Book Review: Lean Technical Communication: Toward Sustainable Program Innovation by Meredith A. Johnson, W. Michele Simmons, & Patricia Sullivan

Abstract

Lean Technical Communication: Toward Sustainable Program Innovation is a book that every program administrator—whether of an undergraduate technical and professional communication (TPC), a graduate, or first-year writing (FYW) program—should read. As an administrator of an FYW program that serves roughly 3,500 students a semester, I found the book invaluable as I considered sustainability, strategy, and innovation for the program. In Lean Technical Communication, Meredith A. Johnson, W. Michele Simmons, and Patricia Sullivan offer a framework for what they call a lean program—one that is “innovative and disruptive,” responsive to local stakeholders and contingencies, aligned with but also challenging of the priorities of local institutions, sustainable, and strategic (p. xv). The book is divided into two parts: the first (Chapters 1–3) overviews their approach, framework, and principles, and the second (Chapters 4–7) illustrates the application of this framework through case examples. In this review, I largely focus on Part 1, which provides the framework that guides the rest of the book. Chapter 1 serves as a definitional chapter of sorts, explaining the book’s key concepts: disruption, sustainability, resilience, and innovation. Sustainability seems to be the central concept of the four, as the authors stress innovating, disrupting, and responding to challenges in sustainable ways “without compromising the natural environment or ignoring needs of diverse populations” (p. 8). The rest of the book shows that a program is sustainable when its central goals and Book Review