I've Concluded That The Metric By Which

The Transformation At The Corporate Level Was Achieved By Selling Off Business Units In Old Markets And By Creating New Business Units To Pursue The New Opportunities. But The Individual Business Units Themselves Within Those Transformed Corporations Were Almost Inert To Change.

Often They [writers On The Study Of Management] Have A Point Of View Based Upon Intuition And Experience. They Then Offer A Cadence Of Two-paragraph Examples Carefully Selected To "prove" Their Theory, And Then They Write "one Size Fits All" Books. The Message Is, "if You'd Do What These Companies Did, You'd Be Successful Too."

To Prop Up The Stock Price, Managers Have To Turn Down The Screws On Everybody. That Forces Them To Cancel All The Projects That Would Lead To Future Growth In Order To Drop Money To The Bottom Line. This Is Hp's Dilemma Today. Once A Company's Growth Has Stopped, The Game As We Have Known It Is Over. It's A Scary Thing.

It's Like In Biological Evolution: The Population Will Evolve, Even Though Individuals Can't. The Same Thing Happens In The Corporate World: The Population Of Business Units Within Corporations Evolves, Even Though Individual Business Units Can't. That's Because The Capabilities Of Business Units Reside In Their Processes And Their Values, And By Their Very Nature, Processes And Values Are Inflexible And Meant Not To Change.

Purpose Must Be Deliberately Conceived And Chosen, And Then Pursued.