Holistic Management: Managing What Matters for Company Success

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471740632 ISBN 13: 9780471740636

Publisher: Wiley-Interscience, 2007

This book presents two recently developed knowledge areas that can significantly improve the management and the performance of business enterprise: System Science and Cybernetics and Key Performance Areas. Included in this book are advanced (and evolving) methods and technologies for planning and budgeting, creating and keeping customers, quality and productivity, innovation, improving organization capability, sustainability in the company's social and ecological environments, and profitability-all integrated with this new viable systems model and system thinking.

From the Back Cover:

A new simplified framework that improves organizationalperformance at all levels

Learn to apply a new, simpler approach to business managementthat enables you to cut through the mounds of literature ontraditional business management and actually get results. This newapproach, based on more than forty years of the author's fieldexperience, combines and extracts the best from two successfulbusiness management innovations:

• Viable System Model (VSM): Developed by Stafford Beer, the VSMmodels the principles of system science and cybernetics forapplication in management. The VSM gives you a more realistic viewof what your organization is and how it works, providing a new,better way to structure and manage the company and its businessesfor successful results.

• Key Performance Areas: Peter Drucker identified seven keyperformance areas that determine success for all businessorganizations. The author presents best practices for achievingorganization goals in all the key performance areas, and describeshow the VSM principles maximize results.

By combining these two management innovations, you learn notonly how to best structure and manage an organization, but you alsolearn to focus on and apply best practices in key performance areasto reach your organization's objectives. Specific methods andtechnologies are offered to assist you in all areas of businessmanagement, including:

Planning and budgeting—Creating and keepingcustomers—Quality andproductivity—Innovation—Improving organizationcapability—Sustainability in the organization's social andecological environments—Profitability

Case examples provided throughout the book demonstrate how theauthor's approach is applied in actual organizations. Not anesoteric theory, this business management approach is easilylearned and easily applied. Managers at all levels in business andindustry will find the material accessible and, most important,effective in improving performance in all key performanceareas.

About the Author:

After a management career in industry, William F. Christopher, MS, is now President of The Management Innovations Group and its literary agency. He has worked with more than 100 businesses in sixteen countries to improve their results in such areas as marketing and sales, new technology development, planning and budgeting, management reporting, and profitability. Mr. Christopher is the author of ten management books as well as numerous articles published in leading business and professional publications. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Science.