Organizational Behavior, 18th ed.

Author: Robbins S and Judge T
Pages: 784p.
Format: EPUB
Publisher: Pearson, (17 Jun. 2021)
eISBN-13: 978-1292403069

Long considered the standard for all organizational behavior textbooks, Organizational Behavior provides the research you want, in the language your students understand. This text continues its tradition of making current, relevant research come alive for readers. The Updated 18th Edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the most recent research and business events within the field of organizational behavior worldwide while maintaining its hallmark features ― a clear writing style, cutting-edge content, and intuitive pedagogy. There’s a reason why Robbins textbooks have educated millions of students and have been translated into twenty languages ― and it’s because of a commitment that provides the kind of engaging, cutting-edge material that helps students understand and connect with organizational behavior.

In the dynamic, fast-paced and diverse 21st century workplace, managers and their employees are facing more challenges than ever before. In turn, educators must help to prepare their students for the reality of work and this text will support them to achieve this goal.

Driving Results Through Social Networks: How top organizations leverage Networks for performance and growth

Driving Results Through Social Networks shows executives and managers how to obtain substantial performance and innovation impact by better leveraging these traditionally invisible assets. For the past decade, Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas have worked closely with executives from over a hundred top-level companies and government agencies. In this groundbreaking book, they describe in-depth how these leaders are using network thinking to increase revenues, lower costs, and accelerate innovation.

The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth

Author: Amy C. Edmondson. Pages: 258 Size: 1.32 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Wiley
Published: 13 November, 2018
eISBN-13: 9781119477228

Conquer the most essential adaptation to the knowledge economy

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent—but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of “fitting in” and “going along” spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. Not every idea is good, and yes there are stupid questions, and yes dissent can slow things down, but talking through these things is an essential part of the creative process. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing.

This book explores this culture of psychological safety, and provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. The road is sometimes bumpy, but succinct and informative scenario-based explanations provide a clear path forward to constant learning and healthy innovation.

  • Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance
  • Create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes
  • Nurture the level of engagement and candor required in today’s knowledge economy
  • Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization

Shed the “yes-men” approach and step into real performance. Fertilize creativity, clarify goals, achieve accountability, redefine leadership, and much more. The Fearless Organization helps you bring about this most critical transfor

Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break the Success of Leaders and Organizations

A systematic look at how relationships determine the success of leaders and their enterprises, along with tools to help strengthen and change them

Since time immemorial, relationships have determined the fate of leaders. But today they are more critical to success than ever. No longer can leaders count on long time horizons or sloppy competition to make up for the inefficiencies that poor relationships create. Leaders must make decisions and take actions quickly and well with others, even those with whom they share very little?perhaps not even a time zone. This new world puts relationships at the center of what leaders must understand and master to succeed.

Uses in-depth observational studies and clinical research to explore how relationships at the top of organizations work, develop, and change

Shows how to understand, strengthen, and transform these relationships, so they can withstand the most intense pressures and conflicts

Building an Innovative Learning Organization: a framework to build a smarter workforce, adapt to change, and drive growth

Institute a culture of learning to boost organizational performance and agility

What makes organizations successful? Today, most successful companies are learning organizations. Building an Innovative Learning Organization shows you how to join their ranks and bring your organization up to the head of the class. This book is a practical, actionable guide on how to boost performance, successfully manage change, and innovate more quickly. Learning organizations are composed of engaged, motivated employees who continually seek improvement, which leads to organizational agility and the ability to innovate ahead of the curve. When you encourage learning at every level, from the intern to the C suite, you gain a more highly skilled workforce with a greater ability to act in any situation.

Building an Innovative Learning Organization shows you how to create this culture in your organization, with detailed explanations, practical examples, and step-by-step instructions so you can get started right away. Written by a recognized thought leader in the training industry, this informative and insightful guide is your roadmap to a more effective organization.

