Homepage
 ISO 9000 Software
 Joint Certification
 Quality for One
 Training in a QMS
 Letters
 News Digest
 Quality Mgmt.
 One Minute Mgr.
 Quality Standards
 Gage Guide
 SPC Toolkit
 Book Reviews
 Guest Editorial
 Quality Software
Picture Picture
Picture
 Book Reviews

Intellectual Capital
by Thomas Stewart

By now, there can be little doubt that knowledge and information, the basic elements of intellectual capital, are valuable corporate commodities. Fortune editor Thomas Stewart is the journalist of record on IC; he has been following its development since 1991. In this book, Stewart introduces IC, offers a taxonomy for organizing it and successfully makes the case for managing it.

We can think of IC as being made up of human capital, structural capital and customer capital, suggests Stewart. Human capital is the sum total of the knowledge that resides in a company's employees. Structural capital is the value of the infrastructure by which that knowledge is transferred. Customer capital is the value of a company's relationships with customers.

IC is a fledgling discipline, and some fuzzy thinking is associated with it. The author suggests, for example, that a company's "true value" is its market value, and that the difference between a company's market value and the book value of its tangible assets comprises the value of its intellectual capital. Such assumptions ignore a myriad of other components of market value, such as bull markets and takeover rumors.

Stewart's Intellectual Capital (Doubleday, $27) may well prove to be the seminal book on the topic. It is compellingly argued and very well-written. Read it as the best introduction to this new management concept.

 

Managing by Values
by Ken Blanchard and Michael O'Connor

A new Ken Blanchard production pops up at least once a year. His latest entry, co-authored with values guru Michael O'Connor and whipped into shape by writer Jim Ballard, is a slim volume on corporate mission and values.

Like One Minute Manager and Raving Fans, this book contains a novella-length story that reduces the establishment and maintenance of mission and values to its essence. In this case, that means a three-phase process defined as clarifying, communicating and aligning.

Phase 1, the clarification of mission and values, is a definition stage. Blanchard describes this as a top-down process, starting with the CEO. However, it is not a dictatorial process. Eventually, everyone connected with the company, including outside stakeholders, is consulted.

Phase 2, communicating mission and values, is a roll-out stage. Here, the mission and values are proclaimed throughout the company, and expectations regarding their application are shared. It is the "talk" before the "walk."

In the final phase, the company's daily practices are aligned with mission and values. This is when companies are required to walk their talk.

The shape and format of a Blanchard book no longer comes as much of a surprise. Blanchard has found a style that works and, with a notable exception or two, sticks with it. What is surprising is the consistent usefulness and effectiveness of these slim tomes. Managing by Values (Berrett-Koehler, $20) is no exception to the rule.

 

The Customer Is CEO
by Forler Massnick

The customer has a special place in the discipline of total quality -- customer focus is a foundation stone of TQM. But even the most committed quality pro may find Forler Massnick's The Customer Is CEO too fanatic about the subject.

The author rightly places the customer at the center of every business. He also suggests that the customer can actually replace the CEO as a company's leader. There may be some convoluted logic to this statement, but the metaphor (the customer is like the CEO) can only be pushed so far. And every reader should be able to readily identify customers they would not want in control of their organization.

Massnick also makes a point of his book's lean approach -- no wasted words, no lengthy explanations. But, in many instances, the book suffers for it. This is particularly evident in Part Two, where a half-dozen concepts, such as the learning organization, quality and reengineering, are described in short five- to six-page chapters. In each case, the mere addition of the "customer" seems to be the magic missing ingredient for success.

The appendixes, which are all reprints of previously published material, are redundant at best. Is another appearance of Deming's 14 Points and Seven Deadly Diseases and the Baldrige Award criteria useful to business book readers? And, surely, many who have tried to gain the attention of U.S. auto dealers by filling out one of their customer satisfaction surveys will question the inclusion of a generic dealer survey in Appendix F.

