Steve Kerr Books

"Like Marko Polo discovering a new world of trade, organizations today are exploring vast new markets throughout the globe. The process is nothing less than a revolution, breaking down once sacrosanct boundaries of space, time, and nationality...In today's world, there is no longer a dichotomy between domestic and foreign. Global boundaries between companies, markets, and people have become irrevocably blurred...For companies such as Unilever, ABB, and SmithKline Beecham, globalization has become a natural part of their business, an integral part of their culture. For most companies, however, the goal to become truly global in mindset, staff, and market seems a stretch. Although the oportunities are tempting, the effort, knowledge, and skill required are much greater than for running a domestic operation, and the risks-once you probe beneath the surface-are equally enormous"(pp.261-262).

In this context, the authors, in Chapter 8, first put forward the following ten reasons why organizations might want to become more global: competitive survival, cost spreading, trailblazing, rule of three, domino effect, evolutionary forces, technological revolution, search for innovation, ripple effect, and benchmarking against other companies. Then, they discuss seven challenges companies face in making the global leap: (1)Establishing a workable global structure, (2)Hiring global supermanagers, (3)Managing people for a global environment, (4)Learning to love cultural differences, (5)Avoiding parochialism and arrogance, (6)Designing unifying mechanisms and a global mindset, (7)Overcoming complexity.

In Chapter 9, to overcome these challenges, they show action plans, and suggest ways of moving forward, from learner to launcher and from launcher to leader into the global arena as summarized as below:

I- From Global Learner to Global Launcher

1. Human Resources Practices

* Supply language/cultural sensitivity training.

* Standardize forms and procedures.

* Set up an overseas presence via joint venture, modest acquisition, or establishment of a headquarters.

* Engage in extensive cross-border relationship building.

2. Organizational Structures

* Arrange short-term visits and international assignments.

* Staff for more diversity in management and board of directors.

* Use e-mail and videoconferencing to maintain day-to-day contact.

3. Organizational Processes and Systems

* Establish worldwide shared values, language, and operating principles.

* Conduct fact-finding missions.

* Design ad hoc transnational teams.

* Hold global town meetings and best-practice exchanges of information.

II- From Global Launcher to Global Leader

1. Human Resources Practices

* Seek complete liquidity of human resources: recruit outside the domestic base; place foreign recruits within the domestic base; promote the best people to global assignments; rotate people internationally; use twinning.

* Aim for a global structure.

* Map global processes.

2. Organizational Structure

* Provide continuing global leadership trining and regular transnational training to reinforce the global mindset.

* Remove/minimize country managers and replace with global managers and focus on global customers.

* Routinize real-time global communications.

3. Organizational Processes and Systems

* Use global reward systems.

* Multiply ongoing transnational project teams.

* Work for global integration (for example, total global sourcing, global design, global engineering, and global purchasing).

Finally, they write that "Many tools are available to organizations, and we have described a good number of them here (as summarized above). But senior management must have the skill and foresight to use the right tools in the right way, at the right time, and in the right sequence...Each stage requires structures that enable the crossing of boundaries, systems and procedures that drive global behavior, and people who can learn to extend their thinking beyond their present outlook."

Highly recommended.

This is a forward-looking discussion of the paradigm shift from traditional pyramidal organizations to organic, dynamic enterprises that feature permeable boundaries. The book is a triumphant crusade against fiefdoms and boundaries of all types, and for freedom in inter- and intra-organizational life. It demonstrates how "boundaryless" organizations can increase the ability to respond quickly, creatively, flexibly, and in an integrated fashion to market demands. Case studies of change efforts bring the main points alive. Adding to the value of this work are self-diagnostic instruments, charts, and tables. This book is a rich source of insights about organization plus savvy guidelines for taking action. I highly recommend it.