You will discover how to:

  • Attract, retain, and motivate the best employees
  • Become a more innovative and agile organization
  • Create a culture of continuous self-improvement
  • Encourage learning at all levels and translate it into action

Learning and education doesn’t end at graduation—it’s a lifelong process that keeps you relevant, informed, and better able to achieve your goals. These same benefits apply at the organizational level, making the culture self-sustaining: learning organizations attract top workers, who drive the organization forward, which attracts more top workers. If you want the best people, you have to be their best option. Building an Innovative Learning Organization gives you a blueprint for building a culture of learning, for a stronger, more robust organization.

Building a Global Learning Organization: using TWI to succeed with strategic workforce expansion in the LEGO Group

Pages: 234 Size: 4.62 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Productivity Press – M.U.A.
Published: 06 June, 2014
eISBN-13: 9781498700641

Building a Global Learning Organization: Using TWI to Succeed with Strategic Workforce Expansion in the LEGO Group describes how a multinational company developed a global structure for learning based on the TWI (Training Within Industry) program to create and sustain standardized work across multiple language and cultural platforms. In this book, Shingo Prize-winning author Patrick Graupp collaborates with two practitioners who performed the planning and implementation of the LEGO Group worldwide Learning Organization.The book outlines the organizational and planning models used by the LEGO Group to create the internal ability to give and receive tacit skills and knowledge. Describing how and why TWI is used as the foundation for success in knowledge transfer across diverse languages and cultures, it provides step-by-step guidance on how to establish a solid organizational foundation for your own Learning Organization.Providing expert insight into the work of culture change, the book explains how to work with people to create motivation for moving to a new system of learning. It details the critical elements that made the implementation at the LEGO Group a success, identifies the stumbling blocks they encountered along the way, and explains how they were overcome. Case studies describe in detail what these efforts looked and felt like in actual application.The TWI program has long been recognized for its ability to generate results. After reading this book, you will gain valuable insight into how your organization whether large or small, national or international can integrate this timeless tool into your operating structure and your daily culture.

The Organizational Network Fieldbook: Best Practices, Techniques and Exercises to Drive Organizational Innovation and Performance

Author: Editors, Rob Cross … [et Al.]. Pages: 385 Size: 5.25 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Published: 03 June, 2010
eISBN-13: 9780470627457

In this practical companion to the best-selling Driving Results Through Social Networks, the authors draw on their network-building activities in organizations such as ConocoPhillips, 3M, and the United States Department of Defense in order to provide a compilation of highly practical approaches to help leaders shift their focus from formal organizational structures to a better understanding of flexible networks.

Preparing for continuous quality improvement for healthcare: sustainability through functional tree structures

Author: Reza Ziaee, James Bologna. Pages: 172 Size: 4.43 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Productivity Press – M.U.A.
Published: 18 November, 2014
eISBN-13: 9781466567726

This book provides a set of detailed instructions to help you construct your departmental, divisional, or organizational functional tree structure (FTS) and work towards world-class service. Preparing for Continuous Quality Improvement for Healthcare: Sustainability through Functional Tree Structures outlines a method that will enable your organization to set a stable base for future improvements that are sustainable and create breakthrough improvements in service, quality, and costs. More importantly, the FTS method outlined in the book will provide you with the tools to build processes tailored to your customers’ specifications and standards. It will enable you to improve your department, division, and entire organization and edge ahead of your competition. The book explains why organizations steeped in process improvement need to re-evaluate and re-establish their procedures-especially if initial outcomes have not met expectations. Illustrating key concepts with examples, case studies, and flow charts, it provides you with a clear understanding of organizational functional structure and how to document current organizational and departmental functional tree structures. Describing how to identify a department’s functional deficits, shortcomings, and waste, it explains how to select the best course of action for your organization. After reading this book, you will be able to create a pictorial representation of your organization’s current functional structure and select the best course of action for achieving sustainable advancements in service, quality, and costs. The book will help to convert your managers from a people-management mentality to one of process management-transforming leaders to educators and not guards.

Insightful Quality: Beyond Continuous Improvement

Author: Victor Sower, Frank Fair Pages: 124 Size: 1.18 MB Format: EPUB Publisher: Business Expert Press
Published: 15 June, 2012
eISBN-13: 9781606492918

In order to survive and attain and maintain market leadership, organizations must engage in longer-term strategic quality activities to address radical – possibly paradigm-shifting – improvements that might affect the organization and its competitive position. Doing so requires a different way of thinking and acting by leaders and managers. This is known as insightful thinking, and this book can show you how to achieve this kind of success.

