Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart, Third Edition

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MANAGING PROCESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS AS SYSTEMS

Labor can do nothing without capital, capital nothing without labor, and neither labor nor capital can do anything without the guiding genius of management.

—W. L. MACKENZIE KING

You shouldn’t expect most of your managers to exhibit “guiding genius.” However, you should expect guiding competence. A competent manager understands the way his or her organization functions and is able to manage the variables that can make it better. Chapter One is devoted to our worldview, which includes the belief that organizations (at all levels) function as adaptive systems. Because your organization operates as a system, you will be most effective if you manage it as a system.

Now that we have ...