A new simplified framework that improves organizational performance at all levels

Learn to apply a new, simpler approach to business management that enables you to cut through the mounds of literature on traditional business management and actually get results. This new approach, based on more than forty years of the author's field experience, combines and extracts the best from two successful business management innovations:

• Viable System Model (VSM): Developed by Stafford Beer, the VSM models the principles of system science and cybernetics for application in management. The VSM gives you a more realistic view of what your organization is and how it works, providing a new, better way to structure and manage the company and its businesses for successful results.

• Key Performance Areas: Peter Drucker identified seven key performance areas that determine success for all business organizations. The author presents best practices for achieving organization goals in all the key performance areas, and describes how the VSM principles maximize results.

By combining these two management innovations, you learn not only how to best structure and manage an organization, but you also learn to focus on and apply best practices in key performance areas to reach your organization's objectives. Specific methods and technologies are offered to assist you in all areas of business management, including:

Planning and budgeting—Creating and keeping customers—Quality and productivity—Innovation—Improving organization capability—Sustainability in the organization's social and ecological environments—Profitability

Case examples provided throughout the book demonstrate how the author's approach is applied in actual organizations. Not an esoteric theory, this business management approach is easily learned and easily applied. Managers at all levels in business and industry will find the material accessible and, most important, effective in improving performance in all key performance areas.