This book is about how to think differently about quality and by doing so increase the creativity, innovation, and agility of an organization and its employees as well as the awareness of new developments in the marketplace and their possible impact on the organization and its markets. Quality must be addressed in strategic as well as operational terms in order for organizations to compete effectively over the long term. Strategic quality management requires insightful leadership.

Each chapter contains short case illustrations about real organizations that illustrate the main points of that chapter. It challenges leaders and managers to adopt a new way of thinking and presents thought-provoking ideas about how organizations can begin the process of charting their own paths to insight – and lasting success.

Improving patient safety: tools and strategies for quality improvement

Author: Raghav Govindarajan. Pages: 299 Size: 2.98 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Productivity Press
Published: 15 January, 2019
eISBN-13: 9781498785037

Based on the IOM’s estimate of 44,000 deaths annually, medical errors rank as the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S. Clearly medical errors are an epidemic that needs to be contained. Despite these numbers, patient safety and medical errors remain an issue for physicians and other clinicians. This book bridges the issues related to patient safety by providing clinically relevant, vignette-based description of the areas where most problems occur. Each vignette highlights a particular issue such as communication, human facturs, E.H.R., etc. and provides tools and strategies for improving quality in these areas and creating a safer environment for patients.

Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement

Author: Trevor L. Strome. Pages: 242 Size: 6.58 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Wiley
Published: 14 October, 2013
eISBN-13: 9781118760178

Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement walks your healthcare organization from relying on generic reports and dashboards to developing powerful analytic applications that drive effective decision-making throughout your organization. Renowned healthcare analytics leader Trevor Strome reveals in this groundbreaking volume the true potential of analytics to harness the vast amounts of data being generated in order to improve the decision-making ability of healthcare managers and improvement teams.

Examines how technology has impacted healthcare delivery

Discusses the challenge facing healthcare organizations: to leverage advances in both clinical and information technology to improve quality and performance while containing costs

Explores the tools and techniques to analyze and extract value from healthcare data

Demonstrates how the clinical, business, and technology components of healthcare organizations (HCOs) must work together to leverage analytics
Other industries are already taking advantage of big data. Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement helps the healthcare industry make the most of the precious data already at its fingertips for long-overdue quality and performance improvement.

Management by Objectives: The key to motivating employees and reaching your goals

Author: 50minutes.Com Pages: 18 Size: 927 KB Format: EPUB Publisher: 50 Minutes
Published: 17 August, 2015
eISBN-13: 9782806265852

The key to motivating employees and reaching your goals. This book is a practical and accessible guide to understanding and implementing Management by Objectives, providing you with the essential information and saving time.. In 50 minutes you will be able to:

  • Work with employees to set clear objectives.
  • Motivate your employees to reach their objectives.
  • Boost performance and employee satisfaction in your company.

Six Sigma: Constantly improve your business processes

Author: 50minutes.Com Pages: 21 Size: 1.06 MB Format: EPUB Publisher: 50 Minutes
Published: 02 September, 2015
eISBN-13: 9782806265913

Constantly improve your business processes!. This book is a practical and accessible guide to understanding and implementing Six Sigma, providing you with the essential information and saving time.. In 50 minutes you will be able to:

  • Follow the DMAIC methodology to successfully implement Six Sigma in your company
  • Focus on the three most important factors: customers, employees and processes
  • Form a strategy that focuses on product quality improvement according to the expectations of your customers

Benchmarking: Analyze performance and adapt your procedures

Author: 50minutes.Com Pages: 27 Size: 2.02 MB Format: EPUB Publisher: 50 Minutes
Published: 17 September, 2015
eISBN-13: 9782806268419

Analyze performance and adapt your procedures. This book is a practical and accessible guide to understanding and implementing benchmarking, providing you with the essential information and saving time.. In 50 minutes you will be able to:.

