The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune With Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive

The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune With Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive

by TERRI L. GRIFFITH
Released October 2011
Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9780470903551

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Book description

A game-changing approach to management

Too often discussions of management practice focus exclusively on managing people and organizational issues. Rarely, however, do they incorporate a discussion about technology or address all three dimensions in a balanced way. When they do, the result is game changing. In our hypercompetitive environment, those managers who are outstanding at being plugged into their people, technology, and organizational processes simultaneously excel at coming up with effective business solutions.

The Plugged-In Manager makes the case that being plugged-in—the ability to see choices across each of an organization's dimensions of people, technology, and organizational processes and then to mix them together into new and powerful organizational strategies, structures, and practices—may be the most important capability a manager can develop to succeed in the 21st century. Step by step Griffith shows you how to acquire this ability.

  • Shows what it takes for business managers to succeed as technology and organizations become more and more complex

  • Profiles exceptional leaders and organizations who are plugged-in, such as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

  • Offers a fresh look at management issues

Filled with compelling case studies and drawing on first-hand interviews, The Plugged-In Manager highlights this often neglected managerial capability and the costs of only focusing on one dimension rather than all three.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The Plugged-In Manager
  3. Title page
  4. Copyright page
  5. FOREWORD
  6. Dedication
  7. chapter ONE: Plugging In to the Twenty-First Century
    1. Why Plug In Now?
    2. Plugged-In Management for All
    3. What’s Ahead
  8. chapter TWO: Why You Need Plugged-In Management
    1. Changing Technology, Organizations, and People
    2. Why We Must Plug In Now
    3. Systemic Changes Demand Plugged-In Management
    4. Eugene Lee’s First Ninety Days at Socialtext
  9. Part ONE: The Three Practices of the Plugged-In Manager
    1. chapter THREE: First Practice: Stop-Look-Listen
      1. Assessing the Environment
      2. Providence Regional Medical Center
      3. The Value of Systematically Assessing the Environment
    2. chapter FOUR: Second Practice: Mixing
      1. Negotiating a Basic Mix
      2. Working with More Complexity
      3. BUILDER
      4. Southwest Airlines Makes a Change
      5. How Mixing Can Support, or Ensnare, Your Customers
      6. Next Steps
    3. chapter FIVE: Third Practice: Sharing
      1. Don’t Let the Words Get in Your Way
      2. Nucor: Hire the Right People, Then Let Them Learn
      3. Get in Tune
      4. Shine a Light on Plugged-In Activities
      5. Teach Some Basics, Then Get Out of the Way
      6. Don’t Hide Your Plugged-In Practice
      7. How Can I Help Others Plug In?
      8. What About a Formal Training Program?
  10. Part TWO: Learning to Plug In
    1. chapter SIX: Assess Your Ability to Plug In
      1. How Plugged In Are You?
      2. How You Compare
      3. Quick and Dirty
    2. chapter SEVEN: Plugging In Through Practice
      1. Amazon’s Kindle eBook Reader
      2. Nucor: Extreme Plugged-In Management at All Levels
      3. A Plugged-In Response to Adversity: Nucor and the Vulcraft Flood
      4. Nucor Steel: Transportation Recovery Through Plugged-In Management
      5. Microsoft’s Excel for the Mac Project
      6. eContact at Cisco
      7. How Did You Do?
    3. chapter EIGHT: The Layers of Plugged-In Management
      1. The Brainstorm Story
      2. Plugging In as a Life Skill
      3. Become Wise in the Ways of Plugging In
      4. Not Your Grandmother’s World
  11. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  12. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  13. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune With Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive
  • Author(s): TERRI L. GRIFFITH
  • Release date: October 2011
  • Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
  • ISBN: 9780470903551