Liberation Management

Attention Managers: Barking Orders Is Out. Curiosity, Initiative, and Imagination Are In.

Welcome to the "new economy", where the world's most important work will be "brainwork", done in semi-permanent networks of small, autonomous, project-oriented teams. it's happening sooner than you think. In fact, as Tom Peters reveals in his revolutionary new bestseller, it's happening now. Are you ready for it? Under Liberation Management, old hierarchical business structures are being consigned to the shredder and replaced with flexible, fast-responding, ad hoc groups of brainworkers.

Total Engagement. Dynamism. Speed. Independence.

These are the keys to success in the business future. Liberation Management is already being practiced at cutting-edge companies from CNN to the Body Shop to Germany's Playmobil and even the radically revamped Union Pacific Railroad.

Don't Be Left Behind.

Liberation Management is as essential to success in the 1990s as In Search of Excellence was in the 1980s. Read it now.

1. Necessary Disorganization: The New Exemplars
1. Toward Fashion, Fickle, Ephemeral
• Yo, Fashion!
• The Shift to Soft
• Bonkers Organizations
• Magic Numbers
• Professional Firms as Model "Organizations"
• When Imagination Fails
• Add It Up
• The Case for Structure
• Markets, by Damn! (And Tries)
• The Quest for Metaphors 1: Carnival
• Toward Zany
• No Port in This Storm
2. EDS. the World's Largest Project Organization in the World's Zaniest Industry: 72.000 Smart People in Bands of 10 Equals $7.1 Billion in Revenues
• Why EDS?
• Who Is EDS?
• One Year in the Life of Philosophy
• Doing Business: The Project
• Keeping Communications Open
• Loose, Flexible — and Disciplined
• A Day in the Life of
• Integration, Learning, and Leverage
• Horizontal SBUs
• Centers of Service
• Affinity Groups and More
• It Can Be Done!
3. Cable News Network: Information as Fashion, Corporation as Carnival
• News on Demand
• Turner's Nuttiness
• The Luck Factor
• All in a Day's Work
• CNN Live
• To Love CNN is to Love Frenzy
• Running CNN, Real-Time, as a Business
• Everyone a Businessperson
• In Control, Out of Control, Self-Control
• CNN Planet
• CNN as Carnival
• Jump in with Both Feet
4. ABB Asea Brown Bovery: Giant Industrial Company, Small Businesses, Lean Staff, Big Leverage through Knowledge Dissemination
• Five Thousand Feisty Profit Centers
• Holding ABB Together
• A Matrix That's Mostly Not
• Rationalize but Don't Kill Competition
• Lean Staff
• Leveraging Knowledge
• T50: The Next Step
• T50: More Than Speed
2. Learning to Hustle
• Prologue: The Quick and the Dead
• Don't Let the Morning Slip By
5. Titeflex: Unplug the Computer, Unleash the Teamster, and "Just Do It"
• Titeflex: Circa 1988
• Titeflex Today
• "Just Do It!
• The Weekend That Was
• The Accompanying Relationship Revolution
• Velocity
• Fashion's Common Denominator
6. Ingersoll-Rand: Barbecues, Drag Tests, Medieval Warriors; and Slowing Down to Speed Things Up
• Twenty-one Steps to Rennaissance: A Chronology
• Getting Beyond the Obvious
• To Hurry Up, Slow Down
• Translating "Listening" into Strategic Advantage
7. The Union Pacific Railroad: Decimate the Middle ranks, Liberate the Conductors, and Launch a Counterattack against the Truckers
• The UPRR Owns Up to Its Shortcomings
• Cleaning Out the Rat's Nest
• Walsh Pushes the Needle All the Way Over
• New "Top Guns" in Business
• Demolishing Functional Barriers
• Centralizing in Omaha and St. Louis — To Better Decentralize
• Teams
• …And More Teams
• Rewiring with a Vengeance
• The Service Reliability Team
• The "Soft Stuff"
• Manager's Don't Melt in the Rain
• Kiss Conventional Wisdom Goodbye
• Hustle's Roots
• One the Other Hand…
3. Information Technology: More, and Less, Than Promised
8. Computer Nerds, As Far as the Eye Can See
• Information Is Everything
• How Many Zeroes ina Trillion?
