Masters of Management by Adrian Wooldridge

Masters of Management by Adrian Wooldridge
How the business gurus and their ideas have changed the world - for better and for worse

[Book reveals stars of the business gurus and their books and relevance; but later part of the book is a repetition that we could see in any management books with same old examples].

As per Drucker, objectives are not fate, but they are direction.
C. Montgomery Burns advised on succeeding in business: "I will keep it short and sweet. Family, religion and Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business"

The breadth of the management industry spread across three categories: The first part that makes the other two possible, consists of business schools. The second category is management consulting business (McKinney, Accenture, Capgemeni, Boston Consulting group, etc) and the third category is guru business - the whirligig of book writing and lecture-giving that is associated with names like Gary Hamel and Jim Collins.

Often, the gurus offer the illusion that for all the complexities of the world, the answers are really rather straightforward, provided the guru is one's guide. Gurus of every stripe have tried to reduce world's complexities to simple phrases ('Core competencies', the five forces, six trends, three Cs (commitment, creativity and competition) etc.

Drucker says in 'Practice of management' that the most powerful as well as most lasting contribution America has made to Western thoughts since the Federalist papers. Gary Hamel seconded this statement by saying, " The machinery of management - which encompasses variance analysis, capital budgeting, project management, pay-for-performance, strategic planning and the like - amounts to one of humanity's greatest inventions".

Peter Drucker: The Guru's guru.
He was one of the few thinkers from any discipline who can claim to have changed the world: he was inventor of privatization, the apostle of a new class of knowledge workers, the champion of management as a serious intellectual discipline and a confidante to the world corp. elite. His last book is 'The effective executive in action'. He was credited with 'moving 75-80% of the Fortune 500 to radical decentralization". The concept of corporation (his third book) was an unashamedly passionate plea for GM to treat labor as a resource rather than just a cost center. Durcker insisted that industrial relations ought to be based on people's desire to be engaged in their job and proud of their product and he is opponent of assembly-line mentality. Druckers enthusiasm for empowerment was reinforced by his belief that the old industrial proletariat was being replaced by knowledge workers.

Drucker invented one of the rational schools of management's most successful products, 'management by objectives (MBO) an approach that dominated 'strategic thinking in the postwar decades. Organization is not an end in itself, but a means to the end of business performance and business results. Org structure must be designed so as to make possible the achievement of the objectives of the business five, ten fifteen years...

However he did not created a single area of academic management theory like Michael Porter did with strategy and Theodore Levitt did with marketing. His most famous quotations," Management is the organ of institutions - the organ that converts a mob into an organization and human efforts into performance"

Some of the countries made breakthrough into sustained growth is not because they discovered new technologies but because they invented new organization.



Tom Peters: management for the masses.

The most important sentence in the English language? I love you.
"May I clean your glasses, Sir" could be the depth of service offering. His best book 'In search of excellence' advances three arguments against the rationalist model. First. the model puts too much emphasis on financial analysis and too little on motivating workers or satisfying customers. Second, the rationalist model encouraged bureaucratic conformity at the expense of entrepreneurial innovation. Rationalist managers believe that big is best, because it brings economics of scale, that messiness is disastrous, because it means waste and confusion and that the planning is essential because it means waste and confusion and that planning is essential. Third, the rationalist model rests on a misunderstanding of human nature.

Since 2000, the management theory business has been revolutionized by the arrival of two new kinds of practitioners: journo-gurus from the world of 'big media' and academic entrepreneurs from the what business school professors might well regard as the wrong side of the tracks.

Journo-Gurus:

The kings of the great journo-gurus are Tom Friedman, Malcolm Gladwell and Christopher Anderson. If Friedman's talent is making sense of the most momentous development of our time, globalization, Gladwell's is for forcing us to take a fresh look at some of the commonplace of our daily lives that look not only exotic, and fascinating. Anderson's big idea was that we are moving from a world of big hits to a world of niche products. Technological innovation is removing bottlenecks in distribution that forced companies to focus on a few products. The era of one-size-fits-all is ending and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes.

