#497  from Innovative Leader Volume 9, Number 10          October 2000

FORUM—from our readers

Not Another Management Book!

I’m a department head in a large company.  My boss, a vice president, devours management books.  When there’s one he likes, he purchases copies for each of the five department heads.  Of course, we all have to read the book and, we guess, each of us has to incorporate this new knowledge into our management style.  In case we didn’t guess, the vice president soon questions if we are using what the management expert recommended.

While I rarely disagree with the expert’s opinions, I rarely find them valuable in a practical sense.  It’s easy to deal with generalities.  It’s also easy to tell how someone, or some company, accomplished something very impressive.  But this information has little relevance to me and, I bet, to most managers.  I’m not that person and I don’t have his or her skills.  It’s too late to change my personality.  Also, my company’s challenges and history isn’t similar to the one(s) in the books.

I recently started a collection of newspaper and magazine articles where someone who was written up previously as a “hero,” an example of superior management abilities, turns out, months or years later, as a “mule” when the press describes how the individual managed the company to its demise (or near demise).  I bet you can think of many examples of heroes turned into mules. 

So, what does this say about expert’s recommended management styles?  That they depend on the person and the situation.  What may work for one person at one time may not work at another time.  Or what may work for one person in a particular situation may not work for another person in a similar situation.

But this Forum isn’t meant only to provide a personal view.  Rather, it’s to show that following the expert can be detrimental.  I’m writing this as one of my fellow department heads has been let go.  He came to the company a bit unsure as how to lead and manage.  He, therefore, took the recommended books very seriously.  And he always strutted the “latest” method before us.  Drove his staff crazy as he went from one management style to another. 

He wasn’t being himself, and that perplexed his staff.  His department began to fall apart.  What the vice president still hasn’t realized is the potential destructive nature--in this particular situation (and, I bet, a lot more)--of those “great” books.

Anonymous