This book has three goals:

• • Help you stop the financial bleeding at your organization.
• • Help you turn your organization into a Cash Machine.
• • Help you stay just ahead of the competition, forever.

But wait, you say. We’re not bleeding. Sure, things get edgy sometimes. Customers push for more quality and better service. The technology tsunami keeps rolling at us. Employees want more pay and benefits. Everything keeps changing, nothing stands still.

We’ve been tough on ourselves in writing this book. Here are the criteria we followed in preparing our recommendations for your organization. To get in our book, a Cash-Machine approach had to be: 1. Proven: Did we apply the approach in the past, or see it applied successfully by others? 2. Simple: Is the approach easy for your organization to implement? 3. Likely to Happen: Is there a reasonable chance the approach will be adopted, even in organizations that aren’t lusting for change? 4. Understandable: Can we explain the approach to you, clearly and succinctly? 5. Cheap: Can the approach be adopted, wherever possible, by using existing resources and people? 6. Effective: Does the approach have a high probability of bringing you cost savings and enhanced survival prospects? 7. Broadly Applicable: Can the approach be effectively adopted at any organization, be it for-profit, non-profit, big, small, miniscule, religious, charitable, you name it? 8. Short-Term or Long Term: Can the approach be used for the quick fix of an immediate problem, while also useable as part of a continuous change process? 9. Fun to Do: Can the approach take some of the drudgery, and fear, out of change and more change? 10. Fun to Write and Read: Will this be the first business book you’ve read that features, among other things, the Lone Ranger, vicious tigers, phone books, front-end loaders, and piles of burning money? There are no priorities here. Each requirement is important. After all, it’s your decision whether to implement one or more of our recommendations. We want to make that decision as reliable as possible.

The authors, Dan Koger and Greg Brower, each have nearly 30 years of experience, as corporate employees and as consultants, helping organizations use innovative, effective and affordable kaizen/continuous improvement techniques to become Cash Machines. Dan is an associate professor of communication at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, KY. Greg is president of GAB Consultancy in Simi Valley, CA. Greg can be reached at gab4iso@aol.com.