Academic Entrepreneurs:

Richard Florida: Accenture put him in third place of management gurus (Michael Porter, Tom Peters, Richard Florida and Peter Drucker) where as WSJ put him into 7th place. In 'the future of success', Reich argued that we live in the age of the terrific deal. Choices are almost limitless and a better deal is always waiting around the corner, a wonderful situation for the consumer but a much more problematic one for the producer. Workers have to market themselves in order to avoid obsolescence by elephantiasis. In the age of terrific deal, economics of attention replace economics of scale as the currency of business success. What matters is the ability to attract people's attention and then to create the 'stickiness' that is the closes thing the modern world has to loyalty. If 'attention must be paid' as Willy Lomand said, the price of commanding it is endless self-publicity. In 'Supercaptialism, Reich argued that today's turbo-charged capitalism is at the same time both generating profound social problems and using its political muscle to prevent those problems from being solved. He argued that the people who are driving supercapatilism are not greedy CEOs, but you and me. Consumers are putting relentless pressure on companies to improve their quality and cut their cost.

Richard Florida: a specialist on urban studies and his carrier making book - The rise of creative class: And how it is transforming work, leisure and everyday life is an odd mixture of Michael Young's 'Rise of Meritocracy' and Candace Bushnell's 'Sex in the city'. As per him, cities that currently attract companies with lower taxes, should attract creative people instead


Howard Gardner: has been professor at Harvard for forty years. And he is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences. He argued that intelligence could be subdivided into several different types and that people who did poorly in one activity might excel in another. He argued that people who lack a command of one or more of these mental disciplines will have hard time of it(from his book - five minds for the future - disciplined, synthesizing, creative, respectful and ethical),. People who cannot synthesize will be overwhelmed by information; People who cannot create will be replaced by machines. People who lack ethics will destroy their org and eventually themselves. People who refused to respect others will poison their surroundings.

New collection of building blocks:
1. Core competencies (ref# C.K. Prahalad & Gary Hamel)
2. Renewal
3. Networking
4. Culture






Books referred in this book

"What If the Female Manager of a High-School Baseball Team Read Drucker's Management", by Natsumi Iwaski
Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices by Peter Drucker
The witch doctor by Adrian Wooldridge & John M
In search of excellence by Tom Peters
The rise of the creative class : and how it's transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life by Florida, Richard L.
The future of success by Robert Reich Creating minds by Howard Gardner
In leading minds by Howard Gardner
Five minds for the future by Howard Gardner
Guru questions books:
Fad Surfing in the Boardroom: managing in the Age of Instant Answers by Eileen Shapiro
Dangerous company: The consulting powerhouses and the business they save and ruin by James O'Shea and Charles Madigan
The halo effect by Phil Rosenzweig
The management myth: debunking the modern business philosophy by Mathew Stewart

Willpower by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney.

Willpower by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney.
Rediscovering the greatest human strength.

[As per the authors, intelligence is set at the time of birth and the only thing that a human can control/change is his self-control to reach higher heights]

Charles Darwin wrote in 'The Descent of man' "The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts'.

The most commonly resisted desire in the beeper study was the urge to eat, followed by the urge to sleep and then by the urge for leisure, like taking a break from work by doing a puzzle or game instead of writing a memo. Sexual urges were next on the list of most-resisted desires, a little ahead of urges for other kinds of interactions, like checking emails and social networking sites, surfing the web, listening to music or watching TV.

The right smile makes people feel good about you, says Dale Carnegie. 'The basic factor in psychology is the realizable wish' Peale wrote: "The man who assumes success tends already to have success". Believe it achieve it.

We can divide the uses of willpower into four broad categories, starting with the control of thoughts. Another broad category is the control of emotions, which psychologist call affect regulations when it's focused specifically on mood. More commonly, we are trying to escape from bad moods and unpleasant thoughts. A third category is often called impulse control, which is what most people associate with willpower: the ability to resist temptations like alcohol, tobacco, etc. The fourth category that researchers call performance control: focusing your energy on the task in hand, finding the right combination of speed and accuracy, managing time, preserving when you feel like quitting.

Intake of glucose directly increases willpower. The old advice about eating a good breakfast applies all day long, particularly on days when you are physically or mentally stressed. To maintain steady self-control, you are better off eating foods with a low glycerin index: mostly vegetables, nuts, many raw fruits, cheese, fish, meats, olive oil, and other food fats.

