So You Think You Can Manage...

By Reinhard Stompe

New management book with a unique approach to business leadership by veteran management consultant and nuclear physicist Dr. Hans Hofmann-Reinecke for the successful management of small companies or large corporations. He develops a compelling theory and a set of handy tools through analyzing typical blunders committed in real life organizations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reinhard Stompe
• Release date: Dec 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465757081

Reinhard Stompe

The author Hans Hofmann-Reinecke is a nuclear physicist who earned his Ph.D. at the Physics Department of Nobel Laureate R Mössbauer in Munich. He also did research in Phonetics and worked as “Nuclear Watchdog” with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. When 40 he became head of a company which developed blood glucose meters for diabetics, at that time global market leader in the field. The lessons learnt there became the foundation for his later work as a management consultant. During the past 15 years he has advised larger and smaller companies regarding their strategic and operational challenges. Among his clients are renowned corporations all over Europe, as well as in the US and in South Africa, like Novartis, Bosch, Lufthansa, B Braun, Dynamit Nobel and others. At present he is based in Cape Town.

Book preview

So You Think You Can Manage…

by

Hans Hofmann-Reinecke, PhD

Copyright © 2011 Dr. Hans Hofmann-Reinecke

Published by Reinhard Stompe at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 What the %&#**! Is Management?

Chapter 2 Distinctions and Intelligence

Chapter 3 What the %&#**! is a Project?

Chapter 4 Six Elements instead of Alchemy

Chapter 5 Objectives

Chapter 6 Collective Intelligence

Chapter 7 A Project’s Genesis

Chapter 8 The Art of Planning

Chapter 9 Risk Management

Chapter 10 Controlling

Chapter 11 Leadership

Chapter 12 Who wants to be Successful?

Preface

As a student of Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering I dreamt of a career in academic research; or at least of an engineering career in the respective industry. It would not turn out like that. After being hired straight from university by a pharmaceutical company it took no more than six month and I found myself in a management position. Today I am still a manager, in a different company but in the same trade; as Head of Division of a several hundred million Euro laboratory reagent business of one of Germany’s most renowned pharmaceutical/chemical corporations.

When the author of this book told me about his intentions to publish his views on management, I was pleased to offer my contribution in form of an introduction. But first, please allow me a quick flashback.

23 years ago, when I started work on my Ph.D. thesis, I asked the professor to agree with me on a concrete objective, the achievement of which would then grant the aspired academic title. The professor was bewildered by my request, but eventually he agreed. When after just under two years I had attained the stipulated goal and informed my mentor that I considered my mission completed, he was not only bewildered, he was upset. He missed the scientific ardor which was supposed to keep me working after I had reached my goal.

After this venture into academic research I entered the world of corporate pharmaceutical management full of optimism. But imagine my frustration when I found myself in meetings with high-ranking decision makers who tried to advance matters without having set clear objectives; who again and again ended up entangling themselves in technical and scientific discussions.

I had learnt very quickly that managers are guided in first place by their affection to the things that they grew up with: their technical expert knowledge. That’s where they feel at home and safe. From this vantage point everybody contributes to the discussion and tries to influence decisions. In other words, it became obvious to me that few decision makers had a clear concept of what was expected from a manager and of how to proceed in order to achieve it.

During those days I met the author who worked as a management consultant in our company. Through him I learnt that my experiences regarding professionalism in management in the pharmaceutical/chemical sector would have been no different in other lines of business. It was an across-the-board problem.

This is in effect surprising, because management can be quite simple as long as we stick to a few rules of the game. Such an approach to management, based on logic and pragmatism, was implemented in our company by the author. His advice for managers is now available as a book. He offers directives which are as logic as they are obvious but which are nevertheless new to most managers. The book should be standard reading for everybody who simply wants to manage.

Dr. Andreas J.G. Rauh, Senior Vice President Lab Essentials Merck Millipore, Darmstadt/Germany

Introduction

No more than 20 generations ago, our worldview was a mix of superstition, taboo and dogma. People would believe that a heap of rags, left in the corner of a room for long enough, would spontaneously develop into a bunch of mice or rats. It was the time when Tomas de Torquemada was chief of the Spanish inquisition, with its colorful auto-da-fés and with redheaded young women being persecuted as witches. Alchemists and doctors of that era tried to transform everything that they could get their hands on, into gold, or if this malfunctioned, into an elixir for eternal youth. There is no evidence for their success on that either. Instead, they had to look on helplessly, as the bubonic plague took its toll on human life.

