Description
What are the root causes of bureaucratic creep? Why do costs grow faster than revenues? Why does it take so long to introduce and lock in even a simple change? Why don't people in product design, marketing, sales, and manufacturing talk - much less listen - to each other? Why does the budget process exhaust managers, strangle innovation, and sub-optimize productivity and profits? In short, what on earth has gone wrong with the way American companies are being run today?The answer, says famed corporate turnaround specialist John O. Whitney, is institutionalized mistrust - the internal blight that's strangling virtually every aspect of corporate vitality and profitability. In his words, "Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business. An enterprise that is at war with itself will not have the strength or focus to survive and thrive in today's competitive environment."
Now, in this groundbreaking book that is nothing less than a wake-up call for senior managers everywhere, Whitney explores how and why corporate mistrust evolves... the large and small ways in which it poisons the corporate culture... how it might be eliminated... and the prognosis for the American economy if it is not! Among the subjects analyzed in detail are such root causes of mistrust as information that is biased, useless, or wrong;
- incompetence or the presumption of incompetence - whether in bosses, peers, or subordinates
- the misalignment of measurements and rewards - an all-too-common state of affairs that pits people against one another and against the organization
- an imperfect understanding of systems; and finally, a lack of integrity - whether it's caused by an individual violator or internal conditions that need to be changed.
Drawing on first-hand experience with a wide range of American companies, Whitney offers concrete proposals on how to dismantle mistrust-breeding hierarchies and revamp the ways of recognizing, measuring, and rewarding performance. He also suggests radical change.
ISBN:9780070700178
