Transforming the Organization [Hardcover]

James N. Kelly (Author), Francis J. Gouillart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

In order to successfully compete in today's rapidly changing marketplace, companies must learn how to continuously transform. Here, for the first time, influential authors James Kelley and Francis Gouillart reveal their revolutionary prescription for corporate metamorphosis. Illustrating its key points with anecdotes, case histories, and summaries, the authors provide a guided tour of the future of business.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This upbeat management primer views the corporation as a living organism complete with body, mind and spirit. The key to a company's successful adaptation and growth is the unified pursuit of common goals, achieved by keeping in sync its technology, "work architecture," reward structure and other "biocorporate" systems. Using numerous case histories involving DuPont, Philips, Citibank, Ashland Oil, Rolls-Royce, Texas retailer HEB and other firms, the authors, executives with Gemini, a global consulting firm, explain how to harness motivation by creating a large number of "natural work teams," small groups of multitalented people empowered with the authority to take action. Instead of a "Pavlovian," carrot-and-stick reward system, they recommend instituting "individual learning" by linking rewards to an employee's expanding opportunities, skills and participation. This is a visionary yet practical blueprint for corporate restructuring and renewal. 50,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill; First Printing edition (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070340676
• ISBN-13: 978-0070340671
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,095,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Francis Gouillart is a co-founder and president of the Experience Co-Creation Partnership (ECC Partnership), a services firm built to implement the co-creation ideas with corporate clients and public organizations around the world. ECC Partnership is the vehicle Mr. Gouillart and his team use for concept development, publication, speeches, management education, workshops, and development of consulting tools. The firm has an office in Concord, MA, and one in Paris, France. The ECC Partnership has an exclusive global agreement with PRTM Consulting on the global application of the co-creation family of concepts to consulting.

Mr. Gouillart has personally consulted with many large global organizations in the last 30 years, including DuPont, BASF, Monsanto, Mead, ExxonMobil, La Poste, Credit Agricole, Wells Fargo, Brown Brothers & Harriman (BBH), Carhartt, Avery-Dennison and Nokia.

Mr. Gouillart is co-author (with Venkat Ramaswamy) of the newly published book "The Power of Co-Creation" (Simon & Schuster Free Press, October 2010) and the Harvard Business Review article "Becoming a Co-Creative Enterprise" (November 2010). Mr. Gouillart is also co-author (with James Kelly) of the book "Transforming the Organization," published by McGraw-Hill, which reached the top of BusinessWeek's best-seller list in 1995. He also co-wrote (with Frederick Sturdivant) the Harvard Business Review article "Spend a Day in the Life of Your Customers," (January-February 1994). He also authored the popular book "Stratégie pour une Entreprise Compétitive" (Editions Economica, Paris), which was named Best Strategy Book of the Year by the French Association of Strategic Planners (AFPLANE) in 1989.

He is considered a leading authority on the topic of co-creation, strategy, innovation, transformation, and process design. His blog, "The Co-Creation Effect," can be found at francisgouillart.com.

Mr. Gouillart received an MBA from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business and currently resides in Concord, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important addition to literature on an organic corporation, May 20, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Transforming the Organization (Hardcover)

"Transforming the Organization" is among the first books to use the concept of "corporate DNA," although the author doesn't use that term. The book may be most valuable for the author's development of organic design principles, such as corporate nervous system. My major disagreement is that, despite an organic orientation, the author's approach becomes a little mechanical, as with his insistence on 12 corporate chromosomes. All in all, the book is well worth the read