Authors Lamprecht and Ricci have pooled their cumulative 40 years of consulting in quality management and employment in various business environments to cut through the fads and take a hard look at the true results of certain business practices from the past few decades. If you want the truth, this is the book for you. Those who want sugarcoating should look elsewhere. The past 25 years have seen the worldwide promotion of ISO 9001, the Six Sigma and lean movements (in their various forms), and many other popular approaches. Some are already forgotten or hardly ever mentioned: Taguchi methods, just-in time, reengineering, TRIZ, Theory of Constraints, visual factory, and many others. In addition to these various tools, companies also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on sophisticated software programs and resource management tools. But despite businesses continuously attempting to re-invent and/or improve themselves, most are still struggling with the same fundamental questions, such as how to motivate people, sustain continuous improvement, avoid the over analysis of too much data, reduce the amount of time spent in meetings, and refrain management from micromanaging. Why? From employee motivation, risk-taking, and software to planning tools, training, and hiring practices, you ll learn why. The authors use their observations of over 500 organizations worldwide to offer their views on what does not seem to work or work very well. By reading these critiques it is hoped that readers, managers, or even CEOs will be moved to modify their habits. Included for each chapter are unique annotated bibliographies that could be considered a book within the book. Each annotated bibliography includes summaries and quotations from a variety of authors that have over the years observed or otherwise commented on similar propositions as those in this book