Fatal Illusions: Shredding a Dozen Unrealities That Can Keep Your Organization from Success - Hardcover

Lucas, James R.

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9780814403594: Fatal Illusions: Shredding a Dozen Unrealities That Can Keep Your Organization from Success

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081440359X ISBN 13: 9780814403594

Publisher: Amacom Books, 1997

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Addresses management attitudes about quality, communication, and employees that can damage an organization's earnings, customer relations, and morale

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From the Author:

Although information, education, and experience can all contribute to wise and healthy decisionmaking, they alone won't move us to change. We can know what the right way is, and may have observed it working for others, and still not be moved to do it ourselves. The problem isn't one of knowledge and won't be solved by more information or more education.

The problem is illusions, false beliefs about the reality of who we are, how other people are thinking, and what our organizations are like and where they are going. We can hang on to those illusions and fiercely resist giving them up, even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, for many reasons. Perhaps our view of business took years to build; we're comfortable with it and don't want to give it up. Or perhaps the illusions fit our own personal view of life and people; change would require modifying our entire worldview. To abandon these ideas would usually require pain, so we avoid doing so.

But the pain of shredding our illusions is nothing compared to the real misery that lies at the end of a fatal illusion. Months and years of pain avoidance can lead to organizational suffering and strife, massive downsizing, financial chaos, and ultimately, organizational death.

But we don't have to go there. We can face the problems honestly and realistically and can "schedule" the smaller pain now rather than be swamped by the illusion-cloaked, gargantuan pain later. We can clear out the illusions that prevent us from doing what we know to be right or effective.

My hopes in writing this book join yours as you read it. I want to be illusion-free, living in reality. I believe that you do, too. We can do it.

About the Author:

James R. Lucas (Kansas City, MO) is president of the management consulting firm Luman Consultants. As an AMA faculty member, he has trained thousands of managers. His corporate experience includes positions at Hallmark Cards and The Lee Company.

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