Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose Book

Living Strategy is Lynda Gratton's attempt to place employees in the context of a business with all its competing attractions. And while it is commonplace among corporations to pay lip service to the need to "put people first", Gratton attempts to demonstrate the benefit to corporations of actually doing so. Even more importantly, she brings it down to the particular level of what a company must do to understand staff and therefore to empower them. Her three key tenets are that people "operate in time"; that is, they have a past, present, and future which informs their judgements. That people "search for meaning in their work". They try to learn the rules of the game irrespective of company policy. The final component is that "People have soul;" they like to get excited about what they do. On top of these three theoretical constructs, she overlays three separate business case studies which revolve around the on-going success of Hewlett-Packard and the H-P Way, the success of Motorola in building a work force in China where others have failed, and finally how Glaxxo Welcome was able to speed up delivery of new products in the face of the expiry of its key patents. Indeed, the book is filled with mini case studies and surveys and experiments to prove her point. Living Strategy suffers a little from untidy sentence construction and pertinent, useful points get lost in a sea of words. At other times, Gratton switches to jargon, which demands incredible tolerance and patience on the part of lay readers. Quibbles aside, however, her book makes a rewarding and thoughtful read. --Bruce McWilliamsRead More