The Management Gurus

Lessons from the Best Management Books of All Time

Chris Lauer

• Verlag: Atlantic Books
• Jahr: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781848873735
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Leadership

The gurus in this book are world-class leaders and managers: they take management's most important concepts and transform them into strategies, tips and techniques that can be utilized in the workplace. This book summarizes their key lessons. The Management Gurus brings you tried-and-tested advice. It will help you to: Hire your dream team and work with them effectively Create profitability Understand the evolution of your business Develop self-awareness to improve leadership Build world-class organizations on your own terms Be a success in the new, global economy This phenomenal collection of digested reads is a great head start in all aspects of management.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

WINNING WITH PEOPLE by John C. Maxwell

TOPGRADING by Bradford D. Smart, PhD

JACK WELCH AND THE 4E’S OF LEADERSHIP by Jeffrey A. Krames

THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

GODS OF MANAGEMENT by Charles Handy

INFLUENCER by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

TRUE NORTH by Bill George with Peter E. Sims

WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter

JUDGMENT by Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis

SMALL GIANTS by Bo Burlingham

DEALING WITH DARWIN by Geoffrey A. Moore

WIKINOMICS by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

MANAGING CRISES BEFORE THEY HAPPEN by Ian I. Mitroff with Gus Anagnos

THE LEADER OF THE FUTURE by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard

THE NEXT GLOBAL STAGE by Kenichi Ohmae

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Soundview Executive Book Summaries has provided busy readers with summaries of exceptional business books for nearly thirty years. In 2006 we published our first full-length book, The Marketing Gurus, a collection of summaries from some of the most interesting and influential writings on marketing. Now, within the pages of The Management Gurus, we offer you fifteen summaries containing valuable lessons on people, management, and change.

The authors who appear in this book grasp management’s fluid concepts and transform them into concrete actions that managers can take into the workplace. The discipline of management changes every day as organizations evolve in a marketplace that continues its eternal metamorphosis. Using the advice, strategies, tips, and techniques found in the following pages, managers and leaders can make better decisions while helping their organizations compete in that marketplace.

The juxtaposition of the management ideas in this volume creates a thought-provoking tool for managers and other students of management theory, starting with advice and insights from world-class leaders and managers. Best-selling author John C. Maxwell presents a compendium of twenty-five straightforward people principles for leadership and life in Winning with People. In Topgrading, management psychologist and consultant Dr. Bradford D. Smart shows executives and managers how the best organizations hire, coach, and promote their people to A-Player status.

In Jack Welch and the 4E’s of Leadership, author Jeffrey A. Krames draws on the leadership model Welch used successfully at GE and describes how some of the best managers have created industry-changing profitability for their companies.

The leadership lessons executive educators James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner offer within The Leadership Challenge help aspiring leaders become managers and executives while also helping those already in leadership positions use 360-degree feedback and a variety of other useful tools and techniques.

The next five summaries present vital insights into the more personal facets of leadership, including the self-discovery that is required to successfully accomplish the difficult work of a leader. Charles Handy begins his classic Gods of Management by explaining that he wrote the book to help more people understand the ways individuals and organizations work so they can better face the changing times.

Management researchers and trainers Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler also aim to help individuals cope with change in Influencer, raising the art and science of management above factory floors, cubicles, and boardrooms to the places they live and play. In True North, legendary former Medtronic CEO Bill George and co-author Peter Sims describe the ways leaders develop their skills for personal introspection that increase self-awareness. Executive coach extraordinaire Marshall Goldsmith and co-author Mark Reiter offer leaders similar introspection techniques and guidance on the path to better leadership in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. The authors describe valuable practices that can help managers and executives solidify their beliefs and use this knowledge to improve their leadership behavior.

In Judgment, two top leadership experts combine their innovative ideas to show leaders how to develop the ability to make better decisions in their work. Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis offer the decision-making skills and wisdom they have gained over their remarkable careers as best-selling authors and respected advisers to some of the most powerful CEOs and leaders around the world.

The next four summaries reveal the secrets to developing world-class organizations on your own terms. Bo Burlingham delivers a unique and important message while focusing on a specific type of company: small giants. In Small Giants, Burlingham shows how several small companies rejected growth for growth’s sake and, instead, dedicated themselves to the strategy of becoming the best at what they do.

To make decisions such as this, a leader must understand his or her company’s role in its market ecosystem. Best-selling author Geoffrey A. Moore’s Dealing with Darwin helps managers do this by turning a monumental management analysis of Cisco Systems into a groundbreaking unified theory on the evolution of markets that continues to help companies prevent extinction.

As the Internet revolution has matured, the market ecosystem has expanded to include new tools and techniques that help the practice of management move forward by leaps and bounds. In Wikinomics, management experts Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams outline the techniques used by the best companies to tap the power of new technology, global interconnectivity, and mass collaboration. Tapscott and Williams imagine a brighter future for management, filled with previously unimagined possibilities for better communication and teamwork.

Next comes Managing Crises Before They Happen, where crisis-management experts Ian I. Mitroff and Gus Anagnos offer strategic lessons about one specific aspect of managing an organization: dealing with crises. Since most managers can expect to face at least one calamity during their careers, the authors show them how to plan for and survive catastrophes.

The last part of this collection takes managers into the future with The Leader of the Future and The Next Global Stage. In The Leader of the Future, editors Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard present the crucial ideas that make managers and their organizations more effective, and show how successful leaders put vision, development, and growth into action. In The Next Global Stage, Kenichi Ohmae presents a vital collection of managerial insights about the new, global economy and offers several radically new rules for business and personal success.

It is difficult for a summary to do justice to a book by Kenichi Ohmae, Charles Handy, John C. Maxwell, or any of the other authors represented here (Bradford Smart’s Topgrading is 562 pages). An eight-page summary can only offer you a tiny taste of the lessons packed into the pages of any of these books. If any of these ideas motivates you, go to a library, bookstore, or other book outlet and search for more works by these authors. I hope this book will be a starting place in a much larger, more enlightening management adventure.

Chris Lauer

Senior Editor

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

WINNING WITH PEOPLE

by John C. Maxwell

John C. Maxwell has a compelling way with words. In his books and during his leadership training seminars, he offers relationship-building insights with a storyteller’s precision. The positive managerial ideas he shares are accented by his resonant voice and rural charm.

An expert on building great relationships, Maxwell connects naturally with others. The universal principles he described in his pivotal book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership—including “Trust is the foundation of leadership” and “Leadership develops daily, not in a day”—made it a New York Times bestseller that has sold more than a million copies since 1999. His other books include Developing the Leader within You, The 360-Degree Leader, Relationships 101, and The Difference Maker. Adding to his reputation as a leader of leaders, Maxwell’s training seminars have been attended by more than a million corporate leaders worldwide.

With a talent for encapsulating valuable life lessons into succinct reflections on growing and thriving as a leader, Maxwell helps managers at all levels of the ...