• The New Infrastructure
• Stuff
• Information Technology and Changing "Products"/Industries
• Network Collaboration = Competitive Advantage
• Go Cardinal!
• From Palm to Planet
9. Information Technology and Organizing
• Knowledge-Based Societies
• Paradox
4. Beyond Hierarchy
10. Unglued Organizations
• The Fluid Life
• Signing On, Heading Out
• The Project Is Everything
• Who Crawled into the Bed Next to Me?
• "Getting" the Culture
• "The Movie Stars of the Business World"
• It's Lonely Sitting Here Unused
• Building Supporters Away from Home
• The Nitty-gritty of Networking without Hierarchy
• "Structure"
• Getting Promoted
• The Slow Consensus-Building Process
• The Second-Class Citizens
• The Squeeky Wheel Doesn't Get Oiled
• I Still Can't Find the Hierarchy
• Hierarchies and Pecking Orders
• A Consistent Message for All Workers: The Age of Unstructure Looms
• The Quest for Metaphors II
• Checkerboards, Kaleidoscopes, Jazz Combos
• Shape? or Shapeless?
• Charles Handy's Shamrock
• Brian Quinn's Mind Trip: Companies as "Packages of Services"
• Organizing Propositions: Towards New "Structures"
• The Quest for Metaphors III: The Movies
11. Projects and Professional Service Firms I: Cases in Pursuit of a Common Denominator
• Imagination
• The "Product"
• "Organization"
• Projects!
• Permanent Flexibility
• "Managing"
• Project Models Are Accountability Models
• David Kelley Design
• The Work
• The Process: High Kinetic Energy
• The Process: Collaboration
• The Process: Multidisciplinary
• The Process: Model It!
• Brownian Motion: The DKD "Organization"
• Chiat/Day/Mojo
• Creativity Means Everyone
• Loose but Tough (Again)
• Planned Nosiness
• Client Involvement
• Client Engagement Reflects Inner Structure
• A Systematic Look at Professional Service Firms: The Case of Investment Banks
• Idea Flow
• Self-Design of Organizations
• Specialization I
• Specialization II
• Network Structure
• Constant Reorganization
• Structure Follows the Person
• Incentive
• General
• Professional Service Firm Conundrums
• Characteristics of Professional Service "Organizations"
12. Projects and Professional Service Firms II: The Fleeting "Organization"
• The Birth, Life, and Death of the "Dallas Organization"
• Who Says Perpetuity's a Must?
• The Larger Network Forms
• Language
• The "Cast"
• The Event Takes Shape
• Now You See It, Now You Don't
• Conclusion: A Full-Fledged, Accountable Enterprise
13. Projects and Professional Service Firms III: Transformation
• Kolind Tries Spaghetti
• Roller Derbies and Shredder Wars
• The Project Process
• A Day in the Life of Inge Christophersen
• A Day in the Life of Soren Holst
14. Projects and Professional Service Firms IV: On the Way to Projects for All
• Don't Let Project Teams Become Committees
• Just How "Far Out" Is the New Way?
• Understanding Project Management
• "Heavyweight" Project Managers Bring Home the Bacon
• Getting the Accounting Right
• Getting Started on Becoming a Project Maniac: Now
• Think Résumé or You're Not Thinking
• Reconsider "Careers"
• The Personal Projects Enterprise Strategy
• Towards Projects for All
• Véronique Vienne
15. Basic Organizational Building Blocks I: Every Person a Businessperson
• Each Employee a Businessperson
• Reversing Hyperspecialization: "Care Pairs", "Care Trios", and the "Patient-Focused Hospital"
• Lakeland's Self-sufficient "Care Pairs"
• Every Account Officer "President of the Ban": The Case of Silicon Valley Bank
• Tomorrow, the World
• "Businessing"
• "Business"
16. Basic Organizational Building Blocks II: Self-contained Work Teams
• Johnsonville Foods
• Profit Sharing
• Work Team Status
• Clusters: A Complete Alternative to Hierarchy?
