The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century - Hardcover

Denning, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470548681 ISBN 13: 9780470548684

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2010

Synopsis

A radical new management model for twenty-first century leaders

Organizations today face a crisis. The crisis is of long standing and its signs are widespread. Most proposals for improving management address one element of the crisis at the expense of the others. The principles described by award-winning author Stephen Denning simultaneously inspire high productivity, continuous innovation, deep job satisfaction and client delight. Denning puts forward a fundamentally different approach to management, with seven inter-locking principles of continuous innovation: focusing the entire organization on delighting clients; working in self-organizing teams; operating in client-driven iterations; delivering value to clients with each iteration; fostering radical transparency; nurturing continuous self-improvement and communicating interactively. In sum, the principles comprise a new mental model of management.

• Author outlines the basic seven principles of continuous innovation
• The book describes more than seventy supporting practices
• Denning offers a rethinking of management from first principles

This book is written by the author of The Secret Language of Leadership―a Financial Times Selection in Best Books of 2007.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Can established organizations learn how to innovate?

The Leader's Guide to Radical Management shows how innovation can become an organization-wide capability, a part of an entire firm's DNA.

The need is urgent. The economy-wide rate of return on assets is one quarter of 1965 levels. Workers are disgruntled. Customers are frustrated. Brands are unraveling. Executive turnover is accelerating. Innovation is faltering. These issues call for a radically different kind of management.

Here you will find the definitive guide to pulling apart the black box of traditional management and putting the pieces together in a new way. It means a wholly different way of thinking, speaking, and acting at work. It leads to workplaces that are more productive and more fun. These workplaces feel different.

Most management improvements address one facet of the organization at the expense of others. Implementing radical management leads simultaneously to high productivity, continuous innovation, deep job satisfaction, and client delight.

Praise for The Leader's Guide to Radical Management

"This masterful book is a delight to read―articulate, provocative, and illuminating. Success is about surpassing expectations, and Denning does so here. This isn't merely radical, it's revolutionary!"
―Peter Guber, CEO, Mandalay Entertainment Group

"This is a wonderful book. It's like having an extended conversation with Steve Denning, who is one of today's most acute and creative critics of traditional management thinking. You would ignore the ideas in this witty, candid, and erudite book at your own peril. Denning shows how to reinvent management based on a more accurate and effective understanding of how humans work best together. This book makes a great text for any extended discussion about how we should be doing things."
―Laurence Prusak, author, Working Knowledge and What's the Big Idea?

From the Inside Flap

"This is a book about a radically different way of managing. . . . It leads to workplaces that are more productive and more fun. These workplaces feel different."
--from the Introduction

In this provocative book, Stephen Denning introduces the seven principles of radical management, along with more than seventy supporting practices. Radical management focuses the entire organization on the goal of constantly increasing the value of what it offers to its clients, not merely producing goods or services or making money for shareholders. The seven interlocking principles comprise a new mental model of management: focusing the entire organization on delighting clients; working in self-organizing teams; operating in short client-driven iterations; delivering value to clients with each iteration; fostering radical transparency; nurturing continuous self-improvement; and communicating interactively. The principles and practices simultaneously inspire high productivity, continuous innovation, and deep job satisfaction, and result in surpassing client expectations.

Rather than offering a quick fix for today's complex workplace problems, radical management rethinks the nature and purpose of management. It addresses the questions: "What is good? Who is it good for? Is it good for the organization? Is it good for those doing the work? Is it good for those for whom the work is done? Is it good for society at large?" At the very foundation is open communication. Managers and workers must communicate interactively, using authentic narratives, open-ended questions, and deep listening, rather than treating people as things to be manipulated.

The principles and practices outlined in this book create a work environment that lifts up the human spirit and inspires the exhilaration of extraordinary performance.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0470548681
• ISBN 13: 9780470548684
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336