Simple Excellence

Detailing the role of senior management in achieving a successful transformation to organizational excellence, Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation charts a course of simplification through the complexity often associated with managing performance improvement initiatives. It spells out the roles of key individuals on the management team—including those from sales and marketing, human resources, purchasing/supply chain, information technology, finance, and engineering. Maintaining a focus on the big picture, this book explains what value streams are and how to use them to structure your business so that all stakeholders are aligned with what matters most. It reduces constraint management to its most practical terms and lays out a sound approach to accounting that enables everyone to spend money where it adds value and stop spending where it doesn’t. Drive your management team with dedicated allegience to the concept of value enhancement Propel your organization to higher performance through the employment of Lean culture and decision-making principles Enact management structures needed to put new ways of thinking into play Focus on the bottom line with the right performance metrics Written by respected authorities with extensive experience helping leading organizations achieve Lean transformation, the text includes case studies from high-profile organizations recognized for operational excellence. Addressing human resources management practices, it explains how to manage the day-to-day operations and pricing factory capabilities for the greatest possible profits. It also discusses the ongoing process of strategic planning to help you move away from annual goal setting, toward a dynamic process of engaging the entire company in the effort to provide your customers with an improved sense of value.

Home educating high school is not a one-size-fits-all experience. It is a journey unique to every student; an quest documented through specific paperwork requested or required by employers and college admission offices. How is a young adult's distinguishing education and exemplary character communicated in a resume, on a transcript, or through portfolios? Celebrate High School equips parents and students of any educational philosophy with easy-to-follow explanations, ready-to-use examples, and experiential narratives from families who have successfully walked the home education high school path. This book was purposefully written and specifically designed from the author's personal experience and research, as well as her and her husband's work with homeschooling families spanning more than twenty years.In the first chapter, Magnificent Make-A-Difference Middle School, parents are equipped with practical tips to help middle schoolers manage their time, organize their work and living space, and find resources. This chapter prepares the parent for Chapter 2, Navigating the Middle School Academic Maze; Chapter 3, Middle School Record Keeping; and Chapter 4, Future Possibilities. Chapter 5 encourages parents to look at the student's long term goals to plan with the end in mind and finish well. By the end of Chapter 5, parents are ready to dig into Chapter 6, Meeting College Admission Requirements. Chapter 7 outlines specific details for High School Record Keeping including course work and credits, writing course descriptions, creating and formatting transcripts, obtaining and documenting community service and extracurricular activity hours, compiling a reading list, requesting letters of recommendation, and preparing for testing and college entrance. The Finishing Well chapter closes the book with words of encouragement for parents in the last year of homeschooling high school. Celebrate High School helps parents celebrate the accomplishments, the efforts, the time, and the energy put forth by the student and the family. It is an opportunity to look back and appreciate the people who poured into and shaped the life of the graduate--the parents, grandparents, mentors, and other significant individuals. Celebrate High School entreats parents to celebrate not only the academic achievements, but also the discovery of the student's strengths and how those strengths have the potential to impact future employers, campuses, the nation, and the world.Parents who have used Celebrate High School say:"Entering high school at home was an easy transition for us thanks to Cheryl's book, Celebrate High School. Easy step-by-step instruction for developing a four-year plan, writing course descriptions, understanding graduation requirements, and creating transcripts make this resource invaluable. With this book, Cheryl's many hours of research and experience is right at your fingertips.""Celebrate High School covers essential details to successfully navigate homeschooling through the middle and high school years. I appreciated the easy-to-read format as well as the wisdom Celebrate High School imparted, offering our family freedom in selecting courses that allow our children to develop their strengths while building a competitive transcript."

