Customer Reviews

Up the Organization

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This is a reprint edition of the classic business text by Robert Townsend. While it is largely like the original 1970 edition, it also includes material from the 1971 paperback version. Townsend made his biggest mark as CEO of Avis Rent-a-Car and the famous "We Try Harder" slogan. He became an early business media star and his sharp observations and criticisms of fat-cat management resonated with the times.

This is not a sustained treatise on management. It's wide-ranging alphabetically-listed paragraphs and short articles on management topics delighted its readers because they could flip around and find just the sharp pointed thoughts they were looking for. In this edition the extra paragraphs that were included in Further "Up the Organization" are also provided as are Townsend's acknowledgements and an appendix that has an address he delivered to the Conference Board that was printed as an article in the late 1970s. It is called "Townsend's Third Degree in Leadership" and summarizes his views on what it takes to be a leader. The second appendix is a biographical article called "No Reserved Parking".

Obviously, I can't cover all the points he makes in the book, but the kind of radical thinking you will find (and it remains radical) are the notions that leaders have to care for the followers first. He also states that people making more than $40k (or thereabouts in today's dollars) should set their own office hours and vacations. CEO compensation should be a much smaller multiple of average company salary than it is and most of the perks of executive management should be eliminated.

Townsend was a foe of corporate bureaucracy and says that the purchasing, personnel, and marketing departments should all be eliminated and says why. Your receptionist is a more important position than you realize and should be compensated and cared for much better than she (or he) usually is. Townsend is a foe of meetings and only those that result in direct action should be held. He hates executive assistants, nepotism, company planes, and thinks that stockholders worry too much about taking good care of the Board and top management. His cure for this is broad employee ownership of company stock. He also says that CEOs should leave after five or six years or be shown the door.

There is much more in this interesting book. Oh, and he clearly comes down in the camp of personal initiative, free enterprise, and is even less fan of government regulation and handouts than he is of fat cat executives. However, Townsend emphasizes excellence, profit, and fun. Lacking those things he asks why you would want to be in business.

This book deserves its classic status and this is a fine reprint edition. You should have this on your shelf of business classics and refer to it with some regularity just to clear up the bad mental habits that we all let into our heads.

Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I'm mystified that this title is out of print, but it seems to be a pattern with Townsend's works; I noticed that a much more recent title of his (1995) is also out of print.

Whatever the reason, if you've been lucky enough to hear about this book -- and on the off-chance you're checking out what will likely be the lone review of it, way down here at Amazon sales rank 200,000-and-then-some -- DO NOT be lulled into the obvious conclusion, namely, if the book were any good it'd still be readily available.

Though written in an era long gone (late 60s/early 70s) the info here is timeless -- and NO, it's not a bunch of idealistic boomer-inspired BS ("boomer" as in "former hippie," which is what most boomers were when this book came out). While the boomers were still smokin' ganga and sitting in, Townsend had already reversed the fortunes of Avis Rent a Car, in a revolutionary manner that completely eclipsed anything the boomers might have been dreaming about.

Any manager who has not read the chapter "People" is just not qualified to manage them, it's that simple. It, like nearly every other chapter in this book, is the last word in how to begin thinking about business -- and the lessons will work for anybody.

Find this book. Check your local used bookstore, do a search, whatever it takes. But find it, learn from it, and start building the vibrant, meaningful, profitable business you had envisioned when you got started.

Thanks Mr. Townsend -- wherever you are.

This book will take your breath away. It speaks in a clear, concise and direct way that makes you think differently. It is as timely as a book can be and it is shameful that it is out of print. This a delightful and profound book that contains good humor and amazing insight. Buy a used copy now and join the revolution Mr. Townsend tried to start...before it's too late. Unfortunately, it's brilliant practical advise will be difficult to apply very directly in today's corporate world. But that is only because the rising tide of corporate bureaucracy and self defeating attitudes that Robert Townsend was raging against has since grown into a title wave of self interest and corporate greed. It is time for us all to take a stand and understanding Mr. Townsend's dynamic principles will help us stand tall. This is a revolutionary handbook for those of us with a healthy discontent with things as they are...and I'm pretty sure that would be most, if not all of us. Read it, use it to change the way you think, make a commitment to fight back, and then apply it to the task at hand in whatever way you can.

