PDF Download The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light
This is it the book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light to be best seller lately. We offer you the most effective offer by obtaining the amazing book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light in this website. This The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light will certainly not only be the sort of book that is hard to locate. In this web site, all types of publications are offered. You could search title by title, author by writer, and publisher by publisher to find out the very best book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light that you could read now.
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light
PDF Download The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light
Spend your time also for simply couple of minutes to review a book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light Checking out a book will never ever lower and also squander your time to be ineffective. Checking out, for some people end up being a demand that is to do daily such as spending quality time for eating. Now, what concerning you? Do you want to review an e-book? Now, we will certainly show you a new e-book entitled The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light that could be a brand-new means to discover the expertise. When reading this e-book, you can get one thing to consistently keep in mind in every reading time, even detailed.
It is not secret when hooking up the composing skills to reading. Checking out The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light will make you obtain even more sources as well as sources. It is a manner in which could boost just how you ignore and recognize the life. By reading this The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light, you could greater than just what you get from various other book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light This is a famous book that is published from well-known author. Seen form the author, it can be trusted that this publication The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light will give several inspirations, concerning the life and also encounter and also every little thing within.
You might not have to be doubt about this The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light It is not difficult means to get this book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light You could just see the distinguished with the web link that we supply. Here, you could purchase the book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light by on-line. By downloading The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light, you can discover the soft file of this book. This is the local time for you to start reading. Even this is not published book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light; it will precisely provide even more advantages. Why? You might not bring the printed book The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light or only pile the book in your house or the workplace.
You can carefully include the soft data The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light to the device or every computer hardware in your office or residence. It will certainly assist you to constantly proceed reviewing The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light each time you have leisure. This is why, reading this The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light doesn't give you problems. It will certainly give you essential resources for you who intend to start writing, writing about the comparable publication The Four Pillars Of High Performance, By Paul Light are different publication field.
How to stay on course and achieve extraordinary performance in a sea of change
In today's change-or-die business environment, companies that achieve the highest levels of performance are "robust organizations"--those that adapt quickly and without losing their strategic direction. Distilling decades of research conducted by Rand, one of the nation's most respected business think tanks, The Four Pillars of High Performance explores the strategies to truly manage change. Using examples, author Paul C. Light extracts powerful lessons for managers and executives, and he provides readers with:
- Never-before-published research by Rand on the shared traits of the highest-performing companies
- Cutting-edge techniques for improving performance across an organization
- Valuable insights into the five major attributes of agility, alignment, metrics, incentives, and impact
- Case studies and vignettes drawn from the experiences of industry leaders in every sector
- Sales Rank: #1982867 in Books
- Published on: 2005-01-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x 1.05" w x 6.30" l, 1.23 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Review
"Important reading for anyone interested in managing organizational change." -- Robert B. Reich, Brandeis University, and former Secretary of Labor, January 19, 2004
"This is a serious addition to the literature with novel and potentially exciting insights." -- John S. Reed, former chairman, Citigroup
The Four Pillars" is the best of the best. This one is worth reading and referencing. -- John Fayed, CEO and Publisher, Business Book Reviews
From the Author
I wrote The Four Pillars of High Performance to help today’s organizations deal with the increasing uncertainty that surrounds them. Organizations must do more than just plan on uncertainty, however. They must also be alert to changing circumstances, agile in hedging against surprises and exploiting opportunities, adaptive in addressing new markets, and aligned around a clear mission to excel. In a word, they must become more robust—able to take a punch from a range of futures, but also able to shape the future that they want.
Drawing upon hundreds of reports, in-depth interviews with more than 100 senior researchers, and an internet survey, I start The Four Pillars of High Performance by summarizing the four problems that plague organizations as they struggle to confront uncertainty: ignorance of important information about the future, inflexibility in responding to surprises and unexpected events, indifference toward changing circumstances and markets, and inconsistency in the commitment to high performance. These four vulnerabilities would be difficult to manage under low uncertainty, but, as The Four Pillars argues, organizations face increasing uncertainty as the revolutions in living things, materials and manufacturing, information, global commerce, and strategies multiply. Organizations can either deal with the uncertainty by getting robust, or perish.
