Table Of ContentDo Lunch or Be Lunch : The Power of
title:
Predictability in Creating Your Future
Stevenson, Howard H.; Cruikshank, Jeffrey
author:
L.; Moldoveanu, Mihnea C.
publisher: Harvard Business School Press
isbn10 | asin: 0875847978
print isbn13: 9780875847979
ebook isbn13: 9780585162195
language: English
Business forecasting, Industrial
subject
management, Corporate culture.
publication date: 1998
lcc: HD30.27.S84 1998eb
ddc: 658.4/0355
Business forecasting, Industrial
subject:
management, Corporate culture.
Page iii
Do Lunch or Be Lunch
The Power of Predictability in Creating Your Future
Howard H. Stevenson
with
Jeffrey L. Cruikshank
Research Assistance by
Mihnea C. Moldoveanu
Page iv
Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not available for
inclusion in the netLibrary eBook.
Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2 1
Exhibit 16 on page 190: Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street
Journal, © 1986 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Worldwide.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stevenson, Howard H.
Do lunch or be lunch : the power of predictability in creating your future /
Howard H. Stevenson, with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank : and research assistance
by Mihnea C. Moldoveanu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87584-797-8 (alk. paper)
1. Business forecasting. 2. Industrial management. 3. Corporate
culture. I. Cruikshank,Jeffrey L. II. Moldoveanu, Mihnea C. III. Title.
HD30.27.S84 1997
658.4'0355dc21 97-12470
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials
Z39.49-1984.
Page v
To my ancestors, both genetic and intellectual,
who gave up certainty to create predictability.
Page vii
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xii
1 1
Predictability: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
2 20
Predictability Important? Says Who?
3 32
Where Prediction and Predictability Live
4 51
Variety versus Predictability
5 68
Predictability in the Past
6 97
How Hard is Prediction?
7 114
Acting to Make the Future Happen
8 142
You, Me, and Agreement
9 155
The Technology of Agreement
10 189
Society and Unpredictability
11 206
Lone Wolves and Team Players
12 221
The Question
Acknowledgments 229
Notes 235
Select Bibliography 280
Index 285
About the Authors 294
Page ix
Preface
A professor is one who talks in
someone else's sleep.
W.H. Auden
Let me begin on a personal note.
I am currently on my third tour of duty as a professor at the Harvard
Business School. Between academic stints, I've worked in a variety of
businesses, ranging from a midsize paper company to a from-the-
ground-up investment management firm. I've served on the boards of
several dozen corporations. I've written or cowritten cases about some
200 companies. In recent years, with several of my academic
colleagues, I've puzzled over the difficult field of entrepreneurship,
trying (I think with some success) to make sense out of this
rambunctious, highly individualistic field.
Throughout my checkered career, I have been looking for a useful
way to interpret all of the disparate things I was learning, in a wide
variety of contexts. And I had a growing conviction that there was a
pattern that cut across and unified much of the behavior within the
many human organizations in which I found myself, in one capacity
or another.
In the notion of predictability I think I've found that pattern.
Page x
And you, the reader, might well ask, "So what?"
I can give several partial answers, which are intended to encourage
you to read on. Certainly, I'm writing this book in part to share my
observations about some of the interesting things I've observed.
(Academics are inclined to do this.) But I have two far more important
goals for this book.
The first is to provide a useful lens for people to interpret their own
lives. Prediction is a powerful tool, and predictability is a powerful
attributehence the subtitle of this book. But mastering and applying
the art of prediction, and getting to be a predictable entity, are not easy
tasks. I have some ideas about how to do this, which I share in the
later chapters of this book.
The second is, frankly, to sound an alarm. I see a number of trends in
our society, particularly in business organizations, that give me great
cause for concern. As these trends intensify, so does my concern.
Many of the very organizations that we have created to help us bring
about our desired futures are now acting in ways that undermine this
critical goal. They are undercutting the meanings and values that are
the indispensable underpinnings of predictability. When business
executives excuse their arbitrary dismissal of capable long-service
employees in the name of short-term bottom-line improvement, I
cringenot just because of the inhumanity of the deed, but also because
of its shortsightedness. And when people say that self-interest (read
"greed") is the best decision rule, I cringe againnot just because of the
pure immorality of such a worldview, but also because of what it says
about our ability to act in concert to accomplish vital goals.
My readers should understand that I am an unabashed, enthusiastic,
lifelong capitalist. I've made good money, for myself and others,
wearing that hat. But I have no patience with companies (or, for that
matter, governments) that consciously or unconsciously adopt policies
that undermine their own legitimacy. I dread the convulsionssocial,
political, and eco-
Description:Here is a refreshing antidote to the change manifestos and reinvention tracts that currently crowd the business bookshelves. "Do Lunch or Be Lunch" is a provocative argument for predictability as the most powerful of management tools. People join organizations to bring about a desired future. But to
