Courageous Leadership

Courageous Leadership: The Missing Link to Creating a Lean Culture of Excellence is one of the first of its kind to address the confusion among leaders on selecting the type of change approach that will yield the best results in their organisation. It educates senior executive leaders and organisational excellence practitioners on the different characteristics of change and explains why incremental and transitional change approaches cannot deliver the results expected from a transformational change.

The author shares his experiences from leading several small and large-scale organisation transformations in multiple industries across different countries, demonstrating how to establish a robust foundation for an excellence journey and integrate strategy into daily operations. This book elaborates on the types of courage and what it means to be a courageous leader while leading change in difficult situations, highlighting what leaders do differently to put the organisation on a path to excellence and culture transformation.

This book presents an innovative design, methodology, and approach that combines best practices and principles from Malcolm Baldrige, Shingo, Lean, Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, accreditation, change management, patient and family-centred care, the Competing Values Framework, the LEADS framework, and the project management body of knowledge. The implementation of this model at a hospital in Canada advanced the organisation further on their transformational journey compared to others who began much earlier.

“Sensei” in Japanese means Teacher and “Gyaan” in Sanskrit means Knowledge. Brief sections on ‘Sensei Gyaan’ have been interspersed throughout the book to provide valuable tips to readers based on the author’s experiential learnings over the past two decades.

This book serves as a practical guide for senior executive leaders and organisational excellence practitioners who wish to embark on or are in various stages of their organisational excellence and culture transformation journey. Readers will be guided through 26 elements necessary for establishing a robust foundation and an additional set of 22 Management System elements required to create and sustain a culture of quality across the organisation.

For leaders in healthcare, the book provides a framework, guiding principles, and associated practices that support the implementation of the four core concepts of patient and family-centred care: dignity and respect, information sharing, participation, and collaboration. Included in the book are several examples with creative visuals, ready-to-use templates and standard works, models, guiding principles, and strategies based on best practices to assist leaders in their organisation excellence journey.