Posted on 26th Aug 2009 @ 2:13 PM

Management has a very colourful history. For many years now, the world’s managers have been adapting or adopting the latest fads introduced by famous management gurus all designed to improve performance and productivity.

At first, management processes changed relatively slowly. Taylor’s Scientific Management (Josiah Wedgwood implemented his own version of this more than 30 years previously) survived virtually intact from 1922 to 1940 (Taylor’s nickname was ‘Speedy’ for his reputation as an efficiency expert), and Alfred P Sloane (the General Motors hero) reigned-in a set of businesses that were out of control. His centralising actions got the name of decentralisation.

The years 1940 through 1960 saw the introduction of project management and continuous process improvement.

From 1960, the pace picked up. We went through ‘management by objectives’, ‘zero defect’ and the feel-good management strategies.

The psychobabble of organisational development experts reached new heights with the management grid and job-enrichment programs. Then we went through the Asian-Pacific period with Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Zen, and the Tao of Management.

Next, we were introduced to the management styles of Attila the Hun, General George Patton, Abraham Lincoln, Chief Sitting Bull, and Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf. We were also alerted to what we could learn from Wolves, Wombats, and Winnie the Pooh.

Then the pace accelerated with TQM, which incited almost religious fervour among competing advocates who denounced one another for heretical thoughts. Did you seek the elusive Six Sigma or Deming’s 14 Points? Did we jump on the Juran bandwagon—or, better yet, go to Crosby quality college and receive our baton to lead the quality band? Did we go for Baldrige? Or, join the quest for ISO 9000? Or did we resort to Chaos—the mathematical concept of chaos theory applied to business.

The TQM concept has now magically metamorphosed into empowerment. But alas, we’ve found that empowerment serves only to disempower. TQM also brought with it the desirability of measurement—if you can’t measure, you can’t manage. So we came up with pushing people to meet numbers—often instead of customers.

And the quest goes on in search of what managers should be learning to improve the performance of their organisations? In the words of the immortal management guru Vince Lombardi, late coach of the Green Bay Packers: ‘It’s all in the fundamentals’.

And that’s where The Management Bible comes in, providing immediate access to the fundamentals. The only other way to have this much enlightenment so conveniently accessible is to live next door to the Dalai Lama. Just about everything a manager needs to know is a flip of a page away. The Management Bible answers every manager’s prayer.