BOOKS & ARTICLES

BOOKS:

BIG Ideas to BIG Results
Remake and Recharge Your Company, Fast
by Michael T. Kanazawa and Robert H. Miles
Financial Times (FT) Press, February 2008

A simple, no-nonsense process that is thoroughly grounded in reality,
inclusive of people and 100% results-oriented.


Based on a unique senior executive program he chaired at the Harvard Business School earlier in his career, Bob developed a simple, powerful approach for accelerating the achievement of breakthrough results across a variety of corporate transformation challenges.

His Accelerated Corporate Transformation, or ACT process has stood the tests of fundamental transformations at such leading companies as GE, IBM Global Services, National Semiconductor, Office Depot and Symantec.

Once reserved only for executives in residence at Harvard Business School and a select group of global companies, the basic principles for addressing breakthrough performance are now available in his new book with Mike Kanazawa, BIG Ideas to BIG Results, and through his new Breakthrough Results Speaker Series.

"Why do most corporations fail to achieve breakthrough performance? They make things too complex. They clutter it with jargon and confusion. They dither on the launch pad. They hire too many consultants, chase after too many fads.

It doesn’t have to be that complicated.

Whatever your goal, whatever your role, BIG Ideas to BIG Results introduces a simple, practical, 100% results-driven approach that works. Drawing on their experience working with hundreds of senior executives, the authors show how to align your organization behind just a few core initiatives; bias your people toward speed and action;
create leaders who can drive change at every level; and achieve rigor and accountability in all facets of execution. You’ll learn how to engage people instead of frustrating them, and harness their energy instead of wasting it.

Whether you’re executing a new initiative, entering a new market, or attempting to transform your entire enterprise, this book will help you find the right path, clear the obstacles, and get there
– surely and quickly."



Leading Corporate Transformation
A Blueprint for Business Renewal
by Robert H. Miles, Ph.D.
Jossey-Bass Publishers, A Division of John Wiley & Sons, 1997

"The framework Bob Miles illustrates in his new book has been the key tool Symantec has used to start the shift from being a technology-driven to a customer-driven company. Business leaders facing a variety of corporate transformation challenges will benefit from this important executive briefing."
-Gordon E. Eubanks, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Symantec Corporation

The distillation of a stellar twenty-year career, Leading Corporate Transformation is consultant Robert Miles's reply to executives who want to be able to rise to the most pervasive challenge facing them today: how to achieve fundamental transformation without exposing the organization to unacceptable risk.

Here, in the form of an executive briefing, are the expert guidance and tools you need to meet a variety of corporate transformation challenges, whether you are trying to reposition a successful company, revitalize a failing one, merge different businesses and cultures, or manage a leadership succession process. These insights are relevant not only for senior executives, but also for leaders at all levels of an organization undergoing fundamental transformation.

By sharing success stories from his professional experiences-the ones in which his detailed framework for large-scale transformation was used-Miles shows how you can:
  • Decipher the initial conditions required to launch and accelerate transformation
  • Generate a strategic vision and business success model
  • Align your organization and your people along the critical path
  • Advance a process architecture for keeping everything on track
If you are a leader-at any organizational level-who must effect fundamental change, you will want to keep this book close at hand.

Cloth May 1997 ISBN 0-7879-0327-2 256 pages $25.00





Corporate Comeback
The Story of Renewal and Transformation at National Semiconductor
by Robert H. Miles, Ph.D.
Jossey-Bass Publishers, A Division of John Wiley & Sons, 1997

An insider's view of the remarkable transformation of National Semiconductor—and a general framework for leading corporate transformation

"A must-read for any serious business leader who intends to be competitive in the twenty-first century. Bob Miles is a world-class practitioner and academic who has distilled practical lessons from his firsthand experience in the trenches helping some of the business world's most important transformations."

-from Noel M. Tichy, Professor, Michigan Business School and Director of the Global Leadership Program; Author of Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will and Judgment.

