Improving Performance

All too often, organizations approach the task of improving overall performance through a mélange of departmental efforts. Little attention is paid to the whole picture or to the potential repercussions for the rest of the organization — for example, how a new product concept in engineering will affect marketing and and manufacturing, or how a critical merchandising campaign will garner the necessary support in retail store operations. Yet it is precisely this interaction between departments — the "white space" on traditional organization charts — that must be managed for improvement efforts to pervade the entire organization and for improvements to be sustained over time.

Improving Performance provides a practical framework for understanding how the the various departments and functions in an organization interrelate and shows how to manage this interaction to enhance the organization's effectiveness. The authors show how, by coordinating improvement efforts among all areas, managers can use organizational resources more efficiently, minimize departmental conflicts, and create a work environment that leads to better performance.

The authors explore three avenues of approach for dealing with performance issues: through organizational strategies, structures, and management practices; through the processes used to get work done; and through individual jobs and employees. They then show how jobs apply these approaches to specific performance issues — presenting a wealth of practical information for improving quality, enhancing customer service, implementing effective training programs, increasing market share, or speeding up order fulfillment.

1. Introduction: The Challenge Facing American Business
• Part One: A Framework for Improving Performance
2. Viewing Organizations as Systems
3. Three Levels of Performance: Organization, Process, and Job/Performer
• Part Two: Exploring the Three Levels of Performance
4. The Organization Level of Performance
5. The Process Level of Performance
6. The Job/Performer Level of Performance
• Part Three: Applying the Three Levels of Performance
7. Linking Performance to Strategy
8. Moving from Annual Programs to Sustained Performance Improvement
9. Diagnosing and Improving the Organization: A Case Study
10. Improving and Managing the Process of the Organization
11. Measuring Performance and Designing a Performance Management System
12. Designing an Organization Structure That Works
13. Managing Organizations as Systems
14. Creating a Performance-Based Human Resource Development Function
15. Developing an Action Plan for Implementation

A decent book on how to design organizations. It is supposed to have started the whole "process improvement" (including BPR, but who cares…) movement.