Simply Management: Effective Methods to Plan, Manage, and Improve Businesses. Warwick J Thompson

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      SIMPLY MANAGEMENT:

      Effective methods to plan, manage, and improve businesses

      By

      Warwick J Thompson

      “You are the scale: those who went before you, and all those who come after, will be measured against you.”

      ---- Horst Oberbandscheidt, speaking on the occasion of the author’s farewell from European management; Chantilly, France, August 1995

      Copyright © Warwick J Thompson 2012.

      All rights reserved.

      Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com

       http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1121-7

      The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.

      This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, no part may be reproduced by any process and in any form without the prior written permission of the Publisher or the Author.

      By the same author: The Far Beyond, a 388-page historical novel, ISBN 978-1-877378-27-0, 2009.

      PREFACE

      This book should have been written many times previously.

      But each time I was being urged to, I thought it presumptuous of me to propound my own ideas about management, or at the least, pretentious. Many others are far better qualified than I, with eminent academic qualifications, extensive business management experience far greater than mine in both depth and breadth, and who also have practised the art with more exemplary skill. And so the occasion would pass, I would put the suggestion aside and the book would not be written.

      Although there is a paucity of letters after my name, I can however, lay claim to having managed manufacturing enterprises, and been a CEO in the diverse sectors of industrial consumables, fast moving packaged goods, and services. I’ve held senior international executive positions with multinationals, started up electronics businesses, managed large projects, given advice to a wide range of businesses including food, beverage, marine-industry, engineering, and professional services. I’ve also held directorships in many companies from cheese to women’s under-fashions. That experience has been gained in Australasia, Asia, North and South America and in Europe.

      In recent years I have been surprised to find Business School graduates freshly placed in positions of substantial responsibility and rapidly promoted to their level of obvious incompetence who - while strong on buzzwords and bullshit - display a remarkable lack of knowledge of the basics of management and organization. I’ve also been asked to advise a number of businesses in difficulty or struggling with growth opportunities, only to find a rudimentary knowledge of basic management understanding to be mostly missing.

      Even worse, I’ve watched substantial businesses with strong histories plunge into receivership with their directors and management apparently unable to provide the direction and skill to avert collapse - or even worse - seemingly unaware of the precarious state of their business. At the same time, enthusiastic hardworking individuals have courageously started an exciting business in their garage or whatever and then because of lack of knowledge of management fundamentals find themselves struggling to take the next big steps forward.

      I’ve had the occasional opportunity in several countries and cultures to put a number of intelligent capable young people with evident talent into positions of management responsibility. Then after being given basic instruction, ongoing nurturing and mentoring, they have grown and blossomed into confident and successful leaders and managers. Seeing their achievements and the realization of their potential has given me some of the greatest satisfaction of my working life.

      So now, when once again I have been urged to put these thoughts into writing, the motivation is finally there to do so. In fact, when I told the U.K. executive doing the latest urging that I would write a small book about management, he responded: “Only a small book? Warwick, from what I am seeing take place in business today, it needs to be a very large book!”

      Well, I don’t know enough about management to fill a large book – only a small book. Besides, I’m of the view that concise, practical and succinct advice is more easily understood and absorbed than tedious long discourses of management theory and practise.

      This is the Information Age and what I have written just adds to the overwhelming volume of information swirling around us like so many snowflakes in a blizzard. I therefore urge the reader to remember this – the first of my many ‘management maxims’: The value of any information is the use that is made of it.

      I hope that those who read this little book will find something of value in it and then have the determination to make good use of it.

      INTRODUCTION

      Where should a small book about management begin?

      It should commence the same way that I think approaching managing a business itself should begin – strategize, then organize. Therefore this book begins with a discussion about Strategy and then follows with Organization & Management.

      The reason for this is that the first task in any business, business venture or operating sector of a business is to devise a viable strategy. Then having devised strategy, we organize the business so as to implement it.

      All too frequently, these two tasks are put back to front and we rush to organize, before we have a clear, cogent and viable strategy in place.

      Why does this happen?

      Devising strategy is difficult. It is ethereal and abstract. Our brains are wired to prefer thinking in the concrete rather than the abstract. It requires hard thinking. There are generally no clear paths to follow, no list of steps to tick off mechanically. Usually there is nobody to help us. It can be like trying to find gold, in a fog, when we don’t even have a clear idea of what gold is or even what it looks like.

      So we plunge into business pursuing some general or vague ideas of what we will try and do and we proceed to organize ourselves.

      Organizing is fun. Organizing is doing. It’s usually constructive - we see something tangible for our efforts. We get lots of support. There are always plenty of people climbing over each other to help us; they want to provide us with their products and services and they want to take our money. We get satisfaction from seeing things taking shape, being put in place; it creates and reinforces a strong sense that we are achieving something. But that is a delusion.

      We wouldn’t sensibly hire a team of accountants if the intended focus of our business endeavour was marketing & sales. We wouldn’t commit to leasing a warehouse if our business intention was the writing of software. Yet all too often, we put strategy and organizing back to front.

      In most other aspects of our personal daily lives, we get the sequence right. We think about the meal we’ll prepare before we go and buy the ingredients. We conceive the СКАЧАТЬ