Miles articulates a winning framework that has evolved since his early career in developing transformational leaders at the Harvard Business School. Over the past twenty years, Miles's model has been tested and refined in a variety of situations to help companies restore financial viability, integrate merged operations, and pursue quantum revenue growth...The powerful lessons of success detailed in this book can help leaders avoid the costly lessons of trial and error and face today's challenges aimed with crucial insight and experience.

Cloth 1997 ISBN 0-7879-0322-1388 pages $27.00


ARTICLES:


ARTICLES:

"Beyond the Age of Dilbert: Accelerating Corporate Transformation by Rapidly Engaging All Employees," by Robert H. Miles, Ph.D. Organizational Dynamics , Special Edition, Summer 2001.

Excerpt:

"As we cross the threshold of a new millennium, a fundamental shift is taking place in the relationship between the organization and the employee in all business sectors. The shift is so huge and the consequences so profound that it is almost as though we are witnessing a time-accelerated shift in two tectonic plates. The plate that is sliding under the new one is submerging an era in which management was the predominant focus in business enterprise. This Era of Management deified a. long line of corporate visionaries, including Lee lacocca of Chrysler Corp., Jack Welch of General Electric Co., Sam Walton of Wal-Mart Stores, and Andy Grove of Intel Corp., to name only a few of the era's highest priests."


"Accelerated Organizational Transformation: Balancing Scope and Involvement," by Robert H. Miles, Ph.D.in Breaking the Code of Change. (Boston: Harvard Business School Publications) 2000, pp. 381-406.

Excerpt:

"The challenge sweeping over almost all industries today is the need to achieve rapid-cycle, organizational transformation. Not rapid-cycle, project-based, incremental change or slow, lumbering, organization-wide transformation...Large, complex organizations do not rapidly change by sequentially pursuing a series of short-cycle projects. The learning cycle involved in such an approach is simply too protracted and the anticipated diffusion of learnings throughout the enterprise too unpredictable to keep up with the increasing pace of change imposed on the organization by the external environment.

So how do we speed up the process of corporate transformation and at the same time increase the capacity of leaders/managers at all levels?
"


"Leading Corporate Transformation: Are You Up to the Task?" by Robert H. Miles, Ph.D.in The Leader's Change Handbook. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, A Division of John Wiley & Company) 1999, pp. 221-267.

Excerpt:

"To master the new pace, transformation leaders have to get it right the first time. They can't wait for early successes to hatch before the rest of the organization catches on. They have to hit the beaches simultaneously on all fronts. They no longer have the luxury of gradually cascading new ideas and expectations down through the organization. They have to greatly enrich and accelerate the processes of learning within the organization. And they have to quickly engage all employees, obtain their commitment, and enable them to lead at their own levels."


ROBERT H. MILES

Speaker, Author,
Business Advisor,
Global Thought and
Practice Leader



A widely recognized thought and practice leader in the field of corporate transformation and strategy execution, Bob is a gifted business advisor and process architect.

Based on a unique senior executive program he chaired at the Harvard Business School earlier in his career, Bob developed a simple, powerful approach for accelerating the achievement of breakthrough results across a variety of corporate transformation challenges.

Called Accelerated Corporate Transformation, ACT has stood the tests of fundamental transformations at such leading companies as GE, IBM Global Services, National Semiconductor, Office Depot and Symantec. ACT has been called, “A simple, no-nonsense process that is thoroughly grounded in reality, inclusive of people and 100% results-oriented.”

Once reserved only for executives in residence at Harvard Business School and a select group of global companies, the basic principles for addressing breakthrough performance are now available in his new book BIG Ideas to BIG Results with Dissero Partners colleague Mike Kanazawa, and through his new Speaking Series.






Corporate Transformation Resources is led by Robert H. Miles, a long-time thought and practice leader in the fields of business transformation, organizational effectiveness, culture change, and executive leadership. Bob Miles has pioneered an Accelerated Corporate Transformation, or ACT methodology that enables new CEOs to rapidly take charge in a high-engagement manner.