The rest of The Four Pillars provides detailed advice on what matters most to high performance, how organizations can strengthen their ability to manage uncertainty, and what they can do to actually implement successful change.
From the Inside Flap
"Light distills essential lessons from a mountain of RAND studies and a mass of related interviews for managers of all stripes—whether you run a hotel, an armored battalion, or think tank. Light’s new volume should be the gold standard for building high performing organizations in a rapidly changing world. A valuable addition to any manager’s bookshelf." Alicia Munnell, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences, Boston College
"For many years, Paul Light has carried the torch for a more responsive, more effective public service. It’s been a challenging vocation, with more than its share of frustration. Now, from the highly disciplined research and wide variety of studies at RAND, he has drawn promising lessons for all organizations striving to reach their missions amid inherent uncertainties. All of us interested in improving the performance of government will find stimulus from the Four Pillars of High Performance." Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, former chairman of James D. Wolfensohn & Company
"This is a fascinating book...in some ways a meta-analysis of RAND work over many years and on many problems projected onto issues of organization. For those of us interested in such things, it is a serious addition to the literature with novel and potentially exciting insights." John S. Reed, former chairman and co-CEO of Citigroup
"Since its founding in 1948, the RAND Corporation has been one of the greatest, and least recognized, American resources for the understanding of management and organizations. Paul Light's masterful study synthesizes the conclusions of generations of researchers and thousands of documents, providing insights that are far more empirical and analytic than the prescriptions of the latest management guru. This book will be of enormous interest not just to public sector managers but to leaders of private corporations as well." Francis Fukuyama, Johns Hopkins University, author of The End of History and the Last Man
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
right concept
By Kent Myers
It is evident from the text and from the author's course notes that his working title was Robust Organization. His publisher must have thought that people would not buy a book with that title, that they will only buy a book that promises, like all the others, 'high performance' as a direct and immediate result of reading the book. Light's actual message is that, in a turbulent environment, you have to build in a capability to achieve performance in different ways. This is not efficient, nor is it a direct path to high performance. But if you do it the right way, it is extremely efficient insurance, and an insurance that many organizations don't have or throw away needlessly. It is an extremely important line of argument, especially for organizations of last resort, such as any Federal agency. The literature in this area is thin and this is a good addition. (Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, is a classic.) While Light gets to the right answer, his concepts, arguments, and evidence are often unclear or disappointing. I get the impression that Light has the gift of gab, lays it down quickly, and moves on. (His frequent talks on NPR flow nicely.) He asserts, for example, that his robust organization qualifies as a resilient organization in Hamel's terms, but that a resilient organization isn't necessarily robust. Correct, but I tried to restate his argument and found that I had to make up a lot that wasn't there. But I suppose that makes the book useful for readers who want to make it their own and use it. I have reorganized my own organizational diagnostic instrument around Light's categories and am pleased with how it helps me relate detailed alignment issues with broader strategy.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
If your organization has them, it will thrive
By Robert Morris
Obviously, when building anything, there are several essential requirements: an appropriate design, materials of the highest possible quality, skilled workers, and establishment of a solid foundation. In this volume, Light suggests how certain organizations have met these requirements and how others can also do so. He concedes that a moribund or demoralized organization can "create a burst of high performance by terrifying [its] workforce or rallying [its] troops" but invariably the results are only temporary. He asserts (and I agree) that the greater challenge is to "build organizations that produce results by hedging against the inevitable surprises and vulnerabilities that lurk in today's environment, while exploiting opportunities to shape the future to their advantage." Hence the importance of having a stereoscopic perspective which includes an awareness of possible and at least a sense of probable perils as well as opportunities. Hence the importance of having a design which can accommodate modification in response to "inevitable surprises." Hence the importance, also, of having a foundation which can withstand the impact of adversity while sustaining competitive initiatives.
