The Intelligent Organization: Engaging the Talent and Initiative of Everyone in the Workplace

Though bureaucracy appears on almost every "biggest problems with business" list, most management books simply suggest ways to make it work better. This book shows how to replace bureaucracy with fundamentally different principles for organizing and coordinating work.

Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot confront head-on the key organizational issues that are threatening the very existence of today's corporations. They assert that "bureaucracy is no more appropriate to the information age than serfdom was to the industrial era. Only freedom and community will work."

The Pinchots describe "intelligent organizations" that make full use of the intelligence of all employees. By developing and engaging the intelligence, business judgment, and wide-system responsibility of all its members, an organization can respond far more effectively to customers, partners, and competitors. The Pinchots provide a far-reaching guide to:
o establishing internal free markets
o liberated teams
o community in the workplace
o equality and diversity
o democratic self-rule
o multiple sources of authority
o limited corporate government

The Pinchots support the sweeping changes they propose with numerous examples of how these changes are already being implemented in such diverse organizations as AT&T, the Canadian National Railroad, DuPont, Russian entrepreneurial firms, Hewlett-Packard, and the U.S. Forest Service.

Gifford Pinchot leads the firm Pinchot & Company, which trains intrapreneurial teams to succeed, helps managers to better foster innovation, and designs reward systems that encourage innovation and wise long-term management. He is author of the bestselling classic Intrapreneuring: Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur, The Intelligent Organization , coauthored with his wife Elizabeth Pinchot, and Intrapreneuring in Practice, coauthored with Ron Pellman.

Elizabeth Pinchot and her husband, Gifford Pinchot have started and run four companies together, consulted to and trained executives of more than half of the 100 largest companies in the United States and many abroad, including AT&T, Banco de Brasil, the Canadian National Railroad, DuPont, Ford, Hoechst Celenese, Kodak, Motorola, the New York Stock Exchange, 3M, and the U.S. Forest Service. They have also led school and community reform projects, and collaborated in the writing of their influential book, Intrapreneuring. Elizabeth and Gifford Pinchot are also coauthors of The Intelligent Organization.