The Self-defeating Organization: How Smart Companies Can Stop Outsmarting Themselves

In this insightful book, consultants Hardy and Schwartz reveal how organizations fall into "low-performance loops," repeating typical self-defeating behaviors. Instead of taking an honest look at themselves and taking chances, they take a safe, familiar path to failure. Rather than dissect a company's unique problems, executives grab onto the latest management fad. They waste time reminiscing about past success or planning a distant future. Other organizations create a culture of such chaos that no one feels accountable. Then, when things go wrong, the group looks around for someone else to blame. The authors map these patterns in a broad range of case studies, from department stores to brokerage houses, factories to software firms.
In The Self-Defeating Organization, managers master how to stop their companies' quirks from stopping them. The path to high performance starts with your organization's core beliefs about itself. Define your company positively - by what it does well, not by what it can't do. Tell the truth about its strengths, its situation, and its secret fears. Be open to new ways of doing things. Spread costs and benefits equitably. And make the success that follows part of your new core beliefs. Throughout this book are real stories of individual managers who boldly led their organizations back up that path from self-defeating behavior to success.