ZB – a poor post and not up to your normal standard of being acerbic and pertinent in equal measure. The true power of vitriol is when it is also undeniable – this time you missed.A TOM is merely a label to describe how the major functions of an organisation work together. To deny that there could be value in analysing such a relationship or that improvements to it might lead to improvements in company performance seems to me silly. Many consultants take labels and make them far more complicated than they need to be; this I would agree deserves ridicule, but the existence of a TOM is not deniable. I would also offer a dozen Director level contact within retail banks who cannot go a full working day without referring to TOM, to counterbalance your experience with your clients.To the OP – I do not believe there are any particularly good books on TOM’s per se. However there is an abundance of good material on organisational behaviour, organisational structures, organisational design, etc. Read these and you will understand that a TOM is simply a way of re-labelling longstanding concepts.On the publication you mention – personally I find it too “techy” in its legacy. It tries to take IT concepts and force fit them onto wider business premises. This comes across in the text – it sounds a lot like a techie architect with a chip on their shoulder about the relative perceived lack of “architecture” in the average business person’s thinking. Not surprisingly this Enterprise Architecture approach is most favoured by IT-legacy consultancies (IBM, Accenture) and not by the people-person-legacy firms or advisory firms.Be careful to whom you expound its virtues be it clients or in inteviews.
