Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

Amazon.com

Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice--nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are "littlepeople," mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It's not just sustenance to them; it's their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they've found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.

Dr. Johnson, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and many other books, presents this parable to business, church groups, schools, military organizations--anyplace where you find people who may fear or resist change. And although more analytical and skeptical readers may find the tale a little too simplistic, its beauty is that it sums up all natural history in just 94 pages: Things change. They always have changed and always will change. And while there's no single way to deal with change, the consequence of pretending change won't happen is always the same: The cheese runs out. --Lou Schuler

Book Description

The Change Survival Kit is an A-Mazing Way to Deal with Changes in Your Work and in Your Life. It reminds you to use what you discovered in the "Cheese" story - and enjoy it!
The kit contains:
A copy of the #1 Hardcover Book
12 Animated Reminders
24 Screen Saver Prompts
12 Desktop Wallpapers
Photo-Top Mouse pad
FREE! Multi-Level Maze Game

Customer Reviews:

It's an OK book.......2007-10-04

Just like most of the people, I got this book from my employer (I hope it's not a sign of restructuring :)).
I'm afraid that I do a too good job of reviewing the book one would no longer need to buy it anymore. In essence, the whole book can be summarized in about 10 statements. In all fairness though, these are insightful and worth meditating on statements.
So, like I said... An OK book.

Thought Provoking.......2007-10-03

The book is an easy and quick read but the story will put thoughts in your head that you will think about for years if not a lifetime. Life brings us all challenges so this book is for all of us... That is, unless your life is perfect.

Genuinely Insulting..........2007-09-29

Genuinely insulting to the independent thinker. Yeah I know, it's been said countless times but I felt the need to reinforce that notion. If you're someone that's more comfortable being a follower and having your life and work environment structured for you then you're more likely to enjoy this book and find something meaningful in it. If you're someone that uses logic and reason to guide your decisions then don't waste your time or money on this rehashed brainwashing manual. This is a book written for unquestioning, mindless followers, not a book for leaders. But a tool that leaders would use to try and control their subordinates.

who moved my cheese.......2007-09-21

Light, but nevertheless thought provoking reading. Good for an hour or so by the fire.

Overrated.......2007-09-17

This book has been considered a classic by many and used widely in the corporate world. In my opinion, however, if you are seriously considering reinventing yourself or improving how you manage life, this book won't get you there. Change doesn't come about with a superficial one-hour read. Consider a book like "The Path of Least Resistance" by Robert Fritz. It will take more time and effort, but I think it's a seminal work in the field of human motivational theory. If you give it a chance, it might transform you.
Mario Alonso, Ph.D; author of "Family Business Survival: Six Key Tasks Required for a Successful Family Business" www.AlonsoStrategyConsulting.com

Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots

Average customer rating:

Practical and Insightful
An Outstanding Growth Guide for Global Business Leaders
Questionable Choice of Examples and Lack of Definitions!
Not All Adjacencies Are Appropriate
Standing Tall

Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots
Chris Zook
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Profit From the Core : Growth Strategy in an Era of Turbulence
Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth
How to Grow When Markets Don't
Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

ASIN: 1578519519

Book Description

All companies must grow to survive-but only one in five growth strategies succeeds. In Profit from the Core, strategy expert Chris Zook revealed how to grow profitably by focusing on and achieving full potential in the core business. But what happens when your core business provides insufficient new growth, or even hits the wall?

In Beyond the Core, Zook outlines an expansion strategy based on putting together combinations of adjacency moves into areas away from, but related to, the core business, such as new product lines or new channels of distribution. These sequences of moves carry less risk than diversification, yet they can create enormous competitive advantage, because they stem directly from what the company already knows and does best.

Based on extensive research on the growth patterns of thousands of companies worldwide, including CEO interviews with twenty-five top performers in adjacency growth, Beyond the Core (1) identifies the adjacency pattern that most dramatically increases the odds of success: "relentless repeatability;" (2) offers a systematic approach for choosing among a range of possible adjacency moves; and 3) shows how to time adjacency moves during a variety of typical business situations.

Beyond the Core shows how to find and leverage the best avenues for growth-without damaging the heart of the firm.

Customer Reviews:

Practical and Insightful .......2005-03-28

What is especially useful about this book is that it is practical. It gives advice for every stage of an adjacency expansion, from strategy development to execution, on how to increase the likelihood that it will be successful. The case studies are interesting and the analysis is insightful.

For people like me who do not have a business background or management consulting experience, this book is an excellent read and, at the very least, should get you by at parties where you would run into such people.

An Outstanding Growth Guide for Global Business Leaders.......2004-05-13

As a second year MBA student at the Kellogg School of Management and a future corporate strategist for a global financial services firm, I found reading Beyond the Core to be one of the best time investments that I've made over the last few years. Chris Zook seems to have a knack for writing great books that not only stand the test of time but that are also highly relevant to the current business and economic environments. Specifically, his first book, Profits from the Core, which focused on maximizing the value of the core business, was launched when businesses needed it most - during the economic downturn. Now, Beyond the Core is perfectly timed since, from what I and other MBA's are observing in the market, most businesses are remobilizing for growth.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Beyond the Core - it's a relatively quick read that is focused, insightful and well structured. More specifically, I think there are three key things that make this book stand out in comparison to many other business books I've read: 1) it takes a global perspective 2) it is highly data driven and has great examples and 3) its very actionable and offers lots of insights on implementation.

To elaborate, the first thing I really liked about Beyond the Core is that it takes a truly global perspective with examples from Europe, Asia and Latin America. As an MBA student majoring in International Business Strategy who will be working in a global firm after graduation, it was great to read about the strategies that firms such as Li & Fung (HK), Ambev (Brazil), Lloyd's Bank and Vodephone (UK) and STMicroelectronics (Italy). Overall, I also liked that the book mixes an array of fresh case studies (Tesco, Biogen, Ambev) with more traditional ones (Dell, Nike, American Express).

Secondly, Beyond the Core is highly data driven and the recommendations are based on empirical evidence, not conjectures. As a student of business strategy, I too often come across books or theories that are supported by nothing other than a few select examples that prop up the author's hypotheses. Beyond the Core, in contrast, is supported by an enormous amount of financial, competitive and market research and by many CEO interviews and studies by Bain & Company. This is extremely insightful as it helps the reader understand the odds of success and failure across the business world and thus leads to much more informed strategies.

Finally, Mr. Zook has focused nearly a third of the book on implementation and execution strategy. This makes the book and its recommendations highly actionable instead of leaving the author asking "so what?" The book sets out a systematic and understandable road map for adjacency expansion. More importantly, it discusses issues that are critical to growth initiatives such as: organizational structure, decision making processes, staffing, accountability and reporting, etc.

In sum, I highly recommend Beyond the Core, especially to global business leaders looking for a practical guide for profitably growing their businesses. Enjoy!!

Questionable Choice of Examples and Lack of Definitions!.......2004-03-15

Many people who have been burned by going into new areas will grade this as five-stars for encouraging caution in expanding a company's scope. If that's all you want from a book, this is a five-star book. If you want to learn what the exact lesson is, and why that lesson is true, you'll have to look elsewhere however. If you want to learn how to beat the odds in this area, you will also have to look elsewhere.

