Management literature is desperately searching for excellence again. It enjoyed a long run of success from the thoughtful genius of Peter Drucker to the philosophies of C K Prahalad, Jim Collins, Gary Hamel, Ram Charan and others, who intelligently studied global corporations. Memoirs from Lee Iaccoca, Jack Welch, Sam Walton, Lou Gerstner and other icons added heft to these efforts.
These books have the additional advantage of imparting appropriate gravitas to the office book shelf. But reading them demands some application of mind - even though most gurus are decent writers and the ex-honchos often hire competent ghosts. But what of those zillions of executives who neither read as a habit nor care to apply their minds too much when they do?
This opened up the market opportunity for the parallel trend of self-help book masquerading as management book. Ken Blanchard (The One Minute Manager) and Stephen Covey (The 7 Habit of Highly Effective People) were the early masters of this popular genre, but it was Spencer Johnson (Who Moved My Cheese?) who hit the ball out of the park. Their down-home style presented in short sentences and bullet points made them best-sellers.
Today, their successors are legion - each month brings to my desk earnest advice on time management, man management, maximising sales, leadership, and variations thereof. The savvier writers of these insta-management books ride a trend. Thus, since Steve Jobs never cared to explain his management philosophy (if he had one) to anyone, his death produced a mini-industry in Jobs- and/or Apple-mania. If Walter Isaacson's authorised door-stopper was too much to absorb, why there was Inside Apple: The Secrets Behind the Past and Future Success of Steve Jobs' Iconic Brand, a neat 240-page primer, Finding the Next Steve Jobs and many more.
One lucrative offshoot is the "lessons" category. Legendary football manager Alex Fergusson, for instance, came out with Leading, basically the third variation of his autobiography couched in vaguely didactic terms. India after economic liberalisation saw an avalanche of books offering management lessons from Hinduism; the Mahabharata and Ramayana, its principal characters and the Gita in particular. The latest to mine a new lucrative seam is a book offering management lessons from Bollywood hits - from Lagaan, Lakshya, Om Shanti Om and so on.
All of which reminds me of the British TV star John Cleese, who is also a management trainer. Come to think of it, he's probably missed an opportunity. There must be management lessons in Monty Python or Fawlty Towers, surely?