  • Understand the different types of benchmarking and choose the best one for your company.
  • Catch up with the competition by comparing their processes to your own and identifying the best practices.
  • Use your results to make concrete improvements to your processes and procedures

Scrum For Dummies

Author: Mark C. Layton. Pages: 411 Size: 5.82 MB Format: PDF Publisher: For Dummies
Published: 16 April, 2015
eISBN-13: 9781118905838

Practice an agile form of management to stop wasting time and money Scrum For Dummies is an easy to use guide to managing the tricky transition from a traditional project management methodology to the new and most popular agile framework. As the most efficient, successful methodology for team project management, Scrum relies on transparency, flexibility, and fluidity to deliver a final product that fulfills the needs of all stakeholders. Written in easy-to-read Dummies style, this book walks you through the core principles of Scrum and provides a roadmap for tangible implementation. The vast majority of projects go over budget, and billions of dollars are wasted every year on overruns. Put a stop to this wasteful leakage by switching to a management style that keeps all participants informed, up-to-date, and accountable. Authored by a Certified Scrum Trainer, Mark Layton, Scrum For Dummies covers the key ideas and processes behind Scrum methodologies, and presents the inner workings of the plan in an engaging and accessible format. Topics include:

  • The Scrum values, roles, artifacts, and activities that make up the principle of this methodology
  • When and how best to use Scrum
  • The differences between Scrum and other agile methodologies
  • Using Scrum for IT, finance, construction, health care, and more

The book also delves into the everyday use of Scrum, and how it can help you achieve your own personal goals outside of work. There`s a reason why scrum is quickly becoming the standard approach to project management it works! If you want to stop wasting time and start producing more effectively, Scrum For Dummies is the guide that will get you there.

Lean Six Sigma For Dummies

Author: By John Morgan And Martin Brenig-Jones. Pages: 371 Size: 6.26 MB Format: PDF Publisher: For Dummies
Published: 08 October, 2015
eISBN-13: 9781119073802

Maximise the quality and efficiency of your organisation with Lean Six Sigma Are you looking to make your organisation more effective and productive? If you answered “yes,” you need to change the way it thinks. Combining the leading improvement methods of Six Sigma and Lean, this winning technique drives performance to the next level and this friendly and accessible guide shows you how. The third edition of Lean Six Sigma For Dummies outlines the key concepts of this strategy and explains how you can use it to get the very best out of your team and your business. The jargon-crowded language and theory of Lean Six Sigma can be intimidating for both beginners and experienced users. Written in plain English and packed with lots of helpful examples, this easy-to-follow guide arms you with tools and techniques for implementing Lean Six Sigma and offers guidance on everything from policy deployment to managing change in your organisation and everything in between.

  • Gives you plain-English explanations of complicated jargon
  • Serves as a useful tool for businesspeople looking to make their organisation more effective
  • Helps you achieve goals with ease and confidence
  • Provides useful hands-on checklists

Whether you want to manage a project more tightly or fine-tune existing systems and processes, the third edition of Lean Six Sigma For Dummies makes it easier to achieve your business goals.

Lean Six Sigma Business Transformation For Dummies

Author: By Roger Burghall, Vince Grant, John Morgan. Pages: 332 Size: 20.27 MB Format: PDF Publisher: For Dummies
Published: 31 July, 2014
eISBN-13: 9781118844885

Use Lean Six Sigma to transform your business. Lean Six Sigma is a powerful method for improving both the efficiency and quality of projects and operations. In this new book, the team that bought you Lean Six Sigma For Dummies shows you how to take Lean Six Sigma to the next level and manage continual change in your organization. You`ll learn to design a roadmap for transformation that`s tailored to your business objectives; develop and implement processes that eliminate waste and variation across the company; synchronize your supply chain; and successfully deploy Lean Six Sigma over time. Lean Six Sigma Business Transformation For Dummies shows you how to:

  • Define your transformation objectives and create a bespoke `Transformation Charter` for your organization.
  • Assess your company`s readiness for transformation.
  • Establish a `Transformation Governance System` to help you manage the transformation programme effectively.
  • Bring your people with you! Plan and achieve the cultural change needed to make the transformation process successful.
  • Join up the dots between planning and effective execution with Strategy Deployment.
  • Deploy a `Continuous Improvement` toolkit to achieve everyday operational excellence.
  • Sustain the transformation programme and widen the scope across the organization (including deploying to the supply chain).
  • Adopt a `Capability Maturity Approach` to drive business improvement – recognizing that change is a continuous transformational journey, just as pioneers like Toyota have done.
  • Use a range of Lean Six Sigma Tools – using the right tools, at the right time (and in the right order!) enables continuous improvement by eliminating waste and process variation.