I found Profit from the Core to be a directionless mishmash of data without firm definitions that repeatedly espoused the idea of "stick to your knitting." As a result, I took up Beyond the Core with great trepidation. At first blush, Beyond the Core seemed to cure some of the peripheral problems of Profit from the Core . . . until I began to notice how almost all of the important examples of continuing business model innovation had been excluded that seemed to fit all of the criteria (except perhaps being willing to be interviewed by the author). Mr. Zook continues to avoid defining what "the core" is, so that basic problem continues.

The book's message is "stick to your knitting . . . unless you have not choice . . . then don't go away from your cost advantages and knowledge." If you want to know a little more about that message, you can read all of the key points in the book summarized in the Afterword on pages 189-192 in less than five minutes.

The book will mainly be helpful to those who are thinking about making unrelated acquisitions. The advice: Don't do it! The odds are way against you . . . but even the most unrelated acquisitions sometimes work (GE bought NBC and has done well with it, for example). The book lacks clear direction for how some overcome the odds.

The book was also curiously silent about how companies can use small experiments to test their way into new areas. That's the way that most firms expand beyond their core.

The methodology looks very much like those employed in Build to Last and Good to Great . . . but don't believe it. Cases were selected in part based on whether Mr. Zook could interview the companies. So it's really a subjective sample. So take the conclusions with a selective grain of salt. Here are some of the cases of those who have prospered with expanding into new areas that seem to fit the Zook criteria but don't appear in the book: Beckman Coulter; Berkshire Hathaway; Clear Channel Communications; Education Management; GE; Iron Mountain; Nucor; Paychex; Sony; Virgin Group; Xilinx; and Zebra Technologies. It's not surprising that the book fails to describe the discipline of continual business model improvement as a best practice . . . a serious omission for this subject.

Ultimately, I think the flaw behind the book is to look at moving "beyond the core" separately from looking "at the core." If the two books had been combined into one that looked at how to outperform the competition, there would have been the basis of helpful insights. Or, this book could have been scoped down into how to grow into new areas with internal development activities versus acquisitions. That would have been helpful. But with the focus of "beyond the core," you are left in a never-never land that you may not want to be in. The other interesting question that could have been addressed is how companies prospered by eliminating the old core and replacing it with a new one through acquisition as a number of companies have.

As I thought about why the author might have chosen this direction, I realized that it may be an unconscious use of the older ways of strategic thinking. Those analytical schemes separated thinking about existing business areas from entering new ones. For some time though, most strategic thinkers have emphasized seeing the questions as connected. You should, for example, be pursuing your best opportunities. That means comparing all choices in some manner at the same time.

The other problem with data-heavy studies like this one is that you are relying on backward impressions (with 20-20 hindsight). Studies of best practices are best done by looking at the decisions and actions when they are made . . . and then measuring the results to see what happens. Interviews taken at such times reveal much different information than the neat success stories spun after the fact. Clayton Christensen does a good job of explaining this issue in chapter one of his new book, The Innovator's Solution.

As I finished the book, I began to think about the many unsuccessful unrelated acquisitions that I have run into among companies. In almost every case, I remember reading a thick book by a name consulting firm that had explained at the time of the purchase why the acquisition could not miss. Perhaps a follow on for this book would be how to avoid bad advice in evaluating acquisitions.

Not All Adjacencies Are Appropriate.......2004-02-12

Perhaps you have already read Profit From the Core: Growth Strategy in the Age of Turbulence which Zook co-authored with James Allen. It was based on rigorous research which revealed the key strategic decisions that most often determine growth or stagnation in business. They note: "Central to our findings are three ideas: the concept of the core business and its boundaries; the idea that every business has a level of full-potential performance that usually exceeds what the company imagines; and the idea that performance-yield loss occurs at many levels, from strategy to leadership to organizational capabilities to execution." In the five chapters which follow, Zook (with Allen) examines "the types of strategic business decisions that most often seem to tilt the odds of future success or failure." Zook correctly suggests in this book that many organizations cannot resist the appeal ("the siren's song") of "miracle cures" of their problems. Zook focuses entirely on what has been verified in real-world experience, on what is practical, and on what will reliably achieve the desired results of sound strategic decisions.

In the first chapter of this book, Zook discusses what he calls "the growth crisis" which many (most?) organizations encounter. He observes, "Finding or maintaining a source of sustained and profitable growth has become the number one concern of most CEOs. And moves that push out the boundaries of their core business into 'adjacencies' are where they are most often look these days." I agree with Zook that these strategies have three distinctive features: "First, they are of significant size, or they can lead to a sequence of related adjacency moves that generate substantial growth. Second. they build on., indeed are bolted on, a strong core business. Thus the adjacent area draws from the strength of the core and at the same time may serve to reinforce or defend that core. Third, adjacency strategies are a journey into the unknown, a true extension of the core, a pushing out of the boundaries, a step-up in risk from typical forms of organic growth." Much of the material in this brilliant book is guided and informed by what Zook claims is "the new math of profitable growth." Specifics are best provided by Zook himself.

Zook presumes that those who read this book already know what a core business is, and more specifically, what the core business is of their respective organizations. Given his objectives, that assumption is probably necessary so that he can explore the opportunities which (key word) appropriate adjencies offer. Fair enough. However, my own experience suggests that companies frequently extend the boundaries of a core business without fully understanding what that core business is. Railroads probably offer the best example. Only much too late (if then) did senior-level executives at major railroads realize that their core business was transporting people and cargo, NOT "railroading." Obviously, trains are confined to the tracks as are ships to the water and trucks to the roadways over which they proceed. Early on, what if owners of railroads and their associates had addressed questions such as those Zook poses in his Preface (Page ix)? Had they done so, presumably they would have recognized appropriate adjacencies which include taxi cabs, Super Shuttle, local delivery services, and "overnight" delivery services (e.g. DHL, FedEx, and UPS). While they're at it, why not own or forge strategic partnerships with over-the-road trucking companies and cargo airlines? Given the central locations of railroad stations in major metropolitan areas, it would have been easy enough to combine a full-range of travel services within an upscale retail mall.

The question to ask, therefore, is not what an organization's core business is. Rather, what could AND SHOULD it be? The correct answer to that question is important, of course, because without a proper core, there can be chaos. Also, the correct answer suggests appropriate adjacencies by which to achieve and then sustain increasingly more profitable growth.

In the Afterword, Zook imagines himself engaged in what he calls the proverbial "elevator" conversation during which he reviews the "key messages" contained within his book. It serves no good purpose to list them here because each must be carefully considered within a meticulously formulated context. However, once the book has been read, I strongly recommend that all of these "key messages" be reviewed on a monthly (if not weekly) basis. For decision-makers in at least some companies, this may well prove to be the most valuable book they have read in recent years.

Standing Tall.......2004-01-31

Standing Tall among Business Books, Chris Zook has indepth research examples of Companies portraying picture of today's business times. Numerous CEO reports, charts and graphs with real practical illustrations are varied. Outside a core business, the expansion is detailed in this book - on how to go ahead framing and practically applying the ways and means so as not to harness the existence levels. The books offers nurturing roots of business, examples on adjacency expansions with pros and cons of success and failure measures. The name itself speaks big 'Expand market without abandoning Roots' and the rule of the game lies in effective management. The author pin points steps to leverage best avenues and the possible adjacent moves so as to reach competitive edge and pooling profit without harnessing the roots of main frame business. In today's time, with diversifications, 'Beyond the Core'- the book serves a Good Reference and as I read on Chris zook's comments, I feel this is a 'Grab Pick' and Must for all Big Company Executives.

Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What

Average customer rating:

Fail often, Fail fast, Fail Cheap
Growth-focused Management
Great insights, a must for corporate "victims" everywhere.
Low Inflation Makes Revenue Growth Harder to Accomplish
Hits the nail on the head

Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What
Michael Treacy
Manufacturer: Portfolio Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 159184066X

Amazon.com

After Michael Treacy finished writing his bestseller, The Discipline of Market Leaders, he continued to track the companies profiled to answer one major question: how do market-leading companies foster growth? In Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It—No Matter What the MIT Management Professor addresses this problem with a five-part portfolio of management disciplines. He offers case studies of well-known and little-known companies that have achieved growth year after year based on this diversified approach.

His first three disciplines--"keep the growth you have already earned," "take business from your competitors," and "show up where the growth is going to happen"--may seem obvious, and even beyond the control of the average executive. But Treacy provides frameworks for applying each as business practice, not just wishful thinking. His fourth and fifth disciplines, "invade adjacent markets" and "invest in new lines of business," are perhaps the most controversial. Here, though, he is not advising rampant conglomeration. Rather, he stresses the need for acquisitions and expansions made based on reliable data predicting long-term growth with risk spread over diversified investments.

Treacy is not presenting a step-by-step formula for success. Through his quick, readable prose he offers instead a course in mental re-training for executives. A management team must construct tools for tracking and measuring its success against each of the five growth disciplines, and it must build a corporate culture that instills growth as a core goal. While he offers no guarantees, his arguments are compelling, and the nuanced management strategies he suggests seem a plausible base for attaining predictable growth. --Patrick O'Kelley

Book Description

The bestselling author of The Discipline of Market Leaders reveals how companies can achieve sustained growth.

In their 1995 blockbuster The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema explained how great companies dominated their markets by offering superior value propositions. Now Treacy is back with an equally groundbreaking book-revealing how great companies master growth each year and how all businesses can identify and exploit opportunities for increased revenues, gross margins, and profits.

Treacy's main point is simple-it really is possible to grow your business by 10 percent or more, year after year, in good times and bad, without cheating. Great companies already know how to do it, and the rest of us can learn their strategies and do the same thing. Using case studies from industry leaders such as Dell Computer, Home Depot, and GE, he shows the five steps that are imperative to ensure growth:

€ keep the growth you have already earned
€ look for growth where it's likely to be found
€ take business from your competitors

Treacy believes that any business can grow at a consistent double-digit rate, and with Double-Digit Growth, managers and investors now have the tools to achieve that lofty goal and maintain corporate success.

Customer Reviews:

Fail often, Fail fast, Fail Cheap.......2006-04-20

[...]

This is now one of my favourite books. (I tend to be a bit fickle and flip from book to book as to which ones are the best.) One thing that I love about the book is the number of examples it gives of companies that maintain double-digit growth for long periods of times. I am a huge growth addict (growth is a great way to drive efficiency into an organization painlessly). Growth is also fun and inspirational. I could rephrase one of the principles of the book with one of my favourite sayings, "Fail often, fail fast, and fail cheap." The gist of it is to experiment in different areas and search aggressively for areas where things can get traction. Look at the downside so don't risk too much. Do it fast and do it often.

The book talks about the toughest way to grow as taking market share from another competitor, growing within a static market is extremely expensive and in most cases very damaging to a company. That's why we constantly seek new markets or markets and change. I have always said, "Change is opportunity".

The book is a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in business.

Jim Estill

Growth-focused Management.......2005-12-27

This straightforward book reduces the problem of corporate growth to five simple disciplines. Some of these disciplines will be familiar to readers of author Michael Treacy's bestseller `The Discipline of Market Leaders'. The author identifies sound principles, and he supports his case with numerous examples from the annals of corporate success and failure. Although the five disciplines are sometimes so obvious (try to get more customers) that a reader may well wonder if any businessperson could possibly be unaware of them, it is true that egregious corporate downfalls often result from a failure to recognize and respond to the obvious. If the book only pointed out the obvious to those in danger of ignoring it, we would find that entirely worthwhile and, for companies that wish to grow, it does a good bit more.

Great insights, a must for corporate "victims" everywhere........2004-04-25

Michael Treacy sets out to show that growth, double digit growth at that, is possible in every economic environment. This is of course a creative possibility, but is often not acknowledged or even sought after by many in corporate America who are content to do the easy risk-avoidance strategies which ensure their ultimate demise. I liked this quote early in the book to set the tone: "Why do many managers preside over no-growth organizations without confronting the reality that accepting the status quo is the business equivalent of committing suicide?"

The highlights of the book are the way the ideas are laid out and then described in action with examples across several industries. Some of the tactics include; Spread the risk, Take small bites, Balance your strategies, and Commit to superior value. One key according to Treacy is to accept that growth is a choice. He describes managers talking about growth difficulties as "a little like listening to an addict in denial. Don't they understand that growth is a choice - a choice that lies entirely within their power and no one else's?" (Page 17).

Treacy covers 5 disciplines; Improving customer base retention; Market share gain; Market positioning; Penetrating adjacent markets; New lines of business. While these are certainly solid examples of the ways to approach growth, the real depth in the book is around understanding consumer behavior. He points out the reality behind why most "customer retention" strategies don't work, and how to increase "switching costs" of your products and services. Making your products and services "sticky" is a key to growth working well, by retaining current customers while attracting new ones.

While the information and theories here are certainly not the final word on growth, this book should be required reading for all the corporate "victims" blaming their woes on things outside their control. It is clear that countless opportunities exist within every market niche and through every economic trend to facilitate growth. Many companies do in fact continue to grow, and they are usually ones who are committed to it. The companies that do not grow are usually gone in time. The section on Corning, caught in the euphoria of the late 90's telecom boom, was a great example of how even market leaders fail to get ahead of the indicators and lose as a result.

Overall, a great read, with some good insights. I would have liked to see a bit more focus on the inspirational factors that great leaders bring to align their employees to deliver when the employees themselves may not see the way. That is obviously a huge key to executing a strategy, and was not covered as in depth as it could have been here. Otherwise, a good look at how to achieve growth and will likely cause many light bulbs to go on while reading.

Low Inflation Makes Revenue Growth Harder to Accomplish.......2004-02-09

During the times when inflation and GNP growth in the United States were higher, investors gradually expanded their expectations of what "growth" meant. During the great bull market of the 1960s, a company that grew revenues by 10 percent a year was considered a great growth firm. Soon, that target was being set north of 15 percent. Exciting breakthroughs in technology meant that many markets were actually growing faster than that, so those who were growing market share were expanding at enormous rates (remember Cisco in the 1990s?).

Since then, inflation has declined to almost nothing, GDP has been stagnant during the Bush administration (with a recent up tick), and the dollar has been plummeting (making overseas revenues worth much less). That's a tougher environment to grow in than even the 1960s. So Double-Digit Growth is talking about a difficult target for those who are not in the highest growth industries. In appreciation of that point, Michael Treacy (coauthor of The Discipline of Market Leaders) says that companies should measure their growth in terms of total gross profits. So if you are expanding your value-added enough, you may be able to have double-digit growth while having less than double-digit revenue growth. That said, he argues that ANY company can have double-digit growth. I assume that he means it is POSSIBLE. Based on the track record of the last three years, most would agree that it?s IMPROBABLE though if we look at time frames of five years or more.

