Holistic Management

This book presents two recently developed knowledge areas that can significantly improve the management and the performance of business enterprise: System Science and Cybernetics and Key Performance Areas. Included in this book are advanced (and evolving) methods and technologies for planning and budgeting, creating and keeping customers, quality and productivity, innovation, improving organization capability, sustainability in the company's social and ecological environments, and profitability-all integrated with this new viable systems model and system thinking. Foreword, Antoine D. Savary.

Preface.

Contributors for Chapter 3.

1. From System Science—A New Way to Structure and Manage the Company.

2. The Viable System Model (VSM).

3. How the Viable System Model Improves Performance — Reports on Five Applications.

4. Key Performance Areas That Determine Company Success.

5. The Viable System Model and Planning and Budgeting.

6. The Viable System Model and Creating and Keeping Customers.

7. The Viable System Model and Quality and Productivity.

8. The Viable System Model and Innovation.

9. The Viable System Model and Organization Capability.

10. The Viable System Model and Public and Environmental Responsibility.

11. The Viable System Model and Profitability.

Index.

"…recognized for its innovative and bold attempt to go beyond conventional theories of management." (Electric Review, June/July 2007) After a management career in industry, William F. Christopher, MS, is now President of The Management Innovations Group and its literary agency. He has worked with more than 100 businesses in sixteen countries to improve their results in such areas as marketing and sales, new technology development, planning and budgeting, management reporting, and profitability. Mr. Christopher is the author of ten management books as well as numerous articles published in leading business and professional publications. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Science.

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.