John Shook - Author

Senior Advisor,
Lean Enterprise Institute

John Shook was introduced to lean management during his 11-year career with Toyota in Japan and the United States. He helped transfer manufacturing, engineering and management systems from Japan to NUMMI and other facilities worldwide. During his time at Toyota headquarters, he became the company's first American kacho (manager) in Japan. In the U.S., Shook joined Toyota's North American center for engineering, research and development in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as general manager of administration and planning. His last position at Toyota was as senior U.S. manager at the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, Kentucky, where he helped North American companies implement the Toyota Production System.

Shook is co-author of Learning to See, the book that introduced value-stream mapping to a global audience. He also co-wrote Kaizen Express, a bilingual guide to the essential concepts and tools of the Toyota Production System. With Managing to Learn Shook revealed the deeper workings of the A3 management process, which is central to Toyota's management and leadership practice.

Shook is an industrial anthropologist with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii, a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee, and is a graduate of the Japan-America Institute of Management Science. At the University of Michigan, he was director of the Japan Technological Management Program and a lecturer in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering.

Shook is the author of numerous articles, including "How to Change a Culture: Lessons from NUMMI," published in the Sloan Management Review in January 2010. This article won Sloan's Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize for excellence in organizational development.

Books: