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A guide to the gurus

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Thirty years ago books on management were largely confined to dusty library shelves and written in dull, dense prose that was begrudgingly digested as part of one’s academic study. But then, along came the one-minute manager in search of excellence and before you could blink, a populist bestseller business genre was built to last. According to the FT’s Andrew Hill, nearly 20 million business books a year are sold in the US, the world’s largest market for such fare, a figure that excludes downloads.¹ And the bestselling business book of all time? Spencer Johnson’s colourful Who Moved My Cheese, with 23 million copies sold, underscoring the point that the most popular books combine business advice with self help.

So just who are these gurus and what do they have to say on the subject of management? In this chapter, I take a quick romp through the best-sellers and the most admired and attempt to summarise their main points. To make navigating easier, I’ve organised them as follows:

• The Top 5 Hall of Famers
• The Top 5 Behaviour Buffs
• The Top 5 Strategy Sages
• The Top 5 Framework Folks
• The Top 5 Practitioners

The Top 5 Hall of Famers

This is my top selection of the bestsellers that you’ll find on the shelves at any airport bookstore. They are easy to read and are brimming with action-based, self-help advice and tips. Some have spawned significant business empires and bestseller series off the back of their first book, and all have impacted popular culture well beyond the management genre in which they began. Their legacies are ‘built to last’ by any measure, and no doubt they will continue to inspire generations of future managers and leaders.

1. Tom Peters, In Search of Excellence (9 million sold)

The original rock star of management gurus, Peters not only writes his advice, he positively performs it, leaving audiences applauding wildly in appreciation. With the publication of In Search of Excellencein 1982, Peters and Waterman, two McKinsey consultants, helped to change the audience and outlet for management books from academics to ordianary working people in bookstores and cafés around the world. At a time when most boardrooms were drowning in a sea of strategy, Peters reminded us that customers come first. Peters exhorts us to embrace change and innovation, rather than get stuck in a rut of routine and risk getting left behind. His work was based on interviewing his ‘list’ of 43 excellent companies and distilling their common characteristics down to eight key principles:²

1. A bias for action, active decision making ‘getting on with it’. Avoid bureaucratic control.
2. Close to the customer learning from the people served by the business.
3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship fostering innovation and nurturing ‘champions’.
4. Productivity through people treating rank-and-file employees as a source of quality.
5. Hands-on, value-driven management philosophy that guides everyday practice – management showing its commitment.
6. Stick to the knitting stay with the business that you know.
7. Simple form, lean staff some of the best companies have minimal HQ staff.
8. Autonomy in ‘shop-floor’ activities plus centralised values.

The go-to guru for: a comprehensive checklist of what makes an organiasation excel and deliver on its promises; good for checking out what a great culture looks like.

2. Ken Blanchard, The One Minute Manager (13 million sold)

Ken Blanchard is the storyteller supremo. He wrote The One Minute Manager (OMM)³ as a simple, easy to understand manual of allegories and anecdotes, helping ‘normal’ people to believe they too could be a manager and a good one at that. In the book, our aspiring manager-hero seeks an inspiring manager but finds such beings elusive, as those he encounters are either results-driven and too autocratic or people-driven and too democratic. Blanchard’s premise is that good managers focus on both results and people, and that if you can master one-minute goal setting, one-minute praising and one-minute reprimands, you can master good management techniques.

One-minute goals are 250 words or less and are clearly communicated, linked to behaviour, and reviewed daily. Similarly, one-minute praises are specific, immediate, and accompanied by shared feelings and a handshake. One-minute reprimands are also specific, focus on the behaviour, not the person, and also include the impact of the bad behaviour on the manager and the organisation. The OMM spends his time going around looking for people ‘doing the right things’ so he can praise them, and also looking for people ‘doing the wrong things’ so he can encourage them to get back on track. Blanchard applies the princiaples used to train animals to train people, relying on specific, immediate positive reinforcement to encourage right behaviours. Blanchard went on to write over twenty One Minute books which collectively have sold over 100 million copies.

