new
WHO REALLY MATTERS:
The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success
Art Kleiner
"Art Kleiner has uncovered a central truth about the way organizations work. His concept of the Core Group clarifies one key reason why rational people often act in seemingly irrational ways within the confines of an institution. Like any deep insight, it makes explicable what had previously been mysterious."
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and coauthor of Built to Last.
In an Organization Man for the twenty-first century, bestselling author Art Kleiner reveals that the energy propelling every organization is the desire to satisfy a core group and shows why understanding the expectations of this group is the key to success.
When corporate leaders announce, with seeming sincerity, that they make their decisions on behalf of their shareholders, their words are taken at face value. But, as recent news stories prove, this imperative is routinely violated.
In Who Really Matters, Art Kleiner argues that the dissonance between a declared mission and actual operation can be seen in both large and small organizations. All organizations have one motive in common: everything they do - choosing which projects to back, who to promote, where to spend the money - is affected by the perceived wants and needs of a core group of key people.
The composition of the core group can differ from organization to organization. Often, the most senior people in the hierarchy are members - but not always. Sometimes the people who "matter" can extend far down the corporate ladder, as well as reach outside the company to include key customers, union leaders and stockholders. Kleiner gives readers the key to reading a core group's real mission by observing its day-to-day actions, including what its fundamental message to employees is and how it gets that message across: how it manages the energy of new members, what basic ideas shape its policies about management, money and the way the world works, and what taboos govern the way it operates.
A deft, engaging blend of argument and observation, anecdotes and management theory, Who Really Matters is the ultimate guide to navigating the hidden pathways in any organization, and to achieving one's own career goals and aspirations.
Art Kleiner is a contributing editor at strategy + business magazine and the author of The Age of Heretics, which was a runner up for the Edgar G Booz Award for the most innovative business book of 1996. He also coordinated and was the lead writer on The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, and Schools That Learn.