• But…
17. The Missing "X-Factor": Trust
• An Unorthodox Culture
• Respect for the Front Line
• From the Horse's Mouth
• Inmate Involvement
• The Inmate Benefit Fund
• "Thank You"
• McKean's Credo: "Beliefs About the Treatment of Inmates"
• Trucks and Trust
18. Basic Organizational building Blocks III: Market-Scale Units (Buckyborgs)
• Goldmann Production, the 11-Person Boeing
• May the Best Garage Win!
• Buckyborgs (and Magic)
• Why 50?
• Is This Book Brought to You by: (a) Feisty Little Knopf or (b) Giant Random House, Inc.? Pick (a), (b), or (a) and (b)
• Collections of Compatible Intellects (Maing Money)
• Squirrel's Nests…
• … and Corporate Muscle
• Sonny Mehta, Inc. (Mostly)
• International Data Group
• Spinoff, Spinoff, Spinoff
• Global from the Start
• A Lean but Persuasive Center
• Train in Tough Time
• Support Operations Get the Market Test
• A "Networked Corporation"
• Cap Gemini Sogeti (and the Magic Number)
• The Little Acordia Giants
• SBUs a Disappointment
• The Acordia Concept
• Acordia Collegiate Benefits
• Acordia Business Benefits
• Acordia Local Government Benefits
• Acordia Small Business Benefits
• Struggling to Implement
• New Big
• More Getting Small to Get Big in Financial Services
• Chromalloy Compressor Technologies
• CCT Companies: Independence and Shared Services (Small/Big)
• Life at a Typical CCT Company: Aero Components Services
• Advantage CCT
• Brazil's Semco Goes Buckyborg
• Lightly Linked Market-Scale Units
• Why a Center at All? (The Search for Soul I)
• Decentralization Redux?
19. More Market Scale: Independent, Global, Mighty, and SMALL
• Total Concentration
• A Distinctive Hard/Soft Blend
• Symbiosis with the "Target"
• The Customers' "Lawyers"
• No Barriers to Communication
• Self-imposed Size Limits
• The Flexible Rational Worker
• Discipline, Self-discipline, "Self-realization"
20. Networks I: Farewell Vertical Integration, Welcome Networks
• Straws in the Wind
• "New Size" = Network Size
• The Flexible, Networked World of MCI
• Subcontracting a Way of Life
• Different Ways to Slice the Cake
• Power, Vertical Integration, and "New Scale"
• "New" Core Competence (Soul II)
• Subcontracting Pros and Cons
• Pitfalls of Excessive Subcontracting… Maybe
• Networks, Subs (and Soul III)
21. Networks II: The World of SuperSubs
• Professional Parking Services, Inc.
• Guardsmark
• The Hiring and Development Edge
• Total Dedication
• Words at Work
• A Full-Service Operation
• No Staff and a Talented Network
• The Skonie Corporation: This SuperSub Does "Soul" (Soul IV)
• Skonie as Network and Recruiter Extraordinaire
• The Process
• No Easy Sell
• Finding a Hole
• Soul (Again)
• The SuperSubs in Review
• A Theory of "Sub"-contracting
• (More) SuperSubs, Big and Small
• Others with Soul Allow You to Dump Nonessentials: The (Mostly) Good New-Network News, or Soul V
• Catch-21.9: So What Is Essential?
• Soul's Tricky New Look: "Horizontal Soul"
• Slipper "New Soul" in the Auto Industry
22. Networks and Markets I: A First Look at "Marketizing"
• Thompson Publishing Group Marketizes "Staff" Services (and Everything Else)
• Emancipated Reporters
• Hewlett-Packard Integrated Circuits Unit Tests Itself in the World Market
• Midland Cabinet Lets the Market Turn Workers into "Businessmen"
• Markets, Markets, Markets
• An Exchange: "Marketizing"
• The Case for Ownership
23. Networks and Markets II: The Pursuit of Power
24. Networks III: Life in Networked Organizations
• The National Restaurant Association Annual Convention
• The American Culinary Classic
• A Fragile Yet Robust Network Churns Out Precision and Novelty
• The Little Band of Jugglers
• Network Meister Gaven
• TPG Communications: Where's the Beef? (Soul VI)
• July 1991: A Day in the Life of Alison Peterson, Networker
• Management Maximizers
• The Art of the (M²) Deal
• Bringing in Business
• "Getting It"
• Managing M²
• Networking Day at M², July 12, 1991
• ROIR/Relationship Power
• And Women Shall Lead the Way!
