Leading outside the lines

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

A direly needed, first-of-its-kind book that will speak to managers at all levels of the organization, this book distinguishes the all important “formal organization” of a company – the management structure, performance metrics and formal strategy – from the “informal organization” – the culture, social networks and communities that aren’t written down or dictated from above, but that spring up naturally and, in an equally vital but different way, make the organization work. As in The Wisdom of Teams, Jon Katzenbach’s classic worldwide bestseller, this book takes a timeless and widely-accepted organizational approach and creates a powerful paradigm-shifting tool set for applying it. In this new book, the authors show through compelling first-hand case studies, that a good manager knows that to really lead a company, you cannot rely on formal structure alone, you have to use the informal organization as well. But, how do you balance the two? When is it better to use formal processes and when can you get the most done by using the social networks that operate under the radar?In this book, Katzenbach and Zia Khan apply decades of experience to unravel how the best managers use both the formal and the informal to achieve superlative performance and results. In a book that will be as revolutionary and essential as Katzenbach’s classic The Wisdom of Teams, they draw upon companies and organizations as varied as Sun Microsystems, Nordstrom, the New York City schools system, Campbell’s Soup, Aetna, the Marines, and the Houston Police Department, to profileorganizations that productively balance the formal and the informal.Innovative, brilliantly written and marked by its knowledge and detail, this is an easy-to-read high concept book containing essential advice on how to work within the formal and the informal – and when and how to make them tick together with great effectiveness. As accessible as it is fundamental, it provides a playbook no contemporary manager can be without, and its theory and examples are so broad that it will be an equally important read for leaders and their mentees in government, the nonprofit sector, and the halls of academia.