Journey to the Emerald City: Achieve a Competitive Edge by Creating a Culture of Accountability [Hardcover]

Roger Connors (Author), Tom Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

Building on the success of their previous book, The Oz Principle, Connors and Smith explore the direct link between a company's culture and the results it produces. Journey to the Emerald City details a clear road map for accelerating the move to a Culture of Accountability in which people focus on achieving the results critical to a company's future. Connors and Smith provide a program to transform entrenched patterns into potent new ways of being and doing. Getting to the core of why people work as they do is a dynamic process demanding that leaders take control of the culture to create experiences that foster beliefs, that drive actions, that produce the ultimate competitive advantage. Filled with success stories, the authors introduce a step-by-step model to help people at any level of the organization take action that will alter the culture's belief system in order to produce the desired results.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Taking inspiration from The Wizard of Oz, international management consultants Roger Connors and Tom Smith have adapted the underlying framework of one of the world's most famous morality plays to propose a better way of doing business. In their first book, The Oz Principle, they described the potential benefits of a related structure of corporate unification and discussed its long-range ramifications for organizational improvement. In their new effort, Journey to the Emerald City: Achieve a Competitive Edge by Creating a Culture of Accountability, they articulate a step-by-step plan for accelerating its development. The obstacle-strewn path negotiated by the story's legendary characters helped create an "understanding of what was needed in order to achieve the goals of each person on the team," write Connors and Smith. "Yet, the journey not only led to personal insight about what needed to change, but also a collective insight about how the team needed to think and act as a whole in order to get where they were going." Accordingly, the authors present a Yellow Brick Road-map here for altering behavioral patterns of employees and managers to get them working together more effectively to achieve superior results. --Howard Rothman

From the Inside Flap

Building on the success of their previous book, The Oz Principle, Connors and Smith explore the direct link between a company's culture and the results it produces. Journey to the Emerald City details a clear road map for accelerating the move to a Culture of Accountability in which people focus on achieving the results critical to a company's future.

Connors and Smith provide a program to transform entrenched patterns into potent new ways of being and doing. Getting to the core of why people work as they do is a dynamic process demanding that leaders take control of the culture to create experiences that foster beliefs, that drive actions, that produce the ultimate competitive advantage.

Filled with success stories, the authors introduce a step-by-step model to help people at any level of the organization take action that will alter the culture's belief system in order to produce the desired results.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall Press; 1 edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735200521
• ISBN-13: 978-0735200524
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #904,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's to Laugh, January 29, 2001

By 

Panopticonman "panopticonman" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Journey to the Emerald City: Achieve a Competitive Edge by Creating a Culture of Accountability (Hardcover)

Many business books are a form of utopian literature and should be treated as such. Given this premise, one would think that a book with a title like "Journey to the Emerald City" would be a top-notch business book as it suggests the authors might have a certain awareness of this genre.

Unfortunately, this in not the case here. Instead, this is yet another entry in the "book as selling tool" sweepstakes. In this sub-genre of the business book, the book is the foot-in-the-door for selling consulting services. Little more than a powerpoint presentation fleshed out with the usual miscellaneous facts and figures, these books are short on everything but jargon. They offer middle managers cozy, self-evident insights and simplistic advice that most company employees find insulting or at least insipid. (Around our office, the charts in the first chapter that show "non-aligned" and "aligned" processes and goals are considered a fine example of this facile and fallacious sub-genre as they keenly demonstrate the obvious in the most obvious fashion possible.)

Business books are not known for their sense of humor, certainly, because as we all know, business is extraordinarily serious. Yet, lack of wit and self-awareness are not virtures either. Nor is the plodding purposefulness with which the authors describe their "innovative" approach, although again, they are clearly in good company in this genre.

A shame really, especially since clearly the publishers felt strongly enough about the book to spend some extra bucks on shiny green foil on the jacket. Then again, perhaps the title is more apt than I take it to be. Like in the Wizard of Oz, we find there is no wizard behind the flashy curtain and special effects, but rather the usual seller of snake oil.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beguiling Title..., March 12, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Journey to the Emerald City (Paperback)

For me, the authors wrote a solid "how to" book on developing a culture within an organization that gets results. Practical and easily understood approaches to fashioning cultural change for achieving results are presented point by point within the pages of this work. For example, several issues addressed are:
-exposing the fallacy of activities for the sake of activities with no appreciable results
-recognizing that every organization has a culture and how to transition that culture into one of effective accomplishment and results-oriented accountability at every level and with every member of the organization
-conveying an agenda on how to make that transition and sustain the new results-oriented culture

It is all here in understandable and ready-to-apply form. While the authors don't pretend that this work to change culture is simple or can be accomplished overnight, they do provide a very focused and forthright view of what is important to work on and maintain as progress is made.

If your organization could be achieving better results or needs to meet promised goals, this is an easy read that contains critical ideas, notions and concepts on how to get there fast.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for any leader!!, March 13, 2006

By 

Banker Dave (Puyallup, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journey to the Emerald City (Paperback)

I am a bank manager for a large corporation. We have a great culture established so I purchased this book not to learn how to change our corporate culture but that of my banking center. I am only about half way through the book at this point but I had to get on here and say that this is one of the most impressive books I have purchased in a long time!

I would say if you are looking at ways to impact your team and develop a culture of accountability this book is exactly what you need. It does cover some things that just make sense but other things are able to be implemented immediately for improvement. My team has noticed the difference in my leadership style as a result. We have to hold them accountable but how do we do it in a way that is effective and not offensive? This is covered.

One of the first things that were an "AHA" for me was regarding how we get results out of people. I have always thought we just need to impact behaviors to get the results we were searching for. The authors suggest a more in depth model. They suggest that it has four levels - First, Experience (create experiences that will enforce the desired behaviors); Second, Beliefs (once they have an experience it creates beliefs); Third, Actions (if they believe something then they will put it into action); Finally, Results (when the actions are what is desired the desired results will follow). Too many times we increase goals to get certain results BUT we forget to move the experiences, beliefs and actions in the same direction. There is so much more!