25. The Quest for Metaphors IV: The Imagery of Dynamics and Connectedness
• Quantum Mechanics' Antirealism
• Australia as a Musical Score
• Harlot's Ghost
• A Trip to Kunming
• Organizations Don't Exist, Do They?
• Particles and Waves
• Hard and Soft Imagery
• Can You Find Your Organization?
• 3M's No-Building Building
• Frolicking Rolodexes
• Capitalism without Untidy Capitalists
• Necessary Disorganization
26. Knowledge Management Structures I: Taking Knowledge Management Seriously
• Knowledge Management Structures and the New Organizing Logic
• The Psychodynamics of Knowledge Management
• Structure
• Philosophy
• Marketing
• Does It Pay Off?
• Databases and Publications
• (More) Internal Marketing
• The Organization Performance Practice
• OPP Structure
• Breathing Life into the OPP: The Rapid Response Network (RRN)) is Created
• The RRN at a Glance
• The On-Call Consultant
• The Artistry of the OPP Three
• A Day in the Life of the OPP Three
• The OPP Three Loves You!
• But Is It Relevant to Me?
• FI Group's "Flying Squads"
• CRSS, The Science of Listening and Learning Together
• Teamwork and Programming
• Brown Sheets, Snow Cards, Etc.
• 100-Pound Pasted Bristol Stock
• (More) Learning Together: Wholesale Mingling
• Quad/Graphics/KMS Typology
• A Learning/KMS Typology
• Learning Devices Galore
27. Knowledge Management Structures II: Getting Physical
• New "Neighborhoods" Speed Up Product Development
• Bring 'Em Home
• Hang Out Wherever It Makes Sense
• Welcome to the Plant, Bean Counters
• The "Transnational" Phenomenon
• CSC Europe
• GM Europe
• IBM
• Proximity on a Grand Scale: Valley Power
• People Who Grow Up in Annapolis Like Oysters
28. Knowledge Management Structures III: Knowledge Bases, Expert Systems, Computer-Augmented Collaborations, and the Potential of Information Technology
• Buckman Bets on Knowledge Transfers
• Digital Exploits Its Network Products for Internal Learning
• Exporting Knowledge Management Capability (for Profit)
• Expert Systems Tap Deep Knowledge
• Computer-Nerd CEOs
• Not So Fast?
• Computer-Augmented Collaboration, Transforming Human Interaction for Learning's Sake
• Electronic Communities
• And Don't Ignore "Cyberspace"
• Right On! (Sorry)
29. Knowledge Management Structures IV: Developing and Tapping Expert Power in the Hierarchy-less Organization
• A "New Logic of Expertise"
• Going Home
• The New-Look Professional Takes Stock
30. The Trauma of Buying into "Horizontal", "Whole", and "Learning to Learn"
• Going "Horizontal"
• All the Way Over, Damn It!
• The "Sociology" of Going Horizontal
• Acquiring Peripheral Vision
• False Start
• "Doc" Littky's Gospel of Projects, Wholes and Horizontal
31. Trust, Respect, and the Mindful Organization
• The Boss Will Not Approve Travel
• Catch-22 (No Half-Trust)
• Room to Learn: Louis Agassiz
• "They Want…": Bull
• The Control Paradox
• Autocratic Delegators (More Paradox
32. Beyond Hierarchy
• The Berlin Wall and the Age of Reason Crumble
• The Carpet Is Thick, the View Magnificent, the Profits Stink
• Tools of Conviviality, Work as Dialogue
• Organizing's New Paradoxes
• Amen, Maybe!?
