Printable version- Adaptive Organization - AKA Betty
- General Reading
- Knowledge-Centered Support
- Organizational Principles
- Support Futures
- Virtual Support Communities
Adaptive Organization - AKA Betty
Books
Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate by Roger Fisher & Daniel Shapiro
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Wikinomics by Don Tapscott
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The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
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The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton
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Somebodies and Nobodies by Rober Fuller
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Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure And Drive Organizational Success by Dean Spitzer
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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell
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Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation
by Frans Johansson
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The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
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Webmetrics by Jim Sterne
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The only Sustainable Edge by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown
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The Future of Knowledge by Verna Allee
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Through extensive reserach and experience with knowledge management practices in major corporations Verna Allee has developed a rich insight to knowledge and how it works in organizations. Her conclusions align with the concepts and fundamentals of the Betty Model (aka the Adaptive Organization). Verna has developed a "value network" mapping methodology that helps bring reality to the concept of knowedge enabled networks, which we have talked about in the Betty team. . An excellent book - highly recommended reading.
The Support Economy: Why corporations are failing individuals and the next episode of capitalism
by Shoshana Zuboff
Shoshana is a Harvard Business School professor and she has done extensive research in the dysfunction of our current business model. She describes why we need a new approach and why that approach should be a network (aka Betty). Great research, great insight and great support for the Adaptive Organization model that we are working on.
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One More Time - How Do You Motivate Employees? by Frederick Herzberg
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Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute (Editor), The Arbinger Institute
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Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion by Marshall B. Rosenberg
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The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
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The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
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The Dance of Change by Peter M. Senge
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Loyalty Rules by Frederick F Reichheld
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We have commented in the Betty discussions that customer satisfaction surveys are of questionable value (if not totally useless) when it comes to assessing customer loyalty. Frederick Reichheld has researched this issue (it is his life's work) and pulled together some great evidence that loyalty is an important differentiator and that most companies don't understand it. He also supports a number of the Betty principles and practices in his description of loyalty and how to develop it and measure it as a business asset.
Leading the Revolution by Gray Hamel
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The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly
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The Brand You 50 by Tom Peters
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The Customer Revolution by Patricia Seybold, Ronni T. Marshak (contributor) and Jeffery M. Lewis (contributor)
In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work by Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak
From Publishers Weekly:
Relationships between supervisor and worker are important, but so are the relationships between other kinds of colleagues. For example, UPS workers frequently get together on a lunch break, not simply to eat but to exchange information or to divide up the workload more fairly. Prusak (executive director of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management) and Cohen (editor of Knowledge Directions) provide insight into the causality between a company's social atmosphere and its success.
New York Times, February 25, 2001:
"The book's novelty and appeal lie in the . . . attention to the power of commonplace conversations. . ."
Book Description:
Knowledge has always resided in organizations-but it wasn't until the Information Age put a premium on ideas that intellectual capital was recognized as a critical resource. Now, forces like technology, globalization, and the rise of free agency and virtual workplaces are bringing another form of "hidden" capital to the forefront.
In Good Company is the first book to examine the role that social capital-a company's "stock" of human connections such as trust, personal networks, and a sense of community-plays in thriving organizations. Written by leading knowledge management experts Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak, this groundbreaking book argues that social capital is so integral to business life that without it, cooperative action-and consequently productive work-isn't possible. The authors help today's leaders understand the nature and value of social capital, suggest ways they can encourage and enhance it, and explore how they can protect this vital but increasingly vulnerable resource in a volatile, virtual world.
Drawing on major social and economic theories, and the experiences of organizations including the World Bank, Aventis Pharma, Alcoa, Russell Reynolds, and UPS, In Good Company identifies the social elements that contribute to knowledge sharing, innovation, and high productivity. The authors convincingly show how almost every managerial decision-from hiring, firing, and promotion to implementing new technologies to designing office space-is an opportunity for social capital investment or loss. They also reveal the benefits that derive from investments in social capital, such as greater commitment and cooperation, increased talent retention, and more intelligent responses to customer needs.
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam
Value Based Management: The Corporate Response to the Shareholder Revolution by John D. Martin, J. William Petty, and William J. Petty
General Reading
Books
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
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"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point", like "future shock" or "chaos theory", will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan
The New York Times Book Review, Alan Wolfe
...a lively, timely and engaging study of fads.... The Tipping Point is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world.