Willpower 101:
1. Know your limits. Your supply of willpower is limited and you use the same resources for many different things.
2. Watch for symptoms. To avoid succumbing to irrational biases and lazy shortcuts articulate your reasons for your decisions and consider whether they make sense.
3. Pick your battles. When you pick you battle, look beyond the immediate challenges and put your life in perspective.
4. Make a to-do list or at least not-to-do-list
5, Beware the planning fallacy One way to avoid the planning fallacy is to force yourself to think about your past.
6. Don't forget the basics. For example, self-control will be most effective if you take good basic care of your body, starting with diet and sleep.
7. The power of positive procrastination. Benchley wrote:"The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment". Procrastination typically avoids one task by doing something else and rarely do they sit there doing nothing at all.
8. The nothing alternative (for example If I can't write, I will do nothing"
9. Keep track - monitoring is crucial for any kind of plan you make.
10. Reward often




Few Books mentioned in this book:
Dale Carnegie - How to win friends and influence people
Norman Vincent Peale's The power of positive thinking
Napoleon Hill's Think and grow rich
Baumeister and Dianne Tice 's Losing Control (scholarly book?)

A hand-list of Rhetorical Terms by Richard A. Lanham.

A hand-list of Rhetorical Terms by Richard A. Lanham.

[I only picked topics & sentences that are interested to me; meaning this is not review of the book. This is a very good reference book for anyone who opt for public debate]

One of four levels or senses of interpretation common in medieval and Renaissance exegesis.
a. literal, b. allegorical, c. moral ,d. spiritual.

The letter teaches the deed, the allegory what you believe, the moral what you should do, the spiritual what you strive for.

(the western political satires, quasiphilosphical anatomies, personal attacks in epigrammatic form, pastorals of all sorts, apocalyptic visions, encyclopedia epics... naturalistic much-raking novels whose aim is to propagandize social change, imaginary voyages, detective stories fairy tales debate poems...

Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fitness, freeness
yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking

Consonance & assonance
Guard and guide

For your bro and my sis no sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.

Goods of life rather than the good life.

The passion is all that man can know of God: his conflicts, duly faced are all that he can know of himself. The last judgment is the always present self-judgment (Erickson)

Positive statement made in a negative forum

I wasted time and now doth time waste me...

I ask you of cheese, you answer me of chalk
He was a modest man, with much to be modest about..

A proposition is true if it has not been proved false

tiny, timid, tentative tardy

I am gonna squeeze your lemon baby, till the good juice comes...

Logicians distinguish four:
material (e.g. the metal which is a card is made),
formal (design of car)
efficient (assembling of the car)
final (purpose of the car - transportation)

if you stay in Beverly hills too long, you become a Mercedes... (Robert Redford)

Anyone who thinks he has ha solution does not comprehend the problem and anyone who comprehends the problem does not have a solution -

The Q is not whether Grape Nuts are good enough for you, it's whether you are good enough for Grape Nuts

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going..

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is nor original and the part that is original is not good...

pregnant sentence or maxim, often illustrated by an anecdote.

this wine may be verified that merry induction, that good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humors, good humors cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo good wine carry a man to heaven.

A crocodile having seized a woman's son, said that he would restore him, if she would the truth. She replied, you will not restore him. Was it the crocodile's duty to give him up?
(The barber shaves only those men in town who do not shave themselves.
All this seems perfectly logical, until we pose the paradoxical question:
Who shaves the barber?)
Careless she is with artful care,
Affecting to seem unaffected." _Congreve

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

As far as Urdu is concerned Mirza Asad ullah Khan Ghalib appears to be the greatest exponent of paradoxical language. Some of his gems are given below. Only first part of the verse is given in the interest of brevity.
1. Mushkilain itni parein kay asaan ho gaien.
So many troubles I got that they become my comfort!
2. Aadmi ko bhe mayyassar nahin Insan hona
Even a man is not able to become human!
3. Tangiay dil ka gila kiya yeh woh kafir dil hai
Why complain about heartlessness, the heart is heathen
4. Jatay hoiy kehto ho qiamat ko mialaingay
kiya khoob qiamat ka hai goya koi din aur
To part saying that will meet again on dooms day,
Well that is enough to make it a dooms day,
6. Qata keejiay na tallauq hum say
kuch nahin to adawat hee sahee
Do not sever all relationship with us
If nothing else let there be acrimony


Emphasizing a strong point by repeating it several times in different words
(e.g. expelled, thrust out, banished and cast away from the city..)

Repetition of a word or words in succeeding clauses
1. for amplification or emphasize
e.g.you are promoting riots, Garica, yes, civil and internal riots

2. to express emotion
e.g. you were not moved when his mother embraced your knees? you were not moved?

Repetition of a word with one or a few words in between , used to express strong emotion
e.g. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed..

Use of different verbs to express similar ideas in successive clauses
e.g. By the roman people, Numantia was destroyed, Carthage razed, Corinth demolished, Fregellae overthrown...