• Lots to Do
5. Markets and Innovation: The Case for Disorganization
• Prologue: Deconstructing the Corporation
33. The Exaltation of Mess, or Learning to Love Chance
• Messy Markets
• I Kin Read Writin
• Embrace Failure to Discover Success
• The Vigorous Pursuit of Serendipity
• Beware the False Prophets of Comprehension
• The Anatomy of a (Planless) Summer Vacation
34. Violent Market-Injection Strategies
• Exalter of Untidiness
• Where's the Mess?
• F.A. Hayek: The Mess Is the Message
• Joyous Anarchy
• Propositions from Hayek
• Michael Porter: An Unlikely Prince of Disorder
• Porter on Policy: Hail Trust Busters and Free Traders
• Hi Ho Destructive Competition!
• Smart Chips from Vigorous Rivals = U.S. Success
• Econ 1010 — You Need It
• Thermo Electron's Public Spinoffs
• Motivations for Spinning Off
• Structure and Incentives
• Run-up to Spinoff
• Thermedics, the First Spinoff
• "Pure Plays" Yield Market Value
• Thermo Technologies Corporation: Letting Go of Central R&D!
• In the End Small (and Big)
• Crazy Cracks
• Cypress's Frisky Satellites
• Owners' Incentives
• Teknekron's "Open Corporation" Model
• Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too
• Violent Market-Injection Strategies
35. The Market's Will Be Done: The Mighty German Mittelstand
• Geobra/Playmobil: Product, Product, Product
• Stirring the Child's Imagination
• A Tough Sell
• Polishing the Idea: R&D and Mold Making
• The Factory
• Advantage, Mittelstand
• Trumpf, the Marriage of Hard and Soft
• "The Quest to Create the Perfect Machine"
• Mittelstand Is "Personal"
• Trumpf's Customers: Mittelstand Serves Mittelstand
• A Commitment to Innovation for the Customer
• Keeping Up
• "User Benefit"
• "Soft" and "Hard"?
• Germany's Matchless "Dual System"
• Public SUpport for Worker Education
• Trumpf U.S.A.
• Living for Quality at Trumpf U.S.A.
• Characteristics of Germany's Mighty Minnows
• More "Mittelstand": The Third Italy
36. "Marketizing's" Imperatives I: Rethinking Scale
• Will We Ever Learn?
• Europe and Japan Rethink (Somewhat)
• What "Small" Means (and Doesn't)
• Perky Baltimore!
• Making "It" Work I: Celebrating the Invisible Hands
• Beware Auto-Correlation! (When "Decentralization" Isn't)
• To Fight Auto-Correlation: Open Your Wallet
• Better Engineering? Fewer Engineers!
• Making "It" Work II: Learning to Respect Small Markets
• Farmers and Hunters
37. "Marketizing's" Imperatives II: Try It! Break It! Touch It!
• Try It. Break It.
• Getting It Right the Second Time
• "The Most Godawful Mess You Ever Saw"
• A Matter of Learning to "See"
• Always a Numbers Game in the End
• Coping with the "Risk-Free Society"
38. "Marketizing's" Imperatives III: Renegades and Traitors, Passion, Arrogance
• The All-Nut Nine: Zany Chiefs for Zany Times
• SOBs and Other Mostly Necessary Characters
• Arrogance!
• Body, Soul, Passion, and Profit
• Ban the Bland
• Seek Out the Anaarchists
• Where's the Joy?
• Towards Productive Anarchy
• Last (Discouraging) Word
39. "Marketizing's" Imperatives IV: Loosening Up
• Toward the Curious Corporation
• Voice Lessons for Publishing International's Chief
• Water-gun Fights at Accolade
• Astrologers at Banamex
• Anybody Know a Good Sci-Fi Author?
• Time Off from Tandem
• Organized (Legal) Grand Larceny
• Ripping Off Chuck E. Cheese
• Sara Lee Direct
• On the Other Hand (Sorta)
• Chekhov and Creative Business Strategy
• Asked Any Good Questions Lately?
