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Innovation at Fever Pitch
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12039 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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12 / 1987 |
4,094 Words |
| Author
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Martin M. Chemers
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THRIVING ON CHAOS
A Revolutionary Agenda for Today's Manager
Tom Peters
New York: Knopf, 1987
384 pp. $19.95
The gloomy prognosticators of the imminent demise of American industry are many and varied. An exception has been Tom Peters, who, in his two earlier books, In Search of Excellence and A Passion for Excellence, co-authored with Robert Waterman, has been a prophet of hope. It is now apparent that the prophet is getting restless with the sluggish response form the faithful. The voice has become louder and more shrill, and the demand is for action, now! In fact, most of the sentences in this new "handbook for Managerial Revolution" could end with an exclamation point.
We are warned early that this is not a book for the faint of heart. In the preface, titled "Rx: Revolution!," we are told that "the rate of change demanded by these prescriptions and the boldness of the goals suggested will be unfailingly new--and frightening." What follows is a detailed and explicit blueprint for the organization that can meet the challenge of a newly competitive world, a "world turned upside down."
The overarching principle and premise on which the book stands is that the world of business is completely and irrevocably changed. The times of predictability and order are past. The theme, repeated throughout the book, is that this is "a world turned upside down." The contemporary business and governmental organization, its managers and workers, must learn to live with and thrive on chaos.
This arena of incredibly fast-paced change, information equivocality, and market unpredictability is not just the battleground for a few traditionally innovative high-tech industries. Peters tells us, "no company is safe." American companies are being badly beaten by foreign competitors--European as well as Asian--because we produce shoddy goods that are poorly serviced, and we are unresponsive to world demand. The answer to the problem lies in the development of drastically restructured organizations and management systems characterized by dramatically increased flexibility and continuous "short-cycle" innovation. We must embrace constant improvement through constant change as our only hope of meeting the competition.
While the rhetoric may be overly dramatic, much of what the book has to say is interesting and insightful, and bears careful attention. To his credit, Peters is not vague or equivocal on the particulars of industrial salvation. The book introduces forty-five specific prescriptions for organizational structure and management style. They are grouped into five broad categories concerned with responsiveness to customers, highly innovative product or service development, motivated and highly skilled employees, leadership that emphasizes and rewards constant change, and organizational structures and systems that are decentralized and simplified to focus attention on the previous four goals. Like the earlier "excellence" books, Thriving on Chaos is based on Peters' extensive familiarity with effective and ineffective organizations and punctuated with anecdotes that illustrate each point and prescription.
The competitive company, or public-sector
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