Whether In Search of Excellence was a good book or not continues to be debated. But, its influence is undeniable.
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More broadly, the sudden and unexpected growth management books can be attributed to a number of other factors. Since 1945 we have witnessed the inexorable
‘professionalization’ of management (indeed, some have argued that we have witnessed the professionalization of almost every occupation). Instead of being a slightly grubby and seedy profession, management has become accepted as an honorable and potentially lucrative means of earning a living.
Managers were once mere supervisors, small-time dictators;
now, they are executives, globe-trotting, intelligent, highly qualified, forging their own role.
Professionals they may be, but managers remain slightly reticent and ill-at-ease with the nobleness of their profession.
They feel a need to explain themselves in a way in which lawyers or doctors do not. They are professionals, but where is the kudos? After all, young children do not express strong urges to become chief executives – and those that do are more likely to be taken to child psychologists than to witness their first production line in operation.
Managers frequently explain themselves with their business cards and their job titles. They explain themselves through their company cars and the stunning variety of executive perks.
And they seek legitimacy through the acquisition of knowledge.
Managers crave a clear set of guidelines on the skills and knowledge required to become a manager. If theirs is a profession, they would like professional qualifications. There is a perennial and largely futile debate about the mythical
‘chartered manager’ – as if a single qualification could equip an executive to manage a steel producer in Illinois, a chain of shoe stores in Spain or a wine importing business in Auckland, New Zealand.
In the past, the quest for knowledge – new tools, techniques and ideas – was part of the process of professionalization. Now, it is the route to survival.
If knowledge means survival, managers cannot and should
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not be criticized for their relentless search for new skins and new approaches. But, too often these resemble an indecent race to find the latest bright idea, the single-stop answer to all their business problems. Managers are addicted to the newest and brightest ideas. They buy the fashionable books of the moment and then within months, perhaps weeks, move on to the next fashion. This is good news for publishers.
For managers it means a relentless and largely impossible quest to keep up to date with the latest thinking. Books and articles are devoured and pored over. It is a losing battle, but one they must endeavor to fight – ‘The only thing worse than slavishly following management theory is ignoring it completely,’ observed The Economist (February 26, 1994).
Richard Pascale, author of Managing on the Edge, is a vehement critic of the managerial enthusiasm for fads and instant solutions. In Managing on the Edge he charts the rise and rise of fads since the 1950s. He calculates that over two dozen techniques have come and gone during this period – with a dozen arriving between 1985 and 1990 alone. Pascale believes that this trend is likely to continue. ‘I think it is a packaged goods business. There is an unquenchable thirst,’ he says. ‘If you take the premise, as I do, that corporations are the dominant social institutions of our age, you have to reckon with the fact that corporations are very influential. Certain trappings go with the party. It is part of the fanfare surrounding these institutions. With that comes a constant chum of material for corporate chieftains to feed on. Because of their prominence in society this is always going to be with us, though among the CEOs I speak to, there is a certain cynicism about the Material.’3
Rodney Turner of the UK’s Henley Management College believes there is a range of responses to what the management thinkers say. ‘There are those who ignore the gurus completely and pig-headedly refuse to change the way they manage. They learnt management in the university of life and have no time for “book learning”. At the other extreme are the sycophants
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who slavishly follow what the gurus say and often apply their ideas unquestioningly and inappropriately and usually make a mess of it,’ observes Turner. ‘In the middle there are those who read what the gurus have to say, pick out some good ideas, adapt them to their environment and make them work.
But some of what the gurus say they take with a pinch of salt and they also realize that there is no philosopher’s stone that turns lead to gold in all circumstances and hence everything must be adapted.’4
The truth is that, despite the hype and the relentless stream of fads, the great ideas of management have been around for a while – indeed, some would say that the basics of management have existed since time immemorial. Ideas which purport to be bright and new are often colorful imitations of age old concepts of hackneyed reworkings. (Indeed, if you wanted to identify the first business blockbuster you would have to go back to 1832 when Charles Babbage’s On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures reputedly sold 10,000 copies.)
And, much of what is written is indigestible. Economist John Kay describes the formula for an article in the Harvard Business Review: ‘One idea per article, although it will not be taken seriously if expressed in less than 3,000 words. Assume no prior knowledge of anything . . . definitely no jokes – our audience has no sense of humor – but frequent references to exchanges with senior executives such as John Harvey-Jones and Akio Morita.’5
Business and management writing is continually subject to such barbs. Better than anyone, managers know that quantity does not equate with quality. There are a lot of poor management books – laden with jargon, fashionable phrases, and smart retrospective case studies. It is easy to forget that the same applies to the literature of any profession. Not all law books are authoritative – many are unreadable, and as bogged down in jargon as the worst managerial text.
Expectations of management books are extraordinarily high. A manager in Rutland, Vermont, reads a book by a
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French academic filled with case studies of Swiss-Swedish conglomerates and expects answers to his or her problems.
The skeptics are right to question the practical usefulness of much that is published. ‘You can be very bold as a theoretician. Good theories are like good art. A practitioner has to compromise,’ says Warren Bennis.6 Even so, the canon of management literature is full of ideas which have been implemented and which have affected the lives and performance of millions of managers. ‘All the great business builders we know of – from the Medici of Renaissance Florence and the founders of the Bank of England in the late seventeenth century down to IBM’s Thomas Watson in our day – had a clear theory of the business which informed all their actions and decisions,’ observes Peter Drucker in Management. Cut through the dross and there is a broad swathe of carefully researched, well-written, insightful books on what makes managers and their organizations tick.
‘The Harvard Business Review may be lacking in humor and brevity, but a great deal of the material it includes is perceptive and practically useful. There are business books which stand the tests of time and usefulness. They are not placebos, but vibrant cures.
And, lest it be forgotten, books and the research behind them, do change things. Look at the part played by W.
Edwards Deming in the renaissance of Japan. Think of the impact of Michael Porter’s work on the value chain which has been taken up by companies throughout the world, as well as his work on national competitiveness which has altered the economic perspectives of entire countries. Porter has been called in by countries as far apart as Portugal and Colombia to shed light on their competitiveness. Who thought customer service was a key competitive weapon before Peters and Waterman? In the business world, books are more than ornamental shelf-fillers.
And their domain is growing. On his election to become leader of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich sent his
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Republican colleagues an essential reading list. It included works by seven management thinkers. In 1993, President Clinton established the National Performance Review and has backed the creation of a public sector MBA. The influence of best management practice and leading-edge thinking is increasingly all pervasive.