As with The Discipline of Market Leaders, Mr. Treacy looks at a few successful companies that have met his targets in the past (Johnson Controls, Mohawk Industries, Paychex, Biomet, Oshkosh Truck and Dell) and extrapolates what they did into a few simple lessons. The strategic lessons are:

1) Spread your risk by pursuing many growth initiatives

2) Take on small growth challenges so you don't become overwhelmed by the size of the task

3) Use a variety of strategies involving organic growth and acquisitions, as appropriate to grow

4) Be committed to providing superior value

5) Develop your management to handle growth opportunities before tackling more opportunities

6) Make growth a central focus of your management processes (using Balanced Scorecard-like measures).

To implement these six strategic perspectives, he counsels that each company should focus on five management disciplines:

a) Reduce customer turnover

b) Take business from competitors

c) Emphasize those areas in your industry that are growing fastest

d) Invade adjacent markets where you can bring important advantages to bear

e) Invest in new lines of business

The heart of the book is devoted to these five disciplines. Each receives a chapter that talks about the difficulties involved and how to over come those difficulties. I thought that the book's advice was most practical and interesting when it talked about the disciplines.

If I look back to when I was first learning about strategy, I think that every article or book I read talked about the last four disciplines . . . but omitted the first. In fact, the best chapter in the book is on the first discipline, especially in debunking those who advocate that you can build loyalty in customers with any method other than making your value proposition be terrific.

Another excellent part of the book comes in the case history of First Data which used these disciplines to improve its situation. Presumably First Data was a consulting client of Mr. Treacy's.

I was pleased to see that Mr. Treacy noted that many of his champion growers frequently changed business models in positive ways (especially Paychex and Dell). Double-Digit Growth is rare book in noting and describing such management excellence. In doing so, the book's only weaknesses were that few examples of continuing business model innovation were included and not enough attention was paid to describing the key elements of this new and important management discipline. I hope in future books that Mr. Treacy will place more emphasis on the best practices in this area.

The book's perspective is that of the strategist and marketing executive, so those who come from other perspectives will probably gain the most from this book. Double-Digit Growth will give other executives a chance to understand what they should be focusing on as they meld their talents together with others in the organization.

If you are, however, a veteran strategist or marketing executive, you may get little benefit except from reading whichever company cases in the book (listed above) you have not read or heard about before.

As I finished the book, I wondered about how companies can make it more exciting to work on customer retention. Perhaps Raving Fans! has it right in that regard.

If you are not in a high growth market, though, I would still rate your chances of double-digit growth in revenues or gross profits to be slim . . . unless you become a master of continuing business model innovation.

Hits the nail on the head.......2004-01-01

In this excellent book, Michael Treacy discusses a subject that had been forgotten by most companies---growth. It's all about growth. Creating revenues. Being creative and competitive.Too many companies are focused on being Mr. Cheapskate by cutting back and many of those companies have lostbusiness to companies that are growth focused.Every executive and every business person must read this book if you want your company to move forward or even stay around in this new, tougher enviroment.Also recommend Good To Great by Jim Collins.

The Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating Systemic Change in Organizations and Communities (Jossey-Bass Business & Management)

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The Handbook of Large Group Methods
Carlotta Tyler, OD Consultant and Executive Coach
An excellent combination of practice, theory and new ideas
Substantive and Provocative
How These Methods Actually Work In Practice

The Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating Systemic Change in Organizations and Communities (Jossey-Bass Business & Management)
Barbara Benedict Bunker , and Billie T. Alban
Manufacturer: Jossey-Bass
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0787981435

Book Description

Large Group Interventions are methods used to gather a whole system together to discuss and take action on the target agenda. That agenda varies from future plans, products, and services, to redesigning work, to discussion of troubling issues and problems. The Handbook of Large Group Methods takes the next step in demonstrating through a series of cases how Large Group Methods are currently being used to address twenty-first-century challenges in organizations and communities today, including:

Working with widely dispersed organizations, and the problem of involvement and participation
Working with organizations facing a serious business crisis
Working with organizations in polarized and politicized environments
Working in community settings with diverse interest groups
Working at the global level and adapting these methods for cross-cultural use
Embedding and sustaining new patterns of working together in organizations and communities

Customer Reviews:

The Handbook of Large Group Methods.......2007-09-12

Trust Alban and Bunker to use their social science prowess and rich professional experiences to create an eminently pragmatic handbook for leaders of systems change. To their credit, the entire construction of the book also employs the very principles espoused by the contributors: inclusion of stakeholders, engagement of multiple perspectives, search for common ground, transparency, and appreciation for diversity. After soliciting cases from around the world, the authors organized them into helpful categories of interventions around "six challenges for the 21st century" and added their views on the issues created by those challenges. These chapter inputs are perfect executive summaries for clients who are mired in these dilemmas daily and are looking for solutions and they will help introduce the large group engagement methods the consultant is offering. Also invaluable is the authors' matrix of each case that delineates the organizational sector, the situation addressed, and the methods used--truly makes the text handy.

Although the book stands on its own merits for the sophisticated organization consultant, reading their previous Large Group Interventions (Jossey Bass, 1997) would give the appropriate context for the creative adaptations of the original methods that their latest book so well describes. The Handbook has not only added new methods (Appreciative Inquiry Summit, World Café and AmericaSpeaks) but, more importantly, it describes combinations of traditional methods along with new twists which are thoroughly described. Appropriately, there is a greater reliance on engagement principles for a change process instead of previously prescribed recipes for events in their prior book.

The consultant contributors have been generous with details, for the most part, so that seasoned organization development consultants will feel comfortable employing these tested methods of engagement. On the other hand, there also could also be a warning sticker that reads: "Don't Try This Alone in your Ballroom!" because much of the success comes with years of experience working with diverse groups and learning what doesn't work. Partnering with such experts is the wisest way to dive into whole system change.

As a trainer of large group principles, I particularly appreciated the enhancement tools this handbook describes--Polarity Mapping (B. Johnson), Gestalt therapy, coaching theory, using professional actors for storytelling, graphic facilitation and more. I look forward to the 2017 iteration Bunker and Alban offer to keep us on our toes!

Elizabeth K. Olson
Preferred Futures, Inc.

Carlotta Tyler, OD Consultant and Executive Coach.......2007-03-18

This Handbook is a valuable, broad scope look at public and private sector systems currently engaged in change iniatitives around the world. Relatively free of jargon and untried theories, these field-tested case studies will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers from organization leaders and HR professionals to business school students. I came away with some important new ideas for my work and avoided a few pitfalls after reading the book.

An excellent combination of practice, theory and new ideas.......2007-02-03

Through the many cases presented, Barbara and Billie were able to present to the reader how the different Large Group Methods actually can be applied, and, specially, how they form part of a larger roadmap for systemic change. Interesting also how all cases have a reflections session, which is very usefull in giving actual or to-be practitioners concrete tips for implementation.
The combination of cases with theory about the methods and innovative ideas (for example, on the use of Technologies and Graphic facilitation)resulted in a superior learning experience and complements very well their first book ("Large Group Interventions: Engaging the Whole System for Rapid Change").
Last but not least, I was happy to note how there was a shift in attention from method to challenges that organizations or communities are facing - so a focus on impact and change. A book worth reading for those that are facing or will face large scale changes.