Fabio - Is that anger or shame I hear in your review? You were on a roll but when you turned corporate dishonesty and abuse into a cheap segway into your own partisan politics your were guilty of the very thing you were condemning. Not a single honest CEO? Come on, it's certainly convenient to have someone to blame but Presidents and CEO's are not the guilty parties. This only happened to the corporate world because we let it. We won't make a difference by pointing a judgemental finger at who we would we like to blame. We are accountable, and we all let this happen, the only way to stop it is to make a commitment to do what we can to fight back. We are not powerless, the future is in our hands.

Read this invaluable little book and you will understand how we have all been lulled into the complacency that allowed things to turn out the way they have. It's time to take a look in the mirror, engage in a little introspection, learn to think differently, and then fight back.

Robert Townsend's unusual little book will help you do just that.

Organized in short, pseudo-encyclopedic sections arranged alphabetically, this book is funny, trenchant, irreverent, iconoclastic, moral, and practical. It puts a human face on capitalism as it's practiced in the real world of providing and selling goods and services (no, .coms, it's not ABOUT stock options and IPOs, it's about providing and selling goods and services). Anybody who's had an office job, especially in middle management, will recognize the joys and dilemmas posed herein; and reading this, they will soon know what to do about visits from the Board of Directors.

I seriously recommend this book to anybody who has a job, let alone anyone who is a manager.

You can dip into it at any page - it is an "alphabet book" - 1 entry for every letter of the alphabet. It has some great ideas, is very funny and is very readable.

The edition I read also had a special guide for women in the workplace. Although I am not a woman (- but then neither is the author), I found this section also very helpful and inspiring.

Although I have already read a borrowed version, I am currently here at Amazon buying a personal copy for my collection.

It is not on my "Great Books of All Time/Desert Island" list, but it is on my next-ranking, "Very Useful Books" list.

Basho

Written the way one can understand and enjoy reading. No pseudoscientific jargon. A thin small book. Nevertheless contains all the essentials of a successful business. I read this book about twenty five years ago (in Polish translation) and consider it the best book about business I ever read. This book is out of print. Is this a reason for a massive failure of dot com's?

I recall when this book first came out, Townsend's assertion that secretaries were unnecessary caused a revolt among the secretaries at his company; they staged a benign strike, to demonstrate how the company would (not) function without them.

I picked up this book again many years later, and read the vignette called "Chairman of the Executive Committee." This is a title you give someone when you boot him upstairs, in preparation for retiring him. It's a nice-sounding title, it appears to be powerful, and in practice it means nothing.

Reading Newsweek Magazine one day, I happened to notice that Katherine Graham had been dubbed "chairman of the executive committee." I made a copy of that vignette from Up the Organization and mailed it to Ms. Graham (care of Newsweek), and asked whether she realized she had been booted upstairs to the holding pen. The note must have struck a nerve; I got no reply.

If you work in a corporation, you will enjoy this book, as long as they don't make you chairman of the executive committee.

I've read this book cover to cover many, many times over the past 20+ years - it's that good. I've told a lot of people that this is the only management book you'll ever need. All of the rest are inferior to Townsend's "Up The Organization".

I saw this on my bookshelf and read it nearly thirty years ago and pulled it off and it is as relevent today as back then. A guy who is colorful and been there done that tells it like it is and todays business leaders ought to dust off a copy and check it out. Timeless principles and worth the read however difficult it is to find. Glad I kept my copy

I read this after reading a Joel Spolsky article. It was a pleasant surprise. I did not expect the book to be an A-Z guide to solving problems but that is what it is. Much of the advice is timeless even though it can be somewhat archaic in language.

The writer often talks of "girls" in the steno pool and "girls" on the switchboard but that was how it was when the book was originally published. If you can get past the sexual-stereotyping you will find this a useful read on how to work in a large(ish) company.

RCT knows what works. He doesn't throw people out. He builds on what he's got. He understand that people behave the way they do because of the environment they are in.

His advice on CEO compensation is refreshing. I wish that many boards and CEOs would follow his advice today.

The amusing parts are those that refer to salaries then, and now. CEO compensation has clearly gone mad and swept ahead of inflation since the 70s.

He also has good advice on those topics we would consider politically incorrect in this day and age, e.g. ambitious wives/spouses.

The author reminds me of something I believe to be very true, those that chase money will never be happy whereas those that do what they like./love will always be rewarded.