3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Getting to the Core of Management, February 24, 2010
This review is from: How Cohesive is your Company?: A Leadership Parable - Top-notch business performance is impossible until you cohesively align mission, vision, goals, strategy, execution & culture (Paperback)
A business text disguised as a novel, Coherent is an extraordinary accomplishment. Never before has this reader seen so many critical business management topics addressed so seemlessly. By using a fictional setting, author Kathuria is able to present challenges and solutions in a realistic progression. His lead character, Trent, is not some perfect angel appearing in the boardroom with all of the answers. To the contrary, this protagonist is driven, intelligent - and appears on the scene unaware of how much he needs to learn. In following his journey, the reader is presented with both an identification of core issues and a basic methodology for addressing them. Anyone responsible for running a business, big or small, will benefit from this read.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fundamental Leadership Concepts Simply Explained, November 20, 2010
This review is from: How Cohesive is your Company?: A Leadership Parable - Top-notch business performance is impossible until you cohesively align mission, vision, goals, strategy, execution & culture (Paperback)
This book constitutes a great summary of fundamental administrative and leadership concepts that anybody working in an organization should know in order to properly steer behaviors, department and organizations to achieve their objectives. One of the fundamental questions that Ravi asks through their characters is: Is your company product centric, service centric or operations centric?
From that starting point a set of concepts (the cohegic method) unfolds to demonstrate how a successful executable business strategy needs to start long before you have a plan and an organization and describes very well which portions of your business can change to adapt to what a business demands to mantain the flexibility that is necesary to compete Vs. other concepts like values that are not expected to change and are the "Constitution" and the organizational glue of a company.
This book combines concepts that are similar to classics like the "Accidental CEO" or "The 7 habits of the highly effective people", and kicks it up a notch by adding several new concepts and linking them together to achieve a concise, down to earth, easy to follow methodology to take your organization to the next level.
I received this book as a gift from Fernando Duran (another reviewer) and can say it is an excellent gift to share and discuss.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"...Well crafted parable. Brings clarity and coherence to management....", June 2, 2010
This review is from: How Cohesive is your Company?: A Leadership Parable - Top-notch business performance is impossible until you cohesively align mission, vision, goals, strategy, execution & culture (Paperback)
This book is a description of the Cohegic Method told through the story of Trent Wertheimer, newly appointed CEO of Hintec, a business intelligence software company. The traits that made Trent a successful VP of sales, including an abundance of confidence and an orientation to quick action, are not the traits that will make Trent a successful CEO, as he quickly finds out. When his early actions meet with a poor response from the board of directors, Trent is humbled and finds himself with no one to turn to and no idea of what his next steps should be. Fortunately, his new neighbor, Watson Hughes, appears in the nick of time and they strike up a relationship. Watson is a retired business executive with much experience and is generous in sharing his wisdom with Trent. Watson's mentorship provides Trent with the keys to understanding both the organization and himself, leading to a challenging period of transition for both Hintec and Trent.
The author clearly has experience of many organizations and leadership teams as he manages to capture the essence of the strengths and weaknesses and diverse perspectives of individuals that can be found in most business organizations. We meet Simon, the hard-charging sales executive; Venkat, the competent and deliberate software engineer; Fran, the glue that keeps the administrative and financial components together; Oscar, the strategic human resource executive; Maxell, the failing executive whose behavior undermines the new CEO resulting in Maxell's termination; and Hector, the executive whose responsibility is operations and who continues to remind the team that ideas are great but at some point the reality of implementation has to be considered.
Together the team, with Trent just a step ahead of them thanks to Watson's mentorship, find a path forward for Hintec and reinvent the organization at all levels in the process.
This book is very readable and is a quick read, helpful in these times when attention spans are necessarily short given the multitude of demands faced by organization leaders. The Cohegic Method is clear - revealed through the story and amplified through the study questions found at the end of each chapter. The approach is effective and makes the book a useful tool for a variety of audiences, including:
1. Individuals who are in or planning for a leadership role in an organization - either through self-study or with a mentor. The book provides an excellent introduction to the multiplicity of issues that must be considered and offers a workable framework for integrating these.
2. Leadership Teams at all levels (organization, division/department, etc.) - as a discussion tool for reflecting on the organization and improving its ability to succeed. This could be done through guided discussion with a facilitator or in a "journal club" format as a management team.
3. Students of management - as an initial assignment to provide a model of a management system and context for deeper investigations into components of business strategy. Many students come to a class on strategy with little experience of the context in which strategy develops, either because they are still early on in their careers or because their careers are oriented towards professional careers, perhaps as individual practitioners or as stakeholders whose exposure to strategic business issues is limited. Providing a context for topics such as vision, mission, strategies, objectives and measures, such as is done through the story of Trent and Hintec, could make the concepts of strategic planning easier to grasp and then apply to other environments, including healthcare organizations. In thinking about our own course, one could see how most of the lectures could be reordered to follow the sequence of topics in this book. If the initial classes were a discussion of the book as a broad introduction to the concepts to be considered in the class, then subsequent discussions of each concept would deepen a student's understanding through the readings and class lectures.
The only suggestion to the author is future oriented - in the spirit of making a good thing better. We would like to see the author publishing a similar book, or perhaps a tailored study guide as a complement to this book, that focuses on healthcare organizations. The complexity of these organizations because of the nature of the relationships between stakeholders, similar to that of a professional services firm, makes clarity and coherence all the more important as a means to align diverse stakeholders.
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