Checklist can be used to help a manager transition an organization to overcome institutional barriers

The title is a misnomer: Although the authors do indeed suggest how to "break through the chains of organizational structure", they provide an enlightening explanation of four different types of boundaries (vertical, horizontal, external, and geographic) which give definition to any organization. They do not advocate the total elimination of these boundaries (which is impossible, anyway); rather, they suggest how to rearrange them so that an organization can thrive. For the authors, there is what they call "A New World Order":

"In living organisms, membranes exist to give the organization shape and definition. They have sufficient structural strength to prevent the organism from dissolving into an amorphous mess....Like a living organism, the boundaryless organization also evolves and grows, and the placement of boundaries may shift....Because the boundaryless organization is a living continuum, not a fixed state, the ongoing management challenge is to find the right balance of boundaryless behavior, to determine how permeable to make boundaries, and where to place them."

This brief excerpt from the first chapter correctly suggests the purpose of this remarkable book: To explain HOW to meet that challenge.

The material is presented within four parts plus a conclusion. The first explains how to achieve "free movement up and down" by crossing vertical boundaries; the second explains how to achieve "free movement side to side" by crossing horizontal boundaries; the third explains how to achieve "free movement along the value chain" by crossing external boundaries; and in the fourth part, they explain how to achieve "free global movement" by crossing geographic boundaries." Then in the Conclusion, the authors discuss "Making It Happen: Leading Toward the Boundaryless Organization."

The authors also include a series of six questionnaires. By completing each in sequence, the reader is able to determine (a) where her or his organization is now located relative to "the boundaryless paradigm", and (b), what is needed to eliminate the "gap" between where it is now and where it should be. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read The Boundaryless Organization Field Guide. It contains a a hands-on set of diagnostic instruments as well as exercises and tools, and a disk with presentation slides in Powerpoint format.

I agree with the authors: The most restrictive organizational boundaries are in the minds of those within an organization. Organizational as well as personal wounds are usually self-inflicted.

This is a forward-looking discussion of the paradigm shift from traditional pyramidal organizations to organic, dynamic enterprises that feature permeable boundaries. The book is a triumphant crusade against fiefdoms and for freedom in inter- and intra-organizational life. It demonstrates how "boundaryless" organizations can increase the ability to respond quickly, creatively, flexibly, and in an integrated fashion to market demands. Case studies of change efforts bring the main points alive. Adding to the value of this work are self-diagnostic instruments, charts, and tables. This book is a rich source of insights about organization plus savvy guidelines for taking action. We highly recommend it.

The GE Workout is a simple and straightforward process for solving problems. The brilliance of Workout is it is simple enough that people can actually put it to use. Any company, organization, group or individual can use the Workout process to tackle problems of any size.

Those who have studied Six Sigma know it can quickly become overly complex. The does not happen with the Workout process. Workout is simple, easy to apply and can produce startling results, often quickly.

If you are frustrated by inefficiencies, process bottle-necks or dealing with the same nagging problems where you work, give this book to your CEO and urge him or her to start utilizing the GE Workout process.

Not every problem can be solved. But many can. Not every problem can be solve quickly. But many can. For those problems that can be addressed, including many that can be resolved in days or weeks - not months or years - Workout can be a life saver.

Highly recommended.

There's no denying the effectiveness of the Work-Out system at General Electric (GE). This book is a straightforward and comprehensive introduction to what Work-Oout means and how it helped GE achieve such astonishing results under Jack Welch, who introduced it. This clear, well-organized book makes it possible for any executive or manager to apply at least some elements of the work-out program in any organizational context. We do caution you, however, that the Work-Out program as portrayed here demands a great deal of commitment and moral fortitude from leaders. Empowerment may be effective, but it is rarely comfortable for the powers that be. Just ask "Neutron Jack."

Unlike other books on Six Sigma that focus on variation reduction, statistics and other tools, this book is full of practical examples of techniques and implementation tips. The focal point of the book is on the process of generating the turnaround in a large conglomerate such as GE. In this case the aspects of organizational behavior constitute THE critical success factor (rather than statistical/other tools). Workout has undoubtedly been fundamental for generating the cultural transformation in GE. This book is addressing these organizational behavior aspects in a pragmatic manner presenting a detailed road-map from planning all the way through implementation.
Most examples deal with administration/bureaucracy and I would have expected to read more on operational aspects such as value chain improvement in a Production/Logistics environment.
This book is a must for top managers that search for a generic methodology to translate their vision into reality.