The go-to guru for: advice on how to line manage when you are newly promoted. A refresher course on how to line manage when you’re stressed, complacent, unclear, or in a new role.

3. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last (5 million sold)

Jim Collins and co-author Jerry Porras advocate taking the long-term view and anchor much of their work in historical research. They argue that great companies are built on lasting principles rather than quick fixes or miracle mantras. By studying eighteen visionary companies, those that are most admired in their field and have been around for ages, Collins and Portas debunked a lot of the ‘myths’ surrounding success. These include: ‘it takes a great idea to start a great company’; visionary companies require a great and charismatic leader; the most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximise profits; and ‘highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning’.⁴ Collins included loads of practical examaples alongside his research from companies such as Procter & Gamble, Boeing, 3M and Wal-Mart. He also coined the expression BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) to describe the kind of inspirational – but a little scary – organisational mission these exceptional companies embrace.

The go-to guru for: inspiring yourself when you are about to embark on setting out a strategy or taking on a new organisational challenge.

4. Dr Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? (23 million sold)

Johnson was Blanchard’s partner in The One Minute Manager. A medical doctor, he uses principles of medicine and biology to encourage us to deal with change, and has become a fixture on bestseller lists along the way. Who Moved My Cheese? tells the tale of two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two little people, Hem and Haw, who live in a maze but seek cheese for nourishment and happiness. Cheese is a metaphor for what you want in life – be that love, health, money or a job. The ‘maze’ is the place you go to find what you want – be that family, comamunity or workplace. Spencer is helping us to anticipate, prepare and adapt to change in work and in life, and to find fulfilment. He wants us to ‘see the handwriting on the wall’, i.e. monitor the cheese so you know change is coming. Don’t be afraid of the maze, get out of your ‘comfort zone’ and go out and search for new and better cheese. Keep anticipating that someone will also move that cheese, so be ready to change again. Ironically, companies have been known to give this book out to employees during downsizings, prompting cynics to say they are misusing its message in an attempt to position such organisational moves in a positive light.

The go-to guru for: learning how to adapt to a new or changing environament either at work or in life generally. A boost to help you get out of a rut when you’re stuck.

5. Steven Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (over 5 million sold)

Covey combined business and personal with this book,⁵ which encouraaged managers to be people first and behave in the same way as managers. Taking a holistic approach to both work and life, he championed the ‘natural laws’ he believed governed both human and organisational effectiveness. He built his ‘habits’ concept on the notion of ‘interdependaence’ – the idea that the optimal outcome comes from everyone giving their best, aligned to a common goal and vision, but using their own individual best judgement as to how to go about achieving that goal.

The seven habits have since found their way into common parlance. They are:

• Habit 1: be proactive
• Habit 2: begin with the end in mind
• Habit 3: put first things first
• Habit 4: think win/win
• Habit 5: seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Habit 6: synergise
• Habit 7: sharpen the saw

On a personal note, I recall being given this book as a middle manager at Procter & Gamble in the early nineties, and then sent on a four-day course to practise the ‘habits’. Covey’s maxims, such as begin with the end in mind, seek first to understand, then to be understood, and think win–win became deeply ingrained in the popular culture of the company.

The go-to guru for: great principles to set out ways of working in a new team or a new job; simple steps to get back on track when you feel a role or a situation is becoming ineffective.

The Top 5 Behaviour Buffs

Given that about 80 per cent of a company’s assets are its people, it’s little wonder most leaders cite the mantra that ‘people are our greatest asset’. As a result, understanding and effectively engaging your people is arguably the most important management skill you can master. Management thinking from the days of Maslow has drawn heavily from psychology by building up an understanding of individual behavaiours and key motivators. The latest thinking has focused on crowd psychology, as captured through Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

1. Abraham Maslow, Hierarchy of Needs

Many of us who studied this in psychology class may not associate Maslow with management, but he is one of the first management thinkers to focus on people rather than task. Maslow’s significant and widely used contribution was to class human needs in the form of a hierarchy.⁶

When one set of needs is fulfilled it ceases to become a motivator and people move up to the next level. If a manager can understand which level his employees are at, then he or she can better understand how best to motivate them. Maslow also spawned thinking in terms of people focus and task focus. His work continues to inform lots of employee surveys and checklists.

