Читать книгу Simply Management: Effective Methods to Plan, Manage, and Improve Businesses - Warwick J Thompson - Страница 3

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.