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This page is the original source of this review, though you may also find it on Amazon or other sites. | ||
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We highly recommend Ideas Are Free--especially if you are a manager. List Price:
$24 |
| Review
of Ideas Are Free, a management book by Alan G. Robinson and Dean
M. Schroeder.
How did Toyota rise from being an obscure automaker to being "Number Three" in "The Big Three?" How did Toyota come to dominate the J.D. Powers Consumer Satisfaction Survey? And why is it Toyota has not laid off a single worker since 1950? Ideas. Toyota uses hundreds more ideas per worker than do its American counterparts. While Toyota is a stunning example of how one company gets and uses employee ideas, this book isn't about Toyota. It's about liberating people and transforming organizations through ideas. Not necessarily big ideas, but ideas that come from every person in the organization and add up to big things. The typical organization is an idea desert. This well-researched book shows you, through case histories and clear explanations, how any organization can transform that desert into a lush land that produces bumper crops. One key is tapping into the vast resource of employees who are closest to the work. Managers have a perspective that is excellent for addressing the larger picture. But to have that perspective, managers are necessarily removed from being close to the work. Thus, they simply are not in a position to see how to improve the work. Another important concept that many managers fail to put to use is that of massively parallel eyes, ears, and brains. Joseph Antonini taught us that ignoring these inputs is very dangerous--he nearly ruined K-Mart by assuming his ideas were the only ones that really mattered.
We have to remember that employees are often leaders and thinkers outside of work. They rear children, hold leadership positions in their churches, hold leadership positions in their trade or professional organizations, conduct neighborhood watches, pay mortgages, coach softball teams, teach children how to ride bikes, care for their aged parents, plan vacation trips, plan and prepare meals for guests, conduct hundreds of financial transactions each year, safely navigate their way around strange neighborhoods or even cities they have never been to before, conduct research at their library and online, send their spouses or children off to war and support them across vast oceans, and.... You get the point. And this is a point that Ideas Are Free brings to front and center. Companies who treat employees as a brain trust have an enormous advantage over companies that treat employees as a cost they'd like to eliminate. This book shows you how to treat employees as a brain trust, based on what other companies have successfully done. It also alerts you to some pitfalls and explains why certain approaches don't work. The competitive advantage that will most determine the future of any company is brainpower. It's not a matter of hiring bright people. It's a matter of correctly managing the brainpower you already have. And that's why I recommend Ideas Are Free to anyone who is in a management position. In today's globally competitive environment, you can't afford to operate on the same premise Antonini did. You need ideas. And, they are free--if you know how to look for them. | |
About these reviewsYou may be wondering why the reviews here are any different from the hundreds of "reviews" posted online. Notice the quotation marks? I've been reviewing books for sites like Amazon for many years now, and it dismays me that Amazon found it necessary to post a minimum word count for reviews. It further dismays me that it's only 20 words. If that's all you have to say about a book, why bother? And why waste everyone else's time with such drivel? As a reader of such reviews, I feel like I am being told that I do not matter. The flippancy of people who write these terse "reviews" is insulting to the authors also, I would suspect. This sound bite blathering taking the place of any actual communication is increasingly a problem in our mindless, blog-posting Webosphere. Sadly, Google rewards such pointlessness as "content" so we just get more if this inanity. My reviews, contrary to current (non) standards, actually tell you about the book. I always got an "A" on a book review I did as a kid (that's how I remember it anyhow, and it's my story so I'm sticking to it). A book review contains certain elements and has a logical structure. It informs the reader about the book. A book review may also tell the reader whether the reviewer liked it, but revealing a reviewer's personal taste is not necessary for an informative book review. About your reviewer
About reading styleNo, I do not "speed read" through these. That said, I do read at a fast rate. But, in contrast to speed reading, I read everything when I read a book for review. Speed reading is a specialized type of reading that requires skipping text as you go. Using this technique, I've been able to consistently "max out" a speed reading machine at 2080 words per minute with 80% comprehension. This method is great if you are out to show how fast you can read. But I didn't use it in graduate school and I don't use it now. I think it takes the joy out of reading, and that pleasure is a big part of why I read. |
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