International Organizational Expert Warns Corporations: Forget Charismatic Leaders and Double-Digit Growth, and Step Through the Looking Glass.

Business Editors

RARITAN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 2002

The business challenge for this century is how to help every contributor perform better. Accessing the potential in the whole workforce requires new organizational and management techniques and structures.

In his new white paper, Adrian W. Savage, president of PNA, Inc., and author of the new book, "A Spark from Heaven?," says that development is about making successful people more successful, not trying to bring people into positions that in the past would have been beyond their reach.

The pernicious belief in "up or out" has turned us into growth junkies. Addiction to impossible levels of sustained growth warps the way we deal with people. It opens the door to charlatans and those willing to mislead others to maintain the illusion of success.

On the other side of the looking glass, organizations retain key employees with long-term rewards for personal growth through developing their potential.

Potential is the basis of all performance, current and future. Looking glass organizations go straight to the fundamental drivers of excellent performance: being in the right role, with the right support, and the freedom to contribute your gifts to your work. A group of people acting together out of choice and shared beliefs always outperforms those whose loyalty and interest goes no further than their paycheck.

Mr. Savage suggests these steps:

-- Seek sustainable performance and seek to retain key employees with long-term rewards, offering the security and support that generate mutual trust.

-- Avoid coercive forms of measurement, using only approaches that help people discover where they fit best, and what gifts they can use to create a satisfying and successful career.

-- Never equate leanness with fitness and steer clear of the endless cycles of corporate anorexia and bulimia.

-- Understand that genuine development of potential produces long-term, qualitative benefits that will not be reversed by turbulent events.

-- Value individual learning and growth as essential insurance against the unknown risks of volatile markets.

For a copy of the white paper email [e-mail].

About PNA, Inc.

PNA, part of the global RSM International network, offers solutions for talent management, organizational development, succession planning and key staff retention. Visit www.nettps.com or call 908-541-1700. For a copy of Mr. Savage's book visit www.explorepotential.com.