View the Table of Contents (printable version)

ENLIGHTENED
LEADERSHIP

Best Practice Guidelines and Timesaving Tools
for Easily Implementing Learning Organizations

by Alan Thomas and Ralph LoVuolo
with Jeanne Hillson

About the Book

Enlightened Leadership: Best Practice Guidelines and Timesaving Tools for Easily Implementing Learning Organizations addresses what every company's purpose ideally should be with respect to continuous improvement. To survive and prosper, every company must constantly improve upon its competitive capabilities and its capacity to identify and capitalize on new ideas and opportunities.

Enlightened Leadership formalizes what all truly successful companies do to produce disciplined innovation. All of the most enduring, tried and true, entrepreneurial management practices are "cut to the chase."

How to use this book

This book is more than just an excellent how-to-guide. Of course, you can use it solely for self-help or reference whenever necessary. You may want to look at yourself, develop others or just always be able to see the larger picture. You may want to improve your own delegation skills, or better inspire others to be more collaborative and creative. Enlightened Leadership will serve you well, because insight is borne out of clarity and insight is empowering.

When you use this book as a "team-learning tool," you will gain even greater benefits. It clearly illustrates how to achieve enterprise-wide continuous learning and improvement. Enlightened Leadership integrates (1) a definitive, "learning organization" management model; (2) a model "team planning and learning in action" process, with a simplified step-by-step guide; and (3) a carefully crafted, comprehensive backbone of best practices with which to implement such a process (categorized in thirty-five modular sections). Management teams can use Enlightened Leadership to instill energy, empowerment, purpose and commitment throughout their company. Its teachings are consistent with the needs of any manager of a business unit, be it a small or mid-sized business, or a division of a larger company.

• Part I--The Concise Guide to Innovative Management shows how to focus and accelerate and broaden and enhance a company's learning and improvement initiatives. It condenses the most progressive leadership and management practices into seven brief chapters. This enables people to understand and directly apply the underlying principles of team planning and learning in action. You can use the Fifteen Principles of Innovative Management as a model set of core business values and behavioral norms. We also present a model of The Entrepreneurial Spirit in Transition that distills three stages of growth to the point of practical, day-to-day application.

• Part II--The Business Knowledge Navigator helps to show managers where to focus their company's learning and improvement initiatives. It is a tool for creating a climate of learning and improvement, via the periodic reassessment of all of a company's key success factors. There are over three hundred, possible make-or-break product, service and cost factors, covering every fundamental management and functional discipline. There is a competitive analysis, an in-depth organizational diagnosis and several operational surveys. You can use each of these tools separately or in combination to implement a process of team planning and learning in action.

Here are some examples of how organizations can use our team-learning tool. Management teams have to schedule planning and learning sessions. This book can serve as a reference guide during such planning and learning sessions. However, you cannot always expect creativity to occur during team meetings. More often than not, the best ideas occur to people unexpectedly and in unforeseen ways. Thus, Enlightened Leadership provides the means for people to think about a myriad of best business practices, alone and as they deem necessary. People can jot down their ideas for improving their organization's practices and plans (in the middle of the night if they so desire). They then can share those ideas at will and in scheduled, topical, "team planning and learning in action" sessions.

This is just one example of a bottom-up approach that produces the best results in terms of harnessing creativity and innovation. Another effective approach would be for a CEO or manager to ask the key people involved in a particular project or process to review, for example, the Key Customer Service Factors and bring their best ideas for improvement to a scheduled meeting on that topic.

How this book will provide value to you and your team

The Business Knowledge Navigator will help you detect external threats and identify internal problems. It will help you build a consensus concerning your company's critical success factors and action plans. You can use whatever approach is comfortable and appropriate, either relaxed or deliberate. The process will save time by enabling you to effectively organize and energize your company's face-to-face and online group discussions.

Compared to the well-known quality management programs, Systematic Innovative Management (SIM) is much more results-oriented than it is process oriented. For instance, TQM, Six Sigma and the ISO 9000 certification standards tend to be very process oriented. Small businesses, service firms, non-profits and many mid-size businesses need a more simplified approach--one that produces continuous improvement in the minds of people, rather than on paper. SIM will help management teams prioritize what they need to do to grow their business and to act upon that vision. It will help people at all levels learn to think out-of-the-box in more focused ways.

The book's simplicity makes it especially compatible with the needs and values of small and mid-sized businesses. We have made many complex lessons very easy to understand and apply. With respect to functionality, the book is extremely flexible. Since it is compact and modular in nature, individual users and teams can easily adapt it to their needs, thereby minimizing the time required to realize its benefits. You can use it any way you want. It fits practice to purpose. Form follows function. Thus, it is exceptionally user-friendly.

It is one of the most practical and affordable management tools available.

Systematic Innovative Management entails a relatively small investment of time, and the payback far outweighs the cost. This compact book enables small and mid-sized business owners and managers to help themselves, without having to find additional outside resources. It will enable you to get more done in less time with better results, and, because people learn best "by doing," its lessons will be inherently more instructive.

Our hope is that Enlightened Leadership will make a world of entrepreneurial dreams come true.

Alan Thomas, Ralph LoVuolo and Jeanne Hillson

BUY THE BOOK!
View the Table of Contents (printable version)

Top of page

HOME BUY THE BOOK! ABOUT US ENDORSEMENTS CONTACT US

© Learning House Publishing, Inc.
Please report all problems to the