Gary Convis is a friend of mine that I see once a year or so. Spend a little time with him and you can’t help but be impressed. He’s a gentle leader, filled with wisdom and experience.

A few years ago he told me about a book he wanted to write that explained the leadership principles he learned while working at Toyota. It seemed like a great idea, but then two things happened. First, we had the economic collapse that saw all the car companies suffer. Then Toyota experienced a rash of recalls and bad publicity. It seemed like bad timing for Gary.

But he persevered. The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development, which he cowrote with Jeffrey Liker, is a worthy addition to the many books on leadership. A lot of folks talk about lean leadership, and there are hundreds of companies trying to put the concept into actual practice. Sadly, few succeed.

After decades of overseeing huge manufacturing plants (including the legendary NUMMI plant in California), Gary believes the reason for that failure is simple: leadership. The book will explain more, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Suffice to say that I found his insights to be completely accurate.

That’s not to say this book is perfect. The writing can be academic at times, which makes for some dry reading through the more difficult sections. And the whole model of Toyota management is still hard for an American to comprehend. Even Gary admits he’s still learning. So that makes it hard to accept some of the ideas in the book and really see their value. But then, explaining the depth of this management method (indeed, the whole corporate culture) is the reason why Gary wrote the book.

Personally, I couldn’t find anything in the book to object to. Corporate executives will get a lot out of this book, as will business students. But I’m not so sure that I did; there isn’t much that crosses over to the small family owned business.

Oh well. I still look forward to a future round of golf or dinner with Gary so I can hear more!