Management Principles

October 8, 2007 · Filed Under General · Comment 

The term “Manage” is often used in common parlance with a tinge of negative connotation like this:

  • He has somehow ‘managed’ it.
  • The student just ‘managed’ to pass the examination.
  • His house is not so big; just ‘manageable’.
  • How did you ‘manage’ to get a promotion, given your reputation as an abominable sloth!

What the heck is Management!

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

~ Peter Drucker.

A layman’s perception of management is some sort of an esoteric activity understood only by a few IIM-ians and Harvard-ians. It is also felt that the art of management is the exclusive domain of a few pompous pundits gushing out high-sounding and jargon-rich discourses. Besides, many creative management consultants nonchalantly drop awe-inspiring names like McKinsey’s, Tom Peters, Parkinson, Akio Morita, Lee Iacoca and their ilk. If you allow yourself to be still more awestruck, the wolves are apt to throw at you such pulpy and exotic best sellers like ‘One Minute Manager’, ‘10 Myths of Management’, ‘WOW’ etc. to bamboozle to a much greater degree!

A puritan has attempted to define the management thus:-

“Management is making desirable results happen through ethical and socially acceptable means, harnessing and optimally utilizing the available limited resources.”

But in fundamental terms, management is managing men who in turn manage the other components of an enterprise like money, machine and material. When “Business is people”, managing a business is managing people. Period.

In these Web pages, I wish to publish my collection of snippets and quirkiest quips and quotes from the very management Guru’s and also the experience of ordinary folks who have shown excellence in their own field of management.

Also some teensy-weensy tidbits out of my own humble efforts in practicing the art of management!

Please visit these pages:

  1. Management Snippets
  2. The wit and wisecracks of Tom Peters!
  3. Travails of a Manager

More of my collection of Management Principles are getting ready!
I hope to publish them Soon!

Please come back!

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Tom Peters, the Guru

October 8, 2007 · Filed Under General · 1 Comment 
  • Is it pain in the butt?
    You bet it is! Nobody said that power comes cheap!
  • Tear up the rule book, because everything has changed. So, ‘forget learning, learn forgetting!’
  • Technology will make many of the low-paying white-collared jobs redundant. So you really need to look to moving up the value chain.
  • The notion of existence in perpetuity is a horrible concept. I’d rather be the chairman of Netscape, which got born, changed the world and died within 48 months; and have that on my tombstone, than have, ‘he met his earnings target for 50 straight quarters’!
  • How long does it take to achieve excellence? May be less than a nano-second to attain it but a lifetime of passionate pursuit to maintain it!
  • The devil is in details!
    Dot the ‘i’s; cross the ‘t’s!
    Answer every phone call, every letter or e-mail!
    Nothing is unimportant!
  • When marketing a product, differentiate the intangibles; When marketing a service, differentiate the tangibles!
  • In 1970, it took 108 men five days to unload a ship at the London docks. Today, eight guys with computers do the same job in one day. The blue-collar world has been revolutionized. And the white-collar world is next up, thanks to the incredible leaps in technology!
  • In the next few years, 90 per cent of all white-collar jobs will either have vanished or changed beyond recognition.
  • Don’t bother with gradual change. Incrementalism is the worst enemy of innovation.
  • General Electric was begun by Edison as an entrepreneurial organization, and even at their bureaucratic worst, they had guys who actually ran things who never paid any attention to HQ!
  • The Afgan campaign of US was Napsterised in the battlefield by cutting out the middle managers: majors, colonels and generals. Result: frontline soldiers could talk directly to pilots. Earlier, a war could be over before any army request for air cover would result in air-force support!
  • The best leadership model is a general manager of a sports team who spends 25 hours a day, 8 days a week, 53 weeks a year in pursuit and retention of the best talent!
  • Many boards have members with an average age of 87.5 years and almost all of them are famous for having been famous some years ago!
  • Good CEO’s should redesignate themselves as ‘CDO’s, or, Chief Destruction officers! Because, they are essentially get paid for blowing up their business before the competition does!

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