Contents

List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

PART I GOOD AND BAD MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 2 Essential Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Chapter 3 Management Failings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 4 Ideal Managers and Excellent Companies . . . . . . . . . . 47

PART II APPLICATIONS TO MANAGING IN

DIFFERENT CONTEXTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Chapter 5 Differences in Managing Small Businesses . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 6 Extra Needs for International Management . . . . . . . . . 73

PART III APPLICATIONS TO EXTERNAL SITUATIONS. . . 87

Chapter 7 Management Issues and Crises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Chapter 8 How to Better Manage Our (World) Affairs. . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 9 Conclusions, Review of the Past, Changes for
the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Appendix A Case Study: The Rio to Paris Plane Crash . . . . . . . . . 121
Appendix B Application to the Management of Soccer Matches . . . 127
Appendix C Detailed Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
 Figures

2.1 Types of environments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.2 Qualities and skills of an ideal manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3 Small business start-up plan contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.4 Project and action planning sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.5 Management aspects of leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.6 Needs for managers or leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.7 Financial control instruments: The car journey analogy . . . 19

3.1 Managers or specialists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3.2 Self-made, well-educated, and “ideal” managers. . . . . . . . . 44

3.3 Positioning between extremes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

4.1 EFQM overall quality assessment for companies . . . . . . . . 53

5.1 Distinctions between entrepreneurs and professional

managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

5.2 Management processes in small business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

5.3 What roles for graduates in small business? . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

5.4 Relevance of various types of graduates to different SB

situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.5 Career (and age) opportunities for graduates in small
firms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

6.1 Additional skills required for international management . . 75

6.2 Major roles for international managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

6.3 Possible student career pattern in international

management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
x FIGURES

6.4 Management aspects: Comparison of French and

British managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

6.5 Background and functional team roles for different

European nationalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

6.6 Attitudinal positioning: British (B), Continental

European (E), American (A), Japanese (J) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.7 Toward the transnational: Alternative avenues of

development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

6.8 Overseas investment: Factors affecting choice . . . . . . . . . . 84

8.1 Political triangle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

10.1 Management processes summary chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Why Is There So Much Bad Management?

The initial problem is that lots of people in business still don’t know what
management is, and, of course, this makes it impossible to go further and
understand what good management is.
The worst culprits are those who try to convince you that man-
agement is just common sense and “do it yourself ” abilities that they
claim to possess partly from intuition and partly from their past experi-
ence. If this were so, then the world of teaching and research could be
largely regarded as a waste of time. Most, however, will probably say
that management is a combination of topics such as marketing, finance,
logistics, and so on, whereas in fact these are only (departmental) man-
agement functions.
The real basis of management are the four management processes of
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, which are used in all
departments like marketing planning or financial control.
Allied to these are the management skills necessary to carry out these
processes, of which the three main categories are technical skills, interper-
sonal skills, and conceptual skills.
Even today most managers have not studied these topics seriously,
partly because courses in management processes, fairly common in North
America, are rather rare in Europe. Their “substitutes” under such names
as organizational behavior (OB), or “politique generale,” do not uni-
formly cover the whole required field. So as well as having past experi-
ence, and a suitable character, managers need to have learned how to use
the various skills and how to apply the relevant processes. This will be
further developed in chapters 2 and 3.
2 ACHIEVING EXCELLENCE IN MANAGEMENT

How Did You Choose This

“Good Versus Bad” Approach?
The initial impulse came the day a student at the bachelor level told me
that my lecture examples of good management were obvious: “Of course a
good manager should be an effective communicator, make the right deci-
sions, and so forth,” he said. I then realized that I had learned much more
from having been around bad managers than from good ones; with the lat-
ter, things went along smoothly just like a plane on autopilot. However, it
would be wrong to focus too much on bad management. What is needed is
to identify examples of bad management that one should avoid and to con-
trast them with the good management that one should learn to practice.

What Does This Book Do?

This book does the following:

• Succinctly clarifies the practice of good management based on

a rigorous application of management processes and related
skills (chapter 2)
• Identifies numerous examples of bad management practice
using real-life situations that I have personally encountered
(chapter 3)
• Assesses the characteristics of “ideal” managers and “excellent”
companies to serve as models for others to follow (chapter 4)
• Applies the good management practice to various situations
where managers might be working: small, local firms (chapter 5)
and those operating internationally (chapter 6)
• Analyzes responses to economic crises since the year 2000
and discusses how the current key management issues can be
handled by companies, governments, and others (chapter 7)
• Elaborates management methods that could be applied to
several other areas of activity like problems in the international
environment and political systems (chapter 8)
• Reviews management practices of the recent past and likely
future and suggests what aspects will remain and what will
need to change (chapter 9)
 INTRODUCTION 3

How Does It Compare With Existing Books?

Firstly, there are books written by academics principally for business
school students that are very comprehensive but too “heavy” to han-
dle for self-tuition on a daily basis. Secondly, there are books written
by consultants, some of which tend to be rather too simplistic, for
instance, suggesting that you only need 10 steps or 24 hours to mas-
ter management. Some serve to introduce various fads implying that
by simply using these fads, one can sort out one’s problems. At the
top of this academic or consultant pyramid are certain business gurus
who have become world famous through their books and by running
exciting conferences with rather simplistic recipes. In some cases their
personal experience of management can be very limited—one recently
indicated that he had had only two experiences, with two different
bosses. Thirdly, there are books written by famous managers who have
demonstrated a record of high performance in the business world. The
problem here is that their recipes for success are rather haphazard and
of course relate to their own achievements in the situations with which
they were faced. Many of these methods cannot be applied by other
managers in different situations who have different personalities and
skills from this author’s.
These limitations also became apparent when I was selecting part-
time lecturers to teach in our management department. Many of the aca-
demic candidates suffered from having too little industrial experience.
The company managers gave interesting examples of cases from within
their companies, but these were rather haphazard and not always closely
related to the theoretical course material that the students had been given
in previous lectures. Certain consultants were better at combining theory
with practice, but that practice was essentially based on what had hap-
pened to others rather than to themselves.

So What Are the Special Features of This Book?

This book tries to combine the pertinent elements from my varied back-
ground as a company manager, an academic, and a consultant, as well as
my experience of starting up and running my own firm, albeit only on a
modest scale.
4 ACHIEVING EXCELLENCE IN MANAGEMENT

Apart from the innovative approach of contrasting the bad from the
good, it adopts a systematic, rigorous treatment taking management
practice to new levels of usefulness, not only in conventional business,
but also in their application to other areas of activity. As well as analysis of
much private research not available elsewhere, it includes many histories
from real life that occurred to me personally or that I witnessed firsthand.
It is rather concise and makes for easy reading on a plane as well a good
reference to use in the office. At every stage it tries to add value by giving
the reader indications as to how he or she can improve his or her own
management understanding and performance.

What Is Its Target Audience?

The main targets are graduate students in their first or second job and
older managers who have not previously been exposed to these topics.
Current business school students will also find it a useful support to
their basic academic books. Finally, workers in other fields like politi-
cians, advisors, journalists, and researchers may appreciate the manage-
ment approach and novel suggestions and ideas presented in the last three
chapters.