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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must-read for leaders/managers/coaches, business and non-profit, January 3, 2010
This review is from: The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy (Hardcover)
I rarely say "must read", but this is a rare book.
Nilofer Merchant has accomplished what few business writers have:
- Implementing the ideas in this book will substantially transform organizations.
- These transformations will make the organizations simultaneously more competitive AND better places to work.
- Leaders at all levels can apply these learnings, although I most want this book to get into the hands of C-levels (the world hasn't changed yet!) and those that advise them.
- The book is so well-written that there's a good chance that readers will actually stay with it, remember it, refer back, and work toward the changes recommended.
Nilofer, former star performer at Apple and Autodesk, now strategy consultant to high-tech CEOs, has one foot grounded in the top-down reality of today's large organizations and another stepping forward into the more networked, collaborative, far more agile world of tomorrow's successful companies.
As an executive coach with roots in corporate strategy, I applaud Nilofer's theme that people at all levels in your organization have knowledge, insight, and solution-finding smarts that go largely untapped as companies currently set strategy and navigate fast-moving markets to deliver. For all the talk of "talent management" people at mid and front-line levels are seldom engaged in the decisions that matter most. This has to change, and here is your roadmap.
I rate this book, along with Heifetz & Lansky's "Practice of Adaptive Leadership", as highest-value reading that give me, at the opening of this perilous decade, the most optimism that people in big organizations can get their acts together and thrive.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't just talk about transparency, do it!, January 2, 2010
This review is from: The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy (Hardcover)
Transparency has always been an important management topic (how much, with whom, about what). But I think we're entering an era where transparency may have a chance of going mainstream. Nilofer Merchant relays vivid examples (often personal ones based on her rich career) of the flaws of top-down thinking and how this approach threatens strategy development and implementation. Her "Air Sandwich" is a clear and memorable way to describe the problem (p. 13):
"An Air Sandwich is, in effect, a strategy that has clear vision and future direction on the top layer, day-to-day action on the bottom, and virtually nothing in the middle -- no meaty key decisions that connect the two layers, no rich chewy center filling to align the new direction with new actions within the company."
I've assigned the introduction of The New How to my MBA class on Organizational Analysis and Design. I expect they will appreciate the clear voice and examples.
(Longer review available at: [....]
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incorporating collaboration into the company's dynamic, January 3, 2010
This review is from: The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy (Hardcover)
Nilofer Merchant addresses a difficult topic: the common discrepancy between what is called "strategy" in the one hand, and what is labeled "execution," on the other. In between, you have what she calls the "air sandwich." The gap is not new whatsoever. Most companies reproduce a multi-millenarian dichotomy between the people who think in the stratosphere and the rest of the humans, bound to deal with the day-to-day weather in the troposphere. Too bad, because that's what is killing them from the inside!
This book offers an extensive description of a devastating disease - but even better, a solid methodology to stop it. Most strategies are doomed to fail from the start because of how they were formed. They are positioned as visions disconnected from implementation considerations - and therefore foster ad hoc measures and improvisation. The book shows how to rebuild and realign the connective pieces and synergies that drive successful businesses, i.e.:
* How people can engage with one another and create value together.
* How collaborative planning must rely on an efficient framework.
* How small acts rather than big announcements transform company cultures for the best.
"Incorporating collaboration into the company's dynamic" is not a pompous motto that comes from the top and fades away as you get lower into the hierarchy, but each employee's personal responsibility: "Think about your work not in terms of what you do, but in terms of the role you play. Your role is not just your title, but includes sets of behaviors, tools, and approaches to create value for and with your organization." By becoming aware of their roles, people are able to create strategies collaboratively and move faster towards creating meaningful business solutions and improving business performance.
Each page has a show and tell feel that will prod you to want to enact the "new how" and evolve. You may be inclined to brag about your innumerable "personal accomplishments." But are you really a leader, able to "facilitate as much as you decide, catalyze as much as you act, and coach as much as you direct?" Maybe not... Building Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy" relies upon the ability of individuals to rethink their personal development: this book gives the practical recommendations that enable employees to reinvent themselves and find purpose at work.
A must read. A very serious book with a lot of humor. Abundant and excellent illustrations by business cartoonist Hugh MacLeod!
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