To muse in mind how faire, how wise, how good
how brave, how free, how courteous, and how true
MY lady is doth but inflame my blood

Fallacy two types – formal & informal

A. Fallacies of relevance
Argumentum ad baculum – appeal to force
Argumentum ad hominen – disparage character of the speaker, instead of attacking his arguments
Argumentum ad ignorantiam – argue that a proposition is true because it has never been proved false
Argumentum ad misericordiam – appeal to pity
Argumentum ad populum – play on the feelings of the audience
Argumentum ad verecundiam – appeal to traditional values
Converse accident – fallacious generalization on the basis of unrepresentative sample
Post hoc, propter hoc (because A occurs before B, A is the cause of B: confusion of temporal and causal sequence
Petitio principia – assuming as a premise the conclusion to be proved – begging the question
Rigged question – the terms of the question require admission as part of any answer: Have you stopped beating your wife (indirectly says he beats his wife)
Ignoratio elenchi – an argument which proves a conclusion different from the one intended

B. Fallacies of ambiguity
Equivocation – deliberate confusion of two or more meanings of a word
Amphiboly – argument from grammatically ambiguous premise
Accent – change of stress or emphasis to change meaning
Composition – taking a part for the whole
Division – taking the whole for a part


The Laws of Thought
1. Principle of Identity - if a statement is true, it is true
2. Principle of contradiction - no statement can be both true and false
3. Principle of excluded middle - any statement must be either true or false

Metaphor - changing a word from its literal meaning to one not properly applicable but analogous to it.
We are naturally find it agreeable to get hold of new ideas easily: words express ideas and therefore those words are the most agreeable that enables us to get hold of new ideas. Now strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh - Aristotle.

Occultatio - emphasizing something by pointedly seeming to pass over it as in introducing a guest speaker one says, " I will not dwell here on the 20 book she has written nor his 40 years as dean nor his many illustrious pupils, but only say that last year he did xyz.."

Subtle speaking, quibbling.
e.g. I rise to commit an irregularity. The intervention I make is without precedent and the reason for that intervention is also without precedent and the fact that the reason for my intervention is without precedent is the reason why I must ask for a precedent for my intervention" - Churchill.

Rhetoric

Three branches of Rhetoric - Deliberate, Judicial & Ceremonial
Five parts - Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory & Delivery

Invention - two kinds of proof - In-artificial & Artificial
Artificial has three types - Ethos, Pathos & Logos

Two types of logical proof
Deductive - Syllogism & Enthymeme
Inductive -

Two kinds of topic
1. Topics useful in a special area of knowledge only
2. Topics useful in arguments of all kinds
a. What can and cannot happen
b. What has and has not happened
c. What will or will not happen
d. Size

28 valid topics
1. Restate your contention in an opposite way (e.g. instead of saying 'excess is bad' say moderation is good. If the opposite statement holds, so will the original one
2. Redefine a key term slightly to support your contention or suggest a synonym that seems better to support it
3. Use a correlative idea. You want to prove B justly punished so prove A just in punishing him
4. Argue a fortiori. Prove A has acted in a cruel way at one time by showing that at another he acted still more cruelly
5. Argue from circumstances of past time. What has been promised at one time must be performed at another, even though times and circumstances may have changed
6. Turn an accusation against accuser. The implied moral superiority of the accuser is this attacked
7. Define your terms so as to place the argument in a favorable light
8. Play upon various senses of a word
9. Divide your argument into its logical parts
10. Argue from plain induction (parallel cases)
11. Argue from authority or previous verdict
12. Argue your contention part by part
13. Argue from consequences, good or bad
14. When an action may have good or bad consequences, invert your opponent's arguments. Aristotle example: Don't take up oratory. If you say truth, men will hate you; if you lie, the Gods will hate you. Take up oratory. If you lie, men will love you; if you say the truth, the Gods will love you.
15. Oppose an argument by seeming to allow it and then maintaining that things are not what they seem. If the opponent maintains thus, argue things are what they seem.
16. Argue from logical consequences. If a man is old enough to fight for his country, he is old enough to vote. Are we then to say that those too sick to fight should not vote?
17. Argue that if two results are the same, their causes must be the same
18. Apply an opponent's earlier decision to later case, to his disadvantage
19. Take the possible motive for the one actually prevailing
20. In arguing individual motive, point to general motives or prohibitions (for or against, depending on which side you have taken)
21. Make people believe an improbability by pointing to an even greater one that is yer true.
22. Catch your opponent out on inaccuracies and self-contradictions
23. Refute slander by showing that it was evoked by a mistaken view of the facts
24. Prove effect by showing the presence of its cause or vice-versa
25. Show that a client or a cause had better argument and failed to use it. Only trustful innocence would make such a mistake
26. Disprove an action by showing it inconsistent with previous actions
27. Use previous mistakes as a defense (or explanation) for present ones
28. Support an argument by playing upon the meaning of names (Mr. Stern is a harsh man)

