Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness

LOS ANGELES, April 6, 2011 – Today’s organizations are under intense pressure to meet new performance demands. And the only way they can succeed, according to organization effectiveness experts Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley, is to make fundamental changes to strategy, organization design and leadership. Traditional management models that focus on hierarchy and maximizing profit are failing; to thrive, today’s organizations must be structured and managed to address social and environmental impacts as well as financial results. In their latest book, Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness (Jossey-Bass, 2011), Lawler and Worley provide prescriptive practices for doing so.

“The old ways of managing are obsolete,” said Lawler, professor of business at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, and founder and director of the University’s Center for Effective Organizations (CEO). “Today’s complex, global business world demands a new approach to management; one that makes change easy and delivers triple bottom-line results. Without a complete ‘management reset,’ many businesses simply will not survive.”

Redefining the Management Model

Management Reset is a guide to how organizations need to be managed and designed to achieve what Lawler and Worley have termed “sustainable effectiveness” – or long-term success aligned with triple bottom-line performance. This new approach to management integrates agility and responsibility, and allows organizations to thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s environment.

“We are challenging the ways businesses and their leaders think about decision making,” added Worley, senior research scientist in USC’s CEO and professor of management at Pepperdine University. “They need to start making changes now because it’s only going to get more challenging from here on. This is the future of management.”

Starting with changes in how organization effectiveness is measured and a more realistic view of risk, Management Reset explores how strategy, governance, organization structure and talent should be managed in businesses to produce sustainable financial, social and environmental results. Lawler and Worley provide illustrative lessons from well-known organizations that are already profiting from these sustainable management principles and practices, including Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, DaVita, Starbucks and the U.S. Secret Service.