The Lean Thinker on Value Enhancement

The guest on the Business901 podcast was Adam Zak (@leanthinker), founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Adam Zak Executive Search and an accomplished senior executive with more than 25 years of experience spanning the areas of management consulting; financial and operations management; and talent acquisition.

During the podcast I was able to ask questions on Customer Value, Value Proposition, and Value Streams, subjects that I am passionate about. Adam did not disappoint me as he challenged the status quo in the continuous improvement field bringing customer value to the forefront.

Adam has just co-authored a new book, Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation and it was the topic of the podcast. The book takes on difficult subjects outside of the normal Lean arena such as Pricing, Human Resources (Could,have guessed that!), Sales and Marketing, Supply Chain and others. I found the book entertaining and read it rather quickly. However, when finished I found myself thumbing back through certain sections and rereading parts of it. They chose a great title for the book. It reminded me of an Einstein quote: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This one should be considered for your bookshelf. It is not a fiction book where you get to learn all the answers. It is a book that challenges your thinking through concrete examples with an emphasis on Customer Value. By the way, they allude to no quick fixes and ask you to accept the challenge of a journey to excellence, however simple it may seem.