50 Books Challenge: Book #5: Management Stripped Bare by Jo Owen

The 50 Books Challenge is an internet challenge. The challenge simply put is to finish reading 50 books in a year or roughly 1 book per week and so far, I’m lagging behind….

The book should have been called “Management, the Reality Show” for it’s candid depiction of real life management. In fact, it’s not even written or read like a book but more like an advice column. It has that undeniable British witticism written into it and the tone is also unmistakably cynical especially towards management theories and top management. The book definitely belongs to the Behavioral School of Management (see Mintzberg 10 schools of management) and eschew towards office /organizational politics. Nevertheless, the author does offer valuable insights into management and on occasion provided some pretty interesting theories and frameworks (such as Chaos Pricing Theory). All of this make this book a must read for management practitioner. Highly recommended. One downside of the book if one can call it a downside is that the book is structured like a dictionary with each topic arranged in alphabetical order with the longest topic span like 3 pages and 5 or 6 paragraphs while the shortest topic has only something like 10 words maybe less. The problem with this kind of structure is that the topics changed abruptly and there is an absence of a smooth flow of thinking precisely because of the sudden changes. However, the upside of this structure is that one can easily look up the topic just like an encyclopedia or a dictionary.

50 Books Challenge: Book # 4: Practical Production Control, a Survival Guide for Planners and Schedulers by Kenneth Mckay and Vincent Wiers

The 50 books challenge is an internet challenge that I adopted which is simply finish reading 50 books in a year or roughly 1 book per week. However, I’m lagging behind….

The operative word here is Practical and indeed the book is a candid structured lecture or more like a pep talk of do’s and don’ts of Production Control. For the clueless, Production Control is akin to Sales in it’s relationship to Marketing, i.e., Sales being the tactical, executive arm of the policy making Marketing. Production Control’s relationship to Operations Management is similar but don’t mistake Production Control to be the totality of Operations Management though. The book is absent on analytical Frameworks save for one in the second to the last chapter. Also, it hardly mentioned any production control techniques, i.e., no formulas, no models, the stuffs. Instead, the book is replete with common sense experiences of the authors, something you pay good money to listen in talks/ in consultancy but nothing deep though. As for the writing style of the author, it’s straight forward, with a generous serving of humor which is something rare in a technical book. Technical at times with its jargons but not that difficult to understand. Overall, I felt disappointed with the book in that you’ll not get something useful out of it save of course if you’re into implementing APS (Advance Production Scheduling) and MRP, in which case, you’ll might get some noteworthy tips (practically more than half of the book is devoted to that aspect). If you’re aim is to learn to control production from this book, better be disappointed.