How smart a manager are you? How good are you at leveraging your knowledge and skills in order to provide value for your business and your customers? How smart is your management team when it comes to understanding both the fundamentals of business, and new trends? How to be your own Management Guru is the perfect answer to those looking to master the fundamentals of managing in the modern world: how to make and implement strategy; how to understand and respond to customer needs; how to manage and get the best out of people; and above all, how to use knowledge. Drawing on both business research and examples of best practice from around the world, past and present, How To Be Your Own Manager Guru will help readers to manage more effectively, and to do business the smart way. The book features: Key areas crucial for management in the twenty-first century Quizzes to test yourself, and your businesses How to identify what are you doing well? What are you doing less well, and how might you improve?

David Collins, a well respected scholar of management gurus proves a critical reappraisal of the very influential work of Tom Peters. This volume examines his key works and reviews his detractors, offering an analysis of his contributions to the field of management that goes beyond the simple chronological model that has previously been used. Colli

Building on the success of the first edition, Huczynski identifies the essential ingredients of popular management ideas and brings his analysis of gurus into the twenty-first century.

Management gurus have existed for as long as the leaders of large, complex organizations have had intractable problems to solve. This seminal text asks key questions such as: What is the secret of the success of management gurus and how can it be emulated? In this revised edition, Andrzej Huczynski brings his analysis of gurus into the twenty-first century. He identifies the essential ingredients of popular management ideas and contends that company managers, business school academics and management consultants all have the possibility of attaining guru status by following the guidelines contained in this book. It includes an additional chapter by Brad Jackson (Department of Management and Employment Relations, The Auckland University Business School, New Zealand) and Eric Guthey (Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, The Copenhagen Business School, Denmark). Management Gurus is a must read for all those studying organizational behaviour, leadership and organizational psychology or for those who wish to attain guru status.

Insightful summaries of fifteen outstanding management books Since 1978, Soundview Executive Book Summaries has offered its subscribers condensed versions of the most relevant and influential business books published each year. The company has won acclaim as the definitive selection service for business book readers. Following its successful first collection, The Marketing Gurus, Soundview has now compiled The Management Gurus, which includes summaries of fifteen management classics. One of them is a previously unpublished summary: Jack Welch and the 4 E?s of Leadership. Other featured books include: ? Winning with People by John Maxwell ? Judgment by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis ? Managing Crises Before They Happen by Ian I. Mitroff These summaries distill thousands of pages about leadership, strategy, crisis management, organizational behavior, and more?perfect for busy executives and students.

This book provides a rhetorical critique of the management guru and management fashion phenomenon, and stimulates a much-needed critical dialogue between practitioners and academics.

This book provides a concise, critical expert overview of the elite group of consultants, analysts and commentators known as ‘management gurus’. Often dismissed as lacking in substance, this volume demonstrates that gurus must be taken seriously given their impact on the world of management. Noting that the gurus are very much products of the 1980s, the book accounts for the rise of this group while challenging those who have attempted to personify – to name and acclaim – the gurus. Reviewing the research on management gurus the book proceeds from a consideration of ‘guru theory’ to offer an analysis of ‘the guru industry’ and ‘guru speak’. Building upon this analysis the book offers a critical engagement with those who have sought to understand gurus as performance artists. Concluding with a radical agenda for future research which situates management’s gurus within the frame of stand-up comedy, this book will enlighten and entertain scholars across the business disciplines and beyond.

The fifth edition of the original, best-selling guide to the ideas of leading management thinkers. The ten additional full-length entries range from classic gurus such as Henry Gantt and the Gilbreth time-and-motion pioneers to the latest thinkers influencing 21st-century business, including Clayton Christensen, master of innovation theory, and Karen Stephenson with her ground-breaking insights into human networks. The lives and work of more than 55 gurus are covered in clear and accessible style, along with penetrating analysis of their ideas and influence on management. Guide to the Management Gurus has sold around the world since its first publication in 1991, and has been translated into more than 15 languages, including Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Management by definition, aims to reduce ambiguity and provide clarity. So it is one of the great ironies of modern corporate life that management techniques often end up doing the opposite: increasing ambiguity rather than reducing it.This new book looks at the powerful, yet hidden force of ambiguity and it effect in organizations. Ambiguity is a primal force that drives much of our behaviour. It is typically viewed negatively - something to be avoided or to be controlled. The truth, however, is that it is a force that can be used in positive ways too. The Force that gave the Dark Side their power in the Star Wars movies was harnessed by the Jedi in positive ways. Similarly, this new management book shows how ambiguous situations, so common in the corporate world, are processed by the brain, and the behaviours that often arise as a consequence. More importantly, though, it shows you how to harness that ambiguity to achieve outstanding results.

Stephen Bungay’s magisterial history is acclaimed as the account of the Battle of Britain. Unrivalled for its synthesis of all previous historical accounts, for the quality of its strategic analysis and its truly compulsive narrative, this is a book ultimately distinguished by its conclusions – that it was the British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency, organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism, ill-preparedness, poor engineering and even in their old-fashioned notions of gallantry. An engrossing read for the military scholar and the general reader alike, this is a classic of military history that looks beyond the mythology, to explore all the tragedy and comedy; the brutality and compassion of war.