And, all the while, organizational complicatedness—that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems—has increased by a whopping factor of thirty-five. In their attempt to respond to the increasingly complex performance requirements they face, company leaders have created an organizational labyrinth that makes it more and more difficult to improve productivity and to pursue innovation. It also disengages and demotivates the workforce.Clearly it’s time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with their traditional tools and instead better leverage employees' intelligence. This book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leading organizations.The way to manage complexity, the authors argue, is neither with the hard solutions of another era nor with the soft solutions—such as team building and feel-good “people initiatives”—that often follow in their wake. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociology) and The Boston Consulting Group’s work with more than five hundred companies in more than forty countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated.Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman give managers a much-needed tool to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless complexity. Included are detailed examples from companies that have achieved a multiplicative effect on performance by using them.It’s time to manage complexity better. Employ these six simple rules to foster autonomy and cooperation and to effectively handle business complexity. As a result, you will improve productivity, innovate more, reengage your workforce, and seize opportunities to create competitive advantage.

    In the process, they are changing the scope of their business operations, redrawing their organization charts, redefining the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility, revamping the mechanisms for motivating and rewarding people, reconsidering which activities to conduct in-house and which to out-source, redesigning their information systems, and seeking to alter the shared beliefs, values and norms that their people hold. In this book, John Roberts argues that there are predictable, necessary relationships among these changes that will improve performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner. The Modern Firm develops powerful conceptual frameworks for analyzing the interrelations between organizational design features, competitive strategy and the business environment. Written in a non-technical language, the book is nevertheless based on rigorous modeling and draws on numerous examples from the eighteenth century fur trading companies to such modern firms such as BP and Nokia. Finally, the book explores why these developments are happening now, pointing to the increase in global competition and changes in technology. Written by one of the world's leading economists and experts on business strategy and organization, The Modern Firm provides new insights into the changes going on in business today and will be of interest to academics, students and managers alike.

    The book will do that through examples of how innovative practices can dramatically improve the success of change programs. These practices combine ideas from the Agile, Lean Startup, change management, organizational development and psychology communities. This book will change how you think about change. In this book we will cover: Why does change resistance emerge and what you should NOT do about it. And of course, how to harness that human reaction to the benefit of all involved in the change process. Step-by-step descriptions of how we combined ideas from many change methods and frameworks to develop a customized change management process that was right for The Commission. How you can customize your own change program just like we did at The Commission. How you can involve the people affected in the change in the design of that change. Directly contributing to the success of the change program. A newly appointed CIO had shaken the place up with some big changes, including a transition away from traditional management practices and towards Agile practices. How to implement these modern approaches to management in a very traditional organization? A new approach to change was needed. Lean Change Management was needed. This book describes how myself and team of change agents helped The Commission transform from an old-school public sector to a modern Agile organization. Was it easy? Of course not. But it was possible because of the innovative practices for Change Management that I describe in this book.

    New

      Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath| Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (2010) is about how to bring about change in an organization. Its main focus is changing behavior by appealing to the rational and emotional sides of people’s psyches. To generate change, authors Chip and Dan Heath maintain, a leader must connect with both sides, the rational and the emotional. This is because sometimes, one side can work against the other and sabotage successful change. The rational side tends to analyze possibilities for change so much that it becomes unable to act—so change never occurs. The emotional side is ready, or even eager, to act on change, but it can act compulsively and without focus. This means that changes based solely on emotion are likely to fail. To bring about real change, a leader must stimulate the emotional side of a group’s psyche to get the process of change underway, then harness its rational side to give this change a concerted direction…  This companion to Switch includes: Overview of the book Important People Key Takeaways Analysis of Key Takeaways and much more!

    This book connects Lean tools to the Lean journey, shows how to identify and eliminate waste, and aids the reader in seeing Lean for what it truly is: to create a learning and problem solving culture. Written to educate the entire organization on the fundamentals of Lean thinking, this is the perfect source to engage all team members at all levels of an organization.

    Organizational pioneer Schein updates his influential understanding of culture--what it is, how it is created, how it evolves, and how it can be changed. Focusing on today's business realities, Schein draws on a wide range of contemporary research to redefine culture, offers new information on the topic of occupational cultures, and demonstrates the crucial role leaders play in successfully applying the principles of culture to achieve organizational goals. He also tackles the complex question of how an existing culture can be changed--one of the toughest challenges of leadership. The result is a vital resource for understanding and practicing organizational effectiveness.

    Michael Abrashoff, legendary commander of the USS Benfold, continues in the same vein of his bestselling book It's Your Ship with the knowledge he's gained from his speaking to and advising some of the top business minds in the world. The story of Captain Abrashoff and his command of USS Benfold has become legendary inside and outside the Navy. By governing his ship with his unique management techniques, Abrashoff turned the Benfold into a model of naval efficiency, with amazing cost savings, the highest gunnery score in the Pacific Fleet, and a highly motivated and top performing crew.In It's Your Ship, he first demonstrated how to bring his successful management techniques from the ship to the boardroom. Now, in his newest book It's Your Ship, in the same rugged, can-do voice, Abrashoff will focus on the leadership, motivational, and management insights and tips that he has learned from his last six years of addressing business and corporate audiences. Abrashoff's timely advice will be eminently prescriptive, and will feature anecdotes and insights from leaders of businesses large and small and from public and non-profit sectors.

