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With news headlines of bankruptcies, layoffs and acquisitions, today's business leaders are under extreme pressure to maintain - and increase - performance. Although one of the first "success factors" scrutinized is revenue, it's imperative to also look at how a company is managed and if its structure and operating procedures stimulate profitability.

In CHASING THE RABBIT: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win (McGraw-Hill; November 2008; Hardcover $29.95), MIT Senior Lecturer Steven J. Spear shows that business leaders need to realize that discovery and self-improvement are the most valuable assets a business can have: attentiveness to quickly solving and circumventing problems, sharing learned knowledge and instilling effective management operations are of paramount importance for helping companies to not just stay afloat, but to excel.

Having recognized Toyota as a "rabbit" organization that steadily increases its lead in the competitive auto industry, Spear spent many months working within the company, learning its processes and dissecting its success into an understandable format that other companies can implement in order to achieve a "high-velocity" position. Chasing the Rabbit relays these lessons from Toyota, as well as case examples of many other organizations such as the U.S. Navy, NASA, Alcoa, Intel, Intuit, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Massachusetts General Hospital, and others.

With a forward by Harvard Business Professor Clayton M. Christensen and endorsement by Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul H. O'Neill, Chasing the Rabbit fills a critical void and delves into important issues that other management literature does not. There is, for example, a plethora of books about the transactions and decisions to manage a firm's position in its external environment, but far fewer books actually examine how a company can shape the external environment.

Illustrating effective and ineffective methods of structure and operations, Spear shows how the four capabilities of successful management apply not only to specific companies and industries, but also to broader and more tangible topics such as our nation's health care system - making Chasing the Rabbit a "must-read" for an audience ranging from well-established business leaders to aspiring entrepreneurs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven J. Spear is the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and trade publications, including the Harvard Business Review and The New York Times, receiving a McKinsey Award for his article, "Fixing Health Care From the Inside, Today." He has won the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research four times, is a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and has worked with a variety of organizations ranging from Toyota to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

CHASING THE RABBIT: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win by Steven J. Spear; McGraw-Hill; November 2008; Hardcover: $29.95; 404 pages; ISBN-10: 0-07-149988-1; ISBN-13: 978-0-07-149988-0.

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