Emily Adams

Healthcare is undergoing radical change. Mergers and acquisitions are constant. Patients are expected to change physicians, shop for healthcare deals, and dispassionately evaluate medical centers, often while facing serious illness. And, as the federal government experiments with new payment structures, it's increasingly unclear who will pay for what.

All of this means that healthcare organizations must be ready to pivot, by becoming both collaborative and adept at solving problems. The books in this category all call for a move away from the old top-down model in order to be more prepared for whatever tomorrow brings.

Daily management systems have been conspicuously absent from organizations of all types. Front-line supervisors and their managers in manufacturing, service industries, and healthcare are too often given targets to meet and then left to their own devices. The results are predictably uneven.

The books in this category show very different companies building a daily management system that is unique to each organization, yet with profound similarities. These organizations have been using the same system of interlocking daily meetings and standardized management work for more than a decade with measurable results.

The books in this category are the stories of people who pioneered lean thinking in industries such as disaster relief, healthcare, and medical supplies—leaders who spent years building robust organizations and then paused to reflect on what worked and what did not.

New ideas like agile, scrum, and Design Thinking have upended project management and leadership styles in the technology sector. Can these sometimes contradictory forces be unified?