ESCP Europe

"Bestselling author, Robert Sutton and Stanford colleague, Huggy Rao tackle a challenge that determines every organization’s success: how to scale up farther, faster, and more effectively as an organization grows. Sutton and Rao have devoted much of the last decade to uncovering what it takes to build and uncover pockets of exemplary performance, to help spread them, and to keep recharging organizations with ever better work practices. Drawing on inside accounts and case studies and academic research from a wealth of industries– including start-ups, pharmaceuticals, airlines, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits, government, and healthcare– Sutton and Rao identify the key scaling challenges that confront every organization. They tackle the difficult trade-offs that organizations must make between whether to encourage individualized approaches tailored to local needs or to replicate the same practices and customs as an organization or program expands. They reveal how the best leaders and teams develop, spread, and instill the right mindsets in their people– rather than ruining or watering down the very things that have fueled successful growth in the past. They unpack the principles that help to cascade excellence throughout an organization, as well as show how to eliminate destructive beliefs and behaviors that will hold them back. Scaling Up Excellence is the first major business book devoted to this universal and vexing challenge and it is destined to become the standard bearer in the field." - From publisher

Preface: The problem of more --- I. SETTING THE STAGE --- Chapter 1. It’s a ground war, not just an air war: going slower to scale faster (and better) lately --- Chapter 2. Buddhism vs Catholicism, choosing a path --- II – SCALING PRINCIPLES --- Chapter 3. Hot causes, cool solutions: stoking the scaling engine --- Chapter 4. Cut cognitive load: but deal with necessary complexity --- Chapter 5. The people who propel scaling: build organizations where “I own the place and the place owns me” --- Chapter 6. Connect people and cascade excellence: using social bonds to spread the right mindset --- Chapter 7. Bad is stronger than good: clearing the way for excellence --- PART III. PARTING POINTS --- Chapter 8. Did this, not that: imagine that you’ve already succeeded (or failed) --- Tell us more, learn more.