johnson (and a few others, like Dr. Ed Baker) are going to write could make all the difference in our future. Dr. Norman Borlaug and his cohorts are trying to feed the world in spite of potentially deadly water shortages; Johnson and a few like-minded intellectuals are trying to feed the world correct thinking in spite of potentially deadly shortsightedness.
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Summary: 20th Century Manufacturing Illuminated
Review: For manufacturers the 20th century was the story of Ford and Toyota. The story of the transition from mass production to lean production has been told many times, but often focusing on the techniques, not the strategy. Professor Johnson has developed a profound insight into the strategy behind Toyota's approach, framed as management by means, rather than management by results. This is the most important insight into the Toyota Production System which has come my way in the last ten years. Johnson demonstrates why the Toyota Management by Means approach gives superior long term value to customers, shareholders and employees. Profit without Measure is essential reading for any manufacturer building a strategy for World Class Manufacturing.
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Summary: 20th Century Manufacturing Illuminated
Review: For manufacturers the 20th century was the story of Ford and Toyota. The story of the transition from mass production to lean production has been told many times, but often focusing on the techniques, not the strategy. Professor Johnson has developed a profound insight into the strategy behind Toyota's approach, framed as management by means, rather than management by results. This is the most important insight into the Toyota Production System which has come my way in the last ten years. Johnson demonstrates why the Toyota Management by Means approach gives superior long term value to customers, shareholders and employees. Profit without Measure is essential reading for any manufacturer building a strategy for World Class Manufacturing.
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Summary: At last, a vision of capitalism with heart
Review: I've always found the notion that businesses should 'maximise profit' to be naive, but to come up with a better business rationale seems to get real messy, quickly. This book uses some concepts that moved me when I read Fritjof Capra's 'The Web of Life', and applies them to effectively and realistically running a business in a competitive environment. In integrating living systems concepts with management control issues, this is the most philosophically thoughtful book I've seen written by someone who understands accounting.
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Summary: The Book the Business World Has Been Waiting for
Review: Since the day Amazon delivered my copy of Johnson and Broms' Profit Beyond Measure,I have taken delight with every page. This book is a wonderfully brilliant, masterful book that may be the serious business book of this decade in the way Senge's Fifth Discipline was for the 1990's. Insightful writers such as Margeret Wheatley and Danah Zohar have artfully open our eyes to the potential of viewing organizations as naturally evolving living systems. Notwithstanding their powerful insights, the actual application of these ideas left a lot to the imagination as to how they would actually be applied. Johnson and Broms, however, provide the substance and put the meat on the bones of the many complexity and chaos theory books available today. Johnson and Broms tell us with precision and in entaintaining detail the stories of Toyota and Scania Truck and how, respectively, they have gone forty and sixty-sixty years without losing money---how, they manage by means, as part of living systems, not trying to orchestrate management by the results (a notion of believing that you can fix future events to happen within a management plan) as America's Big 3 auto companies have over the past century. Johnson and Broms take us inside of the Toyota and Scania plants and board rooms, helping us see how they produce only according to actual orders, how they design and set up assembly and modulated processes to avoid waste (not eliminate it, avoid it in the first place!), how they treat their employees, how they see customers and market and more. Drawing from the principles articulated by Gregory Bateson, Johnson and Bohms help us see the unique milieu and overriding philosophy and work culture that is reflective of an open, living system, that relies on "balanced, cyclical patterns of continuous flow of the work for every person in the organization." Before reading this book, I only had a vague notions of how chaos, complexity, and new science theories applied to the emerging organizations of today. As a result of reading this book, however, I believe I now can grasp what it means, in real and substantive terms, for an organization to exist, evolve, and succeed as part of living system. This is a book for the new century. Every business can learn from this book and those that don' will perish while Toyota, Scania, and others of this fabric will thrive in our increasingly complex and interdependent world. I recommend this book to any one interested in business theory, organizational development, or building a better organization. Tom Coens
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Summary: Living systems applied
Review: Tom Johnson's new book could be just as impactful as Relevance Lost. His close study of perhaps the most powerful and robust company on the planet, Toyota, exposes what others don't see. Toyota is perhaps the most studied and imitated company, and not just by the other autos. Many people look for that one missing link that others don't see. Others have seen it, but few have articulated it as well as Johnson. If you resort to curtailing travel and eliminating donuts to try and make budget, or think lean is a material control system, or simply feel that their current patterns of management will never get you where you need to go, you should read this book. Through the attention and cultivation of the work and relationships of the business and not just the measurement results you will find many disconnects in how you are serving your customers. The work of the organization carries all of the information you need with it, and while output measures are important for reporting reasons, they are not helping you to design a system that connects workers to customers. This can help. I predict this book and not Relevance Lost will be considered Johnson greatest contribution. Enjoy!
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