Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness [Hardcover]

Edward E. Lawler III (Author), Christopher G. Worley (Author), David Creelman (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2011

Provocative new management principles and practices that create effective organizations for shareholders and society

Management experts Lawler and Worley have developed a set of management principles that enable organizations to be both successful and responsible. Existing command & control and high-involvement management styles depend too much on stable conditions and focus too narrowly on economic outcomes. They convincingly argue that we need to "reset" our approach to management to one that fits today's demanding business environment. Starting with a change in how success is measured and a more realistic view of risk, Lawler and Worley take us through how strategy, governance, organization structure and talent should be managed. The result is an organization that can reliable produce financial, social, and ecological results.

• Includes illustrative lessons from Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, DaVita, Starbucks, Nokia, and the U.S. Secret Service
• Offers clear prescriptions for managers who want to organize for sustainable performance effectiveness
• Lawler and Worley are the authors of the bestselling Built to Change

Lawler and Worley outline why and how the current practice of management must change in order for organizations to achieve sustained organizational effectiveness.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Management Reset

"is not about convincing you that organizations need to be sustainably effective; it is a book about how organizations can be sustainably effective."
—EXCERPT from the Introduction

In Management Reset, the acclaimed management experts and authors of the best-selling book Built to Change offer a next-step resource for any organization that wants to thrive in our difficult economic environment. While organizations must perform well financially, Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley contend that companies also need to address their social and environmental impact to be viable in the long term.

Management Reset shows how organizations can be sustainably effective by becoming agile and developing the ability to adjust their strategy, organization design, and leadership practices to support profitability, social justice, and environmental health. The book is filled with illustrative lessons from such leading organizations as Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, DaVita, Starbucks, Nokia, and the United States Secret Service. The authors offer clear, easy to implement principles and practices for managers, leaders, and consultants who want to organize for sustainable performance effectiveness.

By putting in place Lawler and Worley'sinnovative organization designs and management practices, forward-thinking organizations can remake themselves to better serve both their shareholders and society.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Management Reset

"Management Reset is a call to action for any business leader looking to create sustainable growth and value in an increasingly interconnected, thus ethically interdependent world. Ed Lawler and Chris Worley illustrate why new approaches to culture and leadership are the greatest sources of competitive advantage available today."
—Dov Seidman, founder, chairman, CEO of LRN; and author, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything . . . in Business (and in Life)

"Until now, there has been no authoritative review of what sustainability actually requires in terms of the nuts and bolts of organizational strategy, structure, systems, and rewards. Management Reset superbly fills that gap by providing leaders with the practical tools and know-how needed to create truly sustainable businesses. This book is destined to become the indispensable guide to responsible, effective management in the twenty-first century."
—James O'Toole, Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver's Daniels College of Business; author, The Executive Compass; and coeditor, Good Business: Exercising Ethical and Effective Leadership

"Management Reset is a breakthrough. The book offers very pragmatic and concrete guidance and is a leadership guidebook for the future."
—David A. Nadler, vice chairman, Marsh & McLennan Companies; and author, Building Better Boards and Competing by Design

"Management Reset presents a pragmatic approach to developing an organization that can sustain effectiveness and succeed for all its stakeholders. Chris and Ed's approach balances a strong fact base with insights about driving organizational change and effectiveness."
—Joe Mello, COO emeritus, DaVita Inc.

"Management Reset is a great resource for leaders at all levels of an organization. It is the long-awaited next generation approach to managing complex organizations."
—Jodi Krause, director, Council and Board Effectiveness, Corporate Positioning, Cisco Systems, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (March 29, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470637986
• ISBN-13: 978-0470637982
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #389,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward E. Lawler III joined the faculty of Yale University after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. Three years later he was promoted to Associate Professor.

He moved to the University of Michigan in 1972 as Professor of Psychology and also became Program Director in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research. In 1978, he became a Professor in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. That same year, he founded and became Director of the University's Center for Effective Organizations. He was named Professor of Research at the University of Southern California in 1982 and Distinguished Professor of Business in 1999.

Lawler has been honored as a major contributor to theory, research, and practice in the fields of human resources management, compensation, organizational development, corporate governance, and organizational effectiveness. He is the author and co-author of over thirty-eight books and more than three hundred articles, which have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, MIT-Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, USA Today, Strategy and Business, the Financial Times, and more than thirty other magazines, journals, and newspapers.

