Book Brief: Aligning the Stars

Aligning the Stars: How to Succeed When Professionals Drive Results
By Jay W. Lorsch and Thomas J. Tierney
Harvard Business School Press, April 2002
240 pages, $30

If your people are indeed your firm's most important asset—and that's not just something you say because you are supposed to—how do you create an environment where they will want to do their best work? The answer according to Lorsch, a Harvard Business School professor, and Tierney, the former chief executive of consulting firm Bain & Company Inc., is to align your firm's strategy, career paths, culture and leadership. Their focus is on life inside professional services companies such as consulting firms, but the message and steps to be taken should work inside traditional organizations as well.