Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Best Business Books 2019: Management

strategy+business, November 5, 2019

by Theodore Kinni



Illustration by Harry Campbell

Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019)

Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks
Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why (PublicAffairs, 2019)

Roger Dooley
Friction: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage (McGraw-Hill, 2019)

In 1954, the discipline of management was neatly encapsulated by Peter Drucker in the pages of a single book, The Practice of Management. This year’s best business books on management reflect how much the discipline has changed in the past 65 years, and how fuzzy the boundaries separating fields have become.

Nine Lies About Work, by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, the year’s best management book, challenges the assumptions that underlie contemporary managerial practices, many of which date back to Drucker’s day. In doing so, the book offers a glimpse of a new management paradigm that may prove to be better suited to the times. Messengers, by Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks, prompts us to see managers as a living, breathing communication medium — and it describes the traits that can ensure the messages they deliver will be heard. And Friction, by Roger Dooley, suggests that if managers turn their attention to simplifying anything customers and employees need to do, they’ll happily do more of it. Read the rest here.

No comments: