The Managerial Moment of Truth - by Bruce Bodaken & Robert Fritz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Managerial Moment of Truth explains a powerful new concept that can dramatically improve performance and increase productivity, at no cost, in virtually any company or organization. Developed by organizational consultant and bestselling author Robert Fritz and proven in practice by coauthor Bruce Bodaken, the chairman, president, and CEO of Blue Shield of California, the book provides a dynamic technique to help people face up to reality and confront the truth in order to correct mistakes, learn from past performance, and adjust processes to build a more successful organization.

Given human nature, most managers, when faced with the harsh facts of substandard performance, tend to soften the truth with their direct reports, so as not to offend or upset them. They tend to avoid mentioning mistakes, missed dates, an incomplete project, unacceptable quality of work, and the like. Then, if the problem becomes egregious, the manager may suddenly overreact with a contentious confrontation that results in little long-term behavior change. Or else the manager will try to work around the substandard performance, shifting the workload to top performers on the team rather than addressing reality directly with the person concerned. Bodaken and Fritz provide a step-by-step approach for continuous improvement, in which managers deal with performance issues early on, to help employees face the truth without being made to feel denigrated, inept, or incompetent -- which would only defeat the desired goal of improvement. Moreover, this approach also greatly enhances the manager's own career success.

When managers understand and use this practice, they can produce more top performers and add from 25 to 40 percent more actual capacity to their organization. At Blue Shield of California, for example, more than one thousand managers have been trained in this approach, with impressive, measurable results, helping the company become one of the fastest-growing health care plans in the state. Other companies, all at the top of their industries, are now using MMOT with great success. As widely acclaimed author Peter Senge notes in his foreword, "This is not a book with just a bunch of 'good ideas.' It is a call to a simple but transformative practice, vital to building an organization truly worthy of people's highest achievement."

Review Quotes

""The Managerial Moment of Truth" is very simply about how managers must have the discipline to tell the truth and help their employees to confront reality. At a time when people have lost trust in many of the basic institutions of our society, this book will benefit managers and employees alike and support integrity within the organization."

-- Hon. Leon E. Panetta, Director, Panetta Institute for Public Policy, former Chief of Staff to President Clinton

"A valuable addition to our understanding of the power of conversation to transform ourselves and the workplaces we inhabit. It offers a precise framework and dialogue for creating authentic relationships in difficult moments. It delivers the means to replace blame and rationalization with learning and action. No small accomplishment."

-- Peter Block, author of "Stewardship"

"Bodaken and Fritz offer a simple but powerfully effective method to enhance organizational learning. MMOT conversations are the best investments you and your team can make: their payback lasts for years."

-- C. Sherry Immediato, President and Managing Director, SOL, the Society for Organizational Learning

"Bold, important, groundbreaking. This is the most important book you'll read as a business manager and coach. You'll learn a powerful and simple four-step method to shift your organizational culture to one of truth telling and empowerment. Your employees will thank you and your customers will thank them."

-- Patricia Seybold, author of "Customers.com" and "The Customer Revolution"

"This book is for anyone who manages. The authors provide a simple and elegant model for truth telling that will, if practiced and followed, improve the performance of your team. Yet this is not just a technique for performance improvement. It has everything to do with how to develop, engage, and retain the talent on your team."

-- Beverly Kaye, Founder/CEO: Career Systems International

"This book will genuinely revolutionize the way you relate to your boss, your peers, and your employees. It can remove the greatest stress we all experience in organizations by allowing you to relate freshly and directly to what is really going on, which is to say, facing reality. Best of all, the result will be exceptional performance and productivity."

-- Candice Carpenter, author of "Chapters"

About the Author

Bruce Bodaken is Chairman, President, and CEO of Blue Shield of California, a 3.3 million-member not-for-profit health plan that serves the commercial, individual, and government markets in California. During Mr. Bodaken's five-year tenure as CEO, Blue Shield's membership has more than doubled and company revenues have risen from $3 billion to nearly $7 billion. Before embarking on a career in health care, he taught philosophy at the college level. In addition to his work at Blue Shield, Mr. Bodaken serves on numerous professional and civic boards, including the board of directors of the California Business Roundtable; America's Health Insurance Plans; and the University of California, Berkeley's Health Services Management Program. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

Robert Fritz has for more than twenty years been developing the field of structural dynamics through his work, first in the area of the creative process, and then in the area of organizational, business, and management issues. At least eighty thousand people throughout the world have participated in courses Fritz has created. He is the author of several books, including the bestseller The Path of Least Resistance. As a consultant, Fritz has helped numerous organizations put the structural approach into practice, and his clients include Fortune 500 companies, many midsize firms, as well as governmental and nonprofit organizations. Fritz is also a composer and a filmmaker. He lives in Newfane, Vermont.