What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation

What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation

by Gary Hamel (Author)

Synopsis

This is not a book about one thing. It's not a 250-page dissertation on leadership, teams or motivation. Instead, it's an agenda for building organizations that can flourish in a world of diminished hopes, relentless change and ferocious competition.

This is not a book about doing better. It's not a manual for people who want to tinker at the margins. Instead, it's an impassioned plea to reinvent management as we know it to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism, organizational life, and the meaning of work.

Leaders today confront a world where the unprecedented is the norm. Wherever one looks, one sees the exceptional and the extraordinary:

  • Business newspapers decrying the state of capitalism.
  • Once-innovative companies struggling to save off senescence.
  • Next gen employees shunning blue chips for social start-ups.
  • Corporate miscreants getting pilloried in the blogosphere.
  • Entry barriers tumbling in what were once oligopolistic strongholds.
  • Hundred year-old business models being rendered irrelevant overnight.
  • Newbie organizations crowdsourcing their most creative work.
  • National governments lurching towards bankruptcy.
  • Investors angrily confronting greedy CEOs and complacent boards.
  • Newly omnipotent customers eagerly wielding their power.
  • Social media dramatically transforming the way human beings connect, learn and collaborate.

Obviously, there are lots of things that matter now. But in a world of fractured certainties and battered trust, some things matter more than others. While the challenges facing organizations are limitless; leadership bandwidth isn't. That's why you have to be clear about what really matters now. What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead? Hamel identifies five issues are that are paramount: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. In doing so he presents an essential agenda for leaders everywhere who are eager to...

  • move from defense to offense
  • reverse the tide of commoditization
  • defeat bureaucracy
  • astonish their customers
  • foster extraordinary contribution
  • capture the moral high ground
  • outrun change
  • build a company that's truly fit for the future

Concise and to the point, the book will inspire you to rethink your business, your company and how you lead.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Publisher: Jossey Bass
Published: 20 Feb 2012

ISBN 10: 1118120825
ISBN 13: 9781118120828

Media Reviews

An impassioned plea to reinvent management as we know it. (innovationexcellence.com, March 2012)

The book is bang up to date highlights recent crises and what we can learn from them (CPO Agenda, April 2012)

A thought provoking and relevant book for our time that should inspire change, even if it doesn t prescribe it. (economia.com, April 2012)

An interesting and thought provoking read for HR and finance directors. (HR Magazine, April 2012)

Plenty to feed those with an appetite for change. (CA Magazine, April 2012)

A rarity among business books, What Matters Now has an entertaining, anecdotal style that does nothing to diminish the visionary authority with which Hamel speaks . (I: Global Intelligence for the CIO, April 2012)

The book is bang up to date highlights recent crises and what we can learn from them. (CPO Agenda, April 2012)

'Probably one of the most important books you could read this year an invitation to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism. (Leadership Now, May 2012)

Author Bio
Noted business thinker and strategist Gary Hamel has been on the faculty of the London Business School for nearly thirty years. He is the founder of the California-based think-tank The Management Lab. His most recent initiative is The Management Innovation eXchange (www.managementexchange.com), a pioneering effort aimed at reinventing management by harnessing the power of open innovation. Hamel is the author of five books and numerous articles for the Harvard Business Review as well as the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and the Financial Times. He consults widely and has led change initiatives in some of the world's most prominent companies.