Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the Informal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results

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Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the Informal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results (eBook) Pub. Date: 3/25/2010 Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
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Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the Informal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results Pub. Date: 4/19/2010 Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated

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Overview

Praise for Leading Outside the Lines

"Those of us who have been writing about leadership and organization for years should heave a deep sigh of relief and wonder to read this book. Leading Outside the Lines forces us to review and rethink all the twisty turns, false dichotomies, paradoxes, fuzzy or over-metricized writings—all the confusions we've been wrestling with for years—and shapes them into a coherent, useful, and wise perspective. I love this book, and so will anyone with a desire and need to understand the requirements for 21st-century leadership."
—Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California, and author, Still Surprised

"If you want to know how work really gets done, read Leading Outside the Lines! It is the best book I have ever read at explaining the difference between what is supposed to be going on—and what is really going on in organizations."
—Marshall Goldsmith, author, What Got You Here Won't Get You There and MOJO

"Katzenbach and Khan's book is a must-read for leaders who want their teams to shine in terms of performance, innovation, retention, or any other metric of success. I've rarely read a book with such an extraordinary collection of fascinating, real-world examples that drive the message home."
—Keith Ferrazzi, author, Who's Got Your Back and Never Eat Alone

"Leading Outside the Lines is a very important and useful book. Through insightful story-telling and years of experience, Katzenbach and Khan provide strategic and tactical advice about how the informal organization can transform your organization, whether it grapples with radical changes in the competitive environment or the inevitable growing pains of moving from start-up to established global enterprise."
—Linda A. Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

"A must-read for anyone struggling to adapt their organization to new realities. Filled with keen insight about the formal and informal life of organizations, the book offers practical advice on how to blend the two to bring out the best in your organization."
—Ronald A. Williams, chairman and CEO, Aetna

For more information, please visit www.booz.com/katzenbach_center.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780470589021
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Publication date: 4/19/2010
Edition number: 1
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 569,873
Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Jon R. Katzenbach is a senior vice president of Booz & Company, where he founded the Katzenbach Center. Previously, he was the founder and senior partner of Katzenbach Partners and a former director of McKinsey & Company. He is the author of Why Pride Matters More Than Money, Peak Performance, and coauthor of the seminal book The Wisdom of Teams.

Zia Khan is the vice president of strategy and evaluation at the Rockefeller Foundation and a senior fellow of the Katzenbach Center. He cofounded the Katzenbach Center while a partner at Booz & Company. Previously, he led the Katzenbach Partners San Francisco office and developed many of the firm's hallmarkpractices in strategy, organization design, and culture change.

Introduction: Like Talking to a Wall.

Part One: Using the Informal to Enhance the Formal.

1 The Logic of the Formal; the Magic of the Informal.

2 When the Balance Shifts.

3 Jumping Together.

Part Two: Motivating Individual Performance.

4 It's All About the Work.

5 Values Driven, Not Values Displayed.

6 It's Still About Performance.

Part Three: Mobilizing Organizational Change.

7 Setting the Fast Zebras Free.

8 Melting the Frozen Tundra.

9 Mobilizing: A Different Kind of Managing.

10 What to Do.

In Conclusion.

About Our Sources and Methodology.

A Diagnostic Tool: Assessing Your Organizational Quotient.

Notes.

Acknowledgments.

About the Authors.

Index.

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sergevansteenkiste

Posted May 24, 2010

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Superior Organizational Performance Reflecting its Formal and Informal Hues

Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan systematically explore the formal and informal elements of an organization. As the authors highlight repeatedly, the key challenge is how to integrate the two types of mechanisms that give an organization its distinctive DNA over time.

Katzenbach and Khan urge leaders to keep and strengthen their formal managerial approaches to their business i.e., strategy, structures, processes and procedures, programs and initiatives, and performance goals and metrics. These formal building blocks bring precision and permanence to the organization. At the same time, the authors encourage leaders to recognize the limitations of these formal mechanisms in their pursuit of superior performance. Leaders also have to identify and cultivate the informal building blocks of their organization. These informal (outside the lines) building blocks regroup shared value, informal networks, communities, and pride.

The identification and cultivation of the formal and informal elements of an organization is also important to all employees. The most effective employees in any organization learn quickly how an organization actually works instead of relying exclusively on the formal mechanisms that indicate how the organization is supposed to work.

The balance between the formal and informal elements of an organization evolves over the life cycle of the organization. As a young organization grows, the formal building blocks that bring it precision and permanence will gain in importance. However, the leadership has to be careful not to alienate powerful informal elements of the organization that can reject new formal initiatives in which they do not buy in. Imbalances resulting from a lack of integration of the two types of elements tend to appear either during periods of significant growth or significant declines in growth.

Katzenbach and Khan convincingly demonstrate that the mobilization of the informal elements of an organization is of particular importance to strategic planning, innovation, cost-cutting, culture change, or customer service. Whoever has worked in a turnaround environment will feel at home while reading the authors' coverage of mutating companies such as Bell Canada, Aetna, or The Home Depot.

In summary, Katzenbach and Khan invite leaders to mobilize the informal to solve performance challenges. Relying exclusively on the formal elements of an organization to achieve the desired performance will often lead to disappointing results.
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Posted November 23, 2010

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