Science in that era was a quarrel between different schools of thought, with conflicting dogmas, trying in vain to understand the true nature of things. Having failed in this endeavor, the respective pundits could at least take comfort in seeing their academic foes being burnt at the stake.

It was from those dark ages that Western Civilization eventually emerged like Phoenix from the ashes. From now on, rational thinking replaced bigoted indoctrination; the light of awareness and logical insight irradiated the corners of the somber labyrinth of superstitions; clarity of mind triumphed over dogmatic blindness.

This enlightenment kicked off such powerful scientific and technological advancement, that progress during the past 400 years seems to dwarf the preceding four thousand or four million. Today we are governed by logic and enlightened intelligence.

Or are we? There are still some corners, even today, in the early 21st century, where the light of awareness and logical insight has not penetrated. There are still domains, where different schools of thought, with conflicting dogmas, try in vain to understand the true nature of things and each year their pundits besiege us with appeals to forget whatever we learnt so far – because now cometh the truth.

You guessed it precisely; I’m talking about the world of management.

So in case you have been in touch with this trade, as a perpetrator or as a victim, you may be relieved to learn that management does not have to be black magic. Our companies can do without witch hunts or auto-da-fés, without superstition and taboos. The same clarity of mind and unbiased intelligence, which made so many other disciplines flourish, can be applied to the realm of management as well.

This book will demonstrate to you that Management is neither a secret craft nor alchemy. Management is not rocket science either. It’s not even science. It is simpler than you believe and most of its seeming complexity is in reality a result of mental laziness, of lack of logical discipline.

You now have the chance to unmask all those little mix-ups and charades of yours, which have kept you from genuinely enjoying your job. You are only a few pages away from feeling 100% secure and professional in your position as a manager.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

What the %&#**! Is Management?

1.1 Oh no! Not another Book on Management…

If you ever stood in front of Napoleon’s sarcophagus at Les Invalides in Paris you must have been convinced that you would never see an equally pompous burial place again. Wrong! Just take the 30 minute stroll to the Institut Pasteur in the 15th district and you will find another crypt that will take your breath away – and deservedly so. The celebrity who was laid to rest here is worthy of every single bit of that splendor.

Up to the middle of the 19th century doctors and nurses paid little attention to cleanliness. Operations were carried out with dirty instruments while surgeons wore gowns that were almost as filthy as their hands. Any operation was Russian roulette for the patient with a 50% chance of dying from sepsis. It was Louis Pasteur who (among many other things) discovered the correlation between those deadly infections and germs. By doing so he ushered in the custom of sterilizing everything before it would come in contact with a wound. This practice increased a patient’s chances for survival after operation considerably; in particular it reduced the devastatingly high incidence of childbed fewer. It was a giant leap forward in medicine and a blessing for mankind.

We may trust that a lot of literature has been published on each detail of sterile handling in the meantime. E.g. there will be books about the best chemicals to use in order to clean one’s hands; what would be the best water temperature for washing; for how many minutes; etc. Now suppose that somebody studies those books meticulously but without understanding the underlying problem of germs and infections, without seeing the full picture. Then, in practice, after following all the good rules for washing and rinsing, he might sneeze, covering his mouth and nose with his hands. He is now no longer sterile and all the books on washing and rinsing were futile. Nevertheless, he might believe that everything is ok - he had followed the procedures by the letter. Without being able to embed those procedures in their logical context, however, they are of little use.

There are more than plentiful books on the market about the many different methods and tools available in the world of management. There is abundant literature on the Matrix Organization, on Strategic Planning, on Time Management, on People Management, on Risk Analysis, on Project Planning, on Controlling, etc. Nevertheless we see top managers making strategic decisions which are totally wrong, despite many pages of Risk Analysis and Scenario Assessment prepared by their staff. We see projects fail pathetically despite employment of the latest version of MS Project and despite those Team Coordination and Motivation tools.

How can it be that today’s management is still such an amateurish affair - in spite of all those books and trainings and tools?

Like in medicine and like in many other fields it is easier to explain, to understand and to accept the details than to convey the full picture to which the details belong. But the details will not help us succeed unless we comprehend the whole story.

This book will provide you with the imperative insights into intelligent management. You will recognize the skeleton that gives the body of management its structure. The tools and methods mentioned above are the muscles that fit snugly into this framework.

1.2 The World from 15,000 Feet

Among the things that have fascinated me all my life are flying and physics. I like the relentless logic that governs both of them. If you control this logic, then new worlds