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Daniel Donno (introduction)
The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary National Bestseller That Changed The Way We Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen
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What do the Honda Supercub, Intel's 8088 processor, and hydraulic excavators have in common? They are all examples of disruptive technologies that helped to redefine the competitive landscape of their respective markets. These products did not come about as the result of successful companies carrying out sound business practices in established markets. In The Innovator's Dilemma, author Clayton M. Christensen shows how these and other products cut into the low end of the marketplace and eventually evolved to displace high-end competitors and their reigning technologies.
At the heart of The Innovator's Dilemma is how a successful company with established products keeps from being pushed aside by newer, cheaper products that will, over time, get better and become a serious threat. Christensen writes that even the best-managed companies, in spite of their attention to customers and continual investment in new technology, are susceptible to failure no matter what the industry, be it hard drives or consumer retailing. Succinct and clearly written, The Innovator's Dilemma is an important book that belongs on every manager's bookshelf. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton
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The Balanced Scorecard shows managers how to mobilize their people to fulfill the company's mission. More than just a measurement system, this revolutionary tool tells readers how to channel the energies, abilities, and specific knowledge they possess into the achievement of long-term goals.
Here is an accounting text that requires absolutely no knowledge of methods and acronyms, but rather needs a strong business orientation to understand. What professor Kaplan and consultant Norton have created is a system that not only measures but, more important, manages such elusive corporate goals as mission, vision, customer and employee satisfaction, and the like. The "balanced scorecard" they've devised is based on long-term studies of five companies. The beauty of the scorecard is its reality-grounded perspective; the authors readily admit, for instance, that if such a system is put into effect, it will fail without the consensus of senior management. For organizations and their employees undergoing change. -- Barbara Jacobs Ingram†
The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance by Robert S.Kaplan, David P. Norton
HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. During a year-long research project, the authors developed a "balanced scorecard" performance measurement system that allows executives to view a company from several perspectives simultaneously. The scorecard includes financial measures that reveal the results of actions already taken, as well as three sets of operational measures that show customer satisfaction, internal processes, and the organization's ability to learn and improve. Creating a balanced scorecard requires translating a company's strategy and mission statement into specific goals and measures. Managers then track those measures as they work toward their goals. Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work, Reprint #9350! 5, presents the implementation of this concept.
Getting Together : Building Relationships As We Negotiate by Roger Fisher, Scott Brown (Contributor)
The Power of Alignment : How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things by George Labovitz, Victor Rosansky
Offers managers the principles and techniques necessary to direct the human potential of their entire organizations toward achieving sustained growth and profit, winning loyal customers, and creating a high performance workforce. 50,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. --Ingram
Book info: This book goes beyond TQM and reengineering by creating a new approach called Alignment. The authors show that great companies manage to link strategy and people and integrate customer needs with continuous improvement processes. DLC: Organizational change.†
The Art of War y Sun-Tzu, Sun Tzu, James Clavell (Editor)
21st Century Capitalism by Robert Heilbroner
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Economists, practitioners of the dismal science, are little known for their compassion or their profundity, but Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philosophers, displays both in this sweeping study of the state and future of capitalism. Based on lectures delivered at Massey College, Heilbroner's book argues persuasively that the public sector, far from being a drag on the marketplace, can be "an indispensable source of strength;" that the death of Communism, not just an unalloyed cause for celebration, represents in some ways the end of the ideals of egalitarianism and community; and that there is "a limit beyond which acquisitiveness no longer serves, and may well disserve, the adaptability of the order." A book everyone concerned about more than their next paycheck should read.
The New York Times Book Review, Robert Eisner
An exhilarating exploration of ideas . . . Heilbroner ponders the possibilities for 21st-century capitalism in a sweeping examination of the "idea of progress".
Knowledge-Centered Support
Books
Collective Wisdom - Transforming Support with Knowledge by Francoise Tourniaire and David Kay
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Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
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The Future of Knowledge by Verna Allee
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Verna Allee has organized and reflected on the fundamentals of Betty and she references most all of the books and resources that the team has referenced over the course of the past 18 months. An excellent book - highly recommended reading.