Substantive and Provocative.......2007-01-16

In the complex, interconnected, global environment that most organizations work in daily, it is no longer possible for a few people "at the top" of the organization to have all the knowledge, expertise, and perspective needed for its success. At NovaLearning, we have used large group methods with colleges and universities for about fifteen years. I have constantly seen how institutions become better -- more focused, more strategic, but also more humane -- as they incorporate ideas and insight from across the system into their operation. When Bunker and Alban's earlier book was published, I was delighted because it captured well the range of large group approaches that had developed by 1996. This new handbook goes much further.

These are substantive case studies exceptionally well framed by Bunker and Alban's insight and experience. The diverse case study authors are generous in sharing at a level of specificity that makes real learning from their experiences possible. Each chapter is organized around the presenting challenge, the context and methodology (and why chosen), a detailed description of what actually happened, and perhaps most importantly, a set of reflections and insights that give the reader the chance to share in the authors' learning. I also found valuable the examples of how the innovative use of communication technologies can provide new opportunities as well as sometimes create unexpected limitations. I strongly recommend The Handbook of Large Group Methods to consultants who use or want to use large group methods. Individual chapters will also be important and provocative for corporate, academic, social, and political leaders and change agents.

How These Methods Actually Work In Practice.......2007-01-08

The strength of this book lies in the fact that it not only provides methodologies and resources for creating change in organizations in the 21st century; but also identifies how these methodologies actually work in practice.

A series of case studies ranges from addressing business issues at American Airlines and the BBC to managing change in organizations in Mexico and Indonesia. The reader is taken on a journey by those individuals who were responsible for implementing large group methodologies in their respective organizations.

By reading about these success stories and the methodologies they employ, you will be able to develop a plan for you own organization that will ensure a higher level of success that would otherwise be possible.

Walter Willigan, President, Willigan Consulting LLC

The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise

Average customer rating:

Learn how to build growth into a business plan
Exhilarating and Exhausting
A strategic stairway to business success
Very useful models and abstractions
Good book to think about the future of your company

The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise
Mehrdad Baghai , Stephen Coley , and David White
Manufacturer: Perseus Books Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Profit Zone: How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow's Profits
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Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

ASIN: 0738203092

Amazon.com

Why do some companies come and go while others endure? According to McKinsey & Company, Inc. consultants Mehrdad Baghai, Stephen Coley, and David White, the secret to a lasting enterprise is sustained growth. In The Alchemy of Growth, the authors offer a practical guide for jumpstarting expansion and keeping it going. "Growth is a noble pursuit. It creates new jobs for the community and wealth for shareholders. It can turn ordinary companies into stimulating environments where employees find a sense of purpose in their work," they write. "Growth's transformative power is akin to the alchemy of old."

The authors describe the approaches that have succeeded in helping their corporate clients around the world to step up the pace. For instance, companies must simultaneously focus on "three horizons" critical to growth. The first is the current bread-and-butter of the firm; the second, the fast-developing entrepreneurial ventures; and the third, the ideas that will germinate into tomorrow's profits. The best part of the book: the real-life examples of firms that have transformed themselves from laggards to supercharged growth companies. Take Disney, for example. After founder Walt Disney's death in 1966, the company stagnated, with its theme park and film business slipping. But after Michael Eisner took over in 1984, Disney boosted its average annual returns to 29 percent, on the strength of growth in such new avenues as Disney stores, ESPN, and resort development. The Alchemy of Growth is an instructive handbook for managers interested in spurring their companies to new heights. --Dan Ring

Book Description

From experts at McKinsey & Company's world-renowned growth practice comes a highly practical, field-tested approach to initiating and sustaining corporate growth

Growth unleashes benefits beyond the economic. It revitalizes organizations and invigorates the people in them, creating energy, a sense of purpose, and the glow of being on a winning team. Yet growth is often elusive, achieved at unacceptable costs, or managed in fits and starts. Based on over three years of research and application at high-performing companies around the world, The Alchemy of Growth is a comprehensive, practical approach to initiating, achieving, and sustaining profitable growth-today and tomorrow.

Customer Reviews:

Learn how to build growth into a business plan.......2006-02-28

Sustained growth is the motivation of any profit-making organization. As the authors point out, few organizations achieve sustained growth. Most have really good years, and those can be followed by really poor years. The authors see most firms faltering some point in their history unable to sustain growth.

By building growth into a business plan, the authors explain a method that will call for practical growth and help to build an enduring enterprise. Regardless of the size of a business, by following the authors' advice of managing across three "horizons" at once, the company will grow successfully and, most importantly, sustain that growth.

These three horizons reflect the company's present, short-term future, and long-term future. One must be able to manage these three horizons effectively by:
· defending and growing core businesses
· building up new core businesses for the future
· planting the seeds that may become potential businesses for the long term.

The authors point out that managing all three of these is no easy task. There will be areas where the priorities and requirements for these three horizons will conflict. This book will help leaders manage through these conflicts.

They will also learn how to:

· overcome a company's inertia
· build momentum for and through growth
· sustain growth

Exhilarating and Exhausting.......2005-05-01

This book provides a easy-to-understand mental model for thinking about organizational growth. However, the concept of growing and managing three "horizons" of growth at the same time exhilarates and exhausts. This book could be enhanced by incorporating sustainable principles like the Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, and Prosperity.

A strategic stairway to business success.......2000-06-09

A perspective on corporate growth and change which works through the need to maintain a simultaneous focus on three 'horizons' - today's business, emerging businesses and longer term options and the implications for strategy, management and structures.

As you would expect of a book out of the McKinsey stable, this is on an issue of importance to business, is well researched and analysed and very readable and well presented. As you would also expect, it is focused on large corporates, and on strategies for their business success, as measured by exceptional growth and returns to stockholders.

It provides one important perspective on the issue of corporate growth and development, to be compared with other perspectives.

There are obvious comparisons with Collins & Porras: 'Built to Last' both in the concern with continuing exceptional performance over an extended period and in the care taken to explain the research base from which the findings are derived. However, whereas Collins & Porras are concerned primarily with values and culture, Baghai et al are primarily interested in strategies for the selection, development and management of a portfolio of businesses and the implications of those strategies for structuring, staffing and operations.

The fundamental thesis is simple and can be stated in a few propositions:

The companies that have been successful in maintaining high rates of growth with superior profitability are those that have learnt to manage well to three different time horizons at the same time - today's business, the next generation of emerging businesses, and the longer term options out of which the next generation of businesses will arise.

In order to develop longer term options into 'core profit engines', a series of measured steps (concerned with finding ways of profitably building core capabilities and markets) are required, which the authors call 'stairways'. In the nature of things, not all stairways will lead to future core businesses, so a variety of initiatives need to be carried forward together. Management of the 'stairways' should receive significant senior management attention.

The skills and temperaments required to manage current business, to develop new business and to search out viable future options are widely different one from the other. The key to maximising the profitability of today's business is excellence of execution. Emerging businesses require business builders - the typical entrepreneurial temperament, while the identification of future options requires lateral thinkers and visionaries.

