“The skill of progress would be to preserve order among change and also to preserve change among order.” — Alfred North Whitehead, 1800s British math wizzard and philosopher
As Achieve (my first talking to company) was dealing with our Clients to apply Toward Excellence (the cultural change process we’d developed along with Tom Peters) I had been growing more and more uneasy. Something did not feel right. In Looking for Excellence, Peters and Waterman presented a effective situation against “the rational model” of management. It forcefully contended (amongst other things) for concentrating on people (customers and individuals serving them) instead of processes, action rather of research, and achieving values instead of figures driven.
There would be a strong requirement for managers to escape from the overstuffed bureaucratic, controlling, and hierarchical approach a lot of companies had fallen into.
However I also understood of firms that were entrepreneurial, exciting, people-oriented, customer-driven — plus they battled or perhaps went lower the tubes simply because they used a shoebox to have an accounting system and yesterday’s technology. A few of these managers originated from the we-must-still-have-money-because-we-still-have-checks-left school of economic mismanagement.
It appeared in my experience the actual issue was balance. In order I began on my small first book, The Very important personel Strategy, I developed an earlier form of the “triangular model”. After utilizing it with plenty of management teams to border key organization improvement issues, and ongoing to review, speak, and talk about the performance balance, we’ve since further refined the model:
Performance Balance Triangular
Technology — an organization’s core technologies are the expertise and/or equipment that creates the services or products that it is customers buy. Supporting technology can include web-based applications, software, telecommunications, robotics, production equipment, and so on to create, deliver, or offer the organization’s core technology. Personal technologies are the technical expertise I provide the development, delivery, or support of either core or supporting technologies.