'Work-Out' is the famous organizational process that General Electric, the greatest industrial firm in the world, used to bust bureaucracy - fast.

At its core, Work-Out is a simple, straightforward concept for cutting out bureaucracy and solving organizational problems - fast. Large groups of employees and managers - from different levels and functions of the organization - come together to address issues that they identify or that senior management has raised as concerns. In small teams, people challenge prevailing assumptions about "the way we've always done things" and come up with recommendations for dramatic improvements in organizational processes. The Work-Out teams present their recommendations to a senior manager in a "town meeting", where the manager engages the entire group in a dialogue about the recommendations and then makes yes-or-no decisions on the spot. Recommendations for changing the organization are assigned to "owners" who have volunteered to carry them out and follow through to get results. That's Work-Out in a nutshell.

Work-Out can be applied to almost any type of problem. It was first used at GE to harvest the low-hanging fruit of OVERGROWN BUREAUCRACY by getting unnecessary and unproductive work out of the organizational system - e.g. reduce meetings, reports, and approval levels. They asked what procedures didn't make sense? Where were they wasting time? What activities seemed to add little value? Some of the bureaucratic procedures were expense reimbursements, making travel arrangements, obtaining office supplies, updating personnel data, taking education courses, upgrading software, and more. But also in the core functions, bureaucracy was found: filling out forms for deals, preparing presentations for approval meetings, keeping track of customer data, obtaining approval for materials purchasing, overwhelming amounts of extra analysis to justify various investments or initiatives. Some of the results were e.g. that expense accounts did not need multiple approvals, people could purchase approved software without going through the IT department, and a pre-deal process was established to see if deals were worth pursuing before going through all the analytics.

Work-Out has been successfully adapted to any type of organization - public or private, commercial or non-profit, large or small. In all of these organizations, no matter what the issue, the process remains much the same.

1. Bring together the people from the organization who know the issues best
2. Challenge them to develop creative solutions
3. Decide on the solutions immediately in a public forum
4. Empower people to carry them out

Despite its massive impact on GE and other firms, Work-Out is not a snake oil or magic elixir. It is a simple set of concepts, tools, and experiences. When stripped to its essence, Work-Out allows people to get some obstacles out of the way so they can do their work better. In many firms, that alone would be a significant gain.

The real merit of this book is the practical approach. If you are - as I am - struggling with the challenges of continually keeping our organizations lean, then this book can help you. It contains many inspiring worksheets, action plans, tools, and hands-on case studies.

The authors of this book helped GE create Work-Out. So don't expect theoretical contributions. Only sound advice.

Co-author Dave Ulrich is one of my favourite HR experts. I can recommend many of his books, e.g. `Results-Based Leadership' and `Delivering Results'. To him, HR is about delivering business performance and organizational capabilities. Cause if you don't, you'll soon be out of business. The tricky part is balancing the soft and hard part of HR. Dave Ulrich has many good concepts to make that happen. This book is not a bad place to start, if you'd like to pick his brains...

Peter Leerskov,
M.Sc. in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

I completely agree with the reader who said that this book could have been written much more effectively. It is nearly 400 pages and should have been no more than 25 to 50. Most issues or thoughts in this book while being solid are explained in far far too painful of detail with a great deal of redundancy. This made reading the book extremely wasteful of my time.

Perhaps the authors should have a "Work Out" on improvement of their materials.

In summary, this book simply makes you think!
It really makes one think about the customers point of view, and where our rewards systems should be based.

I really liked the fact that the author makes the obvious point that "money isn't everything". It is simply too fleeting, and so difficult to quantify.

