Thought Leadership Resources And Links

This section contains a selected list of thought leadership resources and links to complement the Happy Manager site. For your ease of use we have categorised these into:

Essential Reading and Suggested Further Reading.

Without any apology our list of essential reading is headed by Peter Drucker and then by Charles Handy. In our view their work typifies what thought leadership resources should be; they provide insight, challenge,and fresh thinking. Both write in a compelling style, and think widely about the world of management and business. They place management within a wider context and as well as asking "how" we should manage and organise and "what" questions like "what is the role of a manager", they address the issue of "why" management matters why is it important to society.

Drucker and Handy should be essential reading for all managers!!

We do of course suggest other writers to read and think through the ideas they advocate. See below for some further recommendations for thought leadership resources.

Essential Reading

For nearly half a century Peter Drucker has inspired and educated managers, and influenced the nature of business. This book is a collection of his landmark articles in the Harvard Business Review. Here, gathered together and framed by a thoughtful introduction from the Review's editor Nan Stone, is a priceless collection of his most significant work.

One of the leading thinkers on the practice and study of management,and an essential for any set of thought leadership resources, Drucker has sought out, identified, and examined the most important issues confronting managers, from corporate strategy to management style to social change. Through his unique lens, this volume gives us the rare opportunity to trace the evolution of the great shifts in our workplaces, and to understand more clearly the role of managers.

Some of the articles were written back in the 1960's,but still hold relevance today. These essays represent Drucker at his best: direct, wise, and challenging. Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management, is an essential read, to be enjoyed, studied, and debated by everyone concerned with management.

The excellent essay "Managing for Business Effectiveness" written in 1963 where Drucker articulates what managers want know which is "how to organise the task; how to tell the important from the time-wasting, the potentially effective from the merely frustrating" resonates today. Then in "The new Productivity Challenge" written in 1991 Drucker addresses "the single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the world" and what is that challenge? "To raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers".

This book is worth it for the personal preface at the start alone! Handy at the start raises the question " can capitalism be made more decent and its instrument, business, work more obviously for the good of all, everywhere?"

In the section on a proper selfishness Handy puts forward a similar point to Seligman's view of authentic happiness, that of a meaningful life. Handy defines proper selfishness as "the search for ourselves that, paradoxically, we often pursue best through our involvement with others. To be properly selfish is to accept a responsibility for making the most of oneself by, ulitmately, finding a purpose beyond the bigger than oneself."

The Hungry Spirit is an inspiring book, it challenge conventional wisdom, and holds out hope for values which are more enriching than those of free market capitalism.

This is a read to make you think and perhaps re-think some things. A search for meaning.

This is an invaluable resource and companion for managers. It covers a wide range of essential areas, always within sight, and thought provoking ideas. a separate them or lesson for each day finishes with a question for reflection. Some of Drucker's best work has been condensed in to the "Daily Drucker" and it shows. It is your complete "thought leadership resources" in one book, and is highly recommended!

No set of thought leadership resources should be without a book which looks to the future.In this extraordinary, life-affirming book, Charles Handy reaches for a philosophy beyond the impersonal mechanics of business organizations, and beyond material choices. He presents a powerful alternative vision, where life and work are regrounded in a natural sense of continuity, connection and purposeful direction.

'The empty raincoat is to me, the symbol of our most pressing paradox. If economic progress means that we become anonymous cogs in some great machine, then progress is an empty promise. The challenge must be to show how paradox can be managed.'

Handy discusses some of the paradoxes of our times.He identifies nine principal paradoxes, nine ways of explaining what is going on in society and why some confusion is inevitable. Paradox does not have to be resolved only managed. The paradoxes of the mature economies.The paradox of intelligence; of work; of productivity; of time; of riches; of organisations; of age; of the individual;and of justice. The book challenges us to manage paradox and to serach for ways to make sense of paradoxes.

Suggested Further Reading

A book that challenges conventional wisdom, with research carried out by Gallup to answer the questions

"What does a strong, vibrant workplace look like?" and

"What do great managers do?"

The answers they found certainly challenge much of normal practice in organisations.It is a compelling read full of useful suggestions, and ideas which will make you re-assess how you manage.

A book that will make you think differently about how you manage.

A useful addition to your thought leadership resources.

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