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Product Description
This book offers a composite of the best management methods of some of the most innovative leaders in industry today. The author has spent months interviewing senior high-tech executives including Bill Gates of Microsoft, Lewis Platt of Hewlett-Packard, Jim Manzi of Lotus, Ann Winblad, the high-tech venture capitalist and others to find out why their companies have been able to maintain a competitive edge and high level of profitability in today's fierce marketplace.
The key themes of the book are the comparison of industrial age management to information age styles and the exploration of links between corporate culture and the effective use of technology in the organization. The electronic elite's leadership wisdom is revealed in six new paradigms for managing--all of which are explained through interviews and lively examples. They are:
1) business=ecosystem
2) corporation=community
3) management=service
4) employees=peers
5) work=fun
6) change=pleasure
Each section ends with an action plan for the reader to take into his or her personal business situation
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2641019 in Books
- Published on: 1996-05-28
- Released on: 1996-05-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 254 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Members of the electronic elite?young entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft?have seized on the advent of microprocessors to develop affordable personal computers that have left old-guard mainframe and minicomputer vendors agape. They arrived as upstarts; Gates was a college dropout; Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, a meditation teacher. They brought with them a new corporate culture, overturning traditional mindsets. The workplace, once a battlefield, becomes an ecosystem made up of symbiotic relationships. Workers on the loading dock are peers and on a first-name basis with the guys in the boardroom. They all dress informally, and at companies like Microsoft, employee motivation is fueled not by fear but by shared vision and stock options. Readers looking for hard criticism of Silicon Valley company policies will find it in short supply here. But James (The Tao of Programming) mounts a persuasive case that the elite companies' greatest legacy may be their new business culture and he admonishes workers on all levels to "be part of that transformation!" This succinct overview contains interviews with CEOs and end-of-chapter exercises. Illustrations.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
James (The Tao of Programming, Infobooks, 1987) describes the business strategies used by successful high-tech companies. Based on a new "corporate culture," these companies emphasize respect for the individual and value freedom and creativity over traditional corporate hierarchy and militaristic operations. James offers 34 business strategies to contrast with traditional corporate culture. These include "make work fun," "create a climate of trust," and "imagine the possibilities." The text is sprinkled with quotes from top CEOs such as Bill Gates of Microsoft. Each chapter ends with an action plan to assist in implementing the desired change. Although several recent books cover the business strategies of high-tech companies (e.g., Michael McGrath's Product Strategy for High Technology Companies, Irwin, 1994), none deals specifically with the issue of corporate culture. James shows persuasively how the concept of corporate culture can make a difference in this context. Recommended for business collections.?Kathy Shimpock-Vieweg, Muchmore & Wallwork Lib., Phoenix, Ariz.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
James proclaims that the archetype of the authoritarian manager has been supplanted by new leadership, best represented by those who run today's successful computer and software companies. James is a business and technical writer for computer and trade journals and author of The Tao of Programming (1987). Using examples drawn from companies such as Compaq, Novell, Lotus, and Intuit, and from interviews with 15 leading CEOs, including Bill Gates, he identifies 34 new management strategies, contrasting them with what he calls "traditional mindsets." For example, in this new corporate culture, business is seen as an ecosystem rather than a battlefield; managers serve rather than control. A major advertising and promotion campaign should generate interest in this title. David Rouse
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By Golden Lion
Who are the electronic elite?
1. Bill Gates, Mitchell Kertzman, Safi Qureshey, Eckhard Pfeiffer, Sall Narodick, Mitch Kapor, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and Lew Platt.
How did the electronic elite differ from past executives?
1. They have a different mindset from the executives of the past.
2. They bring unique leadership quality to the business world.
3. They are creative and build organizations that are productive and yet humane in their treatment of their employees.
4. Bureaucracy is almost nonexistent.
5. There is an egalitarian energy that inspires employees to try to change the world.
6. They have learned to create organizations that are both creative and flexible.
What has changed?
1. Computers have changed the world; computers affect almost every facet of life; our economy depends of computers to measure, transmit, and verify financial transactions; and the global communication network brings information locally.