In consequence, the style of organisation and internal culture most appropriate to each of these foci are also different. Large corporates tend to find difficulty in encompassing these very different cultures. The authors discuss in some depth the resulting issues of internal culture, recruitment, structuring and transition, and their strategic management.

The strength of the book is that the authors identify a key issue in business success - the development and maintenance of a vigorous portfolio of businesses over the longer term - and work through the implications with clarity and thoroughness.

The cost of that approach is that other equally significant issues are assumed or left in the background. It is necessary to balance the valuable perspective offered with others that are also important. It is also necessary to be aware of the underpinning tacit assumptions - for example, the underlying metaphor of organisation adopted by the authors appears to me to be much nearer that of the organisation as a (money) machine, than that of the organisation as an organism. There is a marked contrast with the emphasis in, for example de Geus: 'The Living Company'. This is not to say that either is wrong, only that neither is complete.

Very useful models and abstractions.......2000-06-05

It seems like a no-brainer that companies need to grow in order to survive or compete, and this book isn't interesting because it tells us what we already know. What's interesting about this book is that the authors do a wonderful job of taking substantial research, abstracting the trends, and rendering their findings into very clear and usable models and messages that can help most managers who are thinking about growth. It was particularly interesting for me, as I work as an ebusiness consultant for a large IT integrator and many of my customers are trying to start new staircases (as described in the book) via Internet channels and I can immediately see the applicability of Alchemy to what they're trying to do.

The book is a quick read (almost comically quick, given the price) and mercifully low on buzz words. Right now, I don't see the appendix as being particularly useful, but I may find it more so later. Annotating the bibliography would have added a lot of value.

Good book to think about the future of your company.......1999-10-09

An useful book ! Surviving in the future requests perspectives and actions. Companies have a life cicle and gaining right to survive for a long time is not simple. So entrepreuners, directors and managers should think and act carefully for ensuryng the future of their companies, because there's not certitude of existing for decades.

Average customer rating:

Fun to read
Great Companion to'The Evolution of Cooperation'

The Complexity of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Helix Books)

ASIN: 0691015678

Book Description

The articles move beyond the basic paradigm of the Prisoner's Dilemma to study a rich set of issues, including how to cope with errors in perception or implementation, how norms emerge, and how new political actors and regions of shared culture can develop. They use the shared methodology of agent-based modeling, a powerful technique that specifies the rules of interaction between individuals and uses computer simulation to discover emergent properties of the social system. The Complexity of Cooperation is essential reading for all social scientists who are interested in issues of cooperation and complexity

Download Description

Robert Axelrod is widely known for his groundbreaking work in game theory and complexity theory. He is a leader in applying computer modeling to social science problems. His book The Evolution of Cooperation has been hailed as a seminal contribution and has been translated into eight languages since its initial publication. The Complexity of Cooperation is a sequel to that landmark book. It collects seven essays, originally published in a broad range of journals, and adds an extensive new introduction to the collection, along with new prefaces to each essay and a useful new appendix of additional resources. Written in Axelrod's acclaimed, accessible style, this collection serves as an introductory text on complexity theory and computer modeling in the social sciences and as an overview of the current state of the art in the field. The articles move beyond the basic paradigm of the Prisoner's Dilemma to study a rich set of issues, including how to cope with errors in perception or implementation, how norms emerge, and how new political actors and regions of shared culture can develop. They use the shared methodology of agent-based modeling, a powerful technique that specifies the rules of interaction between individuals and uses computer simulation to discover emergent properties of the social system. The Complexity of Cooperation is essential reading for all social scientists who are interested in issues of cooperation and complexity

Customer Reviews:

Fun to read.......2003-11-16

A sequel to his prior book, "the evolution of cooperation".
Iterated prisoner's dilemma is the center of this book,
with a particular focus on the collaboration in the interests of competiion.

No mathmatical background required and usefull referenced included.

Great Companion to'The Evolution of Cooperation'.......2003-09-26

This books covers what Robert Axelrod been up to since "The Evolution of Cooperation." Extensions to the original "Prisoner's Dilemma" have required new agent behaviors for stable solutions.

"Coping with Noise" deals with agents that make mistakes in their defections and cooperation.

"Promoting Norms" covers the fact that pure self-interest isn't a stable strategy and to promote stability requires norms - common behaviors among agents. The most interesting result from his work is NOT that agents should punish defectors - that is intuitive - but agents who DON'T punish defectors (of norms) must be "persuaded" to punish defectors to keep the norm stable. I guess we all need both the carrot and stick!

"Choosing Sides" covers landscape theory - the creation of population aggregates because similar agents tend to clump together.

There are other interesting sections and I like this book. I would normally give a five to this book; however, this is also a thin book. If there were more coverage of the material and a more in depth discussion of other peoples work, I would have given it a five.

Keeping The Family Business Healthy: How to Plan for Continuing Growth, Profitability and Family Leadership (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)
Average customer rating:

A classic in the field

Where to get it

Keeping The Family Business Healthy: How to Plan for Continuing Growth, Profitability and Family Leadership (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)
John L. Ward
Manufacturer: Business Owner Resources
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Perpetuating The Family Business : 50 Lessons Learned from Long Lasting, Successful Families in Business

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Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business

ASIN: 1555420265

Book Description

Less than one-third of family-owned businesses survive into the second generation. Why? Often they fail because their owners or managers avoid making needed decisions about the company's future. As a result, the firms cannot stay intact through the rapid changes that take place in business. Heads of firms that do survive learn to anticipate the changes, crises, or problems that may arise and effectively plan to deal with these changes. In this new book, John L. Ward provides comprehensive, practical advice on strategies that will help family firms plan for and survive future growth and changes in the business world. He shows how to maintain growing, healthy, and profitable companies; shape future business directions; prepare new leaders; ensure the support of family members for the firm; help the firm continue from one generation to the next; and balance the needs of the business with the needs of the family. Ward describes how to create strategies for the business and the family and combine them to create a comprehensive plan that resolves such issues as how the firm's assets will be shared and who will succeed the founder. He offers tools for doing market and financial analysis of the firm and its competitors- and gives advice on how to use or reinvest funds to build a stronger firm. Ward discusses alternative strategic plans and shows which businesses and families they are best suited for. And he provides examples of family and business strategic plans, sample strategic planning worksheets, a sample financial analysis of a family firm, and a questionnaire on the values of the business.

Customer Reviews:

A classic in the field.......2000-05-22

Prof. John Ward is a top writer in the field, and this is a classic. Anyone who is interested by this fascinating subject should read this.

Where to get it.......1998-04-20

Order through Amazon.Com, in paperback reprinted edition, from Business Owner Resources.

Average customer rating:

Excellent Overview on the Scope of Workflow
A Great Analysis of Workflow
Workflow Handbook 2001
Table of Contents
Workflow Handbook

Workflow Handbook 2001

Manufacturer: Future Strategies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Manager's Guides to Computing | Business & Culture | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Workflow Handbook 2001

Published in association with the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)

Edited by Layna Fischer

The definitive and one-stop reference work on workflow, standards and business processes; published in collaboration with the Workflow Management Coalition, the industry's standards-setting body.

Contributions from industry experts, includes Wf-XML Binding Specification and WfMC workflow glossary.

