A passion for excellence:

What are the basics of managerial success? Two of the most important are pride in one's organization and enthusiasm for its works. A quick check of the twenty-five leading textbooks on management finds neither in any index. Nor does one find much about such concepts as 'naive customer listening,' customer perception of service/quality, employee commitment and ownership, internal corporate entrepreneurship (sometimes called intrapreneurship), championing of innovation, trust, vision or 'leadership.' That last, the concept of leadership, is crucial to the revolution now under way - so crucial that we believe the words 'managing' and 'management' should be discarded. 'Management' with its attendant images - cop, referee, devil's advocate, dispassionate analyst, naysayer, pronouncer - connotes controlling and arranging and demeaning and reducing.