    This practical book demonstrates how entire organizations—from product managers and engineers to marketers and executives—can put Agile to work. Author Matt LeMay explains Agile in clear, jargon-free terms and provides concrete and actionable steps to help any team put its values and principles into practice. Examples from a wide variety of organizations, including small nonprofits and global financial enterprises, bring to life the on-the-ground realities of Agile across industries and functions. Understand exactly what Agile is and why it matters Use Agile to address your organization’s specific needs and goals Take customer centricity from theory into practice Stop wasting time in "report and critique" meetings and start making better decisions Create a harmonious cycle of learning, collaborating, and delivering Learn from Agile experts at companies like IBM, Spotify, and Coca-Cola

    Edwards Deming, the "High Prophet of Quality" ("The New York Times")"The Essential W. Edwards Deming" is a collection of articles, excerpts, case studies, and other influential writings that reveal how Deming's ideas evolved over time and show how he worked through problems and challenges many people in his profession previously considered unsolvable.Organized by theme, the book's covers such topics as the consequences of focusing on short-term goals, the problems with delegating quality, why "not" to focus too much on the bottom line, how to treat a business as a system, and eight misuses of statistics.Joyce Orsini is a professor of management at Fordham University and the Director of Fordham's Deming Scholars Program. Diana Deming Cahill, a retired elementary classroom teacher, accompanied her father, W. Edwards Deming, at numerous public and private seminars and consulting sessions, classes, and meetings at New York University and at companies in the United States, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa.

    (Put another way, teaming is to innovation what assembly lines are to car production.) This book brings together key insights on teaming, as they pertain to innovation. How do you build a culture of innovation? What does that culture look like? How does it evolve and grow? How are teams most effectively created and then nurtured in this context? What is a leader's role in this culture? This little book is a roadmap for teaming to innovate. We describe five necessary steps along that road: Aim High, Team Up, Fail Well, Learn Fast, and Repeat. This path is not smooth. To illustrate each critical step, we look at real-life scenarios that show how teaming to innovate provides the spark that can fertilize creativity, clarify goals, and redefine the meaning of leadership.

    The hands of a pocket watch reveal the time of day without following every spring, cog, and movement behind the face. Similarly, an OPPM template reduces any project--no matter how large or complicated--to a simple one-page document, perfect for communicating to upper management and other project stakeholders. Now in its Second Edition, this practical guide, currently saving time and effort in thousands of organizations worldwide, has itself been simplified, then refined and extended to include the innovative AgileOPPM(TM).This Second Edition will include new material and updates including an introduction of the ground-breaking AgileOPPM(TM) and an overview of MyOPPM(TM) template builder, available on-line Includes references throughout the book to the affiliated sections in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK(R)) Shows templates for the Project Management Office (PMO) This new and updated Second Edition will help you master the one-page approach to both traditional project management and Agile project management.(PMBOK is a registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.)

     From energizing morning routines, to insanely efficient work routines, to empowering evening rituals, the ultra-successful structure their days to utilize every last waking minute to its fullest potential. And in this book, you will learn how to do the same. How will you learn to create the ultimate daily routine? Inside the book: The secret to creating the ultimate morning routine so you can have your best day every day (Hint: It has 3 parts) How to get more done with an ultra-efficient work routine (plus the ultimate work routine for squeezing every last drop of potential out of your work hours) How to renew your energy throughout the day with an “energy ritual” for all-day energy and productivity (plus how to schedule tasks according to your energy levels) Why having cold showers every morning can leave you feeling more energized, happy, and productive The secret to waking up feeling energized (Hint: It has nothing to do with how long you sleep for) How to finish your day with a powerful evening routine so you can kick ass the next day (plus an example of a great evening ritual you can copy) And much more… To create a powerful daily routine and perform at the peak of your abilities day in and day out, scroll up to the top of this page and click BUY NOW.

    Seddon argues that while many commentators acknowledge command and control is failing us, no one provides an alternative. His contention is the alternative can only be understood when you see the failings of command and control by taking the better - systems - view. There is little in the book that you would find in a normal management curriculum. Seddon is scathing and controversial about leadership theorists, maintaining that leadership is being able to talk about how the work works with the people who do it. The book provides practical advice and examples of how to put this into place. Packed with illustrations of the unintended consequences of command and control thinking, you will be amazed that management of our organizations should be so appalling. You will see how customer service is poor and carries high costs and that changing the way the work is designed and managed will result in lower costs and better service. But, as Seddon points out, these are things managers cannot "see" from their current position. Managers don't know what they don't know. Seddon's case is that taking this view teaches managers to change their thinking, and he shows how the very observations they make when understanding what he calls "the what and why of current performance as a system" become the building blocks of the systems solution. And also illustrates the solutions for the cases he uses.

    The long-awaited update for work and organizations in the knowledge age!A book about complexity and work - and about how to deal productively with both.A condensed introduction to the theory and practice of organizational high performance.A manifesto for contemporary leadership and profound transformation in organizations of all kinds.