NO DUMBING DOWN
"No Dumbing Down: A No Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth” is a book for a company’s senior-most leaders. It teaches them how to do a job only they can do: aligning the organization’s internal and external strategies for profitable, sustainable growth. Why do leaders need this guidance? The problem is misunderstanding what it takes to grow. When most companies try to grow, they invariably over focus on sales and revenue-growth — at the expense of making sure they’ve aligned the infrastructure needed to support that growth. The result? Sales outpace the company’s ability to fulfill its promises.
Suddenly, product quality drops; employees get overwhelmed by rework; customers grow dissatisfied as commitments are missed; firefighting becomes the norm; top people run for the exits; and the company’s reputation tanks. What happened? It’s not that Marketing did a poor job building demand, or Sales couldn’t close, or Engineering designed a lousy product. It’s that the organization’s cross-functional alignment was missing. The fix is something only the senior leaders can do. Only they have the necessary control. Only they can see from above. Only they can make sure that what happens inside the company can support what’s happening outside. This book will help CEOs and other senior leaders create and align the internal strategies and structures that support external growth.”
No Dumbing Down has been purchased for many academic libraries including Penn State, Case Western, Purdue, BU and UCal.
No Dumbing Down is a “must read” for any new or seasoned CEO, looking to effectively grow their organization. With inspirational and relevant quotes from leaders in industries and with analytic tools, Karen navigates the pitfalls we all encounter that impact a company’s culture. It is not enough to look at the bottom line and focus on team-building; good CEO’s must constantly assess how they actively harness a culture of performance. This book doesn’t just ask leaders to reflect on the possibility of culture shifts; it demands it!
Karen Walker’s book, No Dumbing Down, is a quick-hitting treasure trove of applicable models that can and should be applied to a growing business. Her extensive insights are shared in a practical and approachable manner that supports the imperfect but all-important discipline of transitioning in and out of levels of organizational maturity.
When it comes to running a business, none of us has time for approaches that leave us asking, “So what?” In our decade of working together, Karen demonstrated an unflappable bias for action and an obsession for meaningful results. Her book will enable you to achieve those same kinds of results and all the different types of success that goes with them.