This latest edition of the Workflow Handbook provides valuable insights into the revolution in business process management and the attendant benefits currently underway as eBusiness opportunities increase. The Workflow Handbook 2001 has been designed as a one-stop source for organizations seeking or already committed to implementing workflow systems as part of their IT and EC strategy.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Overview on the Scope of Workflow.......2001-05-23

This book puts workflow in its proper context - much more: it convincingly shows how pervasive the subject has become, despite earlier reports on its death as yet another hype gone sour. On the contrary, the most glorious days for this technology still lie ahead as is eloquently presented in the chapter by Carl Frappolo "The many Generations of workflow", which I particularly enjoyed. It becomes clear that the biggest driver of this technology is and will be the internet, whether for e-business, e-government or enterprise portals, actually for most future web application. And this also means continuous adaptation and further development of the field. It is not surprising: after all behind many web application there is some process, and the automation of a process is called workflow by definition, even if it is not made explicit. I strongly recommend the book to anybody concerned with internet/intranet applications.

A Great Analysis of Workflow.......2001-05-23

I can only say congratulations on this most informative book. As a source of information about workflow it is excellent!!

Workflow Handbook 2001.......2001-05-19

The Workflow Handbook 2001 is exactly what the title indicates. It is a valuable handbook for anyone who is interested in learning about workflow management. Workflow, under whatever label you wish to give it, is a critical enabler in today's hot technologies, such as portals and e-business.

The first chapter - Workflow: An Introduction - describes the current understanding of workflow with the assumption that the reader has no prior knowledge of the topic. It is designed as a basic primer that will help with the appreciation of the more advanced topics described in later articles.

The 20-page paper on workflow interoperability standards for the Internet is clear and easy to understand. It includes details of which operations are defined in the current version of the Wf-XML interoperability specification and a reference list of business-to-business protocols that are being defined and standardized for capturing different business models and

processes. It also describes the efforts toward defining a standard for workflow interoperability that began in 1994 with the Workflow Reference Model from the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)...

Table of Contents.......2001-05-15

As Editor of the Workflow Handbook 2001, I feel that adding the TOC will help readers decide if this is the right book for them:

Divided into three main sections; "The World of Workflow," Workflow Standards" and "Directory and Appendices," Workflow Handbook 2001 includes the full new Wf-XML Binding Specification and the updated WfMC workflow glossary.

White papers cover topics such as the role of workflow in portal environments, managing time in workflow systems, and fundamental trends in application integration, development tools, and workflow engine cooperation.

The Appendix includes a listing of the more than 250 Workflow Management Coalition member organizations. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), a non-profit international organization of workflow vendors, academics, users and consultants (www.wfmc.org). Their contributions to the Workflow Handbook are educational in nature, vendor-independent and have studiously avoided any element of a sales pitch.

Workflow: An Introduction; Rob Allen, Open Image Systems Inc., UK

Workflow for the Information Worker; Keith Swenson, MS2 Inc., USA

The Many Generations of Workflow; Carl Frappaolo, Delphi Consulting Group, USA

Workflow-based Process Controlling-Or: What You Can Measure You Can Control; Michael zur Muehlen, University of Muenster, Germany

The Role of Workflow in Portal Environments; Mike Marin, FileNET Corporation, USA

A Supply Chain Management Framework using the TINA-C Business Model and a jFlow Workflow Prototype; Benito T. Giordani and Manuel de J. Mendes, GMD FOKUS, Germany

Managing Time in Workflow Systems; Johann Eder, University of Klagenfurt, Austria; Euthimios Panagos, AT&T Labs - Research, USA

The Birth of m-Commerce; Robert Haxne, Staffware, UK

Interworkflow: A Challenge for Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce; Haruo Hayami and Masashi Katsumata, Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Ken-ichi Okada, Keio University, Japan

Applying Intelligent Workflow Management in the Chemicals Industries; Jussi Stader, Jonathan Moore, Paul Chung, Ian McBriar, Mohan Ravinranathan, Ann Macintosh, United Kingdom

Workflow in the Public Sector; Kathleen K. Billie, DoxSys, Inc., USA

Building Complex Workflow Applications: How to Overcome the Limitations of the Waterfall Model; Stefan Junginger, BOC GmbH, Germany; Harald Kuehn, BOC GmbH, Austria; Mark Heidenfeld, BOC Ltd, Ireland; Dimitris Karagiannis, University of Vienna, Austria

From Workflow to e-Process Automation; Dave Hollingsworth, ICL, United Kingdom

Three Fundamental Trends: Application Integration, Development Tools, and Workflow Engine Cooperation; Martin Ader, Workflow and Groupware Strategies, France

SECTION 2-Workflow Standards

The Value of Standards; Betsy Fanning, AIIM International

Workflow Interoperability Standards for the Internet; James G. Hayes, Computer Sciences Corporation, USA; Effat Peyrovian, ECC Consultants, USA; Sunil Sarin, TIBCO Software, USA; Marc-Thomas Schmidt, IBM UK Ltd., UK; Keith D. Swenson, MS2 Inc., USA; Rainer Weber, SAP AG, Germany

Workflow Standard-Interoperability Wf-XML Binding

SECTION 3-Directory and Appendices

Terminology and Glossary; WfMC Structure and Membership Details; WfMC Officers; Coalition Member Directory; Author Directory

For an organization to achieve effective electronic communication, its workflow systems need to successfully interoperate both internally at the department level and externally with the organizations with which they do business. This can apply to external parties such as vendors, other businesses, and customers.

To achieve wide scale interoperability between organizations, cooperation between workflow vendors is critical. The Workflow Management Coalition ... has worked strenuously for the adoption of standards throughout the industry. Standards allow organizations that have more than one workflow system to connect them easily. They provide a fertile environment for workflow component development to grow and flourish, giving a rich array of options for user organizations. Most importantly, standards provide an infrastructure for inter-organizational process automation and the basis for electronic commerce.

Workflow Handbook.......2000-12-08

I was disappointed when the Workflow Coalition failed to bring out a next publication after the 1997 Handbook. At last, we have the 2001 edition, which is truly great. Like the last edition, this is basically a collection of white papers by a bunch of techno-gurus over a broad spectrum that addresses the interests of any organization involved in information technology.

I liked David Hollingsworth's paper on how workflow supports e-business. He's the top workflow guru at ICL and really knows the deal. Another paper I liked that made good sense was Michael zur Muehlen's "Workflow-based Process Controlling-Or: What You Can Measure You Can Control." (He's a wizkid professor from a university in Germany...)

There are about another 20 chapters (I'm going from memory) that cover workflow/BPR/IT etc. The appendices includes the workflow glossary, and the full nteroperability Wf-XML binding.

By and large, I'd say this book is worth the money (it's not cheap) - but I learned a lot (more than I thought I would). Go to the wfmc.org website for more info on the organization. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) creates workflow standards like Wf-XML, and was the first to establish stuff like workflow interfaces for e-commerce, b2b etc.

Our company uses their standards, because everybody else does.

Stretch!: How Great Companies Grow in Good Times and Bad
Average customer rating:

One of the worst business books I have read

Back To The Basics Of Growth

Common-sense approach, rich examples make this a great read

Stretch!: How Great Companies Grow in Good Times and Bad
Graeme K. Deans , and Fritz Kroeger
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Winning the Merger Endgame: A Playbook for Profiting From Industry Consolidation

ASIN: 0471468932

Book Description

Learn how to achieve sustained business growth even in the toughest economic times. Author A.T. Kearney surveyed some 29,000 global companies over fourteen years and studied more than eighty companies in depth, in order to determine how the best companies continue to grow in good times and bad. Based on this extensive research and on the best practices of the most successful companies, Stretch! presents a practical, step-by-step plan for positive organic growth.