The go-to guru for: figuring out what makes others tick and how best to motivate them; understanding people’s different perspectives and approaches to work.

2. Daniel Goleman: Godfather of EQ

Goleman popularised the notion that emotional intelligence (often referred to as EQ) is more important than IQ when it comes to living life successfully.⁷ And Goleman equates business acumen with emoational intelligence (EQ) rather than intellect, arguing that the ability to read people well and respond with highly developed interpersonal skills often makes the difference between success and failure. Goleman characterised 25 EQ competencies, many of which have since been simaplified. However, his core idea, that we can use our intelligence to better manage our emotional intuition to guide our thinking, is one that has significantly shaped modern management thinking.

The go-to guru for: helping you to stay in top form as a manager when dealing with different stakeholders and situations; getting to grips with understanding your own and others’ behaviour.

3. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Carnegie wrote his famous work⁸ in 1936, but it foreshadowed much of modern-day thinking with regard to managing interpersonal relaationships successfully. It’s all about promoting self-esteem. Carnegie believed great leaders refrained from criticising or condemning others and focused on praising them and understanding their point of view. He believed most folks were primarily interested in their own desires, so that by uncovering others’ motivations you could persuade them to do your bidding willingly, and thus succeed at almost anything. Carnegie was proof of his pudding – he made a fortune peddling his business philosophy of self-confidence and self-esteem, and his books still sell millions today. The ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ catchaphrase has become iconic, widely used in all sorts of cultural references.

The go-to guru for: boosting your confidence when faced with the unfaamiliar; networking with a roomful of people you don’t know; helping you to persuade others to get what you need to progress.

4. Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Our first female guru is best known for her work on change manageament and innovation, as well as pioneering work on diversity expressed in her Men and Women of the Corporation.⁹ Many of her ideas have gained in relevance and become anchored in popular management wisdom. They centre on empowerment, participative management and employee involvement. Moss Kanter has a ‘how to’ approach that conasiders the social as well as management aspects of issues such as change. Her view is that a leader’s job is to manage change and her tips for doing so are simple, practical and compelling. ‘People will often resist change for reasons that make good sense to them, even if those reasons don’t correspond to organisational goals. So it’s crucial to recognise, reward and celebrate accomplishments.’¹⁰

The go-to guru for: managing change and insights into dealing with human behaviour and expectations in companies; help in boosting employees’ morale in difficult times.

5. Malcolm Gladwell: Blink, Outliers and the Tipping Point

In his entertaining and provocative treatise, Blink: How to Think Without Thinking,¹¹ Gladwell argues that the best decisions are snap decisions, where we trust our instincts rather than rely on the evaluation of inforamation and risk. His book is still the number two management book on Amazon at the time of writing, which demonstrates he has indeed hit a nerve. Like Stephen Covey, Gladwell blurs the distinction between work and life, and calls on us to pay attention to something he calls ‘rapid cognition’– the first two seconds in our decision-making, which he says are often the best. He says it’s not about intuition, but about using our instincts and our gut reaction to things to get a better result. He also distinguishes between good and bad rapid cognition: good is doctors in Chicago relying on gut to better diagnose heart attacks at a major hospital; bad is most Fortune 500 CEOs being tall because people instincatively believe tall folk make better leaders. In addition to Blink, Gladwell’s ‘Tipping Point’ is often used in management as a predictor of trends, while his ‘Outliers’ talks about how the idiosyncratic can be successful.

The go-to guru for: inspiring, quirky but brilliant ideas and approaches to things; making sense of the modern world in ways that make you go ‘Aha’; tips on decision-making and creating trends.

The Top 5 Strategy Sages

Strategy can be a vastly over-used word, with many managers aspiring to move to the loftier world of strategic decision-making beyond the perceived operational doldrums of delivering daily business success. However, most excellent strategies emerge from knowing the realities of your business and particularly through knowing your customers really well. And all strategies require excellence in execution to succeed. The strategic sages I have selected will help you to better understand how to pull all of these aspects together using tools and frameworks that will help you to strategise well and to expand the horizons of your thinking.

1. Michael Porter, The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy (over 1 million sold)

Competitive Strategy is one of the few business bibles to gain widespread academic as well as practitioner acceptance. Porter created a lasting frameawork for strategic analysis by shifting the focus away from individual companies or markets into the broader arena of industries, and varying the approach according to whether the industry was emerging, declining, fragmented or global. Porter defined three generic strategies: low-cost, differentiation and focus. He coined the phrase ‘value chain’ and also gave us the now widely used ‘Five Forces’, pictured in Figure 0.1.¹²

More recently Porter has coined the phrase ‘shared value’ to describe combining capitalism with social benefit as a new force for good.

The go-to guru for: a primer in undertaking any fundamental strategic analysis; benchmarking your existing or future company in terms of how clear your positioning and strategy is – or isn’t.

2. Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, Competing for the Future

This is regarded as one of the most influential books¹³ on strategy. Hamel and Prahalad argued against the traditional notions of strategy in terms of market share and value chain and introduced broader, more multifaceted concepts that were emotional as well as analytical. They championed notions such as ‘strategic intent’ and ‘core compeatence’. To be successful over time, they argued, companies needed to shift focus away from monitoring short-term operational efficiencies in day-to-day operations and start to plan for the future by building new business ideas around their ‘core competencies’ – the things they were fundamentally good at, which weren’t always obvious. A core compeatency meets the following criteria:

• Provides benefit to the customer.
• Is difficult to imitate.
• Can be leveraged widely to create many products (or operate in many markets).
• Uniquely identifies the organisation.
• Is difficult to pin down, because it seems to be a combination of things such as technology, process, and know-how.

The go-to gurus for: a simple and very effective way to understand what your organisation is truly and uniquely good at – and not good at. Sharpening or correcting strategy now or in the future.

3. Clayton Christensen: The Innovator’s Dilemma

Christensen¹⁴ introduced the notion of ‘disruptive innovation’ – the idea that successful companies will get pushed aside by new entrants who introduce cheaper products that still meet customer needs. Over time, the innovations meet these needs better than the existing leaders and top them. The leaders typically miss these newcomers until it’s too late because they are operating in less attractive, low-cost markets. Christensen was trying to answer the question, ‘Why do good comapanies fail?’ Because they are too busy listening to their customers and focusing on larger, more profitable markets. They are more likely to introduce what he calls sustaining technologies rather than disaruptive ones – technologies that improve the performance of their existing products in line with customer needs. Disruptive technologies, however, focus on typically lower-cost, simpler and easy to use innovaations that are at first appreciated only by a few. But as the new markets grow, the products improve until they are so good they displace their larger competitors. Christensen advocates setting up smaller separate divisions to allow them to pursue smaller gains, plan and learn from failure, and avoid obsession with ‘big breakthrough’ mentality.

The go-to guru for: driving more innovation in your organisation’s outcomes, products and services; understanding your market and comapetition better; improving sluggish performance.

4. W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: Blue Ocean Strategy

Kim and Mauborgne, professors at INSEAD, refer to traditional notions of companies competing as red ocean strategies. To seize new profit and growth opportunities, companies need to go beyond red ocean strategies and create blue ocean strategies.¹⁵ Red ocean strategies focus on competing for a larger share of a fixed market – dividing up the red ocean, which doesn’t grow. Blue ocean strategy, on the other hand, is based on the view that market boundaries and industry structures are not given and can be re-imagined in managers’ minds and actions. Blue ocean strategy means extra demand is out there, largely untapped – one needs only to create it by focusing on value innovation and breaking the cost/value trade-off. By expanding the demand side of the economy, new wealth is created. Such a strategy therefore allows firms to largely play a non-zero-sum game, with high pay-off possibilities. Apple’s invention of the iPod, iPhone and iPad are all examples of blue ocean strategies.

