Do Lunch or Be Lunch: The Power of Predictability in Creating Your Future

by Howard H. Stevenson, Jeffrey L. Cruikshank (With)

Overview

Human beings crave predictability. We want to know what the future holds--and will go to great lengths to find out. We have to anticipate what is coming at us, and that requires making tough choices in real time. Predicting the future is extremely difficult. It involves skills of observation, simplification, categorization, and generalization that have to be honed and practiced. Stevenson describes the power of predictability and warns that many of today's corporations are acting in ways that undermine this very basic need. Through their actions, they are damaging our abilities to shape our futures and, as a result, are undercutting their own legitimacy. We join organizations because they help us be mutually predictable to each other, and therefore they help us take action in highly complex surroundings. A Library Journal Best Business Book of the Year. "Stevenson, part mathematician, business professor, and humorist, gives readers the tools to assess what may happen in the future and how to work toward achieving that goal."--USA Today "Do Lunch or Be Lunch is a tour de force of finding one's way through the modern business world."--Simply Tax "I'm pretty sure that business books that are this much fun and so stimulating are illegal. This book is spectacular, a true gem."--Eileen C. Shapiro, author of Fad Surfing in the Boardroom "This is a thoughtful and pathbreaking book, written by that very rare person who is both thinker and doer. Howard Stevenson is one of the few professors to actually go out there and practice what he preaches, and one of the few successful entrepreneurs to come back and write about it. So, when he focuses on predictability - the kind that helps you do good while doing well - the result is worth paying a lot of attention to, both personally and organizationally. In the midst of lots of fluff written about business, this is a reflective book of great substance."--Stan Davis, author of Future Perfect and co-author of Blur

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875847979
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	10/28/1997
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.45(w) x 9.55(h) x 1.16(d)

Editorial Reviews

Stevenson, part mathematician, business professor, and humorist, gives readers the tools to assess what may happen in the future and how to work toward achieving that goal.

USA Today

Argues that predictability is perhaps the single most powerful management tool in making businesses efficient. The author contends that when businesses favor short-term profits over long-term predictability (such as when they fire capable long-service employees) they are not only acting immorally, but incompetently. He discusses how businesses can incorporate predictability into long-term change programs such as reengineering, continuous improvement and restructuring. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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