2. Corporations are struggling and in many cases failing to meet the challenges of computer technology. One of the hardest hit sectors is the computer industry itself. Computer vendors had customers, money, experience, and technology but failed to maintain market position and profitability. The once respected giants of the industry are suffering from upstart competition.
3. Has the electronic elite have learn what works and what works and what does not work in the business environment of the future?
What was it about these upstarts that allow them to perform so well in face of such powerful and entrenched competition?
1. The electronic elite believes and feels that they are a part of a different culture.
2. They believe they have made a radical departure from the management styles and corporate behaviors of the past.
3. Mitchell Kertzman said, "IBM simply got too bureaucratic to be nimble when technology changed...If your culture is bureaucratic, you will not succeed in technology-period."
4. The electronic elite believe that their organizations are successful because they have successful cultures.
What kind of culture leads to success?
1. Decentralized companies have become more effective competitors than the centralized companies that preceded them.
2. Employees started using computer word process and email to correspond; the new technology connect the company through interconnected networks; the new technology was accepted and implemented within one decade; the technology explosion transformed completely the ways people worked and lived.
3. In a global sense, culture, not technology, always has determined which nations have prospered. Certain cultures are better suited to take advantage of advanced technologies than others.
4. Hammer and Champy, authors of "Reengineering the Corporation" admit that 70 percent of all reengineering campaigns fail.
What is Corporate Culture?
1. Authors Deal and Kennedy define Corporate Culture, as, "a strong system of informal rules that spells out how people are to behave most of the time."
2. Corporate culture focuses on values; the corporate motto express the symbolic expression of the companies core value; a large part of any corporation culture consists of the cultural mindsets that people use to evaluate the appropriateness of business behavior; a cultural mindset is a habitual image, metaphor, or paradigm that acts as an emotional and intellectual touchstone for determining what's "the right thing to do".
3. Business=Ecosystem (diversity thrives), corporation=community (goals that contribute to group success), management=service (management leadership), employee=peer (excellence is encourage from each employee - eliminates management time waste), motivation=vision (employees believe in the vision, enjoy what they are doing, and share in the profits), and change=growth (change is adapting to new market conditions).
How do you redefine your culture?
1. Eckhard Pfeiffer said, "Change needs to be constantly on the agenda...We adapt as we move along...The speed of change is not evolutionary, it is revolutionary. It can't be predicted.
2. Calibrate your current culture. The first step is to understand the culture your currently working in, the process of self-examination. The transformation in terms of the economic revolution has been dominated by information technology software and telecommunications.
3. Cultivate cultural role models. Determine the cultural attributes in "best in class" organizations that contribute to successful behavior and try to emulate this behavior in your organization. Choosing a cultural role model requires market research. How do the employees in the model company feel about work? Do they enjoy what they do? Are they having fun? What kind of individuals are attracted to the organization? What kind of individuals stay around for a long time? What kinds of individuals move on? Do employees feel comfortable listening and talking with customers? How do the model employee's feel about profitability? Do they believe they can make an impact? What can you learn from the model company?
4. Imagine the possibilities of a company that is more powerful and more flexible. Eckhard Pfeiffer said, "It's a matter of maintaining the momentum, and making it happy with excitement and good performance-meeting schedules and taking ownership." How would your people behave if they really believed this? "People would be paid based on results rather than on their position in the organization." Eckhard created an HP culture of trust, high achievement, integrity, teamwork, flexibility, and innovation.
5. Extend the vision by creating a vision statement of the ideal organization. Jim Manzi said, "It is insane to think that a cultural change can come directly from a top-down structure, or that there's a monopoly on good ideas at the top of the company". No matter how compelling the company vision, companies develop inertia. It takes time to look for new solutions, for new ideas, and new directions; it requires a great deal of communication; it takes time to overcome frustration and doubts. Success companies have organizations and processes that are flexible and can adapt.
Methods for removing roadblocks: 1. directly confront denial 2. Sacrifice the sacred cow 3. transform the vocabulary 4. reinforce the new culture.
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