<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-Provoking
Review: Elliott Jaques devised a system for analyzing executive ability based upon an individual's time horizon--the maximum period of time in the future toward which his/her work activities were aimed in their performance. He reached this conclusion during extensive, longitudinal, empirical studies in England (see "The Changing Culture of a Factory" for example). His series of books reflect his elaboration and extension of this finding. He worked, for a time, with Dr. Owen Jacobs of the U.S. Army (and then the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, ICAF). Jaques groundbreaking book, "Requisite Organization" is more pictorial than "Executive Leadership" which followed it or the later "Human Capability". While the present work may be oriented more towards organizational structure, it is useful to practicing executives. True, it may present an ideal which cannot, at present, be achieved, but as the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. I wish more bosses would read Jaques' works--and carefully at that. I bought and loaned some of them to my boss. This volume is rather pictorial: the charts provided are engaging and thought-provoking. The more extensive, "Executive Leadership" followed this book in sequence--it is a fine sequel.. These books are most strongly recommended for serious students and practitioners of management as well as human resource professionals. They go far in attempting to move management into management science.
Rating: 
Summary: An extraordinary culmination of research and actual work
Review: The book is interesting, a follow on of General Theory of Bureaucracy and derived from Stratified Systems Theory. Its methods would probably only be used by companies who must (no other option) succeed in the long term...
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding thinking
Review: The only beef I have with this book is the lack of data. Jaques' thinking is crisp and insightful, and well worth reading whether you decide to use his system or not.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding thinking
Review: The only beef I have with this book is the lack of data. Jaques' thinking is crisp and insightful, and well worth reading whether you decide to use his system or not.
Rating:
Summary: Pounding insight
Review: The Requisite Organization is a text explaining how to organize and properly staff a beaurocracy for maximum effectiveness. Sounds painful and dull, but perhaps beaurocrats get such a bad rap because they are operating ineffectively.
Stratified Systems Theory is a hard-core scientificaly derived theory on who has the adequate personal capabilities to be a manager. The key concept is that leaders should be given responsibility based on their ability to think about long term complex problems. All other management competencies (emotional intelligence and other soft skills included) are secondary to this ability. It's a hard concept to handle, but backed with sufficient data.
Many secondary implications are discussed too. How should one promote individual contributors? What's the effective span of control a manager can have? How does one handle organizational conflict? Should one override a subordinate in a staffing decision? All these questions are relevant to today's manager, and it is good to have a theoretical foundation to think about these questions.
There's two downsides to the book. First, whenever there's a book stating, "The whole world is wrong and headed to hell in a bucket!" I tend to greet it with skepticism. Secondly, although Jaques has a tremendous amount of impirical work supporting his positions, it is not clear if the ability to think long term is the driving factor of personal performance in todays world of shifting organizations and personal loyalties.
Even if you disagree with half of what Jaques says, the originality, insight and rigor put into such a soft field makes it well worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: Requisite Organization, The Art of Self-Perpetuating Misery
Review: This book presents a complete system for building and managing an organization structure that will endure. The basic idea is to create hierarchies by function. The characteristic distinguishing layer from layer in a hierarchy is the span of time over which planning takes place. Work is accomplished by managing the flow of processes across functional area hierarchies.This all sounds great. Unfortunately, effectively managing cross-functional workflow in a requisite organization is extremely difficult and time-consuming. Since the attention of most people is on local optimization, and very few managers are up to the task of maintaining a global focus, functional-area hierarchies end up optimizing their local processes at the expense of global performance. Also, since this organization IS so enduring, it is extremely difficult to effect positive changes. There are some interesting ideas in this book. However, the ultimate product is usually going to be an organization that self-reinforces suboptimal behavior. If you want a self-perpetuating organization rife with finger-pointing, political in-fighting, and deadlocked workflow... implement a requisite organization. If you want a lean, mean organization in which ownership and accountability are tied directly to business goals and overall system performance is emphasized... look elsewhere. Start with "The Goal", "It's Not Luck", or "Critical Chain" by Eliyahu Goldratt. Also check out "The New Rational Manager" by Charles Kepner & Benjamin Tregoe, and "How Organizations Work" by Alan Brache; both are excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book. Follow its directives
Review: Want to reduce turnover, eliminate micromanaging, improve leadership and staff development, increase productivity, increase employee and managerial satisfaction, achieve organizational goals, and more? Read this book. Follow its directives.
It may take a while to digest the very dense information contained in this book, but for the serious student of organizational effectiveness, it is worth it. Very terse and prescriptive in his style, Jaques' writing may disenchant some. Yet the wisdom in this, his flagship tome, is immense. It took a while to sink in, and I found that reading several of his other books helped clarify the concepts for me. See for example: Executive Leadership, Social Power and the CEO, Human Capability, and Levels of Abstraction in Logic and Human Action. Requisite Organization, however, is the book to which I return for reference and details; it covers all the important concepts in a single volume. [The other books add detail and emphasize various points, so they have particular value too.] Organizational Design by Rowbottom and Billis helped me too, as did the excellent work by both Mark Van Clieaf at MVC Associates and Gillian Stamp at BIOSS.
I didn't, at first, fully understand the importance of the information contained in this book, or the solid research foundation that underlies it. A little known fact is that the concepts included in this book provide the foundation for leadership development, talent management, and compensation processes of organizations such as GE and the US Army. Many other authors and consulting organizations touting talent management, leadership pipelines, succession planning and the like derive their approaches directly or indirectly from Jaques - an interesting story in itself. Most give him little or no credit, though Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, honored Jaques with the Joint Staff Certificate of Appreciation for "outstanding contributions in the field of military leadership theory and instruction to all of the service departments of the United States". And the American Psychological Association honored him with the Harry Levinson Award of the Consulting Psychology Division for "a distinguished career and impressive accomplishments."
After reading Jaques, all the others seem derivative, shallow, trite, and somewhat off-target. Granted, other authors have something of value to say about organizational structuring, accountability, strategic planning, leadership, selection, mentoring, coaching, compensation, managerial practices, functional alignment, measurement, and the like. But while all the rest are shooting in the dark, Jaques hits center target!
Rating:
Summary: The best in linking complexity and human capability
Review: We have many theories on strategy and complexity. But no understadings regards how these links to human capability. Jaques explains and shows how to connect complexity to human work. And his understanding of human work is particular and clarifying - human work has to do with uncertainty. People in a managerial hierarchies has to deal with different degrees of uncertainty and Jaques shows it in a very organized and deep way. I think that there nothing better than this available in all managerial books available. A classic.
<< 1 >>
|
