Andy Raynor - Beyond the Brief
Andy Raynor's blog
Something for the weekend:
The best book on professional services, ever
We may look and sound independent, proud and self-contained, yet we search for guidance, the single word of wisdom that will make the difference. A word of warning, direction or simply affirmation. A hand on the shoulder or a kick up the backside.
The result? Airport bookshelves that groan under the weight of the guru section. Books that offer ideas for people who don’t have any themselves. Passports to paradise while we fly Ryanair to Girona.
We lost folk in professional services have a particularly rough deal. We create more jobs and more wealth than almost any other sector of the economy and yet remain in the long grass where the management theories don’t reach.
But what if you knew there was a book, simply relating facts, that told the tale of the recreation of a business message? Not only that, but how it came to be adopted by several hundred intelligent, egotistical and selfish leaders? And how armed with this huge power it conquered the market and remained at the top for over a decade?
There is, but you may not recognise it. Here’s my copy:
Before
you break your pencil in rage and write to the
Telegraph, give me the benefit of the doubt. You
may not agree with the message, the philosophy or
the eventual result*, but if you took the bold
step of walking out of Waterstones with this book
(in a plain brown wrapper), you'd recognise the
characters you deal with every day.
And if you want a few pages references, let me know.
*You might agree that Blair is now a pretty effective entrepreneur, though I doubt he would call it that. I suspect the eventual failure of this experiment will be seen by history to be the smothering of leadership by management. Which is a whole different topic....
Tell me what you think at andy@andypraynor.com
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© Andy Raynor 2013