The Management Mythbuster - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

David A.J. Axson, author of Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management (Wiley), is President of the Sonax Group, a business advisory firm. He is a former head of corporate planning at Bank of America and was a cofounder of The Hackett Group. He is a sought-after speaker and writer on business strategy and management and is widely regarded as a thought leader in the industry.

De la contraportada

Are you brave enough?

"We've finally lost it! All sense of perspective has disappeared from the practice of management, buried under the overwhelming weight of methodologies, theories, best practices, models, tools, systems, processes, benchmarks, scorecards, competencies, mission statements, and value propositions. Common sense has been subjugated by nonsense!" —David Axson, from The Management Mythbuster

As the world was rocked by the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008, the time had arrived to take a closer look at many of the practices and processes that govern much of modern management behavior, practices that promised to revolutionize corporate operations and turbocharge the bottom line, yet had been found wanting.

Enter The Management Mythbuster, a humorous review of current management practice. Author and management thought leader David Axson:

• Reveals and refutes the fallacies of conventional management wisdom

• Exposes the myths of standard management thinking

• Untangles the maze of management myths with short chapters on popular, management practices, theories, tools, and behaviors

• Proposes a "new normal" in doing business, set to the world we actually live in, with unpredictability, turbulence, and volatility as part of the daily scenery

This book is for you if you are among those who have found the traditional rules and processes in planning, forecasting, budgeting, reporting, accounting, and risk management to have become obsolete, and if you long for a more relevant way to navigate today's business world.

Become part of the new generation of informed, skeptical, risk-aware, decisive—and yes, brave—managers, with the commonsense perspective found in The Management Mythbuster.

De la solapa interior

The Management Mythbuster

Most of the management practices upon which organizations rely are broken beyond repair.

At no time did this become clearer than in 2008. Within the space of a few months, much of the framework of modern management practice came crashing down. Corporate titans were humbled, long established compensation practices failed, and the only certainty about any forecast was that it would be wrong. All of this upheaval is causing executives in every industry to rethink the conventional management wisdom they had so implicitly trusted.

Taking a seriously irreverent look at some of the more popular management myths, The Management Mythbuster features short chapters on many of the theories, tools, and behaviors that continue to govern decision-making in today's business world, such as:

• Missions, visions, and other expensive pastimes

• Strategy and stuff like it

• Gurus, consultants, and other advisors

• Forget success, focus on failure

• Budgeting—A Modern Vision of Hell (Well, Purgatory at Least)

• The Futility of Forecasting

• Total Quality, Six Sigma, Process Re-engineering, and more

• Pay for Performance? Failure Pays Very Well These Days

• The Business of Spin

• Why Accountants Rule the World

• And much more!

It's time to question the effectiveness of long-established management practices. Entertaining and insightful, The Management Mythbuster takes you on a humorous tour of management today with a thought-provoking message.

Following the trials and tribulations of the fictional management team of Cruciant, Inc., author David Axson illustrates the destructive power of many of the management myths that continue to govern decision-making today and presents a realistic "new normal" road map for successful management today.