The go-to gurus for: kickstarting innovation and a new approach to growth in mature markets; coming up with new ways of looking at current markets and situations to define opportunities.

5. John Kotter

Harvard Business School Professor Kotter’s research and writings¹⁶ focus upon change management from the leadership perspective. He believes that ‘Most organizations are over-managed and under led.’ He identifies eight critical stages that leaders need to follow in order to achieve effecative organisational transformation:

1. Establish a sense of urgency.
2. Form a powerful guiding coalition.
3. Create a vision.
4. Communicate that vision.
5. Empower others to act on the vision.
6. Plan for and create short-term wins.
7. Consolidate improvements.
8. Keep the momentum for change moving and institutionalise the new approaches.

The go-to guru for: a step-by-step guide to leading change and creaating the platform from which to transform an underperforming organisation.

The Top 5 Framework Folks

Many view management as an organising discipline, and as such these gurus provide frameworks to help organise your own thinking on manaagement. They rationalise and try to make sense of management as a discipline, using tools to help your understanding and aid the practical application of management theory. Indeed, Drucker is often credited with creating management as a discipline in itself. The other gurus selected here apply their frameworks to many different aspects of manaagement ranging from quality through to measuring the right things. They also help you to understand the importance of collaboration and continuous learning in the digital age.

1. Peter Drucker: Father of Management?

Peter Drucker (1909–2005) is regarded by both practising managers and writers throughout the world as the management guru. He disliked the term guru – likening it to charlatan – and preferred to be known as a writer. Drucker did concede, however, that he discovered management, not merely as a discipline, but rather as a way of life that is central to the wellbeing of society as well as to the economy. With more than thirty-three books published over seven decades (and translated into at least thirty languages) Drucker was, by common consent, the founding father of modern management studies.

Drucker coined the ‘management by objectives’ term in his 1954 book, Principles of Management.¹⁷ Management by objectives involves the employee and his boss sitting down together and defining goals, agreed roles and responsibilities and measures. Drucker believed that by paraticipating in setting objectives, managers would be more motivated to achieve them. Clarity of communication, agreed roles and responsibiliaties and SMART objectives (Simple, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-bound) are still very widely used. He also coined the equally popular distinction between efficiency (doing things right) and effecativeness (doing the right things).

The go-to guru for: understanding the principles upon which much of modern management is based; learning about how to set objectives and measure them; gaining clarity around responsibilities.

2. W. Edwards Deming: Total Quality Management

Deming has been universally acclaimed as one of the founding fathers of Total Quality Management, if not the founding father. The revoluation in Japanese manufacturing management that led to the economic miracle of the 1970s and 1980s has been attributed largely to Deming. His Fourteen Points have now been adopted, assimilated and integrated into management practice in the 1990s as well as continuously debated and taught in business schools around the world. Deming’s Fourteen Points¹⁸ add up to a code of management philosophy which spans the two major schools of management thought which have domianated since the early twentieth century: scientific (hard) management on the one hand, and human relations (soft) management on the other. Over half of his Fourteen Points focus on people as opposed to systems. Many management thinkers veer towards one school or the other. Deming, like Drucker, melds them together. Deming believed in employees developing quality as a team and building it into the product or service. He also recognised the importance of pride and a sense of accomplishment in boosting productivity.

The go-to guru for: a framework for improving the quality of output in any organisation; ensuring that you are balancing an approach to tasks with an approach to people.

