Product Description

Have powerful market trends or uncontrollable events ever delayed or derailed your organization's growth? This book offers you new concepts and improved tools to anticipate and convert such forces into powerful allies to help you exceed, not merely achieve, you goals, even in the most challenging environments. or are you an entrepreneur starting a new business? This book demonstrates how to establish a trajectory to flourish by harnessing whatever the unstoppable and unpredictable forces you may encounter, whether in the traditional or digital economy? The authors present new ways to recognize and understand the forces that are impacting you so can develop the right vision, and implement the correct strategy to consistently and effectively turn them to advantage. Rejecting old habits, such as expending resources to combat or neutralize forces over which you cannot control, THE IRRESISTIBLE GROWTH ENTERPRISE instead describes revolutionary, yet common sense, management principles that will lead you to breakthrough gains. It also explains how to spread the necessary skills throughout your organization in order to enjoy the highest level of effectiveness. Irresistible forces come in many forms including exponential technological development, frequently changing and ever more fluctuating financial and currency markets, as well as the emergence of new competitors and increasing price pressures as the pace of globalization accelerates. Companies that have ridden such forces well in the past--such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Starbucks, and AOL--have grown from startups to billion dollar sales corporations in ever shorter periods of time. Which force will be most important for your organization tomorrow? How can they propel your business to irresistible growth? While you cannot accurately predict their direction or timing, applying the principles of THE IRRESISTIBLE GROWTH ENTERPRISE will enable you to position yourself to always benefit quickly from shifts, and open an ever-expanding lead over your competitors. Here are new question you need to ask yourself about your business, new ways to answer them, and processes to employ to pursue your winning course. Tomorrow's leaders will be those who excel at using all irresistible forces to best advantage. THE IRRESISTIBLE GROWTH ENTERPRISE offers you the key to grasping your full potential for immediate and sustained breakthroughs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #955624 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 282 pages

Review
" . . .executives encountering such circumstances have help--in the form of THE IRRESISTIBLE GROWTH ENTERPRISE." -- Norman R. Augustine, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Lockheed Martin Corporation

"Learning to be flexible is one of management's toughest challenges ... shows ... how to become adroit and energized by unexpected changes." -- Alan G. Hassenfeld, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hasbro, Inc.,

"THE IRRESISTIBLE GROWTH ENTERPRISE defines the flexibility one needs to turn all of these uncontrollable events to advantage." -- H.W. Lichtenberger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Praxair, Inc.

"This remarkable resource will enable you to move rapidly ahead of competitors by utilizing powerful trends to best advantage." -- Jerre L. Stead, former Chairman and CEO, Ingram Micro, Inc., and coauthor of Soaring with the Phoenix

About the Author
Donald Mitchell is chairman and CEO of Mitchell and Company, a corporate strategy and finance consulting firm. He is the co-author, with Carol Coles and Robert Metz, of the acclaimed The 2,000 Percent Solution (AMACOM 1999).

Carol Coles is president, COO and co-founder of Mitchell and Company. She is a co-author of The 2,000 Percent Solution (AMACOM 1999). She also is co-administrator and designs and conducts research for three organizations: Share Price Growth 100, which focuses on better understanding how transactions affect value; Leading Division Presidents 100, which works on operating performance improvements; and Outstanding Chief Executive Officers.

Customer Reviews

The Gods of Lankhmar meet Napoleon Hill
Fritz Leiber's "Lankhmar" stories tell of a fail-safe system available to the citizens of Lankmar in case they were in grave danger of defeat: They could summon the Gods of Lankhmar, who would lay waste their enemies - and them, too. (Naturally, one does not summon them too often.)
Many leaders, thinking like managers, wait until drastic action is mandatory to save their organization - risking possible destruction in the process. Mitchell and Coles outline a series of steps, somewhat reminicent of Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" system, for recognizing danger (read: opportunity), planning for riding the crest of said opportunity, and for overcoming the organizational inertia that most large systems possess to make it happen.
Part of the change process is accepting risk: The "Gods of Lankhmar Effect" might do to describe the process they envision, as the change device carries the potential to expose the organization to collateral damage, or "creative destruction," as Shumpeter termed it. Knowledge of the risks involved contributes to the "stalls" many cohorts will use to block change. Much of the book is devoted to strategizing ways to overcome the more common ones.
Some of the stalls ("But that's not the way I thought it would be!") remind one of the reactions of individuals to personal loss - the grieving process is often described as a five-step one, including denial as an early reaction. Facing change of major magnitude, when the action called on for survival and the chance to prosper, may involve the preceived loss of what one holds dear. Like Themistocles, the innovative leader may have to sell his people on letting the Persians burn Athens, by offering a compelling vision of the marbled splendor awaiting the victors, as opposed to hoping that a conventional response to overwhelming force will somehow do the trick - magical thinking, if you will.
Tactics described by the authors start out with measurement concepts - an essential part of a rational decision-making process. Collecting relevant data, and knowing what that is, constitutes the first line of defense in directing organizational change. After all, what good is a thermometer when what is needed is a Geiger counter?
The essential quality of the book is this: Accept the need for overcoming a majority in your organization who will not see or accept change, and who may not accept the best alternative for meeting it, along with the consequent resourcing demands. Be prepared to identify and ally with those who come to share your vision. Anticipate dealing with stalling tactics, or be just another Cassandra - right on your predictions, but ignored by those you warn.
-Lloyd A. Conway

