Kim and Spear Honored with Shingo Publication Award for Wiring the Winning Organization
July 23, 2025 – the Shingo Institute
LOGAN, Utah – July 23, 2025 – The Shingo Institute, a program within the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, proudly announces that Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear have been awarded the prestigious Shingo Publication Award for their book Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification.
Wiring the Winning Organization presents a transformative framework based on over 50 years of combined organizational research. Through the principles of simplification, slowification, and amplification, Kim and Spear illustrate how organizations can overcome complex challenges, accelerate problem-solving, and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The book offers practical strategies for leaders to close the gap between goals and results in any environment.
The Shingo Publication Award recognizes exceptional works that advance the understanding and practice of organizational excellence. It aligns with the Shingo Institute’s mission to inspire leaders through the principles of the Shingo Model™, which emphasize a culture of continuous improvement and principled leadership.
“Receipt of the Shingo Publication Award signifies an author’s significant contribution and practical application to the body of knowledge regarding organizational excellence,” said Ken Snyder, Executive Director of the Shingo Institute.
The book has received acclaim from leading voices across industries:
“This is a fabulous book that I highly recommend… successful organizations flow from leaders who create the conditions in which many others thrive.”
—Paul Gaffney, former CTO and head of technology, The Home Depot, Kohl’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods
“All organizations… are overwhelmed by complexity… Kim and Spear lay out an amazing vision of the social circuitry for organizations to not only handle this but thrive while doing so.”
—Phil Venables, Chief Information Security Officer, Google Cloud
“This book clearly teaches you how to rewire your organization to move with focused, sustained urgency and win!”
—Courtney Kissler, SVP Customer and Retail Technology, Starbucks
“In a world where complexity is the norm… This is more than a book—it’s a toolkit for transforming your organization…”
—David Silverman, CEO of CrossLead and co-author of Team of Teams
“This book is a must-read that deeply informs leaders on how to create great systems for outstanding performance and to win.”
—Jeffrey K. Liker, PhD, author of The Toyota Way
“The authors… help take practices developed for particular industries and generalize them across all contexts.”
—Joel Podolny, CEO, Honor Education and former Dean of Apple University and of Yale School of Management
“I would have been much more successful if I had known about and practiced the ideas… It’s worth every minute of your time…”
—ADM John Richardson (ret), 31st Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy
The authors will be formally recognized at the SHINGO CONNECT Awards Gala on March 19, 2026, in San Diego, California. SHINGO CONNECT includes workshops, site tours, keynotes, and sessions focused on achieving organizational excellence. Learn more at shingo.org/events.
To order Wiring the Winning Organization, visit shingo.org/books.
About the Authors
Gene Kim
Gene Kim is an award-winning CTO, researcher, and author who has been exploring what makes technology organizations excel since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years and has authored six influential books, including The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project, The DevOps Handbook, and the award–winning Accelerate. He also co-authored the Visible Ops series. As the founder and organizer of the DevOps Enterprise Summit since 2014, Kim has led efforts to understand and support large-scale technology transformations in complex organizations. Recognized as one of ComputerWorld’s “40 Innovative IT People to Watch Under the Age of 40” in 2007 and honored as a Computer Science Outstanding Alumnus by Purdue University, Kim continues to shape the future of IT and DevOps. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and family.
Steve Spear
Steve Spear (DBA, MS, MS) is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and founder of See to Solve LLC, a business process software firm. He is the award-winning author of The High Velocity Edge and “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” amongst several other Shingo Publication Awards. A leading expert in how world’s best organizations create and sustain competitive advantage by the power of their system design and problem-solving prowess, Spear has advised institutions across tech, manufacturing, healthcare, and more. He was instrumental in developing the Alcoa Business System, saving hundreds of millions in operations, and the “Perfecting Patient Care” system for the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative, which led to major quality improvements in hospitals. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Academic Medicine, and his 1999 HBR article “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” is a foundational piece in Lean manufacturing. He holds a doctorate from Harvard Business School, master’s degrees in engineering and management from MIT, and a bachelor’s in economics from Princeton.
About the Shingo Institute
The Shingo Institute is home to the Shingo Prize, an award recognizing organizations that demonstrate an exceptional culture fostering continuous improvement. Part of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, the Shingo Institute is named after Japanese industrial engineer and Toyota adviser Shigeo Shingo, one of the world's thought leaders in the Toyota Production System.
Drawing from Dr. Shingo’s teachings and years of experience working with organizations worldwide, the Shingo Institute developed the Shingo Model, the basis for its various educational offerings, including workshops, study tours, and conferences. Workshops are available in multiple languages through the Institute's Licensed Affiliates. For more information on workshops and affiliates or to register to attend an event, please visit https://shingo.org.
Shingo Media Contact
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Shingo Institute
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