Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits (J-B Warren Bennis Series) Review

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Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits (J-B Warren Bennis Series) ReviewThis is a reprint edition of the classic business text by Robert Townsend. While it is largely like the original 1970 edition, it also includes material from the 1971 paperback version. Townsend made his biggest mark as CEO of Avis Rent-a-Car and the famous "We Try Harder" slogan. He became an early business media star and his sharp observations and criticisms of fat-cat management resonated with the times.
This is not a sustained treatise on management. It's wide-ranging alphabetically-listed paragraphs and short articles on management topics delighted its readers because they could flip around and find just the sharp pointed thoughts they were looking for. In this edition the extra paragraphs that were included in Further "Up the Organization" are also provided as are Townsend's acknowledgements and an appendix that has an address he delivered to the Conference Board that was printed as an article in the late 1970s. It is called "Townsend's Third Degree in Leadership" and summarizes his views on what it takes to be a leader. The second appendix is a biographical article called "No Reserved Parking".
Obviously, I can't cover all the points he makes in the book, but the kind of radical thinking you will find (and it remains radical) are the notions that leaders have to care for the followers first. He also states that people making more than $40k (or thereabouts in today's dollars) should set their own office hours and vacations. CEO compensation should be a much smaller multiple of average company salary than it is and most of the perks of executive management should be eliminated.
Townsend was a foe of corporate bureaucracy and says that the purchasing, personnel, and marketing departments should all be eliminated and says why. Your receptionist is a more important position than you realize and should be compensated and cared for much better than she (or he) usually is. Townsend is a foe of meetings and only those that result in direct action should be held. He hates executive assistants, nepotism, company planes, and thinks that stockholders worry too much about taking good care of the Board and top management. His cure for this is broad employee ownership of company stock. He also says that CEOs should leave after five or six years or be shown the door.
There is much more in this interesting book. Oh, and he clearly comes down in the camp of personal initiative, free enterprise, and is even less fan of government regulation and handouts than he is of fat cat executives. However, Townsend emphasizes excellence, profit, and fun. Lacking those things he asks why you would want to be in business.
This book deserves its classic status and this is a fine reprint edition. You should have this on your shelf of business classics and refer to it with some regularity just to clear up the bad mental habits that we all let into our heads.
Strongly recommended.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
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