Reviews for Levers of Control: How Managers Use Control Systems to Drive Strategic Renewal

The average rating for Levers of Control: How Managers Use Control Systems to Drive Strategic Renewal based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-13 00:00:00 Travis Flasschoen The book does a fantastic job of describing the levers theoretically, but doesn't do quite as much in the way of real world explanation of how to fix, manipulate or otherwise build levers that work. That said, I was looking for a piece that was more theoretical in nature. Here are a few key points that will go into my analysis: Definitional: Belief Systems - what the organization has set out to do, to achieve Boundary Systems - what an individual part of the organization must never do (ex: 10 commandments) Concept 1: P. 53 - "Organizational participants can view boundary systems either as either constraining or liberating… a lack of rules can be deceiving. At first, subordinates believe they have freedom of action, but they quickly learn that superiors hold them accountable to unwritten rules that can only be determined by trial and error. The result is uncertainty and a reluctance to act." Also, P. 54 - "If improperly set, strategic boundaries can hinder adaptation to changing product, market, technology, and environmental conditions. Boundary systems make it risky for employees to search for new opportunities ouside acceptable domains of activity. Rigid strategic boundaries make it clear to employees that using company resources to experiment in proscribed product markets is subject to discovery and punishment." Thoughts: These concepts point to the idea that structure is everything inspiring people to fulfill actions in a particular manner that is counter-intuitive to the concept of the ID. Concept 2: P. 81-83 talks about dysfunctional side effects. Diagnostic measurement systems are gamed in order to achieve incentive goals that do not meet the end organizations goals. The book then draws out a few popular types of diagnostic failure: "Measuring the wrong variables" - Example was Sears incentivizing based on number of repairs completed. They ended up getting sued for making unnecessary repairs. "Building slack into targets" - Purposely making targets below standards so that anything achieved about this looks like a win for managers. "Gaming the system" - The book gives the example of a credit card company where managers were incentivized by decreasing the amount of time on a call in there department. As a result, managers would pass a caller to multiple departments instead of trying to handle the situation. Productivity numbers looked improved, but callers were not happy. "Smoothing - altering the timing and flow of data without changing the underlying transactions being measured...." "Biasing - transmitting only data that are perceived to be favorable..." "Illegal acts - violation of organizational rules and/or laws Concept 3: Strategic planning should be interactive at the boundaries. Assuming the structure is put together correctly, strategic planning on the long range should have a lot of input from the fringe senior managers and everyone should be capable of voicing change. The Section starting P. 114 goes into great detail on how to achieve this.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-17 00:00:00 Vladimir Krivosheev Definitely worth the read if you manage anything. On a practical level, it covers some important concepts (another reviewer did a fine job of summarizing the key concepts so I won't go there). From an academic standpoint, this is one of the most important books in Management Control that I know of. Most current research in the area makes some reference to this book or the research behind it. The criticism I have seen of it is that some of the terms are too vague (e.g. interactive control) and that it focuses too heavily on senior management. That said, in my opinion the concepts would still hold for any level of management, down to the self-manager. Also, it is well-written, flows in a logical manner, and isn't as dense as other books on the topic.