Customer Reviews

"This Isn't the Company I Joined": Seven Steps to Energizing a Restructured Work Force

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"This book points out the seven steps leaders can take in an effort to energize a restructured work force. They will need to learn new management strategies based on ideas about human resources that may never have occurred to them before. They will have to abandon the old corporate paradigms and accept the fact that business today is a whole new kind of ball game. And above all, they will have to find means to bring the work force as individuals, as human beings, back to the center of corporate strategy-because corporate survival in this chaotic, ever-changing, new business world of ours is going to rely crucially on the commitment, enthusiasm, talent, and creative contributions of every single employee from top to bottom of the organization" (from the Introduction).

In this context, throughout the book Carol Kinsey Goman examines these seven steps in detail, and summarizes them and their basic principles as following:

1. Examine changing realities

* Communicate to employees the forces of change affecting markets, competition, and their jobs.

* Acknowledge the changes in needs and values of the work force.

2. Adopt the new business paradigm

* Identify the changing paradigm for science and organizations.

* Exploit instability as the opportunity for positive transformation.

3. Develop a change-adept work force

* Expand employees' skills to help them thrive on change instead of fearing it.

* Develop management practices that promote change-adeptness throughout the organization.

4. Lead discontinuous change

* Be prepared not just to manage but to lead transformation.

* Build emotional literacy in yourself and in your work force.

5. Develop the core of leadership

* Become the change you want to see in others: Lead by example.

* Transform yourself from manager to leader.

6. Renegotiate the compact between employers and employees

* Recognize the powerful potential of shared commitment.

* Move from paternalizm to partnership.

7. Liberate work force potential

* Eliminate obstacles to creative collaboration.

* Rely on human potential as central to your corporate strategy.

Finally, she writes that "With one exception, success in today's global economy boils down to the single, universally recognized issue of getting more for less. The exception is human resources. The potential of an organization lies within each individual and within the connections between individuals. Human labor is no longer a disposable commodity. It is a unique creative resource for the future of the organization. You can trim production costs, speed up communications, reduce delivery times, cut corners on marketing and promotion...But you can't switch workers off and expect to come out ahead. If you give people less, they give less back. If you treat them like underlings, they behave like underlings. Offer them more, on the other hand, and they'll repay you with interest. I'm not talking about money now. I'm talking about liberating untapped potential, about energizing employees and engaging their enthusiasm."

Highly recommended.

Literally peppered with case histories, this book is practical. It helps provide management with examples that make a case, using many companies they will recognize. While so much data is conceptual or theoretical, this is a nuts and bolts primer on organizational improvement. Informative and loaded with common sense.

Employee Motivation is a FRAGILE art!
How's that for insight.

Include employees in the strategy development process!
Another gem.

This book makes for interesting reading at Starbucks
but is no where near corporate reality!

In the down economy since 1999 employees have been abused
and taken for granted only to have more demands on them
and less salary/bonuses/stock options available.

The majority of salary adjustments DO NOT even keep up with
the cost of living.