The Best Things in Life are Free, Including Management Literature!
True, there is a lot of rubbish on the internet, but for those who are good at using search-strings on Google heaven awaits. As you may have guessed I found the Handy Guide by Googling my way through the information clutter. I found it on the site of BBC World Service under the sub-section ‘Learning English’ (Huh?!).
Charles Handy – a management guru himself – guides you through the lives and works of his choice of management gurus. I could not have imagined a better introduction to management. And as the text is being used in an online course of business English you will find short sentences and clear language (in management literature this is sometimes rare).
“To those of you who have just tuned in, I’m Charles Handy and you’re listening to the Handy Guide to the Gurus of Management, from the BBC World Service. There will be twelve gurus in all but, as I said earlier, I am going to begin with myself and my ideas. That’s so that you can get to know me and my prejudices, my way of looking at the world, even the way I talk.”Here is the list of management gurus that he brings to our attention:
- Charles Handy
- Peter Drucker
- Tom Peters
- Warren Bennis
- Sumantra Ghoshal
- Kenichi Ohmae
- Gary Hamel
- Rosabeth Moss Kanter
- Bill Gates
- Ricardo Semler
- Michael Porter
- Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden Turner
Twelve gurus described by a guru in plain English – if it would be a book I would be the first one to buy it. All these summaries are available in audio as well in 15 minute talks. The best introduction one can find, although as Handy asserts in his concluding remark:
“It is impossible to do justice to someone’s lifetime collection of ideas in fifteen minutes. All I have been able to do is to introduce to you some of the best thinkers of our time in the hope that I can persuade you to get to know them better; I trust that the twelve gurus we’ve met in this Handy Guide will help you find your own way in the world.”
