Customer Reviews

Accountability Leadership: How to Strengthen Productivity Through Sound Managerial Leadership

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Author Gerald Kraines addresses a neglected area of management and lays out practical, important prescriptions for turning accountability into a linchpin of a thriving organization. Unfortunately, his solid counsel reads like an especially turgid graduate-level textbook. While all the ideas in this book are useful and many are extremely valuable, they're obscured by the heavy use of jargon (much of it self-defined, so the book often seems to be written in its own unique language). As a result, even though it is only some 220 pages, readers may give up, defeated by stretches of nearly impenetrable text. Kraines, who builds on the work of Elliott Jaques, tries to open doors with accessible case studies, but he soon lapses back into his specialized vocabulary. As a result, we from getAbstract believe the full text will interest mainly a very specific audience: business students and professors, theorists, consultants and high-level managers at large organizations may want to look up particular chapters for details and context. Even if you don't have the stamina for the whole tome, hang in there for the gems.

Dr. Gerry Kraines of the Levinson Institute has captured in this book the concepts and examples that make his courses so useful for those faced with the challenge of leadership in today's corporations. Derived from the research and teachings of Eliot Jaques, Kraines' models of accoutability in a hierarchical management system are a compelling framework for understanding how to engage and align employees in order to drive superior performance and results. Filled with anecdotes and stories, the book provides the reader with key insights into successful development of individuals within a talent pool, and accountability within cross-functional performance improvement initiatives. Anyone who has a leadership responsibility within a corporation should read this, and if intrigued to learn more, attend one of the offerings of the Levinson Institute.

for managing your organization, you won't find it here.

Although the premise of the book seems attractive (abandoning "champions", self-directed teams, and other nebulous vehicles of managerial abdication), the author presents little more than another fad, that of "accountability chains" wherein the employee (the subordinate, in the newspeak of Dr Kraines) and the boss, and perhaps the bosses boss meet and agree on the "QQTR" (quality, quantity, time and resources) of everything, holding strictly to accountability, nothing more, nothing less with "no surprises" and the assumption that the entire chain will somehow hold together, weak links and all. Perfectly logical, perfectly inflexible and rather absurd, given the nature of business, economy, war, bankruptcy, layoffs and all of the other unpredictable events the company is likely to deal with.

Much of the book seems to be an ad for the Levinson Institute for which the author is CEO. I found particularly disheartening a large section dealing with the selection and cultivation of future leaders based on a sort of "corporate IQ concept" in which candidates' ability to handle role complexity is quantifiable by studying 10 year charts of their progression in the company. The author's idea is that leaders are identifiable by this trajectory and fall so neatly into it that human resources professionals can simply run the numbers (using software developed by the Levinson Institute, of course) to objectively select the future top managers.

The book is great for quips and throwaway lines, but startlingly weak on proven practical examples of the application of the accountability approach. The basic idea seems sound, but I suspect that if applied as the Doctor orders, the cure may be worse than the disease.

This is a book that breaks new ground, a book that Business America would do well to heed.

This fine, controversial book has been reprinted due to popular demand, and is solely available through The Levinson Institute, at levinson@levinsoninst.com

Author Gerald Kraines addresses a neglected area of management and lays out practical, important prescriptions for turning accountability into a linchpin of a thriving organization. Unfortunately, his solid counsel reads like an especially turgid graduate-level textbook. While all the ideas in this book are useful and many are extremely valuable, they're obscured by the heavy use of jargon (much of it self-defined, so the book often seems to be written in its own unique language). As a result, even though it is only some 220 pages, readers may give up, defeated by stretches of nearly impenetrable text. Kraines, who builds on the work of Elliott Jaques, tries to open doors with accessible case studies, but he soon lapses back into his specialized vocabulary. As a result, we believe the full text will interest mainly a very specific audience: business students and professors, theorists, consultants and high-level managers at large organizations may want to look up particular chapters for details and context. Even if you don't have the stamina for the whole tome, hang in there for the gems.