A Breakthrough Work
robertlowe@mindspring.com from Atlanta , 5 July, 2000

The Irresistible Growth Enterprise is a breakthrough work and a millennium message from one of the truly gifted business minds of our times.

The perspective and information in this book is of equal importance to the CEO, CFO, Corporate Director, executive, manager, supervisor, sole practitioner, first time entrepreneur, or student at any level.

This is more than a 'how to' book yet you may use it to work through what you must do to grow, thrive, change, and survive into the new century. It is more than a management technique book, yet the techniques introduced and developed here may be used as a guide for any who must manage to manage into the turbulent and exciting times ahead. Among the 'irresistible forces' with which we must deal are such events as globalization, market fluctuations, economic surges and reversals, new technologies and their economic impacts, natural events - weather and catastrophes, demographic changes, and the myriad aspects of human unpredictability. Don Mitchell tells us that 'Most people see irresistible forces as random factors or inconveniences, but The Irresistible Growth Enterprise will instead show you how to use all those forces instead of trying to avoid them.' This principle, at once ancient and modern, is essential to both business health and personal development.

The principles and practices in this book are more than mere ideas. They are the culmination of practical gleanings, over decades, in close business and interpersonal relationships with an astounding number of the nation's top executives dealing with real-time irresistible forces.

The Irresistible Growth Enterprise is required reading if you wish to deal effectively with the geometrically increasing velocity of change and development facing all of us today. As Don Mitchell says, 'This multiplier effect will increasingly happen with all irresistible forces, and this is the key insight upon which you must act now.'

Robert Lowe - Author Improvisation, Inc.: Harnessing Spontaneity to Engage People and Groups Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer (2000)

For Corporate Executives Who Think They're Poised for Growth
Nimbleness and strategic thinking can go hand-in-hand. The power is in understanding the forces around you that can inhibit progress or send you careening off in the wrong direction. With that understanding, and the ability to act in a timely manner, you can achieve considerably greater success in the corporate world.

The first ten chapters of this insightful book address the factors that can stall progress. This portion will be quite educational for executives who haven't realized how many things could get in their way-many without even appearing to be blockages. Consider these stalls: lack of direction, wishful thinking, helplessness, defensiveness, independence, overoptimism, cover-up, and underestimation. Getting a little uncomfortable? Welcome to the club. These inhibitions are more common than you might think. However, knowledge is power; so understanding what's happening to you will give you the capacity to break through.

The stalls, thinking habits that get in our way, can be overcome. And the authors show readers how to get past the stalls with solutions and challenging questions. A liberal supply of anecdotes from the authors' consulting experiences illustrate the messages to help readers "get" what's happening and what they must do. With a deeper understanding of the company's conditions, you'll be motivated to really dig in and make some things happen.

The next eight chapters of the book will give you the tools you need, enhanced by lots of examples to help you understand the applications. The authors describe how measurement, environmental awareness, studying of best practices, and working differently with your people can make a substantial difference in your success. The epilogue chapter emphasizes why it's important to begin this work now, and not procrastinate. The velocity of change in the world has increased significantly, with more competition and other companies whose executives have read books like these and are striving to apply the principles.

A valuable touch from the authors is an appendix that applies their concepts to personal and family life. This section is a gift. Another appendix focuses on the internet and the unique challenges and opportunities presented by this vehicle.

The book is enhanced by summary introductions to each chapter (like executive summaries), a bibliography, and index. It's a work that will engage your thinking and stimulate some interesting-and productive-discussions among your leadership team.