A step-by-step guide to designing and implementing an amazing customer service culture In today's competitive business environment, keeping customers happy is the key to long-term success. But some businesses provide much better customer service than others. It's not always clear what works and what doesn't, and implementing new customer service practices midstream can be a difficult, chaotic task. Business leaders who want to transform their business culture into one of customer service excellence need reliable, proven guidance. Unleashing Excellence gives you practical tools and step-by-step guidance tailored to your company's individual customer service needs. It shows you how to navigate your teams through every step of the implementation process to achieve true customer service excellence. The book covers the training and education of your group, how to measure the quality of your service, how to build a culture of personal accountability, and how to recognize excellence and reward it. Fully revised to include updated information on the latest tools and best practices, as well as the stories and lessons learned from those organizations that have used the process described in the book. Offers proven best practices for designing and implementing an excellent customer service culture Simple format divides content into nine "leadership actions" that guide you through a step-by-step process Shows you how to build a common customer service vision for your entire organization Customer service is vital to the survival of your business. If you want to move your organization's customer service practices from good to great, Unleashing Excellence is the key.

A revolutionary new understanding of the mind is transforming the field of performance psychology, making it easier than ever before for musicians to bring out the best in themselves and make music as nature intended. Not only that, but it offers renewed hope for sufferers of anxiety, depression and a whole host of other psychological disorders.

"I'm a huge fan of High Output Management and Setting the Table [...] Luca's Best Practices for Operational Excellence took my management to the next level. It's been almost a month since I started implementing the principles, but I can already say that I've noticed a significant improvement in my company's morale [...] That feels amazing." – Molson Hart, Viahart CEO Inside, you’ll find the solutions to your problems as a manager: How to manage “difficult” employees? How to get your subordinates to solve their own problems? How to get more time for yourself to work on what’s important? How to introduce a culture of mutual trust, respect, and accountability, in a team which is demotivated or full of personal problems. What’s inside The 4 Principles of Operational Excellence that determine whether your organization will operate smoothly or always react to the last problem, whether your subordinates respect you and each other or operate with defensiveness and distrust. The 8 Best Practices of Operational Excellence that effective managers use weekly and monthly to ensure that the Principles are followed in practice every day, even when conditions are not optimal, even when they are not around. How to get buy-in, a roadmap for an impactful roll-out, and systems to sustain the change. This book does not let you alone with the complex reality of implementing change in a big company where multiple projects and agendas are involved. This book will help you improve the way your team works, leading to the following benefits: Less stress: as your team’s Operational Culture improves, they will learn how to solve alone problems you would have to micromanage instead. More time: as your team takes care of its own problems, you will be freed from running after emergencies and work on the things that matter. More respect: as you become a better leader, and your subordinates become better teammates, valuing each other’s work, you will become more respected and valued. More budget: as your team improves its output, your team’s bottom line contribution becomes available to be redistributed as budget and bonuses for you and your team. A better career: the skills you will learn with this book are rare and thus valuable. They will make you a more valued and respect employee, leading to a successful career. A complete playbook with best practices you can apply starting today in your company, to translate into impactful action the Principles of Operational Excellence. It includes comparisons between the actions of good managers and bad ones, lots of detailed examples, and word-by-word scripts. Other books only describe how an effective company looks like, ignoring how to get there. This book doesn’t leave you alone with the implementation. It proposes practical tactics and word-by-word scripts you can use to obtain buy-in from the Top Management and roll-out the change initiatives. THE COMPLETE TOOLKIT FOR THE OPERATIONS MANAGERS & SUPERVISORS IN MANUFACTURING & LOGISTICS Handle unmotivated workers and instill newfound proactivity. Get your workers to work safely, even when the boss is not looking. Get your employees to keep an orderly work-floor, even when they are not motivated. Get your quality up while decreasing the cognitive load of your workers. Manage a fast-changing company, where workers fail to keep up with growth and change. In this handbook, you will find all the procedures you need to run your operations smoothly.

