Overview
Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association,Robert Townsend’s Cure for Management Heartburn xiii Jim O’Toole. How Robert Townsend Talked Me out of Getting an MBA xvii Bob Davids. Up the Publisher: On Editing Robert Townsend xxii Robert Gottlieb. Contents, Original Edition xxxi. Up the Organization, Original Edition 1. Appendix A: Townsend’s Third Degree in Leadership 161. When Up the Organization was published in 1970 it spent 28 weeks on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. The Book Robert Townsend claimed that he never. The chapter titled “Further ‘Up the Organization’”was originally published in the July 1970 issue of. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Townsend,Robert,1920-1998 Up the organization:how to stop the corporation from stifling people and strangling profits / Robert Townsend;foreword by Warren Bennis.
Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend’s bestseller first among eighty books that “every manager must read.”This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend’s timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He shows a way to humanize business and a way to have fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before.
Summary and Review: Up the Organization, by Robert Townsend
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1970.
Robert Townsend, former chairman and chief executive officer of Avis ('We try harder') authored his manual for business in 1970. Since then, the book consisting of 97 chapters ranging in length from a couple of lines to 10 pages, has become a legend of controversy.
Recently, in a talk given before mail order executives, Townsend put the reaction to the book in these terms: 'The general reaction from the Establishment is silence. From others the comment is, 'Well, isn't it superficial.' My answer to these critics is, 'The book wasn't written for you, you slob. It was written for you successor.'
It is this kind of irreverent writing style that makes the book stimulating, irritating and very entertaining. Townsend lacerates the much-revered Harvard Business School and says management-consultant firms, 'Waste time, cost money, demoralize and distract your best people, and don't solve problems.'
Townsend claims that if we are to save American (and world business), we must start dismantling organizations where we're serving them, leaving only the parts where they're serving us.' This process is referred to by Townsend as 'decluttering' and he says it must be done overnight. Personnel departments, legal departments, advertising departments, and purchasing departments must be eliminated.
Townsend's book is very easy to read, consisting of encyclopedia-like entries such as 'Big Wheels in Little Companies,' 'Delegation of Authority,' 'Firing People,' and 'Meetings.'
Townsend is regarded as a liberal in matters of corporate social policy. He opposes racial, religious and sexual discrimination in business. His business philosophy demands that stock ownership through options be much more widely distributed than they presently are.
One of the most fundamental hypotheses of the book is found in the section 'People' on page 137. 'There's nothing fundamentally wrong with...
