Management by Missions: Connecting People to Strategy Through Purpose

​A few decades ago, management thinking started to embrace the idea of purpose. The first edition of this book marked an important step in this trajectory; it drew attention to the need for managers to relate the concepts of ’purpose’ and ’missions’ to strategy, culture and leadership. In the years since, purpose and missions have become business imperatives - not only in terms of remaining competitive but as core in the attempts to have a sustainable impact on the world.

The second edition of Management by Missions is an open access book based on substantially more research carried out over fifteen years, involving more than 200 organizations around the world. All of this research supports that the practical models and ideas offered in the book have been tried and tested and actually work in practice.

With case studies, anecdote and new research findings, the authors present the main tools of the MBM method (shared missions, missions scorecards, interdependency matrix, missions-based objectives and integral assessment) and the type of leadership needed to implement it. The ideas presented in this book mark a path towards a new management methodology for the XXI century and a new way of understanding the work that managers do.

Pablo Cardona is a Full Professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School. He has an MBA from IESE and a PhD from UCLA. He has been teaching in schools including UCLA in the United States, IAE in Argentina, and CEIBS in China. Cardona’s consulting work ranges from organizational change to talent development and creating effective top management teams. He has developed and coordinated in-company seminars in organizations such as Abbott, Danone, Sony, Nestlé, Oracle and Roche both in Spain and in other countries.

Cardona has written and contributed to several books and has published in international research journals such as the Strategic Management Journal and presented in various international management forums such as the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Conference. Currently he is the academic director of the Cross-cultural Research Network at IESE.

Carlos Rey is Founder of DPMC and Professor and Director of the Chair of Management by Missions and Corporate Governance at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona).He has developed his career in the industrial sector and presently works in consultancy services. In the industrial sector, he has developed managing positions in operations, sales, purchasing and logistics in different countries (India, Mexico, United Kingdom& Spain). Before Rey joined the consultancy services, he was Managing Director of HUF España, a leading company of locking systems for the automotive industry with over 500 employees.