Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership
Author: Richard Farson, Michael Crichton
List Price: $12.00
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ISBN: 0684830442
Publisher: Free Press (March, 1997)
Sales Rank: 33,683
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pure Wisdom - A must read for Management Consultants
The value of this book is as a counterpoint to the thousands of simple-minded, formulaic, technique-laden books on management, change management, and leadership.
Whether you agree with him or not this book will make you think, and will challenge your underlying assumptions.
I'm not surprised some of the reviewers find it a frustrating read, and would have prefered a recipe book of prescriptive how-to techniques. They've missed the point, this book "educates" rather than "trains". Fortunately for all of us leadership and life in general cannot be reduced to a set of formulas and techniques. To think or hope otherwise would truly be absurd.
A great complement to the works of Maslow, systems thinking, and chaos theory literature.
Rating: 5 out of 5
A management book that will make you think.
This may be the finest management/leadership book I've ever read (and I've read quite a few). Most so called management books consist of theories and/or formulas that never seem to work in real life. Most of these books are based upon an individual reacting in a rational way to a given set of circumstances. Unfortunately, as Mr. Farson points out, many people do not act in a prescribed way and this is where most management books fail. Having worked in the bureaucratic jungle of D.C. for a number of years, this is truly a breath of fresh air. Forget the typical management "gimics" and read this book!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Insights into business paradoxes
I'm not a manager, and have never been a manager, but this book has been critical to my development as a worker bee. I bought it going through a lot of turmoil in the workplace and it really gave me insights to see how the dynamics between people operate. The book shows the logic of such paradox's such as "The opposite of a profound truth is also true" and "Big changes are easier to make the small ones".
Each paradox is described in bite sized chapters of 2-5 pages long. I often pull this out of my bookcase, read two of three random chapters to relax from various stresses.
The best thing about this book is that it is not prescriptive. In fact, it tends to show the fallacy of common business prescriptions. By sharing his insights, Farson allows the reader to better understand various business, and for the matter, personal dynamics and respond constructively to them.
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