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Doc Searls, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, David Weinberger
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While the captains of industry might dismiss it as mere science fiction, The Cluetrain Manifesto is definitely of this day and age. Aiming squarely at the solar plexus of corporate America, the authors show how the Internet is turning business upside down. They proclaim that, thanks to conversations taking place on Web sites and message boards, and in e-mail and chat rooms, employees and customers alike have found voices that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organizes most corporate marketing groups. "Markets are conversations", the authors write, and those conversations are "getting smarter faster than most companies". In their view, the lowly customer service rep wields far more power and influence in today's marketplace than the well-oiled front office PR machine. -- Harry C. Edwards
The Knowledge-Creating Company by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
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Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally.
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations by Thomas A. Stewart
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Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic life. It is the chief ingredient of what we buy and sell, the raw material with which we work. Intellectual capital--not natural resources, machinery, or even financial capital--has become the one indispensable asset of corporations.† Thomas Stewart, an editor at Fortune, weaves the genesis of intellectual capital with flair and historical insights. Intellectual capital is the synergy, flexibility and strength gained from focusing and investing in three fundamentals: human capital, structural capital and customer capital. Stewart explains the long-building pressures that are making the tenets of intellectual capital attractive. His book provides compelling trends, anecdotes and guidelines for executives, startups and knowledge workers struggling to discover the secrets of intellectual capital.
Building the Learning Organization: A Systems Approach to Quantum Improvement and Global Success by Michael J. Marquardt
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Based on extensive observation of the practices at top learning organizations around the world, this guide bridges the gap between the commitment to learning and actually implementing it in an organization. Trainers see show to systematize the learning process with a 17-component model for the learning organization. Keeping theory to a minimum, the authors spell out the best methods of organizational transformation-knowledge management-empowerment-performance improvement-and more. Case studies demonstrate the success of learning companies in five different economic sectors.
Organizational Principles
Books
Birth of the Chaordic Age by Dee W. Hock
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Birth of the Chaordic Age is a compelling manifesto for the future, embedded within the intriguing story of a personal odyssey. An engaging narrator, Dee Hock is the man who first conceived of a global system for the electronic exchange of value, becoming the founder and CEO of VISA International. He looks critically at today's environment of command-and-control institutions and sees organizations that are falling apart, failing to achieve their own purposes let alone addressing the diversity and complexity of society as a whole. The solution, Hock claims, lies in transforming our notion of organization; in embracing the belief that the chaos of competition and the order of cooperation can and do coexist, succeed, even thrive; and in welcoming in the chaordic age.
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Margaret J. Wheatley
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When Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science was initially published in 1992, it outlined an unquestionably unique but extremely challenging view of change, leadership, and the structure of groups. Many readers immediately embraced its cutting-edge perspective, but others just could not understand how the complicated scientific tenets it described could be used to reshape institutions. Now Wheatley, an organizational specialist who has since coauthored A Simpler Way, updates the original by including additional material (such as an epilogue addressing her personal experiences during the past decade) and reconstructing some of her more challenging concepts. The result is a much clearer work that first explores the implications of quantum physics on organizational practice, then investigates ways that biology and chemistry affect living systems, and finally focuses on chaos theory, the creation of a new order, and the manner that scientific principles affect leadership. "Our old ways of relating to each other don't support us any longer", she writes. "It is up to us to journey forth in search of new practices and new ideas that will enable us to create lives and organizations worthy of human habitation." --Howard Rothman
Life at the Edge of Chaos: Creating the Quantum Organization by Mark D. Youngblood
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This breakthrough book provides practical applications of how to transform companies to operate on the "edge of chaos" based on the principles of living, self-organizing systems.
Designing the Global Corporation by Jay R. Galbraith
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Designing Organizations for High Performance by David Hanna
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Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change by Harris & Beckhard
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Support Futures
Books
Real Time by Regis McKenna
This work predicts the business implications of companies operating in a well connected world.† Some of the relevant concepts developed in Real Time include a new meaning to company branding that is based on the experience of the user not the press activity of the vendor.† Also the idea of continuous discontinuous change marked by shifts from economies of scale to economies of time; from broadcast to access (or from monologue to dialogue), from data content to people content, from fixed boundaries to open space, from the satisfied to the self-satisfied consumers.† The ideas offered in this book have profound implications for the future of customer support.† Consider the following quote ...† "In the information age, all business will become service businesses."
The Art of the Long View:† Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz
The Support Futures program team is using this scenario planning methodology to explore possible future states for customer support.
One of the world's leading futurists--who has served as a consultant to clients as diverse as Volvo and the White House--presents a revolutionary guide to planning for the future. A powerful tool for developing strategic vision, this book reveals how to navigate the future by applying the intuitive skills used by artists and musicians.
