Becoming A Better Boss (eBook)

Why Good Management is So Difficult

Julian Birkinshaw (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2013
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
9781118659403 (ISBN)

Infos

An employee's-eye view of what makes a great boss-and how you can become one

Whereas most books on managing people approach the subject from the perspective of a manager of an idealised organisation, Becoming a Better Boss takes a real-world approach, looking at the topic from the perspective of an employee in a real-world organisation-dysfunctions, warts, and all. Focusing on the choices individual employees make every day in getting work done, this book reinvents the practice of management one employee at a time.

Author Julian Birkinshaw stresses the importance of taking management seriously, reveals where management practice often goes wrong, and dives deeply into the worldview of employees. He then explores the common personal biases and frailties of managers and discusses the vital importance of experimentation to overcome the limitations and idiosyncrasies of a particular organisation. Throughout, he supports his assertions with case studies from a wide and varying range of management experiments and situations at real companies.

• Written by a leading authority on strategy, management, and innovation who is also the author of eleven books, including Reinventing Management
• Introduces a new approach to management focused on real employees and actual situations
• Includes case studies from real organisations

Between the stress of deadlines and the demands of today's business environment, it's easy for managers to lose sight of the importance of people management. Becoming a Better Boss not only shows managers how to lead effectively, but why doing so is vitally important to every organisation's success.

Julian Birkinshaw is Professor and Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. He has PhD and MBA degrees in Business from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, and a BSc (Hons) from the University of Durham. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Stockholm School of Economics, 2009.
Professor Birkinshaw's main area of expertise is in the strategy and management of large multinational corporations, and on such specific issues as corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, subsidiary-headquarters relationship, knowledge management, network organizations, and global customer management. He is the author of eleven other books, including Reinventing Management: Smarter Choices for Getting Work Done (Revised and Updated Edition 2012), Giant Steps in Management (2007), Inventuring: Why Big Companies Must Think Small (2003), Leadership the Sven-Goran Eriksson Way (2002) and Entrepreneurship in the Global Firm (2001), and over seventy articles in such journals as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategy Management Journal and Academy of Management Journal. He is active as a consultant and executive educator to many large companies, including Rio Tinto, SAP, GSK, ABB, Ericsson, Kone, Petrofac, WPP, Bombardier, Sara Lee, HSBC, Akzo Nobel, Roche, Thyssen Krupp, UBS, PWC, Coloplast, BBC, Unilever and Novo Nordisk.
In 1998 the leading British Management magazine Management Today profiled Professor Birkinshaw as one of six of the 'Next Generation of Management Gurus'. He is regularly quoted in international media outlets, including CNN, BBC, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and The Times. He speaks regularly at business conferences in the UK, Europe, North America and Australia.
Professor Birkinshaw is co-founder with best-selling author Gary Hamel of the Management Innovation Lab (MLab), a unique partnership between academia and business that is seeking to accelerate the evolution of management.

Inhalt

Cover 1
Title page 5
Copyright page 6
Online Self-Assessment 8
Contents 9
Preface 11
Acknowledgments 15
Introduction 17
1: Why Management Matters 25
Drivers of Corporate Performance 26
Quality of Life Considerations 28
The Rhetoric–Reality Gap 29
Explaining The Puzzle 32
Why Companies Struggle to Change 33
Why Individual Managers Struggle to Change 38
2: So What Is Good Management Really? 41
Management and Leadership 41
Bosses We Love to Hate 44
What Makes a Good Manager? Insights from the Survey 49
Another Perspective: Insights from Seminar Discussions 52
The Rhetoric and The Reality 56
3: Getting inside the Minds of Your Employees: What Makes them Tick? 59
Getting inside the Mind of The Employee 60
Identity 62
Motivations 64
Fears 70
Strengths 75
So What does an Employee’s Eye-View Tell us? 79
4: Seeing The World Through The Eyes of Your Employees 81
Putting Yourself in Their Shoes 84
Lessons from Marketing 86
Cut Through the Hierarchy to Build Employee Insight 88
Individualizing the Employee Proposition 92
Managing the Employee Experience 96
Turning Employees Into Advocates 99
Thinking Like a Marketer 103
5: Doing What We Know We Should: Managing As an Unnatural Act 105
Doing What We Know We Should 107
Why Do We Behave the Way We Do? 108
Letting Go: Why is it Difficult? 111
Letting Go: Some Advice On Doing it Better 114
Giving Credit to Others: Why Is It So Difficult? 117
Giving Credit to Others: Some Advice On Doing It Better 119
Self-Control: Why Is It So Difficult? 123
Self-Control: Some Advice On Doing It Better 126
Overcoming Our Natural Instincts 129
6: Experimentation: Functioning in a Broken System 131
Understanding Bureaucracy – and Rising Above It 133
Take Personal Initiative – To Overcome Political Game-Playing 137
Challenge The Rules – To Overcome Inert Procedures 141
Making Your Experiments Stick 149
Making The Best of an Imperfect World 151
7: The Future of Management? 153
Forces that Shape Our Choice of Management Model 153
Technological Change: Web 2.0 156
Social Changes: Generation Y and Transparency 159
Economic and Political Changes: The Shift from West to East 161
Conclusion: Making the Right Choices 165
Endnotes 167
Index 173

Rezensionen

"Birkinshaw writes persuasively and with a disarming lack of
pretension, sprinkling practical advice throughout. But the best
aspect of this truly excellent book ... is that the author
recognises most management studies ignore the reality of
workplaces." (People Management, September 2013)

"This thoughtful, nuanced book advises managers to see the
world through the eyes of the employee.... The author has some
powerful supporting witnesses." (Financial Times, September
2013)

'Becoming a Better Boss is a very engaging and
informative' (IEDP, September 2013)

"It's a good read and discusses many of the
familiar issues that crop up when trying to get human beings at
work to do what you want." (B2B Marketing, October
2013)

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.9.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• Schlagworte: be a better boss • becoming a better boss • becoming a better boss book • birkinshaw book • books on managing people • Business & Management • business leadership skills • how to be a better boss • how to manage people • Julian Birkinshaw • Leadership Book • leadership skills • leading and managing people • leading people • Management • Management f. Führungskräfte • Management / Leadership • Managing People • managing people effectively • Organisational leadership • Organizational leadership • People Management • people management book • people management guide • people management skills • people management strategies • people management tactics • people management tips • people management training • qualities of a leader • reinventing management • Wirtschaft u. Management
• ISBN-13: 9781118659403 / 9781118659403