I'm Sorry I Broke Your Company Paperback by Karen Phelan

Product Details

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (2013-01-07)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 224 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781609947392
• Item Weight: 357.21 grams
• Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.06 x 0.63 cm

Karen Phelan is sorry. She really is. She tried to do business by the numbers—the management consultant way—developing measures, optimizing processes, and quantifying performance. The only problem is that businesses are run by people. And people can’t be plugged into formulas or summed up in scorecards.

Phelan dissects a whole range of consulting treatments for unhealthy companies and shows why they’re essentially fad diets: superficial would-be fixes that don’t result in lasting improvements and can cause serious damage. With a mix of clear-eyed business analysis, heart-wrenching stories, and hard-won lessons for both consultants and the people who hire them, this book is impossible to put down and impossible to ignore. Karen Phelan and other consultants may have “broken” your company, but she’s eager to make amends.

About the Author

Karen Phelan is a cofounder of Operating Principals, a consulting firm that replaces bad business practices with ones that work. A former engineer with degrees from MIT, she spent more than a dozen years as a consultant with Deloitte & Touche and Gemini Consulting and afterward worked in management at Fortune 100 companies.