By John Case, Perseus Books, 1998, 0-7382-0040-9 The book is pretty good at explaining OBM in the context of real companies, but it’s like XP books, they all sound alike after a while. It’s not like the theory is complex. You just have to do it.

The case studies in the book aren’t case studies. They are collection of annecdotes. Nice ones, but there are no statistics. This was probably the most disappointing part of the book, because the focus of OBM is numbers, and Case points that out over and over, yet his book is sorely lacking in numbers about the OBM experience.

[p14] And a transparent company is one in which numbers are everywhere, an in which people see and use the numbers every day.

[p41] You couldn’t have done this stuff 20 years ago, which is one reason companies have been slow to develop it. But the information age and open-book management go hand in hand. Well-programmed computers can spit out up-to-the-minute data at virtually no cost. Open-book management shows people what kinds of information they need and how to use the information once they get it. Open-book companies need smart financial people and at least one computer whiz. The combination is unbeatable.