H. Thomas Johnson

Books

• Profit Beyond Measure:: Extraordinary Results Through Attention to Work and People
  Forward by Peter Senge. The book details how two extremely profitable manufacturers, Toyota and the Swedish truck maker Scania, have rejected the traditional mechanistic mindset of managing by results.

Articles

• Reflections of a Recovering Management Accountant   view details
  Presentation to the Society for Organizational Learning (lead by Peter Senge).

• A Different Perspective on Quality: Bringing Management to Life   view details
  Presentation at The Deming Institute. "We truly honor the legacy of Edwards Deming and Gregory Bateson if we begin to recognize that our business and economic organizations should be viewed as life systems, not mechanical systems, and begin to act accordingly. It is time to see these organizations as more than mechanical systems that serve only as instruments of conscious human purpose that we can describe with metaphors from life systems--they are in fact life systems..."

• Lean accounting is part of the management problem besetting US industry   view details
  "It should not be surprising, then, to realize that managers in a Toyota plant, unlike their counterparts in American organizations, do not refer to accounting documents such as standard cost-variance budgets to discuss the state of current operations...

• The Unnatural Environment   view details
  "Toyota's management culture at its zenith was process-driven, not results-driven. Toyota eschewed the financial markets' absurdly impossible demand to produce higher results quarter by quarter. It rejected the idea espoused by lean authorities that a com

Web sites

• Lean Edge
  "Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners). ... The aim of the discussion [on the site] is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management."