Synopses & Reviews
Theres a bewildering array of management tools out there. And they all promise to help you excel at the toughest parts of your job: defining your organizations strategic direction, managing customers and costs, and boosting workforce performance.
But just 30 percent of these tools deliver as intended. Why? As Jeremy Hope and Steve Player reveal in Beyond Performance Management, while many tools are sound in theory, theyre misused by most organizations. For example, executives buy and implement a tool without first asking, What problem are we trying to solve?” And they use tools to command and control frontline teams, not empower thema serious and costly mistake.
In this eminently useful, clear-eyed book, the authors critically review dozens of well-known management toolsfrom mission statements, balanced scorecards, and rolling forecasts to key performance indicators, Six Sigma, and performance appraisals. They explain how to select the right tools for your organization, how to implement them correctly, and how to extract maximum value from each.
Brimming with rigorous analysis and solid advice, Beyond Performance Management helps you swiftly gauge the value of each management tool, as well as navigate the increasingly crowded field of offeringsso the tools you select deliver fully on their promise.
Review
A handy guide for the manager who, when faced with a maze of possible strategies, needs a clearly defined and impartial explanation of how to develop his or her business.”
Engineering and Technology MagazineThis is not an ordinary primer on management tools. With Hope as co-author, there is a deeper level of analysis. His critique centres not on the tools but on the people who use them. Ultimately, his book amounts to a strong critique of managers. [It] will challenge their prejudices about some management tools at least and force them to consider whether the weaknesses they perceive lie not in the tools but within themselves.” Beyond Performance Management is Hopes last book, as he died shortly before it went to press. He will be missed for his plain-speaking and incisive, unsparing critique of modern management, at a time when those qualities are very badly needed.” The Financial Times
Synopsis
Jeremy Hope and his coauthor, Steve Player, assess some common and allegedly hard-headed tools that firms often use in an attempt to improve performance, everything from mission statements through Six Sigma through high-powered exec compensation.
This is a supremely useful book, helping managers and execs navigate the increasingly crowded offerings of how to manage a company and set strategic directions. Should you adopt Six Sigma? What value do performance evaluations really offer? What is lean accounting? Hope and Player offer real analysis and useful solutions.
About the Author
Jeremy Hope founded the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable in 1998, and the author of a number of articles and books on performance management and associated leadership issues. His article on Beyond Budgeting with colleague Robin Fraser won the prestigious IFAC award for best management accounting article of 1998. He is a frequent lecturer and author on performance management. He began his career as a chartered accountant and has since had experience in venture capital and business management. Since 1998 his work has been focused on "Beyond Budgeting" as global research director and co-founder of the BBRT.
Steve Player is the director of BBRT North America.
The BBRT is an international shared learning network of member organizations with a common interest in transforming their performance management models to enable sustained, superior performance. BBRT helps organizations learn from world-wide best practice studies and encourages them to share information, past successes and implementation experiences to move beyond command and control. It has more than 50 company partners around the world.