3. Robert Kaplan and David Norton: The Balanced Scorecard

Robert Kaplan and David Norton are jointly recognised as the popualarisers of the balanced scorecard and their approach to it was first introduced in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article, ‘The balanced scorecard: measures that drive performance’.¹⁹ Kaplan and Norton turned the popular saying ‘What gets measured gets done’ on its head and began with ‘What you measure is what you get’, and championed setting key performance indicators (KPIs). The scorecard is flexible, and can be adapted for use by individual organisations or business units across the private and public sectors. It is practical, straightforward and devoid of obscure theory. Most importantly it moves away from measauring an organisation’s success in purely financial terms and looks more broadly across other areas of the business such as customers, employees and communities. The balanced scorecard has become increasingly popular; Bain and Company’s 2007 survey of management tools sugagests that 66 per cent of companies are using it worldwide, with usage at its highest in Asia and in large companies.²⁰

The go-to guru for: adopting a comprehensive and well-respected system for measuring your success at any level of an organisation, whether it is a single store, a division or an entire company.

4. Don Tapscott: Wikinomics

Tapscott’s claim to fame is that he saw the impact of the digital age well before most of us, and the impact that technology and the internet would have on businesses, individuals and society. In his best-selling book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, he argues that the web creates new powers of democracy for people everywhere and enables users to participate en masse.²¹ By working together, people can create ‘open source projects which redefine the way things are proaduced and replace traditional hierarchical structures with self-organised collaborative communities’. ‘Wiki’ means quick in Hawaiian.

The go-to guru for: understanding how technology and the internet have changed the way we work; gaining insight and inspiration on how to create a more collaborative culture and ways of working.

5. Peter Senge: The Learning Organisation

Senge coined this phrase in his major work, The Fifth Discipline.²² In it he argued that a learning organisation believes that competitive advanatage and value stem from continued learning of both individuals and collectives. Senge combined the approach to management with that of biology, the environment and the social sciences, believing that organisations were organisms and that all of these were linked in both approach and outcome. Organisations, to succeed, must continue to adapt, change and transform on a regular basis if they are to become learning organisations. In order to move forward, managers have to give up control and enable learners to make mistakes – easier than in theory, perhaps, than in practice.

The go-to guru for: nudging yourself or others out of complacency and inertia by encouraging ongoing development, change and learning from failures and mistakes as well as successes.

The Top 5 Practitioners

My final selection of gurus are those who have been there and ‘got the T-shirt’. They have been instrumental to managing and leading phenomenal success in their respective companies. They are excellent story-tellers and provide fascinating insights into their own manageament careers, which make for inspiring reads. As individuals they have all had very different journeys to get to the top and are testament to the fact that great leaders are not born, but are made by sheer hard work and determination and often have a lucky break thrown in. They all describe experiencing setbacks on the way, providing lessons in resilaience for us all, as well as popular holiday reads. I am now just waiting for the first female poster practitioner . . .

1. Steven Jobs

Universally celebrated as the creative and irascible genius entrepreaneur and impresario behind Apple, Steven Jobs’ business contributions are chronicled in a best-selling biography he commissioned shortly before his death from cancer at 56, written by Walter Isaacson. Jobs was famous for being iconoclastic, obsessed with excellence, and for bending the world around him to suit his amazingly strong will. He also referred to Apple as ‘the world’s largest start up’, and abhorred corporate decision-making by committee. At Apple, he championed the right individuals and put them in teams that came together once a week for three hours to share ideas and progress – arguing that the best ideas win, not the best hierarchy. No one will doubt his genius and ability to shape the future. He was brilliant at user-centric design and elegance, combining both with intuitive and user-friendly funcation. He also led on what is regarded as one of the greatest successful corporate comebacks ever. Ousted at Apple in 1985, he returned in 1996 and led the company back into the black, via the invention of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, apps and the Apple stores. He reinvented our relationship with technology and changed how we consume media, making Apple the most admired company and valuable brand in the process. No wonder Jobs also tops the Forbes list of most valuable CEOs ever.²³

The go-to guru for: the story of how a brilliant, iconoclastic individual changed the world and reinvented how people interact with techanology. A dramatic lesson in the value of user-centric design and ‘blue ocean’ innovation.

