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Management F-Laws “Management f-laws – How Organisations Really Work” by Russell Ackoff and Herb Adison with considered responses by Sally Bibb. Triarchy Press £20
Here is a delightful little book, filled with mischief, irony and wisdom. But seeing the name of one of the authors – Russell Ackoff – we should not be surprised to find these qualities, and more, in its pages. Ackoff is one of the business world’s most distinguished commentators, a visionary who pioneered the discipline of ‘systems thinking’, an approach which urges executives to consider their organisation’s operations as a whole and not in isolation from each other. Ackoff’s wonderful insight was that the interconnectedness of our actions could easily be misunderstood, and that working on separate parts of the business could be counter-productive if managers did not see and make those connections. This latest publication from the Ackoff production line is far removed from the sort of weighty academic texts he has been associated with over the last 50 years. Rather, it is a series of sketches, thoughts and observations about management and the many idiocies carried out in its name. There are many so-called ‘f-laws’ presented here, each providing an epigrammatic look at some of the nonsense familiar to anyone who has ever turned up for work anywhere. For example, f-law number 19 states that ‘the only thing more difficult than starting something new in an organisation is stopping something old’. Ackoff and Addison elaborate: ‘The momentum of an organisational practice is proportional to its age… Innovations have no age, hence no momentum, and therefore easy to stop.’ F-law 21 declares: ‘The less managers understand their business, the more variables they require to explain it… Consequently,’ the authors add, ‘they suffer much more from an oversupply of irrelevant information than from a shortage of relevant information. And f-law 66 says: ‘The morality that many managers espouse in public is inversely proportional to the morality they practise in private.’ But, so far, this review is only telling half the story – literally. On the page facing the wit and wisdom of Ackoff and Addison are offered the responses of Sally Bibb, a director of The Economist Group, and a published author herself. Bibb wrestles gamely with the laconic views of her two senior colleagues, developing a kind of latter-day Socratic dialogue of management insight. Bibb speaks as a reasonable, modern practitioner. In a sense she is the voice of the honest reader, struggling to absorb and reflect on the advice on offer. There is a risk, as you work your way through all these quips and comments, that the whole becomes a little indigestible. This is probably not a book to be read cover to cover in one sitting, but rather dipped into on a more ad hoc basis. There is another risk, tacitly acknowledged by the authors, that their wisdom benefits from 20:20 hindsight. ‘Retired executives and generals become experts when they are freed of responsibility for their opinions,’ they say. ‘It is amazing how capable retired generals and executives become in solving the problems they could not solve before they retired.’ This review, by Stefan Stern, a columnist for the Financial Times, originally appeared in accounting & business, published by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants |
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