Is the leadership of your company a mystery that confounds you and your career expectations? This is sometimes so, even if you are one its 'big potatoes', to use the term beloved of the Hong Kong corporate world. If the answer is yes, Bob Frisch has penned the book for you.
Frisch asks: do senior management teams (SMTs) really make all those critical decisions? And deduces that, in reality, these decisions are typically made by the boss and a small group of confidants - a 'team with no name', or 'kitchen cabinet' - that functions outside the perceived parameters of the company's formal operations.
Meanwhile, other key players wonder why they weren't even consulted in a timely manner. The dysfunction resulting from this disconnect has often led to unproductive team-building exercises. But such problems, Frisch reveals, are ones of process and structure, with no basis in psychology or personalities.
This bold work, by one of the most original thinkers in corporate training, addresses two key areas and can greatly help readers on senior branches of the organisational tree. Firstly, it helps readers understand and utilise the way decision-making actually takes place in their organisations, and secondly, by showing how these teams-at-the-top can be leveraged to the reader's best advantage.
Moreover, by unleashing the full potential of their SMTs, companies will achieve better business results, while enhancing organisational harmony.
Above all, if you're a boss, this book offers you ways and means of avoiding that dreaded but frequent eventuality - the frowning manager in your office asking: 'Why wasn't I in the room?'
The central premise of Who's In The Room? is that the most crucial decisions rarely get made in accordance with the organisation chart, and Frisch rolls out the very persuasive case that the decision-maker will secure a better outcome if he or she relies on advice from the unofficial 'kitchen cabinet', rather than the formal executive team.
