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Management Strategy: Creating Excellent Organizations

by Richard E. Mallory

280 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0517; ISBN 1-55369-704-9; US$25.95, C$39.96, EUR26.00, £18.00

Management Strategy: Creating Excellent Organizations is a unique how-to guide for organizational improvement which is designed for leaders at any level in private, public or non-profit organizations. It provides clear steps and actions to allow you to transform a mediocre organization into a great one, or to redirect and rebuild enthusiasm for excellence in an organization that has lost focus, or lost spirit.

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about the book      about the author      reviews and sample excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book Management Strategy: Creating Excellent Organizations is a unique how-to guide for organizational improvement which is designed for leaders at any level in private, public or non-profit organizations. You will want to read this book if you are committed to excellence. It provides clear steps and actions to allow you to transform a mediocre organization into a great one, or to redirect and rebuild enthusiasm for excellence in an organization that has lost focus, or lost spirit. Each chapter introduces an area for leadership action covering topics such as setting direction, developing necessary two-way communications, developing a system of innovation, developing a focus on customers, implementing performance measures and encouraging the development of work unit teams to improve key process. After each action area is discussed, options for effective leadership action are presented, and steps to implement each action are suggested.

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About the Author Richard E. Mallory is a management consultant, who specializes in business process review, strategic planning and organizational development. He is a recognized writer and public speaker, with 12 years experience as a senior executive manager in federal and state government. He is an expert on application of the Malcom Baldridge National Quality Award Standards in organizations, and served as an Examiner and Senior Examiner for the California Quality Awards from 1995 until 1999.

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Reviews and Sample Excerpts

What people are saying about this book:

"Rich Mallory is a role model for anyone who aspires to ethical, principled leadership. This book summarizes the philosophy and the practical steps he has employed to transform organizations in both the private and public sectors* Buy this book if you are passionate not only about results, but about leaving your mark on the team you lead, so that its effectiveness long outlasts your tenure."

Philip J. Romero, Dean, Lundquist College of
Business, University of Oregon

"Mallory has written a powerful book that is a "must read" for every leader who seeks innovative ways to expand the boundaries of organizational performance. Management Strategy: Creating Excellent Organizations is an exceptional book that provides a well-tested roadmap for every manager who must inspire people to create extraordinary results and achieve excellence. I strongly recommend it."

Thomas Hinton, President & CEO
California Council for Excellence
Administrators of the California Baldrige Award Program

" Creating Excellent Organizations doesn't just belong on your shelf, it belongs on your desk where it can be utilized. Each page contains information which can improve organizational performance and provide leaders and emerging leaders with ideas on achieving their quest for excellence."

Dr. Denzil Verardo, Chief Deputy Director
Administrative Services, California State Parks

C H A P T E R 1 Charting the journey

Deep down, every leader knows they should make a difference. Everyone expects leaders to be a force for greater success, and we expect this of ourselves. Your business unit may be excellent, good, mediocre or poor. Regardless, the expectation is that you, the leader, will make it better.

What can be said about the status quo? We know that the organization that we lead has been designed and operated in a manner that will result in achievement of the success that it is now achieving. It is likely that the results obtained last year will be similar to the results obtained this year. How, asks the leader, can I insure a significantly better outcome if I continue to do everything the way it is presently done?

Therein lies the overpowering desire of leaders to change things. It must be necessary to change people, change programs, re-organize or something, so that greater success may come about. It sometimes seems that there must be "one thing" which we could find or do that would make all the difference in the results we get. The risk, of course, is that if you inadvertently change something that is working well, like ignoring the quality of existing systems or breaking up an effective work team, that things could get worse. Leaders therefore have angst about change. They feel they have to change something, but they are afraid of what may happen if they change the wrong thing. They sometimes wonder if they have permission to make change, and if they need approval or resources. They can become wrapped up in the politics of change. With no permission, nothing is done, and blame can become an easy shield for defense of the leadership ego.

The politics, debate and worry about the quest to produce "the one big thing" can become so engrossing that the leader forgets to focus on the many smaller things they DO have control over. They forget that excellence can be a product of fundamentals, and a direct function of how they conduct the business of their unit. In fact, a large part of building an excellent organization is a function of inspiring people, giving them authority to carry out important functions, building their sense of responsibility, and creating an enthusiasm for a distant goal. It is a function of developing clear work processes with known rules of operation, getting everyone to work together and encouraging a system of making necessary changes to always improve.