Blur : The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy by Davis & Meyer
This is a shrewd appraisal of the new corporate reality. The authors, who both direct research at the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation, maintain that "connectivity, speed, and the growth of intangible value" have catapulted business into a period of unprecedented transition that demands immediate and creative attention. Citing disparate examples including Amazon.com, singer David Bowie, and the Beanie Baby toy phenomenon, they show how a willingness to step away from conventional thinking is crucial for continued success.
Virtual Support Communities
Books
Net Worth: Shaping Markets When Customers Make the Rules by John Hagel III and Marc Singer
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Net Worth is the follow-up to Net Gain and examines the role of the infomediary.† These concepts are relevant to the Multi-Vendor Support Strategy Team and the Support Futures Team.
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No one ever said consumerism was easy. At one end, the poor consumer faces a bewildering array of goods and services. On the other, vendors contend with a diverse and fragmented marketplace that makes finding the right set of customers akin to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. And in between are the billions misspent on muffed purchases and broken marketing campaigns that serve only to stuff mailboxes and alienate the very customers that vendors are trying to attract. The rise of e-commerce has only intensified the problem by offering consumers even greater choice and vendors more competition. John Hagel and Marc Singer think they've got a better idea, and in Net Worth, they present an online scenario that would end this chaos and give both customers and vendors what they really want.
At the heart of Hagel and Singer's solution is the "infomediary" that sits between the customer and vendor. For the consumer, the infomediary acts as a trustworthy agent who knows the needs and habits of the client. For the vendor, the infomediary is the holy grail of consumer behavior, a marketer's dream. The infomediary brokers client information to vendors in exchange for goods and services for the consumer. The result? Happy consumers, satisfied marketers, and a very lucrative business model that awaits those entrepreneurs and companies that are bold enough to embrace the idea. The authors painstakingly outline the challenges and opportunities of developing an infomediary business and go as far as to peg the potential market cap of a dominant player at $20 billion by its fifth year of operation. While the idea of software agents is nothing new, Hagel and Singer may be breathing new life into the idea at just the right time. And even if infomediaries never arise, following the thinking of Hagel and Singer is well worth the price of admission. For marketers, managers, entrepreneurs, and just about anyone who thinks about e-commerce. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities by John Hagel III & Arthur G. Armstrong
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The Multi-Vendor Support Strategy outlines a framework for a virtual support community. This book by Hagel and Armstrong explores the concepts of virtual communities and legitimizes the concepts we have outlined for the support community! A must read for anyone interested in where the Multi-Vendor Support Strategy will take the support industry.
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Building relationships with customers has been a buzz phrase in many business circles for years. Now John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong declare that's not enough. They make a strong case that business success in the very near future will depend on using the Internet to build not just relationships, but communities. The payoff, they maintain, will be phenomenal customer loyalty and high profits. But, they warn, this race will definitely go to the swift. Here's a cyberspace book that could make your business future. Not everyone agrees with Hagel and Armstrong, but with stakes so high they deserves a serious reading.†
David Warsh, The Boston Globe, April 5, 1998
"The book that is the current rage of the Internet marketing community--NET GAIN: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities by John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong--puts it this way: 'The appearance of the global computer network has set in motion an unprecedented shift in power from the producers of goods and services to the customers who buy them.'"
Business Week, September 27, 1999
"Hagel is a fountain of concepts that are being put into practice all over the Web. In 1997, his book Net Gain (co-authored by Arthur G. Armstrong) suggested how noncommercial Web communities could use content, chat, and bulletin boards to promote e-commerce."
Co-opetition: 1. A Revolutionary Mindset That Redefines Competition and Cooperation; 2. The Game Theory Strategy That's Changing the Game of Business by Brandenburger & Nalebuff
Co-opetition introduces some very interesting ways to think about and evaluate a company's relationship to others in the market place.† It introduces game theory and the "value net" as tools to help companies assess market position.† These concepts and tools are relevant to the Multi-Vendor Support Strategy Team as well as the Support Futures Team.
The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems by James F. Moore
This book draws parallels between business strategy and ecosystems in nature.† It talks about the importance of recognizing the bigger picture roles companies play as part of an ecosystem.† Relationships are critical to the health of a market place and the health of the market place is a function of the health of the relationships.† The concepts in this book are relevant to the Multi-Vendor Support Strategy Team as well as the Support Futures Team.