Outsmarting Business Sharks: Chart Your Path to Sustainable Excellence demystifies how to achieve organizational excellence by bringing to life tools and techniques to build a culture of commitment rather than compliance. It applies to any organization and purposely avoids typical industry jargon to keep the reader focused on application instead of labels.
The book achieves its goals in an innovative setting, on a fishing trip aboard the custom charter boat, the Dolphin Sea. The Captain aboard the Dolphin Sea shares the consequences of shark like vs. dolphin like behaviors.
In this book that reads more like a novel, the reader can easily follow the implementation of the tools. While many of these tools are used in lean and culture change, the authors introduce several new tools gained over their sixty years of combined experience. To help the reader personalize and implement changes in their organization, chapter summaries, key points and implementation checklists are included. Readers are left with the message that synergy between organization culture, structure, tools, and leadership are required to achieve and sustain excellence.
A Word From The Authors
The original concept of the book was to help overcome resistance to change efforts that were commonly met with comments such as, “We tried that before” and, “You don’t understand, we’re different.” This book can be used in several different ways:
- Use new, as well as time tested tools and techniques to achieve Organizational Excellence
- Move in the direction of sustainable Organizational Excellence
- Revisit a Lean approach which didn’t stick and had only short-term benefits
- Have Organizational Excellence be Sustainable within their organization
- Have their mature startup go to the next level of Organizational Excellence
- Design Organizational Excellence into their Entrepreneurial business model
- Provide this book as part of prereading for a workshop focusing on organizational improvement
- Provide an introduction to organizational excellence
We hope you find the business novel approach entertaining and easy to relate to. The deeper dive and action checklists were included to provide additional opportunity for learning and implementation. Enjoy!
Gary Rascoe & Joe Buda
Implementers, Consultants, Writers, Speakers, Active in Community Service
What Readers Are Saying
This is a must read for every leader that has chosen the path of significant sustainable improvement or transformation of their company/organization. Rascoe and Buda are masterful in their presentation of the fundamental approach to building in lasting changes to organizations both large and small. While culture is understood to be important, the authors make a compelling case for first developing the right cultural foundation before operational and structural improvements are made. Without using the traditional lean language of continuous improvement, they educate the reader through a delightful story of a management team that believes they are going on a simple fishing trip only to find the adventure may well be the most important milestone in their professional careers as leaders. This book informs, challenges, and provides the roadmap for sustainable transformation – and yes, it’s entertaining and enjoyable as well. Indulge in the journey.
Lavon R Winkler
Retired President and CEO of FLEXcon Company and Milbank Manufacturing
Organizational change is tough. Resistance is real. Rascoe and Buda’s book is a thoughtful guide for students of organizational effectiveness who want to understand what leaders need to do to leap-frog their competitors. As a bonus, the authors included tools that only well-experienced consultants could develop. Yet, they present these tools in an easy-to-understand format. Tools, insights, and practical wisdom are the foundation of this team-building adventure on a fishing charter trip. In this brief story, students and leaders can understand how to reduce resistance and sail onto a successful change initiative.
Linda Moran
Ed.D, Department Chair, Hillyer College, University of Hartford
A great read for anyone interested in changing organizational culture with the objective of creating an environment for sustainable operational excellence. The book reads more like a novel than a textbook so it will be easy to prescribe as required reading for your team. Tools and key principles are introduced without specific industry jargon and the analogy to fishing is easy to follow without any fishing experience. The overall message of the power of teamwork when supported by the correct structure and measures will resonate in any industry.
Steve Weiss
Executive Vice President, Manufacturing & Supply Chain, Freshpet, Inc.
This book provides a phenomenal foundation for any business leader embarking on a Lean journey. Rascoe and Buda vividly illustrate how operational excellence transcends the implementation of tools and delves into the intersection of culture. It reads like a novel while weaving in foundational principles of Lean adoption from tools to mindset to culture to managing change. The book is salient for any operations leader including in a service delivery environment where the product is intangible. Through delightful storytelling, the authors share hard-earned lessons gleaned over decades of doing this work. Adopting tools is the easy part. The hard work comes in changing habits, minds, and culture. A must read for any operations leader.
Eric Wellman
Former NPR Host, founder of Renrock Consulting
Having been a charter boat captain for many years I found this book to be the first of its kind as it combines realistic fishing experiences and techniques with ideas on how to make the trip more enjoyable for my guests as well as more efficient for me. Perhaps more importantly it has increased my awareness of paying close attention to all the details of trip planning, preparation, actual fishing time and activities after my guests depart.
Matt King
Captain, Hula Charters, Block Island, RI
Resources Available
- Video Conferencing with authors
- Conference phone calls with authors
- One-on-one coaching
- Consulting engagements
- On-site visits
For more information on services and pricing contact us at: OutsmartingBusinessSharks@gmail.com