His most recent books include Rewarding Excellence (Jossey-Bass, 2000), Corporate Boards: New Strategies for Adding Value at the Top (Jossey-Bass, 2001), Organizing for High Performance (Jossey-Bass, 2001), Treat People Right (Jossey-Bass, 2003), Human Resources Business Process Outsourcing (Jossey-Bass, 2004), Achieving Strategic Excellence: An Assessment of Human Resource Organizations (Stanford Press, 2006), Built to Change (Jossey-Bass, 2006), The New American Workplace (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006), and America at Work (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006), Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage (Jossey-Bass, 2008), and Achieving Excellence in HR Management: An Assessment of Human Resource Organizations (Stanford Press, 2009) and Management Reset (Jossey-Bass, 2011).

Business Week has proclaimed Lawler one of the top six gurus in the field of management, and Human Resource Executive called him one of HR's most influential people. Workforce magazine identified him as one of the twenty-five visionaries who have shaped today's workplace over the past century. He has been a consultant to many corporations, including the majority of the Fortune 100, as well as governments at all levels.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, A Management Book for the 21st Century! May 4, 2011

By Cedric Boone

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have several of Edward Lawler's previous books in my library including Corporate Boards and Rewarding Excellence and have always found his work insightful as well as extremely useful in my own managerial role. His current book with Chris Worley entitled Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness did not disappoint.

Lawler and Worley begin with the thesis that it is no longer enough for organizations to perform well financially. They must also perform well socially and environmentally if they are to remain competitive in today's global economy. The authors proceed to describe the principles and practices that management can use to move their organizations toward sustainable effectiveness, illustrating their approach with tangible examples from companies such as Starbucks and Netflix. Topics range from leadership, organization design and reward systems to the role of corporate boards.

Management Reset is both highly readable and exceedingly useful. But what sets this book apart from the majority of business books on the shelves today is that the strategies outlined are based not only on the authors' consulting experiences but also on solid research evidence. In short, Management Reset is thought provoking and a timely addition to the management literature. I whole heartedly recommend it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars 2011 Best Business Book December 6, 2011

By Strategy And Business Magazine

Format:Hardcover

The practical challenge of making good business practices endure is usefully addressed by Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley in Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness. Unlike most "eco-groovy" books published this year, Reset is research based, is realistic, and deals with the nuts and bolts of organizational management. And unlike other sustainability texts, this one doesn't argue why companies should be economically, socially, and environmentally responsible; instead, it deals with how a company should be managed to achieve those ends. They are seeking to overcome the tendency of good companies to fail because they are not as strategically and organizationally agile as they are socially responsible.

The authors group evidence for the sustainable management practices they advocate into four core business components: the way value is created (the formulation of strategy and competitive advantage), the way work is organized (the design of structure and systems), the way people are treated (how employees are recruited, developed, and rewarded), and the way behavior is guided (the role of leadership and corporate culture). They then disaggregate those categories by examining what social scientists have discovered about such practical tasks as strategy creation, board governance, organizational design, and management systems and rewards.

I am no fan of how-to books, but this one overcomes the main weaknesses of the genre by offering a balance of rigorous intellectual theory along with concrete examples (from companies including Procter & Gamble, W.L. Gore, Patagonia, Southwest, UPS, and DaVita) to illustrate the practicality of the authors' ideas. Nonetheless, there is much to be said about this subject that Lawler and Worley (incidentally, my former university faculty colleagues) omit or overlook, and more than a few points they make are debatable. For instance, to my mind, they define high-involvement management so narrowly that they miss the potential contribution employees can make to the ends they advocate, and they ignore the value of employee stock ownership in creating company sustainability. So although Management Reset should not be seen as the final word on this important subject, it is an essential starting point for further thought, research, experimentation, and discussion.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Despite delay, good customer service August 9, 2011

By elizabeth zappitello

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I needed this book for a course that I was attending. I ordered the book with overnight shipping. Unfortunately, there was a delay in the shipping and I did not recieve the book for two days. I was notified in a timely manner that there was going to be a delay, which I appreciated. I was also immediately refunded the cost of the overnight shipping without me having to contact Amazon to do so, which I also greatly appreciated. Despite not receiving the book when I originally wanted it I am still happy with the customer service that I recieved.

I attended the course facilitated by one of the books author's Christopher Worley. I highly recommend the book (and the course) to anyone in management and organizational development fields. The thoughts within the book are the wave of the future for organizations. I was fortunate enough to read the book coupled with experiencing firsthand didatic on the sustainable management model.