The book that named Manage by Means.
Profit Beyond Measure: Extraordinary Results Through Attention to Work and People (The Free Press, 2000), by H. Thomas Johnson and SAM founder Anders Bröms, argues that secure profitability comes from changing how management thinks about work and how it organizes work, demonstrated through Toyota and the Swedish truck maker Scania.
The argument, in brief.
Profit Beyond Measure details how two extremely profitable manufacturers, Toyota and Scania, achieve their legendary cost advantage by managing by means (MBM): instead of being driven to meet preconceived accounting targets, their production systems are governed by the three precepts that guide all living systems: self-organization, interdependence and diversity.
Johnson and Bröms show how design, production and profitability analysis are done to customer order: and how following principles that emulate life systems lets even a lean, profitable company sharply reduce its short-run operating costs and greatly lessen its long-term earnings instability. Scania’s sixty-five years of financial stability and Toyota’s market value stand as the book’s evidence.
When to pick it up.
Read it when you want the thinking behind SAM’s work in full:
You’re weighing a deeper transformation and want its intellectual foundation first.
Managing by results keeps generating waste, and you want the alternative argued properly.
Your leadership team needs a common reference point before an MBM journey.
Getting a copy.
You can find Profit Beyond Measure at Amazon: The Free Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-439-12462-8.
What it gives you.
The original definition of Manage by Means, from the people who coined it.
Toyota and Scania examined as living systems rather than spreadsheets.
A vocabulary - self-organization, interdependence, diversity - a whole leadership team can share.
Where it fits.
The book underpins the two services where SAM’s own concepts run deepest.
Start with the book.
Profit Beyond Measure is where Manage by Means was first set out. Read it, then talk to the people who wrote it into practice.