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Up the organization
First published 1970 · 242 pages
A delightfully blunt, A-to-Z survival guide for dismantling corporate bureaucracy and injecting common sense back into the workplace.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like grabbing a beer with the smartest, most cynical, yet secretly optimistic executive in your company. Structured as a punchy, A-to-Z dictionary of corporate dysfunction, it moves at a brisk, highly digestible pace. The tone is delightfully irreverent and blunt, stripping away the jargon of modern management to reveal the absurdities of bureaucracy, endless meetings, and bloated HR departments. Despite being decades old, the mood remains incredibly energizing and liberating, offering a rebellious breath of fresh air for anyone suffocating under red tape. It will deeply satisfy frustrated managers, corporate rebels, and pragmatic leaders who want permission to ignore the rulebook, treat their employees like adults, and actually have fun at work.
- Mood
- energizing
- rebellious
- no-nonsense
- liberating
- Tone
- irreverent
- blunt
- witty
- pragmatic
- subversive
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- corporate absurdity · radical simplicity · anti-bureaucracy · humanizing work · common sense leadership
- The writing
- Aphoristic, punchy, and conversational, delivering sharp truths with a wink and a sledgehammer.
- The arc
- Begins with a shared frustration over corporate bloat and builds into a liberating, empowering call to dismantle the rules and just get things done.
- Who it's for
- Corporate rebels, frustrated managers, and anyone drowning in red tape who craves permission to use actual common sense.
Content notes
- outdated gender language
- workplace frustration
About the book
Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association, Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend's bestseller first among eighty books that "every manager must read." This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend's timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He shows a way to humanize business and a way to have fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before.
Description from Open Library.
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