• The Pursuit of Luck
40. Own Up to the Great Paradox: Success Is the Product of Deep Grooves/Deep Grooves Destroy Adaptivity
• The Vision and Values Trap
• Organizational Transformation: A Grim Prognosis
• Darwin on Management
• Thanks for the Memories
• Just Try and Change!
• Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't, Just Plain Damned
• A Genuine Original, as If It Mattered
• The Case for "r-Strategies"
• C'mon
• The Interdependence/Independence Paradox
• Change
6. Fashion!
• Prologue: Terminally Tasteless or Sur/Petition?
• The Orderly Swiss Embrace Fashion
41. The Transformation of Positively Everything
• Changing Tastes (Literally)
• Smart, Smarter, Smartest
• Soft, Softer, Softest
• Cases in "Product" Transformation I: The Horne-Center Industry
• Cases in "Product" Transformation II: Selling Computers
• Cases in "Product" Transformation III: Aging "Product"
• The Iron Law of Fashion
• More than a High Standard of Living
• Fashion as Fragmentation
• "Sox Appeal"
• When Special Isn't So Special
• Fashion as Intangibles
• Flip-flopped Ratios
• Tobin's q
• Are You Paying Attention to the Brand?
• Gillete Escapes the Commodity Trap
• Fashioning Strategies
42. Fashion, Diversity, The Globe
• America the Many
• Sutter Health Hang Out in Japan
• Applied Materials Finds "God"
• When Yes Means Anything But
• A.T. Cross: A Nickel at a Time
• Is That All There is?
• To Err Is Glorious
43. Glow! Tingle! Wow! /Yuck!)
• The Slippery Intangibles
• O Know It WHan I See It!
• The Joyless Economy
• It's Slippery Out
• Perception I: How Hot Is That Water?
• Perception II: The Eye of the Beholder
• Perception III: The Real World
• The Best There Is
• An Ode to Clogged Freeways
• Keys to Success (and Failure)
• Squandering a Precious Resource
• Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered about Baldrige
• Firmness, Commodity, Delight
• Nothing Wrong Equals Nothing Right, or, How to Loose the Quality Wars
• Sweet Corn and Business Strategy
• Riding Perception to Transformation
• Po Lo and the Baldrige
44. Follow the Yellow Brick Road (to better Instruction Manuals)
• On the Missing #8096 Left Hinge and Other Items
45. Building "Wow Factories"
• Definitions: Toward Symbiosis and Intertwining
• Pursuing Customer Commitment
• Conversing with Customers
• Home Depot
• Potatoes with Pedigrees
• Trust Through Guarantees That "Thrill"
• Roasters & Toasters
• Delta Dental
• Getting personal
• Becoming a "Process Freak"
• Process and the Management of Trust
• The Special Process of Keeping People Informed
• "You are my hostage. You must obey."
• Toward Automatic Symbiosis: Obsessing on "Lifetime Value"
• More on Symbiosis and Quantification; Why "They" Switch
• "Defections Management" (and More Quantification)
• Another Take on Intertwining: Building and Exploiting Databases
• Forty-five-Seat Restaurants, Too
• Damned If You Don't, Damned If You Do (as Usual)
• The "L-word": Symbiosis and the Really "Soft" Side of Relationships
46. A Special Case of Wow: An Encompassing View of Design
• Design as a Tool for Corporate Transformation
• The TRIAD Design Project
• Deere & Co. Puts a Passenger Seat in the Combine
• Love, Hate, and Skilled Amateurs
• Design as "Personality"
• "Say'Hello' to Mark, Mark or Mark"
• Making Design as Gut Issues
• Design Is Not Aesthetics
• Join the Crusade
• The Big idea
47. "Customerizing": Produced by, Directed by… and Starring — Our Customers
• First Things Last
• Carol Hickey Airlines
• A "Customerizing" Fantasy
• Cleaning Up
• Acting Classes
• Destination

• Afterword: Liberation Management
• Students
• "Workers"
• Middle Managers
• Chiefs
• The Commander in Chief (and His 535 Pals at the Other End of Pennsylvania Avenue)
• The Freedom to Fail

Impossible to get anything out of. Would probably be more interesting to attend one of Peters' seminares.