The New Business Normal: The Peril and Promise of New Global Realities

by Michael W. Wright, Walter J. Ferguson, Walter J Ferguson

Author Michael W. Wright has written a book for serious executives with an introduction and first chapter that race the reader forward at a breakneck speed and bring them back to a place no other... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976625407
• ISBN13: 9780976625407
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Knowledge Management Press
• Length: 130 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.7" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A needed refresh in the world of managment books

Wright's _New Business Normal_ is a much needed update to any leader's classical management library in post-dotcom-bubble, post-globalized and far leaner technology business universe. His delivery is punchy, to the point and delight to read. He highlights the new social, technological and global commercial realities that make our present world a little more interesting (and rewarding) to lead a business in.

Getting Use to No Normals

This book was read by the Do The Books Club and reviewed by the MBA program at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. Do The Books reads only business books. We were able to hear the author talk about the book as well. Throw away much of what you learned about the business world in the last century. It no longer applies, yet many business, government, and non profit leaders continue to use old world management techniques on a global environment that is changing. Michael Wright sets us straight in "The New Business Normal." The world as we know it is not as it was even a few years ago. Time no longer has the meaning it once had. Product development times are measured in days, weeks and months instead of years. Leadership is now servantship. And the transfer of knowledge is the most important transaction in forward-thinking corporations. Wright is a 25-year veteran of high technology industries and has served in a broad array of leadership roles at a who's who of global high tech companies. His experiences include stints working with many cultures and countries, from Russia to China. Currently he is president and chief operating officer of Entegris, Inc. Wright's view of leadership perhaps best illustrates The New Business Normal. "Leadership," according to Wright, "is harnessing the intellectual and emotional energy of people, by influencing their behavior through values-based frameworks such that performance becomes the residual." Wright successfully integrates the visionary viewpoints of many servant leadership experts, from Robert Greenleaf (1970) to Ken Jennings and John Stahl-Wert (2003). Emotion, virtue and purpose are the power tools of the new business normal, Wright says. The new leader must "facilitate and serve," rather than "command and control," as was the norm of the last century. The new business normal is not about "the haves and have nots," but rather, "those who are in the know." Wright speaks about the great transaction about to occur in the U.S., for example, as the population bulge of the Baby Boom generation transitions into retirement, taking vast amount of knowledge to their retirement hideaways. The organizations that can manage and retain that knowledge transfer will be successful. Knowledge management is a relatively new discipline, he says, one that is still vague and obtuse to many organizations. According to Wright, knowledge management takes inputs of data-based information and transforms it into outputs of intelligence. A key theme of the New Business Normal, "is the critical strategy of developing systems that allow the company to access, collate, analyze, and apply information on a customer problem or business opportunity anywhere in the world at any time." Oh yeah, a company also has to do it better than the competition. Wright notes with irony that the way we view the world has always been changing, although those looking out from the windshield of leadership don't always see what's ah