Argues that we must redefine corporate success based on the quality of a company's service to its customers and the quality of life for employees, and presents a three-step process for implementing a new management-by-values approach. 50,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. IP.
Perceptive business leaders are starting to understand that their enterprises will fully succeed only when all of their myriad stakeholders--owners, employees, customers and neighboring communities--also succeed. In the slim, but very thought-provoking Managing By Values, Ken "The One Minute Manager" Blanchard and behavioral researcher Michael O'Connor lay out a realistic step-by-step plan for determining any company's core beliefs, and then putting them into practice throughout the organization in order to achieve real across-the-board satisfaction.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Values Management
Comment: It is often the most difficult thing to think through your values and then derive your whole management plan for your business by it. Yet the moral success and satisfaction of your business starts from that place. It will also guide your management through some of the most difficult problems which inevitably come to challenge and see whether your values make sense.

Is your house built on rock? Or is it built on sand. We want to build on the rock.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Managing by the heart...
Comment: Yet another great book for leaders or those who are leading people, not just managing people. O'Connor tells a story that gets to the heart of managing by the heart!

Easy read, great parable.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: It All Starts with Mission & Values
Comment: Ken Blanchard's collaboration with Dr. Michael O'Connor has produced another management, leadership, and ethical living primer that is highly recommended to all current and future organizational leaders at all levels.

This book is about an inwardly-troubled, yet outwardly "I-have-it-all" president and CEO of a struggling company who, by chance, meets a managing by values (MBV) consultant who immediately and eventually helps transform the CEO's company into a "Fortunate 500 company" and his personal life into a rewarding family success story. The authors' important message that MBV provides the best framework for stability, continuity, and growth in today's fast-paced environment of social, cultural, personal, economic, and technological change was constantly and believably reinforced.

Through meetings with the consultant and interactions with some of his other clients, the CEO learns the fundamentals of MBV and how to apply them at home and at work: the three acts of life (achieve, connect, and integrate); the four pillars of Fortunate 500 companies (`raving fans' customers, employees who feel and act like owners, satisfied owners and stockholders, and the `significant others' who interact in mutually beneficial ways with the company (to include vendors, suppliers, creditors, distributors, the community, and the competition)); and the three-phased MBV process (clarify mission and values, communicate mission and values, align daily practices with mission and values).

I was most impressed with the authors' ability to effectively balance the conceptual and practical application aspects of MBV in a story that brought their extensive research and experiences with real-life MBV organizations to life. Do not let the fact that this book was written in 1997 dissuade you from reading and learning from it for it's message is timeless and probably even more relevant today.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Inspiring yet realistic overview of values integration...
Comment: Finally... a book that gives more detail on how the values integration process works. Reading this book 6 months into our own values integration process is very reassuring because it really hits home on a lot of points. This book outlines the same process that we used and its working! The interpersonal relationships seem to me to be the first notable change. The buy-in part is crucial. This book is also realistic about internal opposition to the values integration and the length of time that it takes to truly become a values- based company. Another key topic in this book is that being a values-based company is about being a group of values-based people. You need to work on yourself too; it's not just that you have values when you come to work. I think an important feature of any values integration process is promoting the importance of living each day with integrity in ALL things that we do, not just at work. The amazing thing is that once you start to see and feel that your company is living your values, you will try harder to keep moving forward. Another good book to get people inspired is Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good principles - too simplistic to execute
Comment: The basic messages of this book can be summarized in one paragraph. First writing down values and guiding principles is necessary. It’s important to know what’s important and making sure our staff and our stakeholders buy into these values. This requires communication. Secondly, writing mission and values won't be enough. The question is how we will put our values into action. It’s in the action that you will see how committed people are to the values. Commitment will mean that people’s behavior is aligned with the mission and the values. Not only does this mean that our values have to be written in a way they provide guidance for this.

Once you know this, reading the book is a waste of time. In fact I learned nothing from this book. The *real* challenges are formulating the mission and values in such a way that people REALLY buy into them. A first level of answer can be found from book such as "Visionary Leadership Skills (Dilts, 1996) and my own book "7 steps to emotional Intellince". A second level of comes from books such as "Appriciative Inquiry".

Good Luck on your search for meaning!

(extract from newsletter of ...

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