Free ebooks – Mark Graban
Free Field Guides for Leaders
Short, practical guides on metrics, variation, improvement, and leadership. Most take about 20 minutes to read, and each ends with a one-page summary you can cut out and keep. Enter your email and the download link appears right away.
Not sure where to start?
- Someone brings you a mistake, and you want them to bring you the next one too: Accountability Without Blame
- You hear about problems last: The Last to Know, a two-page checklist
- Your monthly reviews ask people to explain every up and down: The Red Beads in Your KPI Review
- Your scorecard is a wall of red and green: What Your Scorecard Isn’t Telling You
- Improvement ideas stall, or people won’t test anything that might fail: Just PDSA It
- You want to learn from Toyota’s own words: What Toyota Didn’t Write Down
- People stopped speaking up, and you are not sure why: Why They Stopped Telling You, a two-page checklist
- Staff ideas go into a box and never come back: The Empty Suggestion Box, for hospital leaders
Accountability Without Blame
How to talk with someone about their mistake, one-on-one: your first reaction, the conversation in five parts, and the “second conversation” your team has about whether speaking up was smart.
20 pages, plus a one-page cut-out
The Last to Know
A two-page checklist for leaders who would rather hear bad news first: five habits that get problems to you while they’re still small.
2 pages: the checklist, plus three ways to use it with your team
The Red Beads in Your KPI Review
Leadership lessons from Deming’s Red Bead Experiment: why leaders ask people to explain noise, what that teaches people about speaking up, and how to tell signal from noise in your own metrics.
20 pages, plus a one-page cut-out
What Your Scorecard Isn’t Telling You
Why red-and-green scorecards and bowling charts mislead leaders, and what to use instead. Four sites, one scorecard, and one question most leaders get wrong.
21 pages, plus a one-page cut-out
Just PDSA It
Why kaizen, A3 problem solving, and strategy deployment are one learning loop at three sizes, and what it takes to make being wrong cheap enough that people run honest tests.
22 pages, plus a one-page cut-out
What Toyota Didn’t Write Down
What Toyota’s 1992 booklet says about andon, flow, kaizen, and standardized work, and the leadership behavior it left out. Built from my six-part LeanBlog series, with questions for your leadership team.
33 pages, plus a one-page cut-out
Why They Stopped Telling You
A two-page checklist from my upcoming book The Silence Tax: find out whether fear or futility keeps people quiet, and what to do about each.
2 pages: the checklist, a one-minute self-check, and three ways to use it with your team
The Empty Suggestion Box
Why staff ideas die in hospitals, and what leaders do instead: small ideas, quick yeses, and closing the loop with the person who spoke up. From Healthcare Kaizen, with stories from Franciscan, ThedaCare, and Children’s Medical Center Dallas.
21 pages, plus a one-page cut-out
Free book chapters
Want a longer read? Each of my books has a free preview you can request by email.
- The Silence Tax (February 2027): free sample, the Introduction and Chapter 1
- The Mistakes That Make Us: free preview
- Measures of Success: free sample chapter
- Lean Hospitals: Chapter 1 preview
- Healthcare Kaizen: Chapter 1 preview
Keep reading
Want the full argument behind the guides? Start with The Mistakes That Make Us for learning from mistakes and The Silence Tax (February 2027) for the leadership behaviors that make speaking up worth it, then Measures of Success for metrics and variation, and Healthcare Kaizen and Lean Hospitals for improvement methods.
Several of the guides started as posts on LeanBlog.org, where I have been writing about these ideas since 2005.
About Mark Graban
Mark Graban is a consultant, author, professional speaker, and podcaster who helps organizations improve through Lean management, better use of metrics, and psychological safety. He is a three-time recipient of the Shingo Publication Award. Work with Mark, in person or virtually.