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"Managing to Learn" is an excellent book for managers and coaches of A3 authors/advocates. John Shook is a true sensei with 11 years of Toyota history and real world experience in helping organizations with Lean transformations. I have been learning a lot from his incredible blog posts recently as well. My organization is about 5 months into our A3 launch so I have been researching a lot for best practices and ideas. I initially thought this book was going to be a "how to" guide for the author of the A3. You can probably understand how to write an A3 from this book but it is not as explicit as Sobek/Smalley's book. I believe managers and coaches should read both books. Where this book truly shines is getting into the head of the A3 mentor. A lot of Lean books are written from an academic standpoint but this book feels more like a day in the life of someone actually doing the work. The pressure the manager feels organizationally to get things completed in contrast to allowing the A3 author time to learn is a true struggle I have seen in Lean transformations. The book has a part where the manager is dealing with multiple A3 authors all at different stages in their learning. I know these are true mental challenges for coaches so it is nice to relate to a character going through the same things. Coaches can learn a lot from this book to help the A3 author’s growth and deep understanding. Some great things I learned from the book is how to encourage more than one counter-measure, using respect through conflict, helping the author make valid decisions and transition from author to advocate, pull-based authority, using 5 whys after implementing in the check/act cycle, and how to help the A3 writer become a coach themselves. I think this book would be interesting to Project Managers as well. The last few chapters offer some great insight on how to deal with iterative changes and dealing with cultural resistance.

Fun read! Once Upon a Thanksgiving is the first in a 3 book series. It is a delight to read and I am looking forward to the rest of them. In this series, 3 single parents missed the first PTA meeting and were "volunteered" for social planning committee. They will be heads of Thanksgiving play, Christmas fair, and Valenteine's day. Samantha our first mother takes on Thanksgiving since she has a third grader which is the grade that does the actual play. Other grades just do some singing. But poor Samantha already has so much on her plate. She is busy with trying to finish her nursing degree, raising 3 boys and 1 girl without much help from her ex, work, how in the world can she handle one more thing? Well the answer is with the help of the other 2 suckers who got stuck on the committee. Samantha soon comes to cherish the meetings with the ladies, never realising how much she needed their friendship before. They definitely helped her keep sane and filled a big gap in her life. While Sam is going through the process of redefining herself, she relies on her friendship to guide her and things are going great until her sons get her called to the principal office yet again. She knows they are acting out because of the pain of her divorce but can she convince the new principal of this? Last year, the principal only wanted to punish her boys rather than try to help. So when she meets the new Principal and discovers she knew him when they were both kids and that he was willing to work with her boys and finding a way to help them, she was surprised. Not only by him but by her reaction to him. She so wasn't ready for those type of feelings! Fortunately, neither was he since he was just coming off from a bad break-up. They both decide friendship is best. How long that lasts? You'll have to read the book because I'm not telling. hehehehe Overall, I loved the book, really connected with the characters and their lives. I loved the humor that Holly Jacobs writes with and I also loved the changes she put Sam through. I felt like Sam was a close, personal friend and I was right there with her as she found herself and thrived. Great book, highly recommend, can't wait to read the rest of the series.