Who is my book for?

Utworzono: środa, 18 listopad 2020 07:02

Poprawiono: środa, 18 listopad 2020 14:16

Odsłony: 10147

Download PDF of the book.

Awards given to the 1st Polish edition:

In May 2015, the book took first place in the category "The best economic guide" in the Economicus 2015 competition organized by “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna”.

In June 2016, the book received the award of the Collegium of Business Administration of the Warsaw School of Economics “for the best work in the field of enterprise sciences in the years 2014-2015”.

The first edition of the Polish version of my book was addressed mainly to managers who want to improve the work quality and efficiency of their teams. I defined the word “team” in broad terms. It could be a brigade of workers, a department of some company, as well as the entire company. It could be a team of employees of a self-government organization or a state institution. It could be a military subunit headed by a corporal, a regiment, a brigade, or the entire army. In each and every situation, however, it was a team with a leader, who decides who should do what and when.

Although I tried to emphasize that the role of the contemporary leader is not to control, but to support, my narration was still dominated by the superior–coworker paradigm. Although it was no longer a superior–subordinate relation, which is based on coercive domination, the domination and asymmetry of roles — though based on partnership and support — remained unchanged. In the first edition, I also described a process organizational model which, together with the previously recommended principles of partnership, largely corresponds to the Teal model; nevertheless, the first edition of the Doctrine of Quality was basically addressed to leaders.

In the first edition, I also emphasized very strongly that the most important factor in improving the quality and effectiveness of work is to offer the employees a sense that work gives meaning to their lives, that they may develop thanks to it, and that they work in an atmosphere of partnership and trust. In the second edition of the book — hence also in the English edition — this relation is reversed. What used to be the way to achieve the goal, i.e., satisfaction and joy from work, I now treat as a goal in itself — in fact, the main goal. On the other hand, the effective work of an organization, satisfying the needs of all its stakeholders (including profit in business organizations), and creating a friendly social environment are the ways to achieve this goal. In order to follow this path, we need tools, such as good communication, dignified motivations, a network structure, and methods of quality improvement.

The second edition of the book is addressed both to leaders in traditional hierarchical organizations and to all employees of future or current Teal organizations, in which there are no managers in the traditional sense of the word, but there are leaders of ideas and knowledge, who act as mentors, trainers, and moderators, and all of them, in addition to the duties associated with these functions, most often also perform “ordinary” operational tasks – they produce, sell, bookkeep, work on development strategies, etc.

The road to a Teal world is not an easy one and must not be pursued hastily. However, it is worth pursuing, even if the Teal world is not our goal for the time being, because every step taken along this path builds a better organization, in which work offers more satisfaction, teaches responsibility, partnership, and trust, and creates conditions for personal development. The fact that thanks to this, we achieve higher efficiency — which in the case of companies translates into higher profits — is only a side effect, which allows us to be more effective in carrying out the main goal: being useful and thus fulfilled.

My book is addressed to all people who would like to shape their work environment both from the position of a leader and a rank-and-file employee. After all, in the Teal world, the notion of a rank-and-file employee becomes obsolete. All of them are specialists in their professional fields, but regardless of that, they may also be leaders of ideas, trainers, mentors, and moderators.

The ideas presented in the book are applicable in both economic and non-profit organizations. In government, self-government, and non-governmental institutions. In the army, police forces, health care, and education. And so, basically, in any form of teamwork, where people combine their efforts to achieve common goals.

In the book, I try to give as many examples from life as possible. It so happens that their source is usually large business organizations, because mainly such examples can be found in the literature. This, however, should not be a basis to assume that the applicability of the described method is limited to such organizations. It can be applied to both a company with several people and one employing tens of thousands of employees. Needless to say, in small organizations the implementation is simpler and cheaper than in the larger ones.