Another powerful summary in the book is the comparison of what companies "want", and what they tend to reward, such as, "Wanting Performance, but rewarding attendance, which results in Employees who come in on time and look busy." Nothing should make a manager think, more than that single item. This book is full of examples like that, and challenges management to measure and establish metric systems for each area of the company.

One of the strong points of the book is the observation that most company mission statements are woefully similar, with no real practical wording that will give clear direction.

I think this is a wonderful tiny book that all managers should have as a desk reference. Now if we can just get upper management to listen.

This is a very short, compact book that is packed full of insights into what makes a good reward system. Kerr points out that many companies devise employee reward systems (often unknowingly) that discourage the behaviors they want and reward the very actions they do not want. For example most companies want long-term growth but tend to reward employees that achieve quarterly goals thus creating an environment where the focus is on short-term performance.

The focus of the book is that the reward system is often the fault - it often discourages the behavior that the employer is trying to get by rewarding the wrong behavior.

Kerr states there are three points to a good reward system.
1. Operationally define performance and convert the goals into action steps.

2. Devise comprehensive metrics that track actions.

3. Create a reward syste that meets employee needs, reinforce the metrics and aligns the company's goals with the work people are doing.

He goes on to say that anything that can be measured can be rewarded. Most companies are rather lazy about creating meaningful metrics. But according to Kerr, anything that can be described in actionable terms can be measured.

A central premise of the book is that the quality of the rewards and metrics depends on how well performance is defined and made operational.

Management gets what it inspects, not what it expects.

A large number of companies focus most of the rewards on financial rewards. As Kerr points out, financial rewards are tricky to adminsiter. And when dispensed foolishly you have not increased productivity or motivation, just the cost of doing business.

While most of the book is focused on rewards, he does give a very brief discourse about punishment. Punishment is an ineffective way to change people.

If you are in any way involved in compensation plans for your company, it is worth reading. It only takes a couple of hours to read but you will get a lot of insight.

It is not a how to manual. It gives some very good points and some good questions to determine if your reward system is working. But it is not a detailed how to manual.

Kerr has worked for large companies, GE and Goldman Sachs and in universities. So most of the material will be of greater benefit to those involved in larger companies. However there are still some great gems for the small business owner.

This book was OK. I can stuff it in a back pocket in my jeans it is so small. And I didn't find it to be particularly well written or outlined. If I were to re-write the "book" I think it would be broken into 5 parts and 25 chapters as follows:

I. IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET WHAT YOU WANT BY USING REWARD SYSTEMS
1. Some systems work
2. Some systems don't work
3. Some systems sort of work
II. REWARD SYSTEMS THAT WORK DEFINE GOALS IN TERMS OF MEASURABLE METRICS
4. Actions and behaviors are measurable metrics
5. Thoughts and emotions are not measurable metrics
6. How many goals should you set?
7. How to use stretch goals
III. MEASURABLE METRICS
8. Measure things right
9. Measure the right and important things
10. Objective versus subjective metrics
11. Control versus development
12. Rating versus ranking
IV. THE REWARDS
13. Reward things right
14. Reward the right things
15. Financial rewards
16. Prestige rewards
17. Job content rewards
18. Efficiency versus equity
19. Performance versus attendance versus seniority
20. Individuals versus teams
V. TESTS OF A GOOD REWARD SYSTEM
21. Availability & eligibility
22. Visibility
23. Performance contingency
24. Timeliness
25. Reversibility

But how is one to stuff 25 chapters into a pint sized 134-page tome? You're right - you're not.

There is some good content in this book. And there are some good points made as far as how to properly motivate your employees so your company will be successful at doing what it is supposed to do. But I felt like the book was the first draft of something that probably was going to need 10 or 15 drafts before the author could produce a final manuscript. There is not even a Table of Contents provided that is helpful in telling the reader what he needs to know to find value in this book. Purchase this book if you are already pretty knowledgeable about the subject and you just want to find a few choice nuggets of prose in order to fine tune your grasp of the subject matter. 3 stars!

