Change to Strange

Create a Great Organization by Building a Strange Workforce

by Daniel M. Cable

Number of pages: 224

Publisher: FT Press

BBB Library: Human Resources

ISBN: 9780132317771



About the Author

Dr. Daniel M. Cable is Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School. His consulting and teaching focus on aligning a wide spectrum of human systems with company strategy; his consulting clients have ranged from Sony Ericsson to The Bureau of Naval Personnel.

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Editorial Review

If your competitive advantage depends on your people creating something valuable and distinctive, then your workforce can't be normal. To get your extraordinary results, you are going to have to build yourself a workforce that is extraordinary in a way that customers care about. To build a great organization, you need to build a strange workforce.

Book Reviews

"Make your workforce strange may sound like a gimmick or perhaps you think that you already employ enough strange people but I like the concepts behind the Change To Strange book. The key to success is differentiation. How your people look and act and what they say is a very effective way to make that differentiation visible to customers and tangible in the service that they receive." Business Coaching

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Wisdom to Share

To bring your words and concepts down to earth and make them usable, we need to figure out a way to measure them.

Creating market value depends on you work force capabilities.

There should be a small number of very salient attributes that your target customers can look in their heads about your organization.

Sometimes gaming creates value and more often gaming destroys value.

Remember, acting just like your competitors is very risky, it only feels safe because no one is laughing at you.

You need to be able to track whether or not you are winning.

Means and ends are easy to confuse because you need them both, and they are connected.

If you think of everything your organization does and creates as means then organizational outcomes are the ends.

Imagine what the world will look like when you are winning through your strange workforce.

workforce have to deal with the pain of doing something hard and often painful without knowing why.

Without a clear vision of what winning looks like, you and your strange.

A strange workforce is what makes customers say "I want that" and give you their money.

Maybe having a strange workforce sounds a little risky to you because being different from normal doesn't sound comfortable and doesn't sound like you'd fit in.

To build a great organization, you need to build a strange workforce.

If your competitive advantage depends on your people creating something valuable and distinctive, then your workforce can't be normal.

If you want to stand out above your competitors, you can't just be normal.