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    Can You Manage?
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    Can You Manage?
    Unavailable
    Can You Manage?
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Can You Manage?

    By Ivor Kenny

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “You’ve written nine or ten books”, a friend said to Ivor Kenny. “Any chance you could put them through a mangle and squeeze out some of the lessons you’ve learned? Put them in a short book a manager can read and think about on a transatlantic flight.”

    He has tried to distil into a slim volume lessons learned working with managers for 40 years – 20 in the Irish Management Institute, where he became familiar with theory, and 20 in UCD where I work with managers in international companies. He has plundered earlier books and added new material, about half-and-half.

    The point of the book is that, since few things are black and white, clear-cut, either/or, we have to manage in a way that accepts the existence of contradictory phenomena without trying to resolve them. His hope is that it can be a reminder, timely or otherwise, that brings to the surface thoughts buried under the press of events.

    The lessons include:

    Why do some businesses give the impression that they hate the customer? Is it because people are in the wrong jobs?

    The secret of efficiency is enthusiasm. Compulsion doesn’t work.

    A macho manager goes like a bull at a gate.

    Avoid using a sledgehammer when a feather will do, but keep the hammer handy.

    Management by slogan is good only for pub-talk.

    True humility is knowing yourself and the effect of your actions on others.

    Leadership is a combination of character (who you are) and Competence (what you can do).

    A good boss is tough but fair.

    A leader who has sorted out his inner conflicts will convey a sense of optimism and hope. Cheer up.

    Strategy is the step by step removal of removable constraints.

    Does our lack of enthusiasm for strategy come from the fact that the future is unpredictable or that we are simply going about strategy the wrong way?

    The essence of strategy is to build an arsenal of capabilities to meet whatever the future throws at us.

    Budgets are coffins.

    One of the greatest barriers to change is lack of cohesion in the top team.

    People do not resist change. They resist loss.

    It’s not what’s ahead – today is the golden time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOak Tree Press
    Release dateJan 15, 2014
    ISBN9781781191309
    Unavailable
    Can You Manage?
    Author

    Ivor Kenny

    Ivor Kenny was born in Galway in 1930, the son of a newspaper editor. He is married to Maureen Mac Mahon. They have five children and eight grandchildren. He was educated at St. Ignatius College SJ; UCG; the London School of Economics; the Institute d’Études Politiques, Paris; and the Harvard Business School as a Fulbright Scholar. His first job was as an announcer at the then Radio Éireann, 1955 to 1959. In 1960 he joined the staff of the Irish Management Institute and was appointed Director General in 1963. He brought the Institute from a semi-­‐‑detached house to the National Management Centre in Sandyford. He retired in 1983 and was appointed Research Fellow at UCD from where he conducted consultancy assignments with international companies, including comprehensive studies for the Smurfit Group and the Kerry Group, whose boards he subsequently joined. He served on other boards, public and private, including Independent News and Media PLC and IONA Technologies Plc. He was a Research Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin, 1977 to 1980; Chancellor of the International Academy of Management, 1982 to 1987; Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, the International Management Centres, UK, 1983 to 2006; Professor at Cranfield University, UK, 1984; and Executive‑in-­Residence, Indiana University, USA, 1988. He believes that honours and degrees should be like melting snow and that managers learn best from other managers solving real problems.

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