Businesses trying to stay lean and fit face the same challenges as human dieters--success requires fundamental lifestyle changes and sustained, continuing effort. And, like human dieters, businesses, too, are susceptible to the come-ons of the latest quick-fix fads, which often deliver short-term gains but fall short in the long run. Eventually they go back to their old habits and they're right back where they started. It's a vicious cycle.

The Wall Street Diet uses a diet metaphor to illustrate a complete, integrated approach to what every business must do to become a lean, healthy enterprise. Like a truly effective weight loss program, it is a plan for achieving sustained benefits--following the Wall Street Diet will add five to eight points of potential new profit to a business's bottom line.

Using the proven concept of total enterprise optimization (TEO) as a framework, the book introduces a fitness program that brings together lean techniques, advanced supply chain management, improved quality concepts, selective outsourcing, and a focus on both the top and bottom lines. The authors detail specific TEO efforts that add savings and create new values, demonstrating the synergy to be had by combining those efforts with improved consumption data and analysis and innovative partnering with allied businesses. Fundamentally, The Wall Street Diet is about changing the culture that drives the business, leading to better earnings, continued growth, and the greatest value for all stakeholders.

• Uses a unique diet metaphor to show businesses how to change their lifestyles and become lean, efficient enterprises
• Offers a comprehensive approach to business growth that ties together a broad spectrum of business practices into one synergistic fitness program
• Includes checklists for senior managers and functional managers and "diet champions" so everyone can chart their progress in implementing the Wall Street Diet