Customer Reviews

All Hat and No Cattle: Tales of a Corporate Outlaw Shaking up the System and Making a Difference at Work

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Probably one of the most searing, and brutally honest, books on the subject of business structure and organization of the 20th Century. All is told in an entertaining style, and with refreshing clarity.

Chris succeeds in melding the lessons of complexity theory into a comprehensive, and very practical book dealing with the deficiencies of modern business. She does this by constantly ripping apart the prevailing hierarchical mindset so often found in big companies, and by contrasting that to real success stories obtained through viewing business as a complex adaptive system, instead of a machine. Where people get treated like intelligent human beings, and not as second-hand citizens.

Through various stories and anecdotes she illustrates the incredible potential of the new way of seeing reality. She excels in making the case for unleashing the creativity and promise of employees, through allowing greater openness, and the freedom to learn, collaborate, and interact across geographical and functional boundaries.

Some of her no-holds barred quotes will make the point stronger than I can get across in these few words:

1. There is no telling how much 'pee-pee' there is in the corporate coffee. People who feel shat upon often get revenge.

2. Executive pay is obscene. I mean, these folks make feudal lords look like philanthropists...Lou Gerstner, who axed two hundred thousand IBM employees in 1993 and 1994, simultaneously tripled his own pay to $12 million. What a guy.

3. We should understand that when people are hanging out in the hallways or on the production floor, there is learning going on.

4. People are either learning things that support the strategic intent of the organization, or they are learning how to retire on the job.

5. Understanding the assumptions underlying current organizational practices is the first step toward creating productive organizations filled with learning, creativity, imagination, energy, fun and meaning.

6. The planning process is useful only to the extent that it is thoughtful, that it provokes questioning and causes people to challenge old thinking.

7. Given the dollars spent on wooing new customers, wouldn't it make sense, to try to hang on to them? Wouldn't it make sense to design systems and create environments that amaze customers?

8. Organizational disturbances should unsettle, cause a commotion, create a ruckus, and shake things up. Designed well, they lead to new thinking, new doing, to questioning the status quo, and to give rise to a new level of consciousness. Good disturbances create the future now.

Buy the book!

A powerful critique of contemporary business culture. Exposing corporate hypocrisy for what it is, Turner makes a convincing case for mindful organizations that foster participation, enrich learning, and understand themselves as living systems in need of disturbance rather than as machines in need of oiling. This irreverent, thoughtful, and engrossing book is a must-read for business people and for anyone concerned with generating institutional change. All Hat & No Cattle suggests actions that each of us can take to create the world we want.

Ms. Turner tells it like it is. She uses skillful narrative to weave a true tail of corporate intentions gone wrong, and a few that went right. Read between the lines to create a "how to make change happen" manual for yourself and your organization. Read this book for the refreshing writing style and straightforward perspective.

Chris Turner has done it. She has written a highly entertaining and insightful book based on lots of experience. Her stories illuminate the main threads of her argument effortlessly. If you want a few dozen ideas on how to create change and democratic environments at work, your time will be well spent with Turner's book.

Chris Turner is a maverick turned loose onto Big Business, in this case Xerox. She questioned and made changes to the top-down autocratic management approach in order to stimulate interest and growth in Xerox. All Hat and No Cattle is a phrase she uses to describe managers who have no idea of what is really going on in their department/company. She inspired people to stir things up and try new ideas and concepts to get people/employees fired up setting up "camps" where people met/networked in a free-spirit open method. Once they understood what was the goal, which was growth and saving money, they were off and running on their own. She introduced new ways of doing things to stimulate them and it worked. They became very enthusiastic and zealous in their endeavors to make this work. Many managers use key words such as "empowerment, innovation and learning" without anything to back it up, no substance. All meetings are the same with power-point slide presentations and the same topics rehashed and never resolved. No one learns from these types of meetings she determined. She states that we "resist idiocies that will disappear shortly to be replaced by the latest flavor of the month. People resist inane organizational programs because people are smart." Chris Turner uses humor to describe corporate complacency and has you acknowledging you've experienced managers/leaders that she describes. As a nurse manager myself, she has us understand that with true employee involvement and giving them appropriate tools to work with they can surprise you with their adaptability, innovation and enthusiasm. Out of this involvement change can come, change for the better- bottom line cost savings, increased profit and increased employee morale. All of this really shakes up the bosses, who feel threatened by this increased employee involvement.

Ms. Turner's stories and insight makes one not only ponder the system that is business in society, but often makes one blush at seeing both positive and challenging reflections of oneself. This is a good start on deep reflection and dialogue, conversations, even passionate arguments (which might lead to change....)

There is an old syllogism of organizations. 1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. We must do this.

