Organizational restructuring

For years "risk management" has been characterized chiefly by caution--preventing the business from doing things that would create exposure. Although...

While management skills can improve service systems, a manager is better off if he or she first has a clear understanding of the operating characteristics that set one service system apart from another. This author offers one view of services, which, if followed, results in a “rational approach to the rationalization” of services. His view, […]

Beneath the general principles, attitudes, and ideals of “human relations” lie the actual tactics and day-to-day techniques by which executives achieve, maintain, and exercise power. In the current enthusiasm for “democratizing” business procedures, these hard, practical devices tend to be overlooked. Yet they exist just the same—and, in many ways, do not depart substantially from […]

What do IBM, Texas Instruments, Owens Corning, and Duke Power have in common? They’re all redesigning their organizations around their core processes—and reaping enormous benefits as a result.

Soft management does not mean weak management, says William Peace in this 1991 article. It means candor, openness, and vulnerability, but it also means...

Continuous improvement at Toyota Motor Company is now a business legend. For three decades, Toyota enlisted its employees in a relentless drive to find faster, more efficient methods to develop and make low-cost, defect-free cars. The results were stupendous. Toyota became the benchmark in the automobile industry for quality and low cost. The same, however, […]

The typical large business 20 years hence will have fewer than half the levels of management of its counterpart today, and no more than a third the managers. In its structure, and in its management problems and concerns, it will bear little resemblance to the typical manufacturing company, circa 1950, which our textbooks still consider […]

Spinouts rarely take off; most, in fact, fall into one or more of four traps that doom them from the start. Some companies spin out ventures that are...

What holacracies have in common with 18th-century pirates.

Even the best-designed systems can’t overcome faulty relationships.

A wounded-but-wiser AT&T veteran recounts how one of the world’s biggest and best-known companies became one of its most battered—and explains how others can avoid that fate.

How the most innovative companies capitalize on today’s rapid-fire strategic challenges—and still make their numbers.

In appraising performance, designing pay systems, and in organizing and planning work, managers make assessments about the size and importance of jobs. Whether the assessments are accurate deeply affects how well the organization runs. But what do we mean when we say that one job is bigger than another? Bigger in what sense? One way […]

Developing a new product involves trial and error, but beyond a certain point, redesign becomes wasteful. A practical and proven tool, the Design Structure Matrix, can help streamline the way a company innovates.

Years ago, while visiting friends in the United States, I happened to see the classic children’s film The Wizard of Oz. Near the end, Dorothy at last appears before the all-powerful wizard—a terrifying image of smoke and light. Only when her dog, Toto, tugs at a curtain over to one side does she see a […]

In Brazil, where paternalism and the family business fiefdom still flourish, I am president of a manufacturing company that treats its 800 employees like responsible adults. Most of them—including factory workers—set their own working hours. All have access to the company books. The vast majority vote on many important corporate decisions. Everyone gets paid by […]

The basics of informal management.

Regions where social ties are tight may be the worst places for creative operations.

One day in 1980 a group of four managers in a large Canadian steel company found their company acquired by another that had essentially no managerial ranks and few resources. The executives, traditional men accustomed to working with hard facts and solid numbers, found that their “hard box” way of managing did not fit their […]

Declining margins, excess capacity, mature product portfolio, bureaucratic overburden, poorly planned and executed diversification moves, rapid CEO turnover—a familiar litany of symptoms of U.S. industries in trouble. But this list describes not the airlines, retailers, basic manufacturing, real estate, or financial services; it describes the $200 billion American hospital industry. The seriousness of these symptoms […]