What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success (Hardcover)

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From Publishers Weekly
Managers burned too often by following the latest highly touted formula for business success will welcome this cogent summary of a wide-ranging, systematic study about fundamental practices associated with long-term corporate health. Joyce, a Dartmouth business professor, and his collaborators surveyed hundreds of companies from 1986 to 1996 to correlate superior corporate performance with the companies' adherence to 200 commonly used practices. Companies they identify as winners consistently followed successful practices in all four of the primary areas (strategy, execution, culture and structure) and any two secondary areas (talent, leadership, innovation, and mergers and partnerships). The key to long-term success, they argue, is implementing effective programs in the six areas simultaneously. After analyzing the data, Joyce and his colleagues concluded that a company following this "4+2" formula over the 1986-1996 period had a better than 90% chance of being a winner. Anecdotes from the successful companies will interest general business readers, but the contrast with the experience of companies that stumbled should be particularly instructive. Replete with incisive discussions of various companies' approaches for each of the four primary and four secondary areas of practice, the book also offers summaries of the study results in table format. For managers who wonder how anybody can keep six areas of practice fine-tuned at the same time, the authors agree it may be a challenge, but point to their wealth of success stories to show it isn't impossible.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Based on a groundbreaking five–year study, analysing data on 200 management practices gathered over a 10–year period, What Really Works reveals the effectiveness of practices that really matter – the ones that, if followed rigorously, ensure sustained business success.

With hundreds of well–known management practices and prescriptions promoted by consultants and available to business, which are really effective and contribute to the growth and continued success of a company? Which do little or nothing?

Based on the 'Evergreen Project', a massive, five–year study involving the business school faculties of 10 universities, the authors set out to find the management practices that truly promote long–term growth and success. Their findings will revolutionise the art and practice of business management.

The book shows that there are essentially six management practices that all successful companies must master simultaneously. They range from focusing on a strategy of growth to maintaining the depth and quality of human talent in the organisation.

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