Many a budding institutional innovator, frustrated by the hidebound habits of her colleagues, has nonetheless stifled her creativity for fear of losing influence, job, or respect. Then there are those like Chris Turner, who resolutely turn their horse's head and take the road less traveled. In Turner's case, that means donning the proud mantle of change agent, leading corporate learning programs at Xerox Business Services. Since leaving XBS, Turner has turned consultant and speaker, using her irreverence, Texan argot, and impatience with untested convention to inspire revolution.

Turner wants change, and she wants it now. She wants to replace institutional fear with "love-based systems." She believes in "disturbing the system," doing something - anything - differently to provoke a reaction. Most of all she castigates "all hat and no cattle," a Lone Star State expression for all style and no substance. Pay for performance, obsessions with measurement, corporate welfare, bad PowerPoint slides: "all hat and no cattle," declares Turner, and she delights in taking the high and mighty down a notch or three.

Irreverence can be entertaining, even when it fulminates on a soapbox. But like another successful Texan who partied throughout college, Turner tends to assume that the people in charge are self-interested, greedy mediocrities who can't be trusted. Appealing though they may be, generalizations cut both ways: we mustn't assume that all managers are automatically right, but nor should we assume that they're automatically wrong. Turner is mad as hell and not going to take it any more: fair enough, but by condemning any activity that perpetuates the status quo, she often veers from passion to petulance. It's imprudent for a sans-culotte to show frustration at not being queen.

If you're a stymied OD professional, you may be inflamed by this call for revolution. You'll certainly welcome Chapter 6, in which Turner offers specific, detailed suggestions for revamping organizational meetings. And you can always add to your storehouse of quotations, as Turner strews aphorisms across her pages with Barlettian generosity - Emerson, Wilde, Einstein, Didley, all are grist to her mill. But in the end All Hat and No Cattle suffers from the same syndrome it so gleefully diagnoses: too much prate, not enough practice. Change agent, heal thyself.

"All Hat and No Cattle" purports to be an insider's account of, amongst other things, the lessons learned from being part of a bloated bureaucracy run amok. The title comes from the Texas term for "all talk without any substance." Indeed the foreword by Alan Webber extols the virtues of the author's genuine honesty. He even says that she "writes with a Texas twang!"

Trouble is, if that's the only real thing here, it's not enough to make up for the sloppy thinking and other defects that make this book such a waste of money. (Wish I could get a refund on grounds that the book had nothing of any value to say!)

My ex-husband and I both attended the Xerox Business Services (XBS) "Camp Lur-ning" organized by the author a number of years ago. She contends that the positive effects to the company are still felt to this day. Oh yeah? If true, why'd she bail like so many of us did? Tom Peters obviously failed to consider this when he cited Chris Turner as an example of passion and caring transforming large organizations into creative enterprises.

The book really has only about enough substance for a small pamphlet but embellishes to the point that the final pages degenerate into an incoherent diatribe, nah--it's just mush--of how all the ills of society are the result of white males running the show. Readers are encouraged to do everything from writing their elected officials to voting for Ralph Nader!

Not realizing that she had nothing much to say in the first place, the author tells readers that this is a story without end so she gives, in the book's final pages, a URL where readers are told not to be strangers (the contraction "Y'hear?" seemed missin' y'all!). Even here, most of what is posted reflects the ignorance keeping the author from assessing reality in a way that would have let her draw conclusions that made sense or, even better, would have been of some use.

The problem with Xerox in general, and XBS in particular, is the drag on operations by the bloated levels of bosses. Coupled with the incompetence of the over paid executives and it's no wonder the stock has tanked!

The biggest falsehood Chris Turner spreads is the myth that XBS was the only financial money maker within the corporation. Any XBS "profits" over the years were at the expense of the rest of the enterprise, mostly getting credit for the profitable part of the sale of equipment "bought" from manufacturing (at cost) along with the "services" (mostly slave labor) provided for running the same equipment. The dime-a-dozen vice presidents belched forth by XBS then actually believe their own propaganda--that they know what they're doing--and executives in the rest of the company follow their flawed example!

Chris Turner's a nice person but her book is no better than the phonies she used to work for. Too bad! Don't waste your time or money on this terrible, incoherently rambling, shoddily thrown together, replete with misprints, work which, with even a little bit of thought, could have risen to the level of fluff or, perhaps even, all hat and no cattle?

The single star given was generous. (Star of Texas?)

The book began as an interesting concept, but quickly I realized that the author was never at a job long enough to see any results. She never was in a position of importance in any of the companies, so I don't really know where she gets the idea that these programs will actually work. She has views about almost every company and suggestions, but so far I've not been able to find anything that would lead me to believe that what she says had any validity. Save your money and buy another book.

The best thing about Chris Turner's ideas is that they are so easily applied in the workplace - any workplace. The book is very thought-provoking. Every person in an organization can "create the future now" by applying these principles. My only wish is that this book be required reading for every white male over 30.