Lean For Dummies

Author: By Natalie Sayer And Bruce Williams. Pages: 411 Size: 17.24 MB Format: PDF Publisher: For Dummies
Published: 01 March, 2012
eISBN-13: 9781118224465

Take charge and engage your enterprise in a Lean transformation Have you thought about using Lean in your business or organization, but are not really sure how to implement it? Or perhaps you`re already using Lean, but you need to get up to speed. Lean For Dummies shows you how to do more with less and create an enterprise that embraces change. In plain-English, this friendly guide explores the general overview of Lean, how flow and the value stream works, and the best ways to apply Lean to your enterprise. This revised edition includes the latest tools, advice, and information that can be used by everyone — from major corporations to small business, from non-profits and hospitals to manufacturers and service corporations. In addition, it takes a look at the successes and failures of earlier Lean pioneers — including Toyota, the inventors of Lean — and offer case studies and hands-on advice.

  • The latest on the Six Sigma and Lean movements
  • The role of technology and the expanding
  • Lean toolbox Case studies enhance the material

Lean For Dummies gives today`s business owners and upper level management in companies of all sizes and in all industries, the tools and information they need to streamline process and operate more efficiently.

The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance

Author: Gerald J. Langley … [et Al.]. Pages: 515 Size: 2.53 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Jossey Bass Ltd
Published: 13 May, 2009
eISBN-13: 9780470430880

This new edition of this bestselling guide offers an integrated approach to process improvement that delivers quick and substantial results in quality and productivity in diverse settings. The authors explore their Model for Improvement that worked with international improvement efforts at multinational companies as well as in different industries such as healthcare and public agencies. This edition includes new information that shows how to accelerate improvement by spreading changes across multiple sites. The book presents a practical tool kit of ideas, examples, and applications.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences

Author: Nancy Duarte. Pages: 276 Size: 46.31 MB Format: PDF Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
Published: 27 September, 2010
eISBN-13: 978111801487

Reveals the underlying story form of all great presentations that will not only create impact, but will move people to action Presentations are meant to inform, inspire, and persuade audiences. So why then do so many audiences leave feeling like they`ve wasted their time? All too often, presentations don`t resonate with the audience and move them to transformative action. Just as the author`s first book helped presenters become visual communicators, Resonate helps you make a strong connection with your audience and lead them to purposeful action. The author`s approach is simple: building a presentation today is a bit like writing a documentary. Using this approach, you`ll convey your content with passion, persuasion, and impact. Author has a proven track record, including having created the slides in Al Gore`s Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth Focuses on content development methodologies that are not only fundamental but will move people to action Upends the usual paradigm by making the audience the hero and the presenter the mentor Shows how to use story techniques of conflict and resolution Presentations don`t have to be boring ordeals. You can make them fun, exciting, and full of meaning. Leave your audiences energized and ready to take action with Resonate .

Ideas Are Free

Author: Robinson, Alan G, Dean M. Schroeder Schroeder, Dean M. Pages: 255 Size: 1.07 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 09 January, 2006
eISBN-13: 9781605090177

The fact is, because they’re the ones doing the day-to-day work, front-line employees see a great many problems and opportunities that their managers don’t. But most organisations do very poorly at tapping into this extraordinary potential source of revenue-enhancing and savings-generating ideas.

Drawing on extensive research and experience in more than 300 organisations around the world, Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder show precisely how to take advantage of the virtually free, perpetually renewable resource of employee ideas.

True excellence and sustainable competitive advantage—in every area, from productivity, to responsiveness, keeping costs low, quality and service delivery—is only possible with the attention to detail that comes from getting and implementing large numbers of ideas from employees.

