Whilst waiting at Tokyo airport I am amazed at just how many management textbooks there are available. Things with titles such as "If you're buying this you are beyond help and couldn't manage a sneeze in a pepper factory let alone a business" and "Thanks for the cash sucker - why don't you try managing your book budget a bit better and don't waste money on this". They are all crap of course and I buy every single one, just in case, cos you never now.
Indeed I may just be inspired to write my own book based on my unique style of management, updated from American bullshit-speak into Bogglish.
However, there is one of these authors who I truly admire. Not because I have read his work but because he's the only one that everyone seems to find acceptable as a guru and I am too much of my own man not to follow the herd if I feel like it. I am talking about Murdo Joyfull, whose Tripping Point is the classic polemic about the point where you have so many of these management tomes lying around the office that they become a health hazard.
Joyfull also relates a timely tale about Korean airlines, which does little for my confidence as I wait to board one. Basically, he concludes that they have more crashes because their planes are badly made. And he smashes the myth of innate talent over sheer hard work, luck and being in the right place at the right time (that place and time being Oxford, naturally, during your undergraduate years).
He also makes a point about deferential societies where people find it hard to criticise their seniors or point out problems. Quite right too. At BUBB, what I say goes, no matter what Hector, Fab and Geof may say and do behind the scenes.
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