Review–As One
Recently I received a review copy of a book called As One by Mehrdad Baghai and James Quigley. Mr. Baghai lives in Australia, earned his consulting stripes at McKinsey and is now associated with Alchemy Growth Partners and Mr. Quigley is the visible Global CEO of Deloitte Touche and Tohmatsu.
While some might consider As One a calling card for new clients, the authors appear to have tapped into the zeitgeist and applied it to the business environment. Mr. Quigley for one acknowledges the era of top down, “command and control management” may be way too narrow for modern times, a fact that has reverberated on the nightly news programs lately.
As One suggests another structure. It breaks corporate environments down into eight patterns, or archetypes, a concept perhaps more familiar to followers of Joseph Campbell than the contemporary business community. Archetypes are not a new concept. In their landmark book Terry Deal and Allan Kennedy introduced the idea of Corporate Cultures some thirty years ago and argued that distinct cultures evolve within companies. And those four types—macho tough guy, work hard/play hard, bet your company and process culture—seemed to be static and had a direct and measurable impact on strategy.
The authors of As One seem to suggest that their archetypes are more fluid, and can change overtime. And theyalso seem to suggest unlike the types in Corporate Cultures, the As One pairs—landlord and tenant, community organizer and volunteer, conductor and orchestra, producer and creative team, general and soldier, architect and builders, captain and sports team and senator and citizen—can exist at competing companies within the same industry.
This has implications for competition, but also for those individuals seeking to manage or perform to maximum effectiveness in an archetype that may be antithetical to their nature or value system.
The authors provide a table at the end of each section, trying to answer the question of whether a specific archetype is right for the reader. The answers give the impression that senior management is the decision maker in this case. The book would be enhanced by a similar table of questions for a prospective or current employees. It might be increased productivity and job satisfaction is as simple as choosing the correct archetype.
Tags: corporate cultures, Joseph Campbell, management style
