The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune with Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive [Hardcover]

Terri L Griffith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 2011

A game-changing approach to management

Too often discussions of management practice focus exclusively on managing people and organizational issues. Rarely, however, do they incorporate a discussion about technology or address all three dimensions in a balanced way. When they do, the result is game changing. In our hypercompetitive environment, those managers who are outstanding at being plugged into their people, technology, and organizational processes simultaneously excel at coming up with effective business solutions.

The Plugged-In Manager makes the case that being plugged-in—the ability to see choices across each of an organization's dimensions of people, technology, and organizational processes and then to mix them together into new and powerful organizational strategies, structures, and practices—may be the most important capability a manager can develop to succeed in the 21st century. Step by step Griffith shows you how to acquire this ability.

• Shows what it takes for business managers to succeed as technology and organizations become more and more complex
• Profiles exceptional leaders and organizations who are plugged-in, such as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com
• Offers a fresh look at management issues

Filled with compelling case studies and drawing on first-hand interviews, The Plugged-In Manager highlights this often neglected managerial capability and the costs of only focusing on one dimension rather than all three.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

We live and work in a time of rapid change. Innovative technologies—from the latest social media platforms to high-tech automated warehouses—reinvent the way we do business every day. At the same time, globalization and new nonlinear career paths continually transform our workforce, with teams constantly diversifying. Managers and organizations know they must adapt, but simple awareness of these sweeping changes is not enough. How can you go beyond merely understanding this new world to see unique new opportunities and, more importantly, beat the competition to tomorrow's greatest ideas?

The answer lies in being "plugged in"—not just to new technology, but also to processes and people, and, most crucially, to the way these strategic elements fit together. Today's hypercompetitive economy demands seamless integration between the particular skills and knowledge of a team, the range of any business's technological tools, and the structure of the organization. After years of studying respected, successful companies, Professor Terri L. Griffith reveals how top performers "plug in" to achieve impressive results.

The cornerstone of Griffith's work is an easy-to-understand framework for plugging in, explained through three core practices:

• Stop-Look-Listen: What do your data say? What do you already know that will help you with this project?

• Mixing: How do you balance your available resources?

• Sharing: How can you achieve better results by integrating your choices with other team members?

To show how the most plugged-in organizations develop sophisticated, industry-leading strategies from these basic practices, Griffith goes behind the scenes for interviews and case studies at leading companies such as Zappos, Intuit, Microsoft, Nucor, Socialtext, and many more.

With Griffith's deep understanding of today's business climate and her practical model for maximizing the potential of any organization's resources, The Plugged-In Manager is an essential tool for success in our fast-paced, interconnected world.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Plugged-In Manager
"The Plugged-In Manager is required reading for every modern leader. Griffith shows that the best managers don't become fixated on, or freaked out by, the onslaught of new technologies. Instead, the best bosses blend these tools with the right talents and organizational designs so they can whomp the competition and create a place where people love to work."--Robert I. Sutton, professor, Stanford University; and bestselling author, Good Boss, Bad Boss
"You won't enchant people with a new product or service if it doesn't mix well with your employees. Read The Plugged-In Manager and make yourself more enchanting, more powerful, and more 'with it.'"--Guy Kawasaki, bestselling author, Enchantment; and former chief evangelist, Apple
"Want to help your organization kick ass in the marketplace? Read this book. It will prepare you to manage for this century, when most management books prepare you to lead in the last one."--Nilofer Merchant, behavioral strategist; and author, The New How
"Required reading--accessible, clear, authoritative, and practical."--Barry Z. Posner, coauthor, The Leadership Challenge and The Truth About Leadership; and professor of leadership, Santa Clara University
"Macrowikinomics outlines why and how we urgently need to reboot business and the world. The Plugged-In Manager opens eyes as to how we can move our organizations to that future."--Don Tapscott, coauthor, Macrowikinomics

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (October 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470903554
• ISBN-13: 978-0470903551
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Terri Griffith, Ph.D. helps people and organizations work with technology. As a Professor of Management at Santa Clara University (Silicon Valley), Terri helps mix together the technology of work (everything from telepresence to the size and type of tools a crew would use to build a fence), the way we organize to do this work (virtual teams, collaborative leadership, hiring and pay plans), and the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the people we work with.

She shares her insights via her classes and speaking; the award winning blog, Technology and Organizations; contributions to GigaOM's WebWorkerDaily blog; and now her 2012 book, The Plugged-In Manager.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The "Plugged-In" or "Agile" Manager? February 4, 2012

By Andrew Karpie

Format:Hardcover

Professor Griffith's book, "The Plugged-In Manager," is an excellent work, which I am a bit concerned could be misunderstood and under-read because of its title (which I interpret to be her publisher's doing, not her own).