This book, written by Steve Kerr, the former chief learning officer of General Electric and Goldman Sacks, is outstanding. It addresses how to get the results you want by rewarding employees for the right things. This might sound like a simple concept, but the fact that the process often doesn't work well is proof that it is often done incorrectly. This book shows you how to make it work right -- you end up with happy employees and the results you want -- a win-win situation.

The book is divided into 3 sections: 1) define performance in actionable terms; 2) measure the right things & use the right measures; and 3) reward the right things & use the right rewards. Undesirable behaviors on the part of employees are often due to faulty reward systems. For example, if companies reward employees who achieve quarterly targets, they often get an "overemphasis on short-term performance or employees who game the numbers"; if companies reward individual goal attainment, they often get "self-serving activities and unproductive competition." This book shows you how to look at exactly what you want, and how particular types of rewards work, so that you can select the right rewards to get the behavior you want from employees, which leads to the business results you want.

Section 1 is about figuring out exactly what you want, in specific terms. One way of doing this is through the bull's eye exercise, in which your mission/values/principles leads you to the thoughts/emotions you desire, which leads you to the specific actions/behaviors you want. Because you have gone through this exercise, the actions/behaviors you end up rewarding are more carefully selected than they probably would be otherwise. This section also discusses how many goals to set (probably more than you think) and "stretch goals", which are goals you want people to strive for but don't expect them to fully achieve often (these function to motivate people to greater achievement, if used correctly).

Section 2 is about measuring people's performance and whether or not they are helping achieve company goals. As the book says, "Measurement also signals that something is important; if no one is tracking it, it will take a backseat to things that are being scrutinized." Employees should be monitored so that they can be shown what they are doing correctly and incorrectly -- and, at first, this should be presented as information only, without negative repercussions. This helps people be more open about the feedback. This section discussues rating people versus ranking them against each other and shows why rating is usually MUCH better. Kerr explains why limiting rewards (in various ways) before performance has even occurred can be very bad for morale (or motivation), and therefore performance. One very important part of this section discusses how to make sure you are measuring the right things. If you measure the wrong things, you will reward the wrong things, and not get the results you desire.

Now that you are ready to reward the right things, section 3 teaches you about "rewarding things right", that is, what rewards to use. This is probably the best part of the book, though the whole book is tremendously useful. There are 3 basic types of rewards: financial, prestige and job content. Despite what you might think, financial is not always the most motivating to people. Job content rewards are basically things that make the job experience itself satisfying, such as "responsibility, challenge, recognition, autonomy, and opportunities to participate in decision making, to grow professionally, and to do interesting and important work." All 3 of these basic types of rewards have their place, and Kerr can help you figure out which rewards are most effective for particular situations. Once you have made a draft reward systems, use the tests of a good reward system to check it out -- Kerr helps you evaluate availability & eligibility (availability may be unchangeable, but eligibility is usually most effective if not limited; visibility (more visibility is usually best); performance contingency (this should be more important than seniority, title, etc.); timeliness (sooner is better than way after the fact); and reversibility (rewards that can be denied in the future if performance slackens are often better motivation). This section covers trade-offs, such as rewarding efficiency vs. equity; rewarding performance vs. attendance vs. seniority; rewarding individuals vs. teams (rewarding teams is often the better method and is often underused); and rewards vs. punishment.

The final brief chapter tells how to get this process started. It advises: don't confuse activities with outcomes (or you may not focus on long-term objectives); identify some local heroes (i.e. spotlight those already doing well); and run in parallel (test your new reward system rather than abruptly switching).

This book would be useful in many situations. It is meant for many types of businesses, including non-profits and the government. Any organization's goals can be advanced with these methods, not just "money is our goal" type businesses and this is demonstrated throughout the book. This book is not long, but it sure packs a punch. It gets to the point of things and has cut out the fluff so that it can be read and utilized by those short on time, as are the other books in this "Memo to the CEO" series. This book will probably make a great difference to your organization's ability to succeed in meeting it's goals.

I bought this book for my homeschooled eight year old son. The book looks great but it is completely set up for group and classroom use and is also intended for older students.