Thriving on Chaos [antikvár]

Preface RX: REVOLUTION! Few would take exception to the conclusion that our sales forces are not sufficiently cherished. But how many are ready to consider doubling the sales force—in the next 36 months? And all would nod when urged to get marketers out with customers more. But would you sign up for putting marketers in the field 50 percent of the time? Improving quality—we all salute that, too. But will you accept a challenge to cut defects by 90 percent in 36 months? I'd guess that most would agree when the idea of tying pay to performance (for everyone) comes up. But are you ready to institute a bonus that amounts to 50 percent of base pay (a third of total pay)? Revolution: It's a word business people have trouble with, and justifiably so. But our competitive situation is dire. The time for 10 percent staff cuts and 20 percent quality improvements is past. Such changes are not good enough. Many of the ideas in this book will be new to readers of In Search of Excellence and A Passion for Excellence; others will be familiar. But the rate of change demanded by the prescriptions in this book and the boldness of the goals suggested will be unfailingly new—and frightening. So this book is about a revolution—a necessary revolution. It challenges everything we thought we knew about managing, and often challenges over a hundred years of American tradition. Most fundamentally, the times demand that flexibility and love of change replace our longstanding penchant for mass production and mass markets, based as it is upon a relatively predictable environment now vanished. Xlll