In any case, after struggling with how the title applied to the content, I eventually came away with what I now view as the core of Griffith's perspective, which I see as a kind of a phenomenology of an effective manager in the year 2012 AD, in a business environment (a) where change is indeed the only constant (day-to-day, moment-to-moment), (b) where organizations are more like open adaptive organisms in rapidly changing human and technological ecosystems and (c)where formal management perspectives, mindshare and communications have been overrun by vast uncontrolled flows containing often important, hidden information and insights. In this sense, Griffith both pays tribute to and differentiates her own perspective from her early moorings in the Carnegie School of organizational theory.

John Hagel III's preface brings clarity to the point of the book where he discusses the book in the context of a business world moving from "push" to "pull" and "stocks" to "flow." Hagel: "Whatever knowledge stocks we have, they are depreciating at an accelerating rate. In this environment, business success depends on our ability to participate effectively in a broader range of knowledge flows so that we can refresh our knowledge stocks more rapidly. The plugged-in manager is one who learns to harness knowledge flows in ways that create growing economic value..."

Griffith is very clear about the need for managers to maintain a balanced three dimensional (technology, people, organizational) approach to problem solving in today's complex, dynamic, socially-permeable, information-inundated business environment. S-L-L, Mixing, and Sharing are described as three different practices, but they really integrate into one, a kind of tao of pragmatic management for our modern world.

It is in this sense that I think the chosen title for Griffith's book does her and her work a disservice. "Plugged-in," to me, implies a kind of static technology-based connection (plugging into a socket or a motherboard) and so suggests a behavioral perspective that is more techno-centric and less dynamic and humanly visceral than the one Griffith actually expounds. Griffith's perspective, I believe, is one that reveals the manager as an actor in a world of flows, someone who must somehow solve the paradox of needing to be everywhere, sampling and sharing in information flows and mixing ideas and concepts to achieve plans suited for the moment. The importance of Griffith's model of a manager does not really lie in the actor being "plugged-in" at all, but rather being unplugged "and mobile," while still in dynamic communication with (and designing value creating responses to) a complex, changing web of technology, people, and organizational structures. The challenge of the modern manager is to adopt a stance and perform a Nietzschean dance that is always pressing the limits of "bounded rationality."

If I were Griffith's publisher, I would probably have lobbied to call the book, "The Agile Manager" or "The Quantum Manager." But no matter -- in the case of Griffith's work, the old adage holds true: "don't judge a book by its cover." More importantly, don't be confused by its title. Set the title aside and dive into the actual reading -- act like the kind of manager Griffith proposes that you become.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars The Plugged-In Manager August 28, 2012

By Denise

Format:Hardcover

As someone who also works as an adjunct professor, with undergrads, I certainly understand the teaching technique of repeating the same thing over and over again. Terri L. Griffith uses the same technique from cover to cover of her book The Plugged-In Manager. It's not a bad thing, especially in a classroom, because that's how learning begins to take place - using repetition.

She attended conferences, interviewed company CEO's, VP's, consultants and other authors. Griffith also presents case studies from businesses like Southwest Air, IBM, Zappos, Google, Nucor and more. We get a glimpse of who is a plugged-in manager: it's the person who learns from and makes decisions based on being in tune with the collective of people, technology and the organizational process and procedures. We were even given the formula to become plugged-in. I will let you read the book to find out what it is.

What was missing for me? Answers to how do you practice being plugged-in when there's numerous layers of management and how do you plug-in when a culture of excellence is not nurtured or supported?

What worked for me? The what would you do scenario's were helpful.

I don't think the experienced manager will ask themselves reflective questions once they've read the book. I didn't. I do believe that the book could be insightful for the novice manager, though, like a recent college graduate. Part I provides a great guide for beginners in the field of management.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic resource for 21st century managers October 19, 2011

By Chris Grams

Format:Hardcover

The Plugged-In Manager is one of the most thought-provoking and *current* management books I've read in years. Terri Griffith's position as professor of management at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley puts her in an ideal location to learn from and connect with some of the top management innovators in the world today.

There is nothing traditional about her worldview. Terri marries some of the core principles that define success in a world shaped by the Internet--transparency, sharing, collaboration, rapid prototyping--with a deliberate and repeatable approach that current and aspiring managers can use to ensure they make effective decisions in a rapidly-changing landscape.

A few particular strengths of this book: 1) it provides a set of well-designed, repeatable practices that will allow managers to quickly and easily begin to put theory into practice 2) it shares detailed, personal stories from managers at some of the most innovative organizations in the world, including Zappos, Nucor, IBM, Cisco, and Intuit 3) It includes a series of scenario-based assessment tools that will allow you to test how well your current approach matches that of the "plugged-in managers" she has researched. Quickly learn how far you've come (or how far you have to go).

If you are looking for ways to be a more effective manager in an Internet-enabled world, spending a few hours reading this book will be an excellent investment of your time.