The Fall of the Alphas: The New Beta Way to Connect, Collaborate, Influence---and Lead - Hardcover

Ardi, Dana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312681933 ISBN 13: 9780312681937

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2013

Synopsis

The new model for business success: replace top-down Alpha management with collaboration, connection, and increased job satisfaction―the Beta model

The Fall of the Alphas explores the sweeping changes taking place in the corporate and social cultures of today's most successful organizations. Utilizing years of advising companies of all sizes, hypergrowth startups to Fortune 500 company management teams, Dana Ardi identifies a pivotal evolutionary moment: the decline of the traditional Alpha-model (the top-down, male-dominated, authoritarian, corner-office hierarchy that has ruled organizational landscapes for so long), as it is replaced by collaboration, connectivity, and the sharing of power. As Ardi persuasively demonstrates, in the new Beta organization, it is the team players, the sage advisors, the network experts, the trusted assistants, and the communications facilitators who are coming to the fore, as savvy managers learn to lead through influence and collaboration rather than authority and competition. From technology behemoths to small and medium-sized businesses, Beta has become the new paradigm for success in today's challenging market.

With insight and practical guidance, Dana Ardi shows how any business organization or team can re-organize from Alpha to Beta―and be more effective, flexible, and profitable

About this title

About the Author

DANA ARDI is a leader of the human capital movement, distinguished by her expertise in the executive coaching and recruitment field. She is Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, working to advise and transform businesses through people. She lives in New York.

Reviews

The alpha model—boss reigning from the corner office, issuing orders, and maintaining distance—is slowly being replaced as the model for business success. What works better in the information age is the beta model—management by collaboration, connection, and shared power. After years of advising Fortune 500 companies, Ardi has observed the evolution from hierarchic to horizontal management. Knowledge industry startups have provided the model that more traditional companies are beginning to adopt, and Ardi furnishes ample case studies of both. But she looks beyond the contemporary business world to provide history of the evolution of labor from hunter-gatherers to farmers, from the industrial to the information age, and the impact of globalization that makes the alpha model outdated. She also looks to anthropology, biology, genetics, psychology, sociology, and information technology for the social forces that have prompted a reexamination of alpha male-dominated organizational structure. Noting the potential of higher flexibility and creativity promised by the beta model, Ardi offers solid advice on how more companies can make the switch. An insightful look at a pivotal change in business management style. --Vanessa Bush

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312681933
• ISBN 13: 9780312681937
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240