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I am working on identifying the most important/useful/provocative management thinking for a project. Drop me a comment or email with the articles or books or posts that have most impacted your practices or beliefs about management (in a good way). These do not need to have the word "management" in the title - sometimes it's an article about honey bee colonies that teach us about project teams.
Looking forward to your thoughts.
Here's an article I find interesting from Susan Blackmore called The Power of Memes. Totally related to management.
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I found Henry Mintzberg's books "Managing" and "Managers not MBAs" indispensable. Drucker's "The Effective Executive" and Marcus Buckingham's books, "First, Break all the Rules" and "The One Thing You Need to Know", I refer to time and again. For something non-management related, but applicable, Nassim Taleb's book "The Black Swan" is excellent, and teaches the importance of not thinking that we can know and control everything.
Posted by: Darin W | July 21, 2011 at 05:02 PM
Darin - those are some great classics you have on your list. They would make mine, too! I have not read Black Swan, however, and your reasoning is intriguing. The control issue is one in which many managers struggle.
Posted by: lisa haneberg | July 21, 2011 at 09:30 PM
I think Dr. David Weinberger sums up the paradigm shift (described differently in many articles), quite nicely: Transparency is the New Objectivity http://www.whatdoyouwantfromthem.com/members/blog_view.asp?id=560366&post=124183
Posted by: anna smith | July 22, 2011 at 10:10 AM
Anna - very cool, thanks so much for sharing this.
Posted by: lisa haneberg | July 23, 2011 at 02:51 PM
I have recently read a book entitled "Boundary Spanning Leadership" by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason. In our organization we are finding ourselves needing to "re-think" how we get work done: less hierarchical and more moving through. Expert to expert whereever they "reside" in the organization. This requires managers to do their jobs differently. A book I read that relates to this is "Management Reset" by Lawler and Worley. Both of these books have sparked new ways of thinking about how we manage/lead. For my organization it is the new vision.
Posted by: Johanna Niemitz | July 27, 2011 at 09:02 AM
Johanna - thanks so much for both recommendations! I had forgotten about Lawler's book, and I have that on my bookshelves!
Posted by: lisa haneberg | July 27, 2011 at 09:11 AM
An all-time classic that I have always liked is "A Passion for Excellence" by Austin and Peters - all chapters end with thought provoking questions for the reader, and I think this intro'd Management By Wandering Around, which really does work for me like they say.
Posted by: David K Waltz | July 28, 2011 at 11:07 AM
I recently wrote about the top ten characteristics of horrible bosses. I see it as a lesson on what to do by knowing what not to do. Enjoy your site, and wanted to share. http://middleclasskeith.blogspot.com/2011/07/horrible-bosses.html
Posted by: Keith Ross | August 03, 2011 at 07:46 PM
I don't disagree with this writing!!!
Posted by: David Ella's Blog | December 17, 2011 at 01:25 PM
You couldn't be more right on...
Posted by: Product Placement | December 17, 2011 at 02:38 PM