Re-imagine! [antikvár]

I In 2002,1 tried (without success) to induce Stanford University to retract my MBA. I Here's why: The dean of the business school when I got my degree tliere was Robert i Jaedicke. He was also an accounting professor, and I took his advanced accounting course while I was a student. I last saw Jaedicke, 30 years later, on TV. He was testifying about his g involvement in the Enron fiasco. Not only was he an Enron board member—he was chairman fc of the board's Audit Committee. Yet he claimed he had no clue about the truckload of peculiar transactions that brought the company down! When a guy who served as Enron's audit boss the last bastion of bean counting invokes the "clueless" defense, it makes you wonder: Did he have any clue as to the usefulness of the curriculum at the school where he'd been a dean? Did he have any clue as to what lessons I'd extract from his "advanced" accounting course? Needless to say, my view of MBAs and of traditional business education soured even more than it already had. (Which is saying a lot.) The same goes for my view of "accepted business practices" in general. You see, this is personal to me. But, then, business is personal not an abstraction. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS BOOK! I'm 60 years old as I write. I've been doing my "thing" for well over a quarter of a century I've achieved some degree of acclaim. At this point, I don't have to write a book. My speaking and consulting gigs keep me busy to the breaking point and beyond. So why am I sitting inside, scrunched over a makeshift writing desk on a gorgeous July day on Martha's Vineyard cranking out Book Number 11? Because I'm pissed off. I happen to believe that all innovation comes, not from market research or carefully crafted focus groups, but from pissed-off people. People who just can't stand the opacity of current financial reports. People who are enraged when the CIA database doesn't connect to the FBI database. People who throw their hands up in frustration at the little slips of paper that fall out of their hymnals (and who thence proceed to invent Post-it Notes). My old friend Bob Waterman, co-author of In Search of Excellence, once told a reporter, "Tom's not happy unless he's madder than hell about something." True enough. And right now I am precisely that—madder than hell. I'm mad that I (and a lot of people far more clever than I) have been screaming and yelling and shouting about bankrupt business practices for 25 or 30 years mosdy to no avail. Every chapter in this book starts off with a "Rant." My overall rant, in brief: People in entei-prise, in government are by and large well intentioned. They'd like to get things done. To be of service to others. But they're thwarted at every step of the way by absurd organizational barriers and by the egos of petty tyrants (be they corporate middle managers, or army colonels, or school superintendents).