Ten invalid topics or fallacies of arguments
1. Conclude an argument, as if at the end of a reasoning process, without having gone, through the process
2. Play on illogical, fortuitous similarity of words (A sauce pan must be noble for so was the great god Pan)
3. Make statement about the whole that is true only of individual parts or vice versa
4. Use indignant language
5. Use a single, unrepresentative example
6. Take the accidental as essential
7. Argue from consequence
8. Argue post hoc, ergo propter hoc
9. Ignore crucial circumstances
10. Suggest, from fraudulent confusion of general and particular that the improbable is probable and vice versa

Thesis & Hypotheses

Thesis- a general argument, one that does not deal with particular case

Hypothesis - argument about a particular case and there are two divisions
1. Question of fact or justice
2. Question of law

Hypothesis has seven elements
1. Actor
2. Action
3. Time
4. Place
5.Cause
6. Manner
7. Starting point


Arrangement: The parts of an Oration

To avoid the unnecessary confusion of overlapping classifications, there are six basic steps according to the well known discussion in Rhetoric ad Herennum

1. Exordium - catches the audience attention
2. Narration - sets forth the facts
3. Division - sets forth points stipulated and points to be contested
4. Proof - sets forth the arguments that support one's case
5. Refutation - refutes opponent arguments
6. Peroration - sums up arguments and stirs audience.

Aristotle saw two essential elements - the statement of the issue (narration) and the arguments for & against it. At most he thought, an introduction and conclusion framing the two essential parts would make a total of four. a. ingratiating introduction, b. state your case, c. prove your case, d.sum up in an ingratiating way.

If there is any characteristic form to be found among the various schemes for the parts, it would seem to be a strategy of alternating emotional and evidential appeals, first cultivating the good will of hearers and then setting forth the facts of the case.

Simplest structure - states your case, and proves it
First complication: Encapsulate this statement with emotional appeals fore and aft
Second complication: Interrupt the factual statement with one or more emotional appeals
Third complication: Divide your argumentation into subsections
Da Capo: More interpolated emotional appeals and argumentative subdivisions

Style

Three types
1. The low or plain style (unornamented - brief style)
2. The middle style (somewhere between 1 &3)
3. The grand style (ornamented style - full style)

The Greek Demetrius offers four divisions
Plan, Grand, Elegant & Forceful


Memory
There are two types - natural & artificial. Artificial memory is trained using one of the 'memory-theater.

Delivery
Two parts - voice and gesture and these were variously and greatly subdivided.
Read the following for Delivery
Non-verbal communication by Robert A Hinde
Elizabethan Acting by L. Joseph
Chirologia or the natural language of the hands by John Bulwer (1644)1
Chironomia by Gilbert Austin (1806)
Essay on elocution and pronunciation by John Mason (1748)
Practical illustration of Rhetorical gesture and action by Henry Siddons

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/paradox-examples-in-literature.html
Below are copied from the above site

You can save money by spending it.

"I can resist anything but temptation."-Oscar Wilde
"I must be cruel to be kind."
We must go to war to make peace.
Extreme rationalism, by 'seeing through' all 'rational' motives, leaves us creatures of wholly irrational behavior. – C. S. Lewis
Each new power won by man (over nature) is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. – C. S. Lewis
To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting. – King Stanislaw II
Freedom is not doing what you want, freedom is wanting to do what you have to do…this kind of freedom is always rooted in practiced habit. – Northrop Frye

`Nobody asked your opinion,' said Alice.
`Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked triumphantly.

'You won't marry me because I'm crazy, and you say I'm crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?'

"War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength."

"Men work together whether they work together or apart." - The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - Animal Farm by George Orwell

Alliteration Examples in Advertising Slogans:
"Don't dream it. Drive it."
- Jaguar
"Dream. Dare. Do."
- Girl Guides

"Functional... Fashionable... Formidable..."
- Fila