Business Storytelling For Dummies

Author: By Karen Dietz, Phd And Lori L. Silverman. Pages: 387 Size: 12.24 MB Format: PDF Publisher: For Dummies
Published: 12 April, 2013
eISBN-13: 978111873028

Use storytelling to influence people and move them to action Need to get your point across? Get staff on board with change? Foster collaboration? Increase sales? Strengthen employee engagement? Build customer loyalty? Drive innovation and creativity? Capture best practices? Align people around a goal? Grow your business? Business Storytelling For Dummies can help you do this and more.

  • Expert advice with real-world examples
  • Proven case studies, tips, and templates
  • How to get results by capturing, crafting, telling stories, and more

The Idea-Driven Organization

Author: Alan G. Robinson, Dean M. Schroeder. Pages: 138 Size: 2.46 MB Format: EPUB Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 31 March, 2014
eISBN-13: 9781626561250

Most companies, if they solicit employee ideas at all, essentially just set up a suggestion box, which employees know from experience is where ideas go to die. So nothing happens. But innovation is not an option – it’s the key to survival. And innovation needs new ideas. So where are those ideas going to come from? Using numerous examples, Robinson and Schroeder argue that the employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services are in the best position to see where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact. Robinson and Schroeder explain how leaders can build the kind of idea-driven company capable of implementing 50 to 100 or more ideas per employee per year. Drawing on their work with companies world-wide, they show what’s needed to put together a management team open to grassroots innovation and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that encourage – and those that discourage – employee ideas. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one customized for your organization – including advice for teaching people how to come up with new ideas. The best ideas may come from the bottom, but they have to be systematically solicited from the top.

Summary The Idea-Driven Organization – Review and Analysis of Robinson and Schroeder’s Book

Author: Businessnews Publishing Pages: 25 Size: 1.35 MB Format: EPUB Publisher: Must Read Summaries
Published: 01 July, 2015
eISBN-13: 9782511036068

The must-read summary of Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder`s book: “”The Idea-Driven Organization””.This complete summary of the ideas from Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder`s book “”The Idea-Driven Organization”” details how the best ideas to improve a business often come from the front-line. According to Robinson and Schroeder, you should listen to these ideas and apply them. This is exactly what an idea-driven organisation does. For this concept to work, organisations must have systems in place to push and pull these ideas.There are five steps to building an idea-driven organisation:1. Understand the power of front-line ideas2. Realise this needs different leadership3. Align your strategy and management4. Implement your front-line idea system5. Use these ideas to innovateAdded-value of this summary:

  • Save time
  • Understand the power of front-line ideas
  • Build an idea-driven organisation and benefit from innovative ideas

To learn more, read ”The Idea-Driven Organization’ and start listening to those that know your business the best!

Problem Solving for Healthcare Workers

Author: John Michael Collins. Pages: 267 Size: 2.12 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Productivity Press
Published: 02 January, 2018
eISBN-13: 9780203728727

While most healthcare facilities have an extremely high success rate at the most challenging lifesaving work and we all know of friends and relatives who have had supreme care, mistakes are still made and patients’ lives have been put at risk and lost.

How often have we heard politicians say after some disastrous report, “Lessons must be learned”, but what does this really mean. Will responsible parties carry out a careful cause and effect analysis and methodically get to the root causes of the problem? Will sufficient steps be taken to permanently eradicate those causes and provide a permanent solution so that the problem will not reoccur? This is what is done in the aviation industry with the result that air travel is very safe. The low accident rate is achieved by studying the causes and using the methods of continuous improvement explained in this book. These methods are now becoming better known in the medical profession have been recommended in recent reports but are perhaps misunderstood at operational levels.

This book is a basic level manual for those who have never been involved in any form of quality improvement project and is also suitable as a refresher for anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the various techniques discussed. The aim of this book is to explain what continuous improvement is and why it’s needed; explain how individual departments can explain how and why continuous improvement is important, and helps readers recognize quality control methods in their own workplace and understand how to contribute to existing continuous improvement activities. While many of the case studies and examples are from the NHS, the author includes similar examples from around the world.