Fast Forward

Change driven by information technology is moving us forward so rapidly that management is hard-pressed to keep up. Champy (Reengineering Management) and Nohria (coauthor of Beyond the Hype) have edited and contributed to a collection of 16 insightful essays designed to steer company managers safely into the future. Management guru Peter Drucker says in one piece that a typical business 20 years hence will be organized more like a hospital, a university or a symphony orchestra than like its vertical counterpart today. It will be decentralized, composed of interactive, self-disciplined specialists, with fewer intervening levels of management. Other authors describe marketing strategies that are at once global in scope and rooted locally. The reinvention process is compared to a roller coaster, whereby the strong, the agile, the mentally alert and the well prepared prevail. (Apr.)