When Giants Learn To Dance: Mastering The Challenges Of Strategy, Management And Careers In The 1990's

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Invest in the future, but meet your short-term goals. Support entrepreneurial risk-taking, but don't lose the company money. Streamline your operation, but make it a great place to work.

When Giants Learn to Dance is the first comprehensive business strategy book to address these and many other pressing challenges facing companies and careers today - an award-winning work that is sure to become the definitive guide to business success in the 1990s. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the renowned Harvard Business School professor who helped inject entrepreneurial dynamism into mainstream corporate America with her landmark 1983 best-seller The Change Masters, reveals how to swing past the dangers of both hierarchical stagnation and go-for-broke innovation - and waltz toward renewed success. And she tells you how to keep your career in step with corporate America's new and increasingly complex rhythms.

Based on a wide-ranging five-year study of scores of America's top companies, including Kodak, IBM, AT&T, Ford, and CBS, Professor Kanter shows how achieving fewer management levels, greater responsiveness to change, and an openness to strategic alliances can lead to a more dynamic corporate environment.

The new key to a fast-track career is a flexible package of skills and services that Professor Kanter details with authority and vison. Comprehensive and challenging, her blueprint for success is must reading for anyone in business who wants to stay competitive in the 1990s.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Leadership

First published April 1, 1989

About the author

Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. She is also Chair and Director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, an innovation that helps successful leaders at the top of their professions apply their skills to national and global challenges in their next life stage. A collaboration across all of Harvard, the Advanced Leadership Initiative aims to build a new leadership force for the world.

Her latest book, MOVE: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead, is a sweeping look across industries and technologies shaping the future of mobility and the leadership required for transformation. Her strategic and practical insights guide leaders of large and small organizations worldwide, through her teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. The former chief Editor of Harvard Business Review, Professor Kanter has been repeatedly named to lists of the “50 most powerful women in the world” (Times of London), and the “50 most influential business thinkers in the world” (Thinkers 50). She has received 24 honorary doctoral degrees, as well as numerous leadership awards, lifetime achievement awards, and prizes. These include the Academy of Management’s Distinguished Career Award for scholarly contributions to management knowledge; the World Teleport Association's “Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year” award; the International Leadership Award from the Association of Leadership Professionals; and the Warren Bennis Award for Leadership Excellence.

She is the author or coauthor of 19 books. Her book The Change Masters was named one of the most influential business books of the 20th century (Financial Times). SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good, a manifesto for leadership of sustainable enterprises, was named one of the ten best business books of 2009 by Amazon.com. A related article, "How Great Companies Think Differently," received Harvard Business Review's 2011 McKinsey Award for the year's two best articles. Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End (a New York Times business bestseller and #1 Business Week bestseller), describes the culture of high-performance organizations compared with those in decline and shows how to lead turnarounds, whether in businesses, schools, sports teams, or countries. Men & Women of the Corporation, winner of the C. Wright Mills award for the best book on social issues and called a classic, offers insight into the individual and organizational factors that promote success or perpetuate disadvantage; a spin-off video, A Tale of ‘O’: On Being Different, is a widely-used tool for diversity training. A related book, Work & Family in the United States, set a policy agenda; later, a coalition of university centers created in her honor the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for the best research on work/family issues. Another award-winning book, When Giants Learn to Dance, showed how to master the new terms of competition at the dawn of the global information age. World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy identified the rise of new business networks and dilemmas of globalization, a theme she continues to pursue in her new book MOVE and the Harvard Business School U.S. Competitiveness Project.

Through her consulting arm, Goodmeasure Inc., she advises numerous CEOs and has partnered with IBM on applying her leadership tools from business to other sectors as a Senior Advisor for IBM’s Global Citizenship portfolio. She has served on many business and non-profit boards, such as City Year, the urban “Peace Corps” addressing the school dropout crisis through national service, and on a variety of national or regional commissions including the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. She speaks widely, often sharing the platform with Presidents, Pr

Reviews

[Sunny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn’t overly impressed with this book and got bored about half way through the book. it looks at some of the great companies in the 1980s and those with momentum going into 1990s. There is a lot of detail about innovation in companies, company politics, future organisation styles that will work and those that wont and what strategies were needed to succeed then. There are a few interesting chapters which focus on the effort he corporate world takes out of you and about how individuals are able to perform in a corporate but at the same time maintain a life balance which were interesting but overall not much here that made me sit up and notice. very US focussed.

[Peter Van · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first I read this book it was very good, now 15-20 years later it is very outdated.
Fortunately business moved beyond anything we could imagine in the 80s and 90s.
The parts on innovation, corporate restructuring have matured a lot the last 17 years due to the crisis we have had to deal with (and are still struggling with). A very good book, but we moved on.