Download Description

The secrets of sustained business growth-from the experts at A.T. Kearney

In Stretch!, experts from consulting firm A.T. Kearney show business leaders how to grow their businesses even in tough times. CEOs worldwide confess that they achieve, on average, just fifty percent of their growth targets. It's not because they can't grow, it's because they've forgotten how. Based on in-depth case studies and analysis of some 25,000 global companies over 14 years, Stretch! combines hard data, fresh ideas, and practical guidance on achieving real growth in any economy.

Graeme K. Deans (Toronto, Canada) is a Vice President of A.T. Kearney and leads the company's Global Strategy Practice. Dr. Fritz Kroeger (Berlin, Germany) is a Vice President of A.T. Kearney and a senior strategy consultant for clients worldwide.

Customer Reviews:

One of the worst business books I have read.......2004-09-11

Don't even waste your time on this book...it's written in an oversimplistic way and offers nothing new!

Back To The Basics Of Growth.......2004-01-23

Stretch! is an excellent roadmap for business executives to return their companies to an upward growth trajectory.
Written in an engaging style, the book takes the premise
that any company, in any kind of financial or competitive situation, can achieve and sustain profitable growth.
Deans and Kroeger use insightful case studies to
illustrate their four-stage growth model, and emphasize
that strong execution, not strategy, separates the winners
from the losers. Highly recommended!

Common-sense approach, rich examples make this a great read.......2004-01-22

Forget the jargon and fad theories. This book hits straight at the heart of today's biggest barriers to growth--and offers well-reasoned, straightforward advice on how companies can get back on track. The four-step approach, which is the core of the book, pinpoints growth opportunities in every aspect of how a company functions. The best part, however, is the examples that the authors pull from all industries, around the world. They not only make it an interesting read, they hammer home just how "doable" everything is.

Average customer rating:

This book is about building a sustainable and successful biz the old-fashioned way - by growing from within.
Back to the Basics
A must-read for all executives who want to win.
A Practical Road Map...With Soul
The real winners use organic growth

The Road to Organic Growth
Edward D. Hess
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0071475257

Book Description

Why is Organic Growth a Smart Long-Term Strategy for Your Company?

A rigorous two-year study of the top 800 value-creating public companies found that growth generated internally through a commitment to customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and profitability resulted in consistent employee retention, stock value improvements, and better returns on investment.

In The Road to Organic Growth, Edward Hess shares the full results of his breakthrough study, providing fresh, and often-surprising perspectives on what it really takes to foster organic growth. Using instructive examples from leading companies such as SYSCO, Best Buy,Tiffany & Company, Outback Steakhouse, and Stryker Corporation, Hess reveals the strategies these trailblazers used to achieve long-term growth from within.

Drawing upon original research, interviews, and in-depth corporate studies, Hess identifies the six keys to achieving organic growth and-most important-explains how to seamlessly and consistently incorporate them into a formula for sustainability and competitive advantage to

Develop a simple, easy-to-understand business model and growth strategy
Be entrepreneurial at the point of customer contact
Measure everything-from finances to operations to behaviors
Build an engaged, loyal, and multi-talented people pipeline
Find humble, internally-focused operators to lead your company
Be an execution and technology champion

The Road to Organic Growth proves that you can build a sustainable, successful business without the expense of acquisitions, financial manipulations, or devaluing your employees. By exceeding customer expectations, building an employee-centric organization, and focusing intensely on measurement and performance, your company will achieve consistent, solid growth from within.

Customer Reviews:

This book is about building a sustainable and successful biz the old-fashioned way - by growing from within........2007-05-06

A great book! I loved it. It is broken into nine chapters as follows:

1. Why is organic growth important?
2. Discovering the DNA of organic growth.
3. The organic growth winners: Interesting Facts.
4. An elevator-pitch business model.
5. Instill a "small-company soul" into a "big-company body."
6. Measure everything.
7. Build a people pipeline.
8. Leaders: humble, passionate, focused operators.
9. Be an execution and technology champion.

Chapters 4 - 9 are the ingredients to building a company through organic growth. If a biz can be explained in a just a few words while riding up an elevator, then it's leaders/managers can probably focus well on growing the business from within. If a biz is comprised of workers who care about the company instead of just showing up to work and collecting a paycheck, then the business will probably grow from within. The business will probably also have a pipeline of new managers if the employees care about coming to work for reasons other than just collecting a paycheck. These are the types of things discussed in the last six chapters of the book.

Generally speaking, companies either grow through "organic growth" or by "mergers and acquisitions." Many companies grow by using both methods, but the author only discusses the organic growth method in this book. There is talk that growth may take place by playing accounting games and engaging in financial manipulations. However, this really is not a method to create growth. Manipulations are just that - shifts of revenues and expenses from one accounting period to another. If there is gain today via manipulation, then there is going to be a loss next week or next month - guaranteed.

A small company soul is what this book is about. And I really enjoyed reading it. I liked the list of "Growth Questions" at the end of each chapter. They helped pull the chapters together for me. If you are putting together a business plan for a start up company, then I recommend you read this book. You will want to incorporate many of the ideas and concepts discussed here into your business plan and your implementation of your business plan.

I would have liked the book better if the print had not been so large. And since the spine of the book was not all that thick I got the feeling that the book was padded by increasing the font size of the text. The book could have been longer if there had been more examples of real world situations regarding what was being discussed. And I would have liked a chapter comparing organic growth to mergers and acquisitions. To discuss organic growth as the best way to grow a company, and to ignore M&A's as though they were a bad way, just didn't feel right to me. In fact, M&A's are a great way to grow a business. But the book was well-written and informative. 5 stars!

Back to the Basics.......2007-04-28

This is a phenomenal work. This book provides the attributes and tools of what it really means to "grow" a business. Hess brilliantly reveals some of the most fundamental concepts that make a "great" business great. Pages full of evidence and stories about engaged and loyal people, humble servanthood leadership, dynamic client service, and clear and conscise business models will stir entreprenuers as they read this excellent volume.

A must-read for all executives who want to win........2007-02-24

Hess has done it again. The Six Keys to Organic Growth
cuts through traditional leadership thought to show what great organic
growth leaders really do - execute. This book offers terrific insight into
some of the great organic growth companies. The Six Keys to Organic
Growth should be required reading for all young executives and MBA students who want to win.

A Practical Road Map...With Soul .......2007-02-23

Ed Hess has written a book with strikingly original research, compelling analysis, and real soul. This is an inspiring, challenging, and practical book for executives, consultants, and other business leaders (present and future) who believe that the best, most satisfying, and most sustainable kind of growth comes from within. For the good of their businesses and people--as well as the larger economy and society--organizations would do well to follow Ed Hess' road to organic growth.

The real winners use organic growth.......2007-02-07

Ed Hess has successfully identified the keys to building and growing a successful business: useable business and growth model, owning the customer, obsession with measurement, engaging loyal people, finding leaders for the company, and attention to execution and technological details. This is a must read for those building entrepreneurial businesses.

Thomas Kinnear, Chair and President of the Venture Michigan Fund and Executive Director of the Zell Lurie Institute, Ross School of Business

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