Richard J. Buckles

“In his new book Overcoming Organizational Myopia: Breaking Through Stovepipe Organizations, John Knotts has written a book filled with simple, straightforward, common sense approaches to dealing with issues affecting operational excellence. Knotts does a good job of laying out his argument and the premises for the argument. He effectively describes his operational terms and their respective definitions, the underlying reasons for myopia and what he refers to as the creation of organizational siloes, and then laying the foundation for what Organizational Myopia (OM) is and what, then, can be done about it. I particularly liked his argument against the application of organization design and restructuring, used by so many management groups to treat the underlying problems associated with OM. He uses a case study throughout to expose the elements of the argument and its related issues. Then connects it to an important principle in the Quality Improvement area - Deming’s 14th point of breaking down barriers throughout the organization as a path to organizational effectiveness. Following the laying out of his rationale for dealing with OM, he goes on to describe a set of action elements for dealing with it. I particularly liked how he set this up with a Table of Strategic and Organizational Methods for Dealing with OM as his introduction to the various methods of treatment. He effectively uses this to introduce his preferred approach then identifies many of the underlying elements that contribute to OM, followed by what can reasonably be expected in terms of results and, as importantly, who the target audience is. The remainder of the book is an elucidation of each of those methods and how each element of the target audience can use them. All-in-all, a logical and reasonable approach to dealing with an infectious problem that many organizations experience. I think the book is well laid-out, logical in its flow, interesting to read and will be very useful to the reader.”