Whoosh : Business in the Fast Lane - Hardcover

McGehee, Tom; Tom McGehee, Jr.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0738204021 ISBN 13: 9780738204024

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

In this incisive and practical book, Tom McGehee reveals techniques he developed in Ernst & Young's Accelerated Solutions Environment (ASE) to help companies achieve radical innovation. Whoosh presents groundbreaking formulas to bring about sweeping adjustments in business, and guides organizations to jettison deadwood ideals in favor of a focus on the cutting edge. It offers a blueprint for a better type of organization-called a Creation Company-that generates ideas by the truckload. Creation Companies do not hesitate to abandon the industrial age artifacts-best practices, mission statements, policy manuals, etc.-that place false barriers between people and achievement. Whoosh will lead companies, and the individuals within them, to strive for and ultimately achieve the state of Whoosh that will transform the workplace right before their eyes.

About this title

About the Author

Tom McGehee, Jr. has spent his career teaching large organizations how to work together more effectively. He is Vice President of Cap Gemini/Ernst & Young's Accelerated Solutions Environment (ASE) in Dallas and a lead collaborative designer for global ASE centers. Tom has worked with companies such as Enron, Johnson & Johnson, Grocery.com, Genentech, and Compaq. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Reviews

In this short, engaging, but ultimately frustrating book, McGehee, a consultant with Cap Gemini Ernst Young, broadly sketches a strategy for remaining competitive in business in coming years: constant, radical innovation through breaking down barriers between an employee's achievements and those of the company. His advice boils down to these recommendations: "a leadership style that emphasizes freedom, not control... an understanding that success means creating the new and not replicating the old" and a "work style that values individual expression and collaborative work [rather than conformity and individual work]." While these concepts are sound and presented clearly, they're practically clich‚s in the management world. Managers who want to know how to make their organization into what the author calls a "Creation Company," one that understands its past successes and builds off of them instead of maintaining the status quo, may find the book short on nuts-and-bolts advice. McGehee is a lively writer who has extensive experience with large organizations, such as British Petroleum, Johnson & Johnson, Genentech and American Airlines, but this book won't mark his breakout.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

McGehee is a vice-president at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Accelerated Solutions Environments. He suggests that the benchmark for measuring today's successful company is its ability to innovate and change. Companies that have learned to do this well are "creation companies"; those that have not are "compliance companies." Creation companies are typified by a leadership that emphasizes freedom over control, that understands that success means creating the new and not replicating the old, and that values individual expression and collaboration over group conformity and individual work. Compliance companies have command and control leaders who judge accomplishment by the ability to repeat past success and maintain a conformist corporate culture. McGehee provides models for becoming a creation company and offers advice on how best to lead one. Employees in creation companies exhibit excitement, confidence, anticipation, eagerness, and unstoppability. Whoosh is the sound they make as they sweep by the competition. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A consultant for Cap Gemini Ernst &Young's Accelerated Solutions Environment, McGehee defines "whoosh" as the feeling one gets at the moment of creative business success. To unleash this energy, companies need to change from "compliance companies" (companies that try to replicate past successes) to "creation companies" (companies that look to the future). A "creation company" values collaboration, freedom, focus, networking, the Internet, and distributed judgment. In this management scheme, argues McGehee, beginners are more important than experts because of their fresh, open viewpoint. The author is willing to jettison such standards as best practices, mission statements, and policy manuals if they get in the way of innovation. With a committed staff, this method will work as well as any other to transform the workplace. This breezy read offers fewer examples than most management books, no scholarly apparatus, and as much enthusiasm and superficiality as any in the field. The word responsibility is hardly mentioned. Neither unique enough nor good enough to recommend highly, it is nonetheless a harmless, acceptable purchase for a public library if someone asks for it. Patrick J. Brunet, Western Wisconsin Technical Coll., LaCrosse
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0738204021
• ISBN 13: 9780738204024
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208