2. Warren Buffett: The Sage of Omaha

Rising from humble beginnings in Omaha, Nebraska, Buffett is one of the world’s wealthiest men and enjoys a reputation as the world’s most successful investor. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, takes stakes in everything from Coca Cola to Geico to Tesco, and the market impact of Buffett investing in something can be significant. Buffett espouses the value investing approach, which is to buy shares in companies for less than their ‘intrinsic’ value – in other words, buy the stock of a great company at a sensible price, and sell it when the value is realised. He teaches this approach for free on a website and in many books. Famous for combining folksy humour, modesty and simplicity in his approach, Buffett has also become the populist voice of authority for millions of private investors. Thousands travel each year to Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings. A major philanthropist, Buffett has pledged to give away over 99 per cent of his multi-billion-dollar fortune, most of it to the Gates Foundation.

The go-to guru for: a common-sense, real-world approach to investing and value creation in a world obsessed with complexity and leverage. A great believer in just getting on with it – read him when you’re feeling overwhelmed by the uncertainty of it all.

3. Jack Welch

Jack Welch was perhaps the first CEO whose ways of working spawned a management doctrine. As CEO of GE from 1980 to 2001, he pioaneered a number of practices that became incredibly influential and were not without controversy. Among them were GE’s ruthless perforamance management: every year, the bottom 10 per cent of performers were fired, whilst the top 20 per cent were rewarded with stock options and bonuses. Welch was ruthlessly driven to weed out inefficiencies and bureaucracy, and in the process he shed over 100,000 from the GE workforce, and earned the nickname ‘neutron Jack’. A big proponent of Six Sigma, Welch also believed that unless a company was number 1 or 2 in its industry it couldn’t compete. During his tenure at GE he built the company’s market value by over 4000 per cent, and in 1999 Fortune Magazine named him ‘Manager of the Century’.²⁴ Since leaving GE he has, among other things, founded his own Management Institute, which claims to be ‘the only online executive education program built on the proven principles and practices of one of our country’s most celebrated business leaders’.

The go-to guru for: a hard-hitting guide to improving business perforamance via a tough, no-nonsense approach to people management and stamping out organisational bureaucracy.

4. Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity

This aptly titled biography²⁵ chronicles the ‘life and times of Britain’s’ most famous entrepreneur. He has built a business with over eight separate billion-dollar companies, spanning everything from airlines to gyms. Branson is regarded as both an iconoclast and a branding genius. He is also a daredevil – frequently taking off on adventures many would regard as foolish, such as travelling around the world in a balloon or trying to break world speed records. His own advice is simple and with a rebel’s edge – he started Virgin when he was 20, as a self-confessed hippie who never went to business school. Not surprisingly, ‘Be visible’, ‘Choose your name wisely’ and ‘Take risks’ are among the Branson bon mots of business advice. He also advocates picking up the phone, and laments that the email age is damaging business relationships.²⁶

The go-to guru for: understanding the importance of building a personal as well as a business brand, of not being afraid to challenge convenational wisdom and of staying true to your brand and yourself. Also good for reminding us all to have fun and not take it all too seriously!

5. Bill Gates

The world’s second richest man, Bill Gates is currently worth $65 billion. A Harvard drop-out who founded Microsoft in his garage, Gates is now almost as famous for his philanthropic efforts as for the company he built that pioneered web software with Windows. The Bill Gates Foundation champions the eradication of infectious diseases and the provision of education in Africa and throughout the world. He also founded the ‘Giving Pledge’, where the world’s wealthiest pledge to give away half their wealth (Buffett is a member). Ranked the fourth most powerful person in the world by Forbes, and the highest business person on the list, Gates is a soothsayer when it comes to technology – he accurately predicted Amazon, Netflix and Facebook.²⁷ He was also the most influential proponent of geek chic and is quoted as saying, ‘If geek means you’re willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.’²⁸

The go-to guru for: understanding that it’s not enough to be rich for the sake of it. You’ve got to use your vast wealth to improve the lives of the people and the planet. Philanthropy is CSR for CEOs.

