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Book summary · Strategy deployment · Intermediate

Getting the Right Things Done: summary and review

A Leader's Guide to Planning and Execution

By Pascal Dennis. First published 2006.

The short answer

Getting the Right Things Done teaches strategy deployment (hoshin kanri) as a story. A fictional manufacturer, Atlas Industries, is heading for trouble despite smart people and plenty of lean tools. Pascal Dennis, a former Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada manager, argues that companies spend their effort choosing goals and too little on deploying them, which is the hard part. The leadership team agrees a few priorities, negotiates them down the organization and reviews progress on a fixed rhythm, with filled-in A3s and blank templates to copy. It is the most approachable first book on the subject.

Read it if

  • You run a plant or department and your improvement projects are not tied to a few agreed goals.
  • You want to see what a finished A3, dashboard and X-matrix look like before you draw your own.
  • You will work through hoshin with a leadership team and want a shared story to hand them.

Skip it if

  • You want the history or theory of policy management in Japan. This is a how-to told as fiction.
  • You need finance-linked detail or product-development deployment. Jackson's book covers more of that ground.
  • You dislike business fables. Some readers find the story contrived.

When it pays off: When your plant has plenty of kaizen activity but nobody can say how it adds up to this year's targets, and before you build an X-matrix. Read it ahead of the planning cycle, not in the middle of it.

The core ideas, in plain language

  1. 1

    Deployment is the hard part

    Dennis argues companies put most effort into choosing objectives and little into carrying them out. The book is organized around execution: who owns what, how objectives translate at each level, how progress is checked.

  2. 2

    A few objectives, not a long list

    Dennis has said Toyota's strength is grasping the situation, picking two or three obstacles, planning against them and deploying those plans. Jon Miller, in 2006, summarized it as the vital few: three to five breakthrough objectives, everything else subordinate.

  3. 3

    Catchball turns orders into agreement

    Targets move down the organization and come back changed. Each level says what it can commit to and what resources it needs. The book pairs this with a deployment leader who keeps the process running. Without the return trip you have cascaded targets, not agreement.

  4. 4

    True North and PDCA at every level

    True North is the direction; PDCA tests whether each plan works. The book repeats the loop at each level, so a supervisor's monthly check has the same shape as the executive review.

  5. 5

    A3s, action trees and the ladder of abstraction

    A3 storyboards put a plan on one page, action trees break broad aims into actions, and a ladder of abstraction moves between a vague goal and a specific task. The point is to make people think the plan through, not fill in a form.

  6. 6

    Lean tools serve the system

    Value stream maps, kaizen events and 5S are means to the objectives, not ends. In a 2021 article Dennis adds that there is no one best way; each organization adapts the process.

How to use it on Monday morning

  1. 1

    Get the objectives and obstacles in writing

    Ask your manager for the plant's top three to five objectives this year and the two or three obstacles in the way. If nobody can state them in a minute, that gap is your first finding. Write down what you were told and the date.

  2. 2

    Sort what your area is running

    List every kaizen, project and audit your area has open and write the objective each supports. Anything supporting none goes on a separate list for the next review. Do not cancel work on the spot; ask the owner first.

  3. 3

    Run one catchball conversation

    Take the targets you were given. Spend 20 minutes with your team lead and one operator on what is needed to hit them and what worries them. Record what changed, and take unresolved resource questions back to your manager within the week.

  4. 4

    Write one A3 for your most important objective

    One page: where you are now with a number, the target, the gap, countermeasures with owner and date, and the date of the first check. Post it where the daily huddle happens and check it there.

What to be careful about

  • The fiction trims the conflict

    On Goodreads, reviewers call the story contrived and say conflict between staff is glossed over; a more recent reviewer says it skips the politics that derail real efforts. Expect your first cycle to be messier than Atlas's.

  • Real adoption takes years

    Jon Miller reported in 2006 that the trainer he heard said it took roughly five annual cycles to see how all the parts connect. Barry Witcher's research at the University of East Anglia found Western firms needed long adoption periods and that copying Japanese methods literally failed.

  • Manufacturing-led, light on money

    The publisher's description and the reviews we found do not mention cost accounting or deploying objectives into product development. Jackson's book covers value stream P&L and design-side use.

  • Written for paper boards, and form can replace substance

    Michel Baudin (2025) praises the A3 discipline of synthesis but calls obsession with the paper format obsolete, and warns hoshin kanri degrades into formality without genuine management commitment. Use the templates; do not mistake them for the practice.

Getting the Right Things Done compared with Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise

Pick Dennis when a leadership team needs to understand the process and see worked A3s. Pick Jackson when you are building the X-matrix, scorecard and review system and finance must accept the savings. If you read one first, make it Dennis; Dennis gives the story, Jackson the mechanics.

Read the summary of Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise.

Tools and templates on LeanSuite that go with it

Book details

Bibliographic details of Getting the Right Things Done
TitleGetting the Right Things Done: A Leader's Guide to Planning and Execution
AuthorPascal Dennis
First published2006
Edition shownFirst edition, paperback, Lean Enterprise Institute, 2006
ISBN-13978-0976315261
Pages232

Details checked against public records on 7 October 2026. Other editions have other ISBNs. We carry no affiliate links.

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