Just Add Management

the long version

It’s time to get back to business—real business. A decade of hands-off management has produced a stream of cost overruns, incomplete projects, and reduced productivity, not to mention a growing list of accounting scandals. Companies that prided themselves on thinking outside the box have been boxed in by their neglect of basic business processes and a failure to insist on accountability and quantifiable results.In Just Add Management Farzad and Rhonda Love Dibachi reveal that the technological advances of the past decade actually have brought most business organizations to the brink of a major productivity breakthrough. In order to leap the final hurdle, however, managers must find ways to set the priorities, track the progress, and measure the productivity of knowledge workers.This step-by-step guide to managing knowledge workers explores the realities and myths of today’s knowledge workplace, introduces the archetypes who populate it, and shows managers how to set the right tone in the office for every employee every day. It demonstrates ways in which managers can establish transparency—the state in which every member of the enterprise understands his or her role in the larger scheme and how that role influences the success of the entire organization.The authors introduce time-tested, proven management techniques that enable managers to set and broadcast priorities, agree upon and enforce processes, and track and monitor employees’ progress and accountability. They also show managers how to support this accountability management system with knowledge tools that provide accurate, timely business data in order to help organizations work smarter. These techniques provide the mechanics of visibility—data-driven insight into which employees are doing what and how well they are doing.Without the oversight of mature, focused managers who stress business fundamentals and organizational goals, all of the technological breakthroughs of the past decade are just expensive toys for technocrats and computer mavens. Just Add Management gives businesses and managers the tools and techniques they need to take control of the knowledge workplace, put their operations back on track, and make the next leap forward in productivity and profitability.