Top tips, pitfalls and takeaways

Top tips

1. Be eclectic Not one of these thinkers is 100 per cent right – or wrong. Put together your own personal ‘menu’ of advice based on the circumstances you face. If you are stuck for ideas in a competitive market then maybe ‘blue ocean’ thinking will help; if you’re not getting the people results you need, maybe some One Minute Manager techniques will be helpful.
2. Use free resources to stay current There are many really useful summaries of management thinkers which can save you a fortune in time and money. I’ve listed some of these below:

• Business Book – http://800ceoread.com
• Top 50 Thinkers – www.thinkers50.com
• Mind Tools – www.mindtools.com
• HBR – www.hbr.org
• Mix – www.visitmix.com

Top pitfall

Use sparingly and stay grounded No one is going to welcome you spouting forth management theory in your meetings or over-quoting Harvard Business School professors or Dale Carnegie. Try to apply the principles of the gurus to your own situation using your own words.

Top takeaway

Focus on the main message The overwhelming message from all the gurus is it’s about people and behaviour, at least as much as about task or process. Most managers get into trouble because they forget that, and forget that too easily. Remember: business is simple, people are compliacated! Even if you are using advanced strategic techniques, if you ignore the people element you won’t succeed.

¹ Andrew Hill, Financial Times, 15 Oct. 2012.

² http://www.tompeters.com/toms_world/toms_books.php#Excellence

³ http://www.kenblanchard.com/Store/Books_Audios/The_One_Minute_Manager_ Essentials/ One_Minute_Manager_The/

⁴ http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/building-companies.html

⁵ https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php

⁶ http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

⁷ http://danielgoleman.info/topics/emotional-intelligence/

⁸ http://www.dalecarnegie.co.uk/secrets_of_success/?keycode=google06uk.GBBranded&gclid=COL9suC4-bQCFfHJtAodVzAAuw

⁹ http://www.questia.com/library/3697902/men-and-women-of-the-corporation

¹⁰ http://thinkexist.com/quotes/rosabeth_moss_kanter

¹¹ http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html

¹² http://hbr.org/2008/01/the-five-competitive-forces-that-shape-strategy/ar/1?referral=00269

¹³ http://hbr.org/product/competing-for-the-future/an/7161-PBK-ENG

¹⁴ http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm

¹⁵ http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com

¹⁶ http://www.kotterinternational.com/aboutus/bios/john-kotter

¹⁷ http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1GJzVRYOCkgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA5&dq= principles+of+management+drucker&ots=xS8toK1nJm&sig=jxY0lylCD56M-EBfSXHu8H COXU4#v=onepage&q=principles%20of%20management%20drucker&f=false

¹⁸ http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_75.htm

¹⁹ http://hbr.org/product/balanced-scorecard-measures-that-drive-performance/an/ R0507Q-PDF-ENG

²⁰ http://www.bain.com/management_tools/management_tools_and_trends_2007.pdf

²¹ LCCN 2006-51390

²² Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday/Currency, 1990.

²³ http://tnerd.com/2010/03/29/steve-jobs-is-the-most-valuable-ceo-in-the-world-says-forbes/

²⁴ ‘FORTUNE – GE’s Jack Welch Named Manager of the Century – November 01, 1999’. Timewarner.com. 1999-04-26. http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/ pr/0,20812,667526,00.html. Retrieved 2010-07-12.

²⁵ Branson, Richard, Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, Three Rivers Press, 1999.

²⁶ http://business.financialpost.com/2012/09/22/richard-bransons-18-tips-for-success

²⁷ http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/

²⁸ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/bill-gates/8073946/Bill-Gates-If-you-dont-likeageeks-youre-in-trouble..html