Fast Manager
Mark Gottfredson & Steve Schaubert
Collins
Pages: 367
Price: Rs 495
One of the things that the global market place has done is to crunch cycle times. Products go obsolete faster than before, competitors learn faster than they ever did before, and boom and bust cycles occur faster but with far greater intensity than before. This dramatic change in the operating environment has profound implications for managers: they don’t have the luxury of time to produce results. Excessive focus on quarterly results means that their performance is appraised with greater frequency, and the punishment for failure is swift and severe.
The fact, however, is that, as much as the unfortunate managers, their employers can ill afford to fail. While booting out unsuccessful managers is an option, it’s a poor one. Apart from money and energy, the time spent on a project is lost forever. So, what are the managers to do? Equip themselves with the knowledge they need to achieve results in a competitive and dynamic market place.
The Breakthrough Imperative is all about how managers can go about doing just that. Deriving a lot from the works of other management writers, including Bain’s star consultant Chris Zook of Profit from the Core fame, the book proposes that there are two fundamental reasons why great managers are more successful. One reason is that they have a deep and clear understanding of the fundamental laws of business, and the other is that, once having identified what they need to do to achieve the desired results, they follow a clear path to success.
This discovery—that there are two keys to success—is based on the authors’ analysis of 202 highly profitable companies and the 413 CEOs that led them over a 10-year period ending 2005, besides interviews with 40 leaders from industry and nonprofit sector. From that, Gottfredson, a partner in Bain’s Dallas office, and Schaubert, a partner in the firm’s Boston office, derive four laws that they say are “fundamental knowledge necessary to guide a successful manager’s initial diagnosis and path to success”.
What are these four laws? One states that “costs and prices always decline”; another says that “competitive position determines your options”; the third says “customers and profit pools (that is, in an industry, which part of the value chain makes the most money) don’t stand still”; and the final law notes that “simplicity gets results”. These might sound like Business 101, but the fact is not enough managers a) know of them or b) keep them in mind when they strategise. The book also offers a do-it-yourself diagnostic for managers to develop their “point of departure”.
A common problem with most writing on management is that it tends to generalise things. But Gottfredson and Schaubert manage to avoid that trap to a great extent. As a result, the book is a great handbook for managers trying to chart a winning course in these turbulent times.
Debra E. Meyerson
Harvard Business Press
Pages: 224
Price: $14.95 (Rs 643)
Mahatma Gandhi had once said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Rocking the Boat, How to Effect Change Without Making Trouble by Debra E. Meyerson tells you how you can bring about small, incremental changes in the organisation you work in without necessarily being in a position of authority.
Most large organisations have “organisational cultures” that leave little room for people to air their opinions or differences. Yet, management gurus wax eloquent on how post-modern organisations have to allow individuals to flower.
Meyerson’s book tries to square these two mutually exclusive subsets by pointing out how ordinary people can resist being swamped by the majority culture of their workplaces, without disrupting the cultural cohesion of the office. They can bring about small, incremental changes on a range of issues from gender equality to corporate environmentalism to familyfriendly work practices. The book is full of examples of people who have, by bringing about small doses of change at a time, succeeded in changing organisational cultures.
Whether those (mainly US) examples can be transplanted to the Indian context is debatable, but the value of this extremely well-researched book lies in its power to inspire.
