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The 75 Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made
Book

The 75 Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made

...and 21 of the Worst

Stuart Crainer
AMACOM, 1999
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Editorial Rating

5

Qualities

  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Great authors, historians, musicians, and sports stars are usually included in end of the year "best" lists. Managers rarely show up on such lists. This book highlights 75 history-making management decisions that changed the way we think, live, and work. The decisions profiled remind executives that great management requires experience, vision, the ability to take risks, and good luck. This entertaining volume also covers 21 truly mistaken management decisions, a valuable contrast. getAbstract recommends this book to executives and managers who would like to be able to recount colorful war stories about some ups and downs in the evolution of management.

Summary

Great Management Decisions

What makes a management decision great? It’s hard to quantify or classify which management decisions will bring success and which ones will bring failure. Making a good decision is a combination of factors: imagination, courage, experience, and sometimes just plain luck. Good managers are good listeners. They can bring ideas to fruition even if they didn’t originate the ideas. However, good managers also follow their gut instincts. They are not afraid to challenge the status quo, especially if they strongly believe in an idea and feel they are right. The following examples of the world’s greatest management decisions show these common strengths.

The Birth of Advertising

One hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, someone lost a slave named Shem in the city of Thebes. The owner publicly offered a "whole gold coin" for returning the slave. Today, it’s hard to imagine a world without advertising. You see advertising on billboards while speeding along the highway, on television when you’re watching the nightly news, and on the Internet when you check stock quotes. You hear it on the car radio and see it on hot air balloons at ...

About the Author

Stuart Crainer, a business and management writer, contributes to a number of leading business publications including The Financial Times, Across the Board and The Times of London. He has written many books including The Ultimate Business Library, The Ultimate Book of Business Quotations, and The Ultimate Book of Business Gurus. He lives near Oxford, England.

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