Product Description

You may have heard about the organization that employed people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.

There was an important job to do and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody would not do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

This book is not about that organization. Instead, it's about building or working in an organization where Everybody can succeed because Everybody has clear accountabilities, a manager who adds value, and the resources to do the job - an accountability-based organization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #958417 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-05
• Released on: 2006-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 114 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781412065603
• Condition: USED - LIKE NEW
• Notes:
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Customer Reviews

No Value In This Shameful Glossary
A Is For Accountability: A Guide to Accountability-Based Management, is an attempt by the writer Burns to communicate some of Elliott Jaques concepts pertaining to his system of effective managerial organization and leadership, which he called `The Requisite Organization'. The writer has chosen to call it `accountability-based management'.

Unfortunately, the book is a minimalist glossary of borrowed ideas and concepts. No thought or intellectual effort was given to presenting a coherent theory or structured advice that might actually serve as a "guide" to anything. Instead, a few of the foundational concepts of Jaques' Requisite Organization theory are chopped up into fragments and reassembled in alphabetical order (A is for Accountability, B is for Boundaries, C is for Capability, etc.). No effort is made by the writer to present an overview or summary of the theory of `Accountability-Based Management' or 'Requisite Organization', not even what it is and why it is important.

Shamefully, there is an almost complete lack of acknowledgment that the source of the core content of this glossary is the intellectual work of Elliott Jaques. There is one reference to Jaques in the preface acknowledging him "for the foundational work on requisite organization," and one other minor reference to his book Requisite Organization on P. 48 pertaining to the fact that he did research related to the principle of level of work complexity (L is for level of work complexity).

In reality almost every concept in the book was lifted directly from Jaques' corpus, yet the sources from which the core content is derived are not revealed. There is no bibliography of Jaques' dozen or so books or reference to his two articles in Harvard Business Review should a reader wish to learn more. But the writer does feel that it is important to take the time and space to let us know her online source for dictionary definitions and space-filler quotations.

By willfully failing to acknowledge that Jaques is the source of almost all of the intellectual content of the book, it unfortunately appears that the writer is trying to hide this fact from her readers, and thereby immorally and deceptively trying to present the concepts contained therein as her own. The advice provided is not really her advice, but that of Jaques presented second-hand.

It is also curious to me that the writer provides 40 quotations from authors such as Drucker and Covey that loosely pertain to the topics presented, yet not one from Jaques. She footnotes James B. Thompson for a definition of "three degrees of interdependence" yet she fails to acknowledge Elliott Jaques as the thinker who defined and developed key concepts she presents, such as: future potential capability, managerial accountability, employee-once-removed, felt-fair pay, QQTR, SoR/EoR, IPC/CMP, service-getting and -giving, time span of level of work, information processing capability/complexity of mental processing, three-tier units/mutual recognition units, etc. One has to wonder if she fears that her audience may discover that he had something important to say about the topics she is writing about!

What would have been more useful would have been pertinent quotes from Jaques on each topic she presents, but that likely would have exposed too much. It really does seem as though she is trying to hide his existence from her audience rather than celebrating his original thinking and contribution to organizational theory.

To this extent, the book does an immense injustice to one of history's geniuses of management science, and a man the I assume the writer must surely admire, by failing to give him proper credit for the intellectual content that her book contains.

If you are contemplating buying this book should also know that it contains almost as many "empty" pages (46) as it has pages with content (58, excluding a few with large and superfluous cartoon illustrations).

In my opinion, this book is of no value to anyone who is already familiar with Jaques' body of work (in fact, the intellectual disrespect shown is highly insulting), and no value to anyone who isn't. If the topic of `accountability-based management' interests you, I would recommend you read Executive Leadership by Elliott Jaques and Stephen D. Clement for a thorough, coherent, and original presentation of how to achieve accountable, value-adding, managerial leadership in organizations.