In bringing this about, your leadership can be everything or nothing. Any company or organization can exist without great leadership, and many do. But leadership alone has the capability of revving the internal engine of an organiza tion, and developing new power, energy and commitment to get the job done. Leadership is the skill of obtaining and directing the commitment of others to finish a race, and to win it. Leadership for excellence is an event, which puts things into motion, to bring about a valuable end result. So if good leadership is an event, how does your leadership measure up now? In what direction does your leadership point? What valuable goal are you seeking? What kind of energy do you add?

This book will help you find answers to those questions; and it is important that you do, because they will have vast importance for your future success. They are questions that are the beginning point of achievement, and of greatness. The leader's personal choice with regard to goals and level of achievement are fundamental. They chart the journey on which you will embark. Charting the journey does not by itself guarantee success, but it is an elemental first step in a series of steps which need to be taken.

Just as a car battery fires the spark plugs that start the car, the first small spark for greater success comes from your interest in building a winning organization. So think about it. Do you have a strong feeling that you want something very positive to come about in your organization? If you do, let that feeling inspire you. Pat yourself on the back. You have just passed the first test in a series which will determine whether you actually can shake up the status quo and move on to a new level.

What comes second? Charting the journey does! As you scan the horizon in your mind's eye you will see that greater success (or "excellence") is the distant horizon: It is there and you are here. You know that if you want to build an excellent organization, there is something that you must do or have to get it; and this book is designed as a guide on the long journey you wish to pursue. This book will focus on the "things" which you will need to get there -and all of them will be within your current span of control.

C H A P T E R 9

Develop skills in decision-making

Decision-making is a microcosm of leadership. Decisions are the spark plugs of the powerful engine of leadership, and each decision you make has the potential to capture new energy for your organization, or to lose it. Decisions are moments of opportunity for leaders that are based on questions. Decisions are the basic currency of leadership, and through commerce in decision making each leader either increases his equity, or sees it wash away. Decisions are framed by the questions that we choose to ask, and the questions that we choose to answer.

In fact, the whole matter of who gets permission to ask questions, and how we will decide which questions are worth answering is in itself both a question, and a decision. This is the foundation of a system of innovation, testing and review, and it directly relates to the idea raised in Chapter 1, regarding the testing of a theory of business. We can either choose to have a deliberate system for the development and review of good questions, or we can allow it to happen by chance and fiat. If we allow questions only as a matter of chance and fiat our system of innovation, testing and review will be flabby and weak. Our chances of being an outstanding organizational performer are remote.

In this chapter we will encourage you to refine the work that you started in Chapter 5, where we encouraged you to give everyone the right to ask questions. Now that we can see that asking questions is important because it frames decisions, we will need to focus on a strategy for answering questions, and the matter of who gets to make all these decisions! We know that we do not have time to answer all the questions in the world, no matter how interesting they are. Even if every question had a likely benefit for us, we would only have the time and resources to handle some of them. So we know at the outset that managing the process of question answering and decision making will itself take some thought!

In our American culture there is a powerful stereotype that calls for our leaders to be great decision makers, and in this view we presume and expect that our leaders will somehow knows the best course of action for us. In this view we expect our leader to be like our lucky friend down the street who always seems to win raffles and lotteries: We demand that our leaders accurately divine the future for us or else! It is like cheering for our favorite sports team. We presume that the coach should make the right decisions so that the team will win, and if they loose we blame him and speculate whether he should be replaced. This view of leadership creates excessive dependency, even if imaginary, and creates an environment of whiners. In a work environment it gives those who suffer under such a system the perfect excuse not to take responsibility and to place blame with others.

As followers we should expect to have some of the authority for decision making and accountability for its results. As leaders we should be generous in delegation and stingy in placing blame. Leaders should not avoid decisions. Instead, they should become good at building a decision making process that works! Out of dynamic systems management we learn that in complex systems like most organizations, we want to insure that our work processes are always being streamlined, groomed and polished up to insure that customer needs are met. We know that new and unique needs rise up every day, we know that the environment changes, we know that technology presents new opportunities and that new ideas abound. The only way that we can hope to have active polishing up and grooming of work processes in every corner of our vast organization is to empower a lot of people at the lowest levels to ask good questions, and to make good decisions.

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Catalogue Information

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