Business Beyond the Box: Applying Your Mind for Breakthrough Results Book

For decades soap giant Procter and Gamble was a byword for stodgy formulaic business practice and a paranoid obsession with keeping the nature of those practices to itself. But recently, driven by declining margins in saturated markets, it has chosen to espouse a more touchy- feely and creative approach to its business. And like some some reformed alcoholic or born-again convert, it wants to sing about what it is doing and how it has been achieved from the roof tops. In Business Beyond The Box, P&G group vice-president John 0'Keefe describes the imaginative leaps required to achieve "step change" (as opposed to incremental change) that galvanised his company from a lumbering giant into a lithe super-company with profits to match. O'Keefe's starting point is that we all have it within us to perform significantly better than we do now, not just by a few percentage points, but by a quarter or half as much again. What limits us is our ambition and the assumptions we make about problem solving. "Your mind is a brilliant cranial computer, but most people don't know how to operate it. Indeed, other than using analytical thinking, most people don't have clue what to do with it", he writes. His principal tool is what he calls "triangular thinking", a variant on lateral thinking with three major elements: picturing the desired step-change, building know-how and using creative thinking. In other hands, this could be a bit like one of those spurious "change your life" programmes (normally run by people who have changed their lives by selling "change your life programmes" to others). But O'Keefe is a seriously heavy corporate player and P&G is a seriously heavy corporation. Which gives this book the gravitas it might otherwise lack. There¹s no dreary management theory, just an inspirational framework which shows how managers can break out of their limited thinking to achieve personal and corporate breakthroughs. Breezily written and peppered with intriguing examples and fascinating exercises, this book is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in real change, personal or organisational. --Alex BenadyRead More