Foreword

I have been involved in education for a good part of my life, most of which came through the Institute for Management Studies (IMS), founded in 1974 by my father, mentor, and friend, Gordon A. Peters. IMS, his brainchild, was designed to deliver knowledge from cutting-edge business thinkers to managers at large organizations, who might otherwise not have a chance to receive it. In its first year, IMS presented such well-known faculty as Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard. We also introduced a promising young Harvard professor, Dr. Michael Porter. Since that time, IMS has worked with the best and brightest from academia and consulting to provide management development to over 25,000 managers a year throughout the Western world.

Over the years, I have contemplated gathering together the views of these great minds into a collection of essays that would reach more people than IMS alone had an opportunity to touch. I quickly realized two fundamental truths; it would take several volumes to collect even a small portion of the knowledge that these thought leaders have to offer, and I did not have nearly enough time to devote to the task.

Nothing much happened with the notion of a "Best of IMS" book until an unusually warm winter's day when I received a call from my business colleague and friend, Marshall Goldsmith. He prompted me to once again explore the idea, stating that there "was tremendous upside potential for a book of this kind and almost no potential downside."

Why now? Extremely busy working with two different companies, I knew that it would take more than a few phone calls to put a great book together. However, I had two compelling reasons to accept: the state of management as a practice and my four-year old son.

The State of Management

During the 1980s and 1990s, organizations were restructuring in order to find new efficiencies. The usual result was that they became flatter and managers were given an increased span of control, usually with a commensurate increase in the length of their workday.

At the turn of the millennium, business entered a new era. The Information Age truly arrived and has since changed the way organizations conduct business. While one could certainly argue that many new business models have been built on shaky foundations in the hope that they would create new economic models, the changes ushered in by this new age are nonetheless far-reaching. Technology has forever changed the way that companies manufacture, market, sell, and ship products and/or services. Technology has also changed the way people manage and work in organizations. People are using technology to communicate, gather information, collaborate with team members, manage personal time and productivity, and learn.

These changes have created tremendous organizational and managerial efficiencies. With technology to fill the void, we can now get more done in less time with fewer people. Organizations can quickly and easily communicate with customers and employees around the world, creating a truly global community. Through technology people can also get a seemingly limitless amount of information with which to make better and faster decisions. Unfortunately there have been some negative impacts as well.

Everything moves faster. With cycle times and product lifecycles becoming increasingly shorter, the ability to create a long-term strategy has become almost impossible. While organizations can find almost any information about their competitors, their competitors are engaged in the same fact-finding mission about them.

Employees have huge amounts of data on which to base decisions, but the enormity of it can induce a state of paralysis. People often forego making a decision rather than make one without all the information that is available, or soon will be.

Communication, now constant, has suffered in some significant ways. Face-to-face conversation is frequently replaced by e-mail or voicemail in instances of employee praise, reprimand, or even termination. In an effort to drive support costs down, customer service has been reduced from personal interaction to voicemail and now to e-mail.

Leadership, and the skills required to be a leader, have changed dramatically in our new digital world. Leadership used to be driven by knowledge and expertise in a given area. Now, it is virtually impossible to know it all. Instead, leaders must rely on managing knowledge workers. Thus, people skills have become the key to successful leadership, which may seem ironic given the tremendous dependence we all have on rather impersonal technology. So, the time was right for a book that explored these changes and challenges while giving insight on how to leverage them to our benefit.

Tuberous Sclerosis

The second reason that I wanted to help with this book is my son Mitchell, who at birth was diagnosed with Tuberous Sclerosis. TS is a debilitating genetic disease. Sixty percent of those affected are unable to live independently. The disease affects multiple organs and can cause tumors in the skin, kidneys, brain, heart, eyes, lungs, teeth as well as other organ systems. TS is the leading genetic cause of epilepsy and can also cause retardation, autism, or renal failure. An estimated 50,000 people in the US are affected with Tuberous Sclerosis.

When our son was born, the doctors found several tumors in his heart and numerous tumors in his brain. Fortunately, we have been lucky. For the most part, our lives have been normal. Many others have been far less fortunate. For the past several years, I have felt powerless against the progression of this disease. It is my sincere hope that the awareness generated by this book may, in some small way, help Mitchell and others like him.

Jon V. Peters
President, COO
The Institute for Management Studies