Results from the Heart: How Mini-Company Management Captures Everyone's Talents and Helps Them Find Meaning and Purpose at Work - Hardcover

Suzaki, Kiyoshi

9780743215503: Results from the Heart: How Mini-Company Management Captures Everyone's Talents and Helps Them Find Meaning and Purpose at Work

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743215508 ISBN 13: 9780743215503

Publisher: Free Press, 2002

Results from the Heart introduces a new and helpful approach to improving job performance, improving job satisfaction, and helping organizations better respond to the rapid changes that are an inherent part of today's business environment. Mr. Suzaki recognizes that a motivated and engaged workforce should be part of any strategy to obtain and maintain competitive advantage. --Carl Stern, CEO, The Boston Consulting Group Since the publication of Frederick Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management, managers have relied on logic to compel action. Now Kiyoshi Suzaki, one of the world's leading experts on enlarging the talents, self-esteem, and growth of the individual employee, argues that logic alone cannot move people to act. Productivity problems are inextricably linked to self-esteem, he argues, and worst of all to a prodigious waste of individual talent. But each solution is personal, Suzaki concludes, and found only within ourselves. "To find meaning and purpose at work we must use our brain," Suzaki says, "but listen to our heart." In Zenlike fashion he proposes that each of us ask ourselves a series of questions to determine the degree to which our brain is engaged with our heart. The framework around which this selfquestioning takes place is a groundbreaking concept that Suzaki calls "the mini-company." The author demonstrates how, within the larger workplace, each job is endowed with an almost spiritual meaning when each person -- at every level -- becomes president of his or her own area of responsibility. With simple diagrams, Suzaki shows how your boss becomes your banker or venture capitalist and your peers become your immediate suppliers or customers. The results are nothing short of astonishing. In Results from the Heart, Suzaki describes thousands of mini-companies he has "founded" during his worldwide consulting assignments. In most cases in which unhappy employees had previously "followed instructions like robots," there have been spectacular increases in both morale and productivity. If it is true that work is a journey, this manifesto for a more humane definition of the way we work is the roadmap.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

As proposed by Kiyoshi Suzaki, a "mini-company" is a new kind of internal structure within a larger business, managed like an individual but interconnected corporation and designed for both personal and organizational advancement. Suzaki, a worldwide manufacturing consultant and author of several previous books, fully defines the concept in Results from the Heart and shows how it can have positive impacts on employees and ultimately contribute to their success and their company's. The purpose, as he sees it, is to "go beyond just doing our work routinely. We need a fresh and lively new paradigm to continuously find purpose in what we do." This is achieved with his model, Suzaki argues, because it allows workers on all levels to make meaningful contributions in the areas over which they have responsibility. He explains how those in any department can create and operate one of these entities, from developing its mission and orchestrating its implementation to summarizing its progress and acknowledging its contributions. The idea may not appeal to everyone, but Suzaki contends it has already proven effective and he provides enough detail here for anyone interested in giving it a try. --Howard Rothman

About the Author:

Kiyoshi Suzaki is president of Suzaki Company, a worldwide management advisory service. He has traveled to over thirty countries to conduct seminars and consult to hundreds of companies of various sizes from broad industry bases. He is the author of The New Manufacturing Challenge and The New Shop Floor Management.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.