On management

I have been perusing a slim little volume of managerial maxims first issued in 1970 again in 1984 and again in 2007. The book is Up the Organization by Robert Townsend and it is the Everything I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten book for management. Townsend’s words ring simple and true, the same today as they did almost 40 years ago. Any organization would benefit from another reading of this book. It helps one to stop, think, and focus on what is important to an organization, and ultimately to the people that make up the organization. Here are some examples from Townsend’s book that illustrate what I mean:

Leadership: True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders. In combat, officers eat last. Most people in big companies today are administered, not led.

Management Consultants: They waste time, cost money, demoralize and distract your best people, and don’t solve problems. They are people who borrow your watch to tell you what time it is and then walk off with it. Don’t use them under any circumstances.

Reorganizing: Should be undergone about as often as major surgery. And should be well planned and swiftly executed.

Secrecy: A child’s garden of diseases. Secrecy is totally bad. It defeats the crusade for justice, which doesn’t flourish in the dark. Secrecy implies either:
1) What I’m doing is so horrible I don’t dare tell you. or
2) I don’t trust you (any more).

Listen. Do you hear the ring of truth? A good little book. Highly recommended.