In 1999, Light was engaged by the RAND Corporation to examine what its researchers had learned about managing public organizations during several previous decades . He eventually decided to focus on what had been learned about how any organization can achieve and then sustain high performance. It is important to note, as does Light, that RAND research is guided by three basic principles embedded in its own organizational culture: "First, RAND has a well-deserved reputation for questioning the questions.....Second, RAND has a long history of questioning its own answers through peer review and quality control....Third, RAND allows the evidence to speak, even when it unsettles the client." I was also interested to learn that RAND had some serious problems of its own during the mid-1990s which are noted within Light's narrative. RAND solved those problems by focusing on the basics of the Four Pillars.
That said, let's examine how he organizes his material. In Chapter 1, he shares several lessons about the future revealed by RAND's research after a rigorous analysis of "four critical sources of organizational vulnerability: ignorance, inflexibility, indifference, and inconsistency." In Chapter 2, Light shifts his attention to what RAND research has learned about addressing the vulnerabilities of uncertainty. Of special interest to me are the "seven powerful predictors of high performance" and the "four underlying pillars that help organizations achieve extraordinary results," all of which had been identified by the research. Then in Chapter 3, Light explains what RAND has learned about each of the "four pillars." In Chapter 4, he focuses on what RAND has learned about operating a "robust" organization. "Simply asked, how do robust organizations create the alertness, agility, adaptability, and alignment [which are] essential to high performance?" This chapter provides four answers. Then in the fifth and final chapter, he shares what RAND has learned about managing change. In this chapter, the reader is provided with "six suggested steps for improving the odds of success."
At this point in my brief commentary, I feel obliged to explain that Light has accomplished far more than examine an immense body of research data and then merely summarize key points. He had more ambitious objectives for this book and he achieved all of them. They include focusing much less attention on broad general principles (albeit sound ones) and far more attention on HOW almost any organization (regardless of size or nature) can apply those principles where perils are greatest, where opportunities are most promising, and where significant change is most likely. Granted, senior-level executives will find few head-snapping revelations in this book. Light creates for them, however, broad and deep access to a wealth of valuable (previously inaccessible) information from which he helps them to learn how to establish or nourish their own "robust" organization. After a careful reading and then re-reading of his book, they should then review key points in the Conclusion at the end of each chapter. I strongly recommend that his readers regularly review, also, the dozens of (boxed) idea clusters which Light thoughtfully provides throughout the narrative. For example, The Six Revolutions (Page 27), The First, Second, and Third Rounds of Winnowing: Strong Associations with Performance (Pages 56-57, 60, 62, respectively), and Organizing for Lightning (Page 150).
One final point. As James Q. Wilson notes in the Foreword, Light's work at RAND "did not involve any pre-conditions or post-research clearances. What you will read here is Light's best independent advice." In my opinion, The Four Pillars of High Performance is a brilliant achievement.
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Evan I. Schwartz's Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors, Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien's The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability, Peter Schwartz's The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World and Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence, and Jason Jennings' Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive as well as Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change co-authored by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, and Scott D. Anthony.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Insightful!
By Rolf Dobelli
The RAND Corporation's organizational strategy advice is based on more than 50 years of research. Author Paul C. Light draws from RAND studies primarily related to the U.S. military to explain the need for organizations to confront unavoidable change with alertness, agility, adaptability and alignment. He notes that these four attributes are equally valuable to small and large businesses, and to organizations of all kinds. You can apply each solid lesson Light takes from RAND's studies to your organization's structure and planning. In fact, some of his points are already common wisdom. Political instability, labor force fluctuations, or the potential for terrorism or economic unrest affect some industries more than others, but every organization is susceptible to unanticipated developments. If you want to find out what to do when your organization gets surprised, we recommend this in-depth research-based report.
See all 4 customer reviews...
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light PDF
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light EPub
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Doc
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light iBooks
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light rtf
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Mobipocket
The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Kindle
~ PDF Download The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Doc
~ PDF Download The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Doc
~ PDF Download The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Doc
~ PDF Download The Four Pillars of High Performance, by Paul Light Doc