Excellence For All: American Education Reform, 1983-2008 examines the history of school reform in the United States over the past quarter-century. Specifically, the work examines an approach to educational change best characterized by the phrase "excellence for all"—an equity-focused policy phenomenon uniquely situated for the policymaking context of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The idea of promoting excellence for all students united a broad enough coalition to pursue a truly national reform effort and captured the imaginations of leaders in state and local government, at philanthropic foundations, in colleges and universities, and in school districts across the country. Led by a corps of self-styled educational entrepreneurs aggressively pursuing reforms that they could take "to scale, " the movement sought to remake the American high school piece by piece. The dissertation examines this reform movement through the nation's three largest districts—New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—and through three particular change efforts: a physical plant reform (the small schools movement), a personnel reform (Teach For America), and a curricular reform (the Advanced Placement Program). The work aims to establish the ways in which this most recent era of school reform represented a departure from previous reform eras, strives to explain the movement's broad appeal, and ultimately, aims to understand its shortcomings by exploring the assumptions underlying the excellence for all approach and the tradeoffs required by it.

We are called to excellence in all aspects of our lives and activities, and not least in our character. Andreas Köstenberger summons all Christians, and especially aspiring pastors, scholars, and teachers, to a life of virtue lived out in excellence. Köstenberger moves through Christian virtues chapter by chapter, outlining the Bible's teaching and showing how Christ-dependent excellence in each area will have a profound impact on one's ministry and scholarship. Virtues covered include grace, courage, integrity, creativity, eloquence, humility, diligence, and service. This unique book is an important character check for all Christians engaged in teaching and ministry, and especially for those in training. Köstenberger's thoughtful volume will be a valuable touchstone for readers, for one's character is a critical matter in both scholarship and ministry.

The six core strategies to elevate any business-and how to implement them-made simple What do the world's most successful companies and organization have in common? And what can you actually take away and use from their examples? Distilling the best fundamental business strategies, trusted advisor and strategist John Spence helps you take a hard look at your business and together develop specific plans and action steps that will allow you to dramatically improve the success of your company. Delivered in Spence's approachable and straightforward manner, Awesomely Simple reveals the six key strategies that create a foundation for achieving business excellence: Vivid Vision, Best People, A Performance-Oriented Culture, Robust Communication, A Sense of Urgency, and Extreme Customer Focus. Filled with case studies and clear action items, includes easy-to-follow guidelines for implementing the strategies in any organization no matter its mission or size After concisely breaking down each strategy, Spence gives specific examples, tips, tools, discussion questions and exercises for how to execute them successfully A perfect resource for business leaders, Awesomely Simple will help you turn ideas into positive action and achieve lasting business success.

Horst Schulze knows what it takes to win. In Excellence Wins, the cofounder and former president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company lays out a blueprint for becoming the very best in a world of compromise. In his characteristic no-nonsense approach, Schulze shares the visionary and disruptive principles that have led to immense global success over the course of his still-prolific fifty-year career in the hospitality industry. For over twenty years, Schulze fearlessly led the company to unprecedented multibillion dollar growth, setting the business vision and people-focused standards that made the Ritz-Carlton brand world renowned. In Excellence Wins, Schulze shares his approach to everything from providing the best customer service to creating a culture of excellence within your organization. With his tried-and-true methods and inspiring, hard-earned wisdom, Schulze teaches you everything you need to know about: Why leading well is an acquired skill Serving your customers Engaging your employees Creating a culture of customer service Why vision statements make a difference What it really means to practice servant leadership Schulze's principles are designed to be versatile and practical no matter where you are in your career. He'll remind you that you don't need a powerful title or dozens of direct reports to benefit from the advice he shares in Excellence Wins--you have everything you need to apply it to your life and career right now. Let Schulze's incredible story help you unleash the disruptive power of your true potential, beat the competition, own your career trajectory, and experience the game-changing power of what happens when Excellence Wins.

The author gives us a vision of educational reform that transcends standards, curriculum, and instructional strategies. He argues for a paradigm shift-a schoolwide embrace of an "ethic of excellence" and with a passion for quality describes what's possible when teachers, students, and parents commit to nothing less than the best. The author tells exactly how this can be done, from the blackboard to the blacktop to the school boardroom.