The Management Myth (2006)

This is an outstanding, well-written article about how business management often falls victim to faddish theories.<p>It is long, but enjoyable and well worth the read.<p>My favourite quote: "Knowledge, by its very nature, must be intelligible, not obscure."<p>It comes up in the context of management consultants using bafflegab and fancy-sounding jargon to mislead clients (and perhaps themselves). This quote is a reminder to have the courage, (as is needed in some contexts), to speak up when you don't understand something, ... since what seems like wisdom you are having difficulty grasping, may in fact be snake oil.<p>For a strangely related article, you might also like to read: "What you can't say" ( <a href="http://paulgraham.com/say.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/say.html</a>) which also talks about widely held beliefs that later turn out to be just a passing fashion. Although later seen clearly to be false, at the earlier time, the flaws are invisible.

Gerald Weinberg's book The Secrets Of Consulting IMO is a much better view of the give and take of giving business advice. Grad school has become far more popular than it used to be and a lot of people seem to promote it as worthwhile to students (paying large tuition, and spending extra years in school) and business (paying high initial salaries and rapidly promoting the grad school graduates). The book "The Big Test" talks about a new class of "Mandarins" - people who have high test scores, get advanced degrees and get high end jobs in business or government as a result. Bill and Hillary Clinton are two of his examples.

The most interesting thing in this article is its claim that Taylor was a self-promoting fraud, which gives a whole new meaning to his status as the founder of "scientific management". If you want to understand a thing, look at its origins.

It's interesting to note that the author plans to release a book regarding the same subject later in the year: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Management-Myth-Consulting-Present-Largely/dp/0393065537/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1240893048&#38;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Management-Myth-Consulting-Present-Lar...</a>.<p>While it should be a good read, it's bit too opportunistic IMO, given the current economic climate. Heads will roll, and MBA's are a juicy scapegoat (nonetheless, deservingly so).<p>I guess not everyone can be like Shiller. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Exuberance_%28book%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Exuberance_%28book%2...</a>)

I think there should be a management degree where you actually start a small business. I am not thinking just about an assignment for one semester; the whole purpose of the degree would be to end up with a real small business.

I went to Stevens Institute of Technology as a lad. I like telling an illustrative anecdote about the school compared to its competition: W. Edwards Deming went to MIT; Frederick Taylor went to Stevens.<p>All you need to know, really. :)

One of the biggest challenges in managing is the social aspect.