THE MANAGEMENT MASTERCLASS

THE MANAGEMENT MASTERCLASS Edited by Emma De Vita For Management Today Hachette /Business Plus 2010 Rs 199   pages 190

What makes good management, asks Sir Terry Leahy, CEO Executive, Tesco, in the Foreword. A question that, in the best of times, can only be tentative, and the answer even more so. It is generally known, though rarely accepted, that a manager grows through experiential learning, that there just can’t be preset rules out there in the jungle, and all theories and formulae go out of the window when you have your entire workforce camped at the door of your workplace. So what’s to be done? You assess the situation and work out whatever negotiation is possible with such of the leaders as are recognizable. (In a mob situation, the leaders melt into the mass so effectively that you wonder where they disappear when you need them most). Emma De Vita, the editor of the book under review, thinks that one effective measure would be to read her book: View this book as a short cut to becoming a brilliant manager in the 21^st century. It’s meant to be kept to hand so that when you find yourself in need of some help or inspiration, you can delve in…

Now, if you want to read this book as normal people do (cover to cover) you have a problem. There is not much of straight text here. After every few lines there are breaks. There are 20 sets of Your Route To The Top, 8 of Do it right, 22 Crash Courses for myriad situations, and

26 Ten Ways

to do umpteen things. And then there are quotes interspersed – ranging from Dolly Parton and Duke Ellington to Chekhov and Churchill to George W. Bush. The Bush-ism is unbeatable – It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

Along the way the reader will be introduced to various ‘syndromes’ like the ‘Someday Syndrome’ which is quite obvious. The Hubris Syndrome: the closer we get to power, the more our brain starts to feed on it. Symptoms include the habit of seeing the world as a stage on which to exercise power, with a growing belief that we are accountable only to God. The Tall Poppy Syndrome is a sort of fear of the top position – the name has been drawn from Livy’s History of Rome which reports that when Tarquin (The Proud) symbolically cut off the tall poppies in his garden, his son, Sextus, killed all the important people in the town. The Corollary Syndrome gets you thinking that what you are thinking is what everyone else is, or should be, thinking. There is also a peculiarity called micromanagement, which most people in management are acutely aware of. Based on some obscure Freudian theory, it has been concluded that children who did not learn the art of ‘elimination’ get constipated and in their later years become obsessively tidy adult preoccupied with petty details. No, TPM practitioners with their ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ are not constipated, at least not chronically.

The introduction starts rather boldly: If you are engaged in your work and want to get ahead, then this book will give you the leg-up that you need. If you don’t care for success, then perhaps this isn’t for you. Can authors be sued for tall claims under the Consumer Protection law?

There is no claim, however, of being comprehensive or original, the book trundles on with humour that doesn’t quite get there; in fact it stops short of the facetious. Of course the usual contents of leadership, team building, emotional intelligence, communication, delegation, decision-making … all that a management book should have, are all there. But what kind of hand-book can claim to inspire at critical moments? What sense, for that matter, does it make to be informed that your first step in Your Route to the Top is that you should fulfil your goals? Or if you want to get noticed, the first step is: Take the lead?

A more pertinent question therefore, Sir Terry, would be: What makes a good management-book? From the one-minute management tactics to tomes that strain more than your elbow, you think you’ve had it up to the ears … oh, but there’s still a lot to follow. After all there is so much they don’t teach you at Harvard!