Book Review: Management By Process

Ever wonder what it was like working and managing at a leading edge high tech firms during the rise of the Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s?  Ever wonder what’s changed and why?  If you are interested in the history of Silicon Valley, and the management theories and philosophies (both good and bad) that sprang from the very heart and soul of the information technology revolution, then you will like Managing By Process: A Silicon Valley Retrospective.  It provides some very interesting insights written in an unusually stealthy essay by an insider, Scott Adams with over 30 years of business management experience at not one but two of the top Fortune 100 companies in Silicon Valley. Its instructive, informative and also pointedly sarcastic and critical of the management style that sprang from Silicon Valley during the past two decades. If you are a new manager or even a seasoned manager — whether you work for a large company or a small one — we recommend you take a look There is a free sample  link here for Kindle readers and also at the bottom of the review article.

Reprinted with permission from BlogCritics:

Article first published as Book Review: Managing by Process: A Silicon Valley Retrospective by Scott Adams on Blogcritics.

Managing by Process: A Silicon Valley Retrospective, written by Scott Adams, a senior manager at two top Fortune 100 companies located in the hot-bed of the 1990s Silicon Valley technology explosion, provides an interesting and sometimes humorous retrospective on the changes in culture that took place in the heart of Silicon Valley over the past three decades. With over 30 years of experience managing in this once unique culture, Mr. Adams successfully traces back the evolution of the once employee-centric business culture which dominated the Silicon Valley corporate environment into a culture that  now remains only in a handful of firms in the surrounding Bay Area.  Why the change? Adams takes you on both an informative and entertaining journey to answer this very question… and provide some insight and lessons for managers seeking to change culture within their organizations today.

The reader is transported back 30 years to a healthier time where a set of five key employee-centric business process principles reigned supreme. These were the hallmark principles at several leading edge Silicon Valley firms during the dawn of the digital information revolution. The author traces the changes and factors which led up to the erosion of these very same principles over the course of the last two decades. Adams offers both seasoned and novice managers alike several worthwhile insights on the value of learning from the mistakes of the past in order to lay a solid foundation for the future.

Managing by Process is cleverly written and interlaced with a number of true stories and humorous anecdotes which illustrate the pros and cons of the paradoxical management theories and fads spawned in Silicon Valley during past several decades: MBO (Management by Objective), Team and Individual “Self Appraisals,” complex performance evaluations, ISO 9000 hysteria, Hoshin and other overly convoluted planning practices. The rise of outsourcing, “leadership training,” Six Sigma, TQM and the questionable liberal use of new age MBA consultants who at times redirected the course of major multinational organizations based solely on “theory” with little or no real world business management experience are just a few phenomena examined!

Original Article Located Here: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-managing-by-process-a/#ixzz1YXoojmQY