The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation, by lean experts Michael and Freddy Ballé, addresses the critical problem that most companies face today: how can they advance beyond realizing isolated gains from deploying lean tools, to fundamentally changing how they operate, think, and learn? The book gives companies a definitive guide for sustaining their ability to learn and to improve operations and financial performance, while continually developing people. “The only way to stay lean is to produce lean managers,” says Jim Womack, author, lean management authority, and LEI founder. “Every isolated effort will recede — or fail — unless companies learn to use the lean process as a way of developing individual problem-solvers with the ownership, initiative, and know-how to solve problems, learn, and coach new individuals.” The Lean Manager, the sequel to the Ballé’s international bestselling business novel The Gold Mine, tells the compelling story of plant manager Andrew Ward as h