Boardroom to washroom

Press, 14 March 1987, Page 23

Boardroom to washroom

A Passion for Excellence. By Tom Peters and Nancy Austin. Fontana, 1986. 437 pp. Index. $16.32 (paperback). (Reviewed by Glyn Strange) According to this book, corporate life may well begin in what Americans euphemistically call the washroom. A dismal, draughty washroom that is inconveniently located and poorly serviced can tell you a lot about the company it belongs to. If this is how it treats its employees, how does it treat its customers? Does it have such low standards in its other spheres of activity?

Tom Peters and Nancy Austin, management consultants, not only teach managers how to look after their staff and customers, they also teach employees and customers how to judge the companies they work for or deal with.

One of the messages coming loud and clear through their book is that business leaders must care for their people because people, much more than dollars and productivity, are at the heart of business life. With thousands of examples, they prove that today’s most successful companies are those that are strongly peopleorientated.

Nevertheless, the authors feel that, with so many accountants and other financially-trained executives in boardrooms, there is too much emphasis nowadays on flimsy paper things such as balance sheets, systems analyses, and market studies. They say there is not enough attention paid to the people who produce and consume the products of services that these flimsy things refer to. Although there is much talk in the business world about “industrial relations,” Peters and Austin — and quite a few others — would rather see the word “industrial” replaced by "human.” Humans relate: “industrials” do not.

One of the messages coming loud and clear through recent American books on management is that commonsense is a prime requirement for business success. This is riot a new idea, nor is the humanitarian emphasis new. Both are at least as old as Dickens’s “Hard Times,” a novel that does not rate a mention in “A Passion for Excellence” and is probably not studied in business schools. Perhaps the study of literature could be added by the latter 'to the study of accounting and marketing. Perhaps future business leaders will come from university arts faculties instead. This book is the sequel to “In Search of Excellence,” a very popular study of American business success. Written in a goldarnit-whoopee kinda style at times, it makes a limited number of points in a laboured way, emphasising and re-emphasising them and then summarising them at the end of each chapter. In truth it is a little tedious to read and it seems likely, to judge by the frequent printing errors, that even those who were paid to read it, the proof-readers, must have gone to sleep at times. As inspirational reading to be carried in a briefcase and dipped into, like a bag of crisps, it is excellent value despite its faults of style. But getting back to the washroom, this book should force every manager to examine himself in the mirror and decide whether he is just a manager -or, that huge step better, a leader. Is she (i.e. the manager — this is a nonsexist review) an enthusiast, a communicator, an inspirer of positive thoughts, a good listener?

Or does he or she sit in an office rustling paper and worrying about the bottom line, emerging only to play golf with someone equally unimportant from another company? Leadership in business as in other fields, is characterised by passion. In war and on the sportsfield passionate leadership becomes obvious. This book can teach how to recognise it in the office or, indeed, any other room in your company.