It's hard to argue with any book that advocates an intense and unwavering focus on customers. Obviously, this is a critical success factor in today's company. But it is just as hard to recommend The Customer Is CEO (AMACOM, $27.95), which adds little, if anything, to this already well-documented subject.

booknotes

Documentation Practices
by Carol DeSain and Charmaine Sutton
(Advanstar, 178 pages, $124.95)

This expensive hardcover covers the purpose, preparation and maintenance of the documentation required by quality systems such as ISO 9000 and the FDA's GMP regulations. Directive, commitment and data-collection documents are described and illustrated.

 

Trust in the Balance
by Robert Bruce Shaw
(Jossey-Bass, 231 pages, $25)

Trust, says Shaw, is a primary lubricant in the operation of today's flat, networked organizations. Shaw builds a model for building trust in the workplace based on three imperatives: accountability for results, acting with integrity, and caring and concern for others.

 

Moving Ahead With ISO 14000
edited by Philip Marcus and John Willig
(John Wiley & Sons, 302 pages, $54.95)

This collection of essays from 30 environmental management experts adds up to a comprehensive tour of the major issues and elements of the discipline. Five sections cover: the case for voluntary compliance, gaining internal support, ISO 14000 registration, integration with other standards and sustainability issues.

 

Real-World Project Management
by Mary DeWeaver and Lori Gillespie
(Quality Resources, 230 pages, $42.50)

In the first half of the text, the authors offer a project management model with four stages labeled opportunity, commitment, implementation and conclusion. In the second half, project managers get plenty of advice regarding their roles as politicians, human resources managers, change agents and risk assessors.

 

Insights to Performance Excellence 1997
by Mark Blazey
(ASQC Quality Press, 246 pages, $35)

Originally designed for quality award examiners, this text provides an in-depth look at the Baldrige criteria. Each of the quality award's clauses are presented in their original form, explained in plain language, presented as a flowchart, linked to other pertinent clauses and illustrated with real-life examples.

 

Improving R&D Performance the Juran Way
by Al Enders
(John Wiley & Sons, 258 pages, $45)

This text applies total quality principles -- à la Joseph M. Juran -- to the R&D function. Among the promised results: reduced development cycles, increased customer satisfaction and enhanced return on investment. The book is sprinkled with abstracts of papers presented by corporate practitioners.

 


Miller's Bolt
by Thomas Stirr

Thomas Stirr's first book is an unlikely combination of behavior modification tools, project management skills and fiction. The result, surprisingly, is an effective business book that may not be the "page-turner" the publisher promises, but is nevertheless an easy, enjoyable read.

Stirr's hero is Jim Manion, a marketing executive at a stagnant company, whose attitude toward work and his colleagues is as stale as the company's sales. When the company president gives him three months to become a productive team player, Manion turns to a personal performance coach to help him keep his job.

The coach teaches Manion and the reader how to alter behavior using visualization exercises and a four-step affirmation technique that Stirr labels WIPE. W = focus on the result you Want; I = use the pronoun I to make the result into a personal goal; P = set the goal in the Present tense; and E = attach positive Emotion to the goal.

Once Manion explains the behavioral work, he offers up an eight-step project management process. The generic process is fairly standard, but Stirr adds a good measure of assessability to it by assigning each step a catchy label and describing the process in easy-to-understand language.

All this teaching is well-camouflaged by an entertaining plot that includes a full measure of corporate politics. There's even a villain who, of course, gets his just rewards in the end.

Business novels are pretty commonplace these days, and few live up to the promise of the format. Miller's Bolt (Addison-Wesley, $12) is a happy exception to the rule and worth a look for those struggling with personal improvement and project-based workplaces.

Picture
Picture
Picture

e-mail Quality Digest

Copyright 1997 QCI International. All rights reserved. Quality Digest can be reached by phone at (916) 893-4095.

Please contact our Webmaster with questions or comments.

[Homepage]

[Current Issue]

[ISO 9000 Database]

[Daily News]

[Phil's Journal]

[Past Issues]

[Quality Web]

[Information]

[Media Kit]

[Subscribe]

[Guestbook]