Karen Phelan

I'm Sorry I Broke Your Company (eBook, ePUB)

When Management Consultants Are the Problem, Not the Solution

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

It's the People, Stupid! Karen Phelan is sorry. She really is. She tried to do business by the numbers-the management consultant way-developing measures, optimizing processes, and quantifying performance. The only problem is that businesses are run by people. And people can't be plugged into formulas or summed up in scorecards. Phelan dissects a whole range of consulting treatments for unhealthy companies and shows why they're essentially fad diets: superficial would-be fixes that don't result in lasting improvements and can cause serious damage. With a mix of clear-eyed business analysis, heart-wrenching stories, and hard-won lessons for both consultants and the people who hire them, this book is impossible to put down and impossible to ignore. Karen Phelan and other consultants may have "broken" your company, but she's eager to make amends. "Finally, an author challenging our broken management models who has credibility-she has been there. Karen Phelan not only explains why the emperor-our sacred ways of managing-has no clothes but provides us with insightful alternatives that promise to add real value to our organizations and the people that make them function." -Dean Schroeder, award-winning coauthor of Ideas Are Free "Funny, irreverent, and outrageous, this book is making a deeply serious point: talking to actual people and figuring out how to help them work together better is what's going to make organizations stronger, not another PowerPoint presentation." -Rosina L. Racioppi, President and CEO, Women Unlimited, Inc.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. Dezember 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781609947415
• Artikelnr.: 38331176

Autorenporträt

Karen Phelan is a cofounder of Operating Principals, a consulting firm that replaces bad business practices with ones that work. A former engineer with degrees from MIT, she spent more than a dozen years as a consultant with Deloitte & Touche and Gemini Consulting and afterward worked in management at Fortune 100 companies.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Introduction
Why I Blame Management Consultants
About this book

Chapter 1. Strategic Planning can't Predict the Future: Strategy Development is a Vision Quest
The downside of having a strategy is missed opportunities
Managing by the numbers only manages the numbers
Predicting the future is risky business
Planning for the future and predicting the future are not the same thing

Chapter 2. Make Sure You Reengineer the People, too: Optimized Processes only Look Good on Paper
Having people to rely on for improvements is all you really need
People should manage the methods and not the methods manage the people
In a human-created world, most of the problems are created by humans
It s hard to optimize a person 36

Chapter 3. Metrics Are the Means, not the Ends: Numerical Targets are Measure-mental
Everything gets measured all the time
It s funny how the targets are always met
Measures create conflict where there normally is none
Take a goal you want and turn it into something you don t

Chapter 4. Standardized Asset Management is a SHAM: How Performance Management Demoralizes the Performers
Performance management systems only enforce the strategic objective of implementing performance management systems
There s so much effort to ensure fairness in a process that is inherently unfair
Let me tell you what I like and don t like about you
We re not only in it for the money

Chapter 5. I am a Manager, and So Can You: Why is the Manager's Handbook is 609 Pages Long?
There s no shortage of management models and techniques
How I inadvertently managed to manage
Being a good manager isn t all that different from being a good person

Chapter 6. Stop Perpetrating Talent Management on People: Albert Einstein Was NOT an A-player
Sorting out the A, B, Cs
Performance is situational
The problem with labels is that labels stick
Sometimes the A players are alienated by this system, too
The Peter Principle is not a joke
We are pushing people toward mediocrity
Fit the jobs to the people, not the people to the boxes

Chapter 7. Great Leaders Don't Fit the Models: Steve Jobs Failed My Leadership Competencies
The ongoing debate: What traits make a leader?
If traits don t make a leader, what are leadership assessments assessing?
We use teams because one person can t be good at everything
Trying to be good at everything is the way to achieve mediocrity
There is no recipe or checklist for self-actualization

Chapter 8: Out of the boxes, charts, and spreadsheets: How to think without consultants
Management is not a science
How to think better
How to think about working with consultants
Conclusion
Resources
a. A Measure of Truth
b. The Method of Truth
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author

Rezensionen

Finally, an author challenging our broken management models who has credibility she has been there. Karen Phelan not only explains why the emperor our sacred ways of managing has no clothes but provides us with insightful alternatives that promise to add real value to our organizations and the people that make them function.
Dean Schroeder, award-winning coauthor of Ideas Are Free

Funny, irreverent, and outrageous, this book is making a deeply serious point: talking to actual people and figuring out how to help them work together better is what s going to make organizations stronger, not another PowerPoint presentation.
Rosina L. Racioppi, President and CEO, Women Unlimited, Inc.