Booked

Buisness thinking between the covers, by FRANK DILLON

Together

by Richard Sennett

Allen Lane €30

Sennett, a professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, has produced a thoughtful book on cooperation. Society today involves living with people who differ racially, ethnically, religiously and economically. Sennett argues that living with people unlike ourselves involves more than just goodwill – it requires skill. Cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skilful cooperation lies in learning to listen well rather than to debate.

It traces the evolution of co-operation from medieval churches and guilds, to Renaissance workshops and courts, then on to science laboratories and diplomatic embassies. A major challenge now, according to Sennett, is that structural unemployment rates of 15-20 per cent are becoming normal in western societies. It’s a fantasy, he says, to think that new creative or green economies can do much to offset the drift of jobs here.

While not a pure business text, Sennett touches on many important economic issues. He remains hopeful that as social animals we are capable of cooperating more deeply than the existing social order envisions, and he suggests ways in which the weak level of cooperation he sees in society can be strengthened.

Beyond Performance Management

by Jeremy Hope and Steve Player

Harvard Business Review Press €25 Sub-titled “Why, When, and How to Use 40 Tools and Best Practices for Superior Business Performance”, this book is designed to help managers properly understand the many management tools that are at their disposal but are misused by most organisations.

The authors contend that only about 30 per cent of the tools used to define strategic direction, manage customers and costs, and boost workers’ performance, are employed correctly.

Hope and Player critically review dozens of these tools – from mission statements and rolling forecasts to performance indicators and appraisals – and explain how to select the right tools, implement them correctly, and extract maximum value.

Among the interesting observations is that many CEOs complain about lack of visibility and poor response times when unexpected events happen, which is often partly the result of their own fixation on meeting predetermined targets.

The authors also suggest that organisations stop making strategy a top-down process. The best ideas are more likely to come from junior employees rather than board-level executives, so devolving strategy to teams closer to the customer makes sense.

The Transformation Roadmap

by Paul Mooney

Oak Tree Press €19.99

This book about organisational change aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It describes how change is managed in real organisational settings and is based on the experiences of several hundred change management initiatives across a variety of sectors, both in Ireland and abroad. The book explores the three stages that occur in all successful change journeys – developing an overall change strategy, choosing specific change targets and systematic change implementation. It includes a chapter on identifying change levers, human responses to change, building the capability of senior management around change and future proofing.

Written and presented in a highly accessible format, Mooney doesn’t offer a total panacea in this area and refreshingly acknowledges that change is an inherently messy process. He says that Irish organisations are overly reliant on organisational concepts and change management models developed in other countries, which ignore the subtle cultural differences that exist here.

The Irish case studies, including those of the local operation of Georgia-Pacific, Bord na Mona and the EBS Building Society will thus prove particularly interesting to readers here.