The Forward-Focused Organization: Visionary Thinking and Breakthrough Leadership to Create Your Company's Future.

Stephen C. Harper AMACOM, 2001 258 pp; $27.95 Hardcover

"The forward-focused organization is like a magnet. It attracts customers, employees, investors, and allies who want to be partners in its journey into tomorrow" (page xii). This is the basic tenet of Harper, consultant and professor of management at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, who has penned a book designed to help organizations not only react to or anticipate, but to actually create their own futures. This process is clearly outlined in three parts. Following an introduction, which compels readers to abandon their comfort zone, Harper reminds us that organizations might do well by hiring a "Vice President in Charge of Killing Things." Only when companies break away from the bondage of the status quo can they see and craft the opportunities that lie ahead. Part I discusses the role of leadership in creating a forward-focused organization. In this section, Harper introduces readers to the levels of commitment to change, ranging from the champions, who are most committed, to the covert resisters, who passive-aggressively plot against change efforts. Other established change models, developed by theorists such as Lewin, Drucker, and Argyris are introduced here. The text then progresses to describe "breakthrough leadership" responsibilities which include, among other things, creating an environment where change is initiated at all level of the company, developing other leaders, and demonstrating "impatient patience." Importantly, unlike the myriad of existing books on change management, Harper has chosen to focus not on how leaders can get others in their organizations to go along with change efforts, but instead on why and how leaders need to change themselves so others will break down walls to follow them.

Part II clarifies the need for bold initiatives and the creation of new realities. To demonstrate the need for this, Harper discusses corporate Maginot Lines that might provide for a false sense of security. Referring to executives who continue to be "card-carrying members of the Flat Earth Society," Harper reminds readers of many once-sacred business paradigms (e.g., 93% is the optimal quality level as higher levels are cost prohibitive and location is everything). The author then progresses to discuss the concept of "futuring," which diverges from long-range planning in that it recognizes we cannot mindlessly extrapolate the past to forecast what tomorrow will be like. And, finally, Part III discusses strategic management in terms of thinking (developing contingency scenarios), learning (gaining strategic insights), positioning (creating a unified corporate vision), planning (formulating plans) and monitoring/controlling (verifying assumptions). Two appendices contain humorous yet frighteningly insightful lists of 100 ways to self-destruct as a leader and 100 ways to drive away your customers.

There are some particularly unique and interesting contributions that are made by the book. For example, by introducing the concept of "bifocal management," Harper implores readers to simultaneous focus on the short and long term, on both operational matters and strategic issue. He compares such ...