Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World

CORPORATE AGILITY: A REVOLUTIONARY NEW MODEL FOR COMPETING IN A FLAT WORLD tells of a new business model, one that enables businesses to embrace workworld changes on a global scale. Currently most companies are unable to adapt to new methods of doing business, and become crippled by high fixed costs and new competition. CORPORATE AGILITY tells how to break this destructive cycle, offering tried methods by leaders of the Work Design Collaborative and providing a survey of value to any business library. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Finally there is a book for the Facility Manager, I.T. Guy or H.R. professional looking to prove their point. How often have we heard the words; "That may be a great idea, but what is everyone else doing?" When it comes to leading edge ideas for changing the work place and the way we work, this book provides hard data based on what some of America's top companies are doing now. Corporate Agility gives us a look into companies such as Hewlett Packard, Sun, IBM and others. It provides detailed analysis of how they are addressing the changing work place environment. How are companies staying connected with an increasingly mobile work force? How are they integrating Gen X, Gen Y & the Millennial workers? How are they reducing costs for work space, real estate and I.T. while increasing productivity and worker satisfaction? In depth case studies provide hard data regarding how different programs impact costs savings, worker productivity and employee satisfaction. The analysis and case studies also let you key into a network of resources to help with your projects. Furniture systems, architects, designers, real estate brokers and I.T. solutions are all discussed. The Future of Work community is a door to a nearly endless supply of thinkers and practitioners dedicated to solving today's work place issues. Regardless of the size organization you are trying to change, Corporate Agility will provide the ammunition you need to get the project designed, approved and completed.

In the Introduction, Charles Grantham, James Ware, and Cory Williamson explain that they assembled a small group of thought leaders from major corporations and collaborated with them when conducting a survey among decision-makers in both labor and management "to discover how new technologies, the changing workforce, and economic globalization were changing how and where people worked, and what those changes meant to the future of work in the so-called Information Economy." The survey responses confirmed what they had only suspected previously: "most businesses had been unable, or unwilling, to adapt their traditional management styles to the new conditions." Various factors resulted in a crippling loss of corporate agility. "These Industrial-Age behemoths are often referred to as corporate dinosaurs, in an effort to describe just how slow and unwieldy they really are - to say nothing of being nearly extinct - and there may be even more truth and insight contained in that image than anyone ever intended." Grantham, Ware, and Williamson pose an especially interesting question: How can a business evolve from being a dinosaur to a jaguar, and do so in the space of months, not millennia? In this book, they provide their response to it, what they characterize as "a collaborative, strategic approach to management that acknowledges and leverages the growing interdependence of human resources (HR), corporate real estate (CRE), and information technology (IT), a process we call collaborative strategic management." In this volume, they explain to define, develop, and then implement the CSM process, and thus achieve corporate agility. The co-authors organize and present their material within ten chapters and draw upon a collection of wide-ranging, cutting-edge ideas drawn from pilot programs, case studies, and evolving best practices established by members of the Future of Work community. (The co-authors invite you to visit www.thefutureofwork.net/index.html.) FYI, the quoted phrase in this review's title was formulated by James O'Toole while identifying major barriers to leading change in a book that bears that name. Grantham, Ware, and Williamson have no illusions whatsoever as to the difficulty of defining, developing, and then implementing the CSM process to achieve corporate agility. They realize that many organizations cannot overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" and will not survive. These are the "dinosaurs" to which they refer. However, other organizations can become agile and thus adapt to rapid, model-shattering changes in the global economy. These are the "jaguars" to which they refer. To me, it is especially appropriate that the process of defining, developing, and then implementing collaborative strategic management requires organizations to be actively involved in all manner of alliances and mutually beneficial partnerships between and among members of global communities such as Future of Work. This is precisely wh

All Real Estate organziations struggle with driving dramatic change in their organizations, whether stemming from the challenges of supporting 4 generations under a single (physical or virtual) roof, dramatically reshaping a portfolio and costs or creating a stragety that aligns with the overall business strategy -- this is THE book for you. It's written with a relevant, direct approach and loaded with practical case studies that can easily be applied to your operations.

As I researched experts on business and workforce agility for our upcoming event in April, I came across this book. The authors provide a very interesting look at how companies can be successful in a business climate that changes almost daily. They point out that being able to adapt in this rapid-fire environment requires agility and they take you through case studies that illustrate best practices and innovative ideas in helping to achieve agility. Business leaders need to take the pulse of their company's agility level and this book is a great place to start.