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Title: The Irresistible Growth Enterprise: Breakthrough Gains from Unstoppable Change by Donald Mitchell, Carol Coles, Tobi Kahn ISBN: 1-57922-026-6 Publisher: Stylus Publishing, LLC. Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.77 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Breakthrough Work
Comment: [email protected] from Atlanta , 5 July, 2000
The Irresistible Growth Enterprise is a breakthrough work and a millennium message from one of the truly gifted business minds of our times.
The perspective and information in this book is of equal importance to the CEO, CFO, Corporate Director, executive, manager, supervisor, sole practitioner, first time entrepreneur, or student at any level.
This is more than a 'how to' book yet you may use it to work through what you must do to grow, thrive, change, and survive into the new century. It is more than a management technique book, yet the techniques introduced and developed here may be used as a guide for any who must manage to manage into the turbulent and exciting times ahead. Among the 'irresistible forces' with which we must deal are such events as globalization, market fluctuations, economic surges and reversals, new technologies and their economic impacts, natural events - weather and catastrophes, demographic changes, and the myriad aspects of human unpredictability. Don Mitchell tells us that 'Most people see irresistible forces as random factors or inconveniences, but The Irresistible Growth Enterprise will instead show you how to use all those forces instead of trying to avoid them.' This principle, at once ancient and modern, is essential to both business health and personal development.
The principles and practices in this book are more than mere ideas. They are the culmination of practical gleanings, over decades, in close business and interpersonal relationships with an astounding number of the nation's top executives dealing with real-time irresistible forces.
The Irresistible Growth Enterprise is required reading if you wish to deal effectively with the geometrically increasing velocity of change and development facing all of us today. As Don Mitchell says, 'This multiplier effect will increasingly happen with all irresistible forces, and this is the key insight upon which you must act now.'
Robert Lowe - Author Improvisation, Inc.: Harnessing Spontaneity to Engage People and Groups Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer (2000)
Rating: 5
Summary: Taking Advantage of the Irresistible Forces Affecting Us
Comment: History is replete with companies done in by forces beyond their control. History also celebrates the rare examples of executives who turned these "irresistible" forces to their great advantage.
Can executives of companies see the wave soon enough, catch and ride (read manage) it to sustained growth, rewarding themselves, employees, customers and shareholders along the way?
In their new book, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise: Breakthrough Gains from Unstoppable Change, authors Donald W. Mitchell and Carol Coles lay out a road map for managers that, if followed, will allow them to take advantage of forces beyond their control. Authors of the popular The 2,000 Percent Solution, Mitchell and Coles show how CEOs can benefit from flexibility when they confront irresistible forces and provide a set of principles for shaping vision, strategy, tactics, management process and organizational structure.
The book identifies external factors and obsolete ways of thinking. For example, "companies that strategize only to optimize the forces when they are positive, will face grave difficulties when the forces shift directions," say Mitchell and Coles. A lack of understanding can lead to "inappropriate action or no action," the authors suggest in their book.
In separate chapters, they describe a wide range of stalls commonly faced by companies in a section called, Overcoming Stalls and Taking Actions.
These stalls include:
A lack of direction;
Wishful thinking that favorable conditions will return;
A sense of helplessness about actions to take;
A defensive reaction and denial of the seriousness of the forces;
Relying only on the company's resources to handle the situation;
Covering up problems and "throwing in the towel";
Being too independent and believing they can succeed;
Being overly optimistic about succeeding; and
Underestimating the impact.
Mitchell and Coles set out eight steps that will allow companies to manage these irresistible forces successfully:
1) Recognize how measurements can help your company identify and understand more about irresistible forces;
2) use your own leading indicators to anticipate shifts in irresistible forces;
3) identify the future best practices for locating, anticipating and adapting to change in irresistible forces;
4) extend your vision to accomplish best practices beyond anyone else in the future;
5) identify the ideal best practices for benefiting from irresistible forces;
6) determine how to operate close to ideal best practices for locating, anticipating and adapting to your irresistible forces;
7) enhance your people's ability to achieve the benefits of irresistible force management; and
8) repeat steps one through seven for improved effectiveness in using the management process.
Last, the authors urge readers to "embrace the forces," encouraging managers to "seek out the irresistible forces" as a basis for early action. Survival, growth, and personal opportunity are at stake and at hand. They lay out a course of action for taking the lead inside your company and mobilizing people.
A chapter personalizes the entire process for each reader's overall life.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Gods of Lankhmar meet Napoleon Hill
Comment: Fritz Leiber's "Lankhmar" stories tell of a fail-safe system available to the citizens of Lankmar in case they were in grave danger of defeat: They could summon the Gods of Lankhmar, who would lay waste their enemies - and them, too. (Naturally, one does not summon them too often.)
Many leaders, thinking like managers, wait until drastic action is mandatory to save their organization - risking possible destruction in the process. Mitchell and Coles outline a series of steps, somewhat reminicent of Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" system, for recognizing danger (read: opportunity), planning for riding the crest of said opportunity, and for overcoming the organizational inertia that most large systems possess to make it happen.
Part of the change process is accepting risk: The "Gods of Lankhmar Effect" might do to describe the process they envision, as the change device carries the potential to expose the organization to collateral damage, or "creative destruction," as Shumpeter termed it. Knowledge of the risks involved contributes to the "stalls" many cohorts will use to block change. Much of the book is devoted to strategizing ways to overcome the more common ones.
Some of the stalls ("But that's not the way I thought it would be!") remind one of the reactions of individuals to personal loss - the grieving process is often described as a five-step one, including denial as an early reaction. Facing change of major magnitude, when the action called on for survival and the chance to prosper, may involve the preceived loss of what one holds dear. Like Themistocles, the innovative leader may have to sell his people on letting the Persians burn Athens, by offering a compelling vision of the marbled splendor awaiting the victors, as opposed to hoping that a conventional response to overwhelming force will somehow do the trick - magical thinking, if you will.
Tactics described by the authors start out with measurement concepts - an essential part of a rational decision-making process. Collecting relevant data, and knowing what that is, constitutes the first line of defense in directing organizational change. After all, what good is a thermometer when what is needed is a Geiger counter?
The essential quality of the book is this: Accept the need for overcoming a majority in your organization who will not see or accept change, and who may not accept the best alternative for meeting it, along with the consequent resourcing demands. Be prepared to identify and ally with those who come to share your vision. Anticipate dealing with stalling tactics, or be just another Cassandra - right on your predictions, but ignored by those you warn.
-Lloyd A. Conway
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