1. You can’t teach an old dog or executive new tricks, or even that there are any new tricks
2. Knowledge is of two types, explicit and implicit, and knowing this is implicit
3. You rarely improve an organisation as a whole by improving the performance of one or more of its parts
4. There is no point in asking consumers, who do not know what they want, to say what they want
5. All managers believe they can do their boss’s job better than their boss can, but they forget that their subordinates share the same belief about themselves
6. For managers the only conditions under which experience is the best teacher are ones in which no change takes place
7. The level of conformity in an organisation is in inverse proportion to its creative ability
8. The best reason for recording what one thinks is to discover what one thinks and to organise it in transmittable form
9. No corporation should retain a business unit that is worth more outside the corporation than within it
10. The amount of irrationality that executives attribute to others is directly proportional to their own
11. The future is better dealt with using assumptions than forecasts
12. An organisation’s planning horizon is the same as its CEO’s retirement horizon
13. The lower the rank of managers, the more they know about fewer things. The higher the rank of managers, the less they know about many things
14. The importance of executives is directly proportional to the size of their waiting rooms and the number of intervening secretaries
15. When managers say something is obvious, it does not mean that it is unquestionable, but rather that they are unwilling to have it questioned
16. The less sure managers are of their opinions, the more vigorously they defend them
17. The more lawyers an organisation employs, the less innovation it tolerates
18. Good teachers produce sceptics who ask their own questions and find their own answers; management gurus produce only unquestioning disciples
19. The only thing more difficult than starting something new in an organisation is stopping something old
20. Acceptance of a recommended solution to a problem depends more on the manager’s trust of its source than on the content of the recommendation or the competence of its source
21. The less managers understand their business, the more variables they require to explain it
22. The higher the rank of managers, the less is the distance between their offices and their restrooms
23. Business schools are as difficult to change as cemeteries, and for the same reasons
24. Curiosity is the ‘open sesame’ to learning, even for managers
25. The legibility of a male manager’s handwriting is in inverse proportion to his seniority
26. Executives must be prevented from receiving any information about frauds or immoral acts committed by their subordinates
27. There is nothing that a manager wants done that educated subordinates cannot undo
28. The more corporate executives believe in a free (unregulated) market, the more they believe in a regulated internal market
29. The amount of time a committee wastes is directly proportional to its size
30. It is generally easier to evaluate an organisation from the outside-in than from the inside-out
31. Development is less about how much an organisation has than how much it can do with whatever it has
32. Smart subordinates can make their managers look bad no matter how good they are, and make their managers look good no matter how bad they are
33. In an organisation that disapproves of mistakes, but identifies only errors of commission, the best strategy for anyone who seeks job security is to do nothing
34. The best organisational designers are ones who know how to beat any organisation designed by others
35. The offence taken by an organisation from negative press is directly proportional to its truthfulness
36. The less important an issue is, the more time managers spend discussing it
37. The time spent waiting to get into an executive’s office is directly proportional to the difference in rank between the executive and the one waiting to get in
38. Administration, management and leadership are not the same thing
39. In acquisitions the value added to the acquired company is much more important than the value added to the acquiring company
40. Business schools are high security prisons of the mind
41. No matter how large and successful an organisation is, if it fails to adapt to change, then, like a dinosaur, it will become extinct
42. The size of a CEO’s bonus is directly proportional to how much more the company would have lost had it not been for him or her
43. The less managers expect of their subordinates, the less they get
44. The amount of money spent to broadcast a television or radio commercial is inversely related to its truthfulness and relevance
45. All work and no play is a prescription for low quantity and quality of outputs
46. A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say ‘no’ but none to say ‘yes’
47. Teleconferencing is an electronic way of wasting more time than is saved in travel
48. The more important the problem a manager asks consultants for help on, the less useful and more costly their solutions are likely to be
49. The distance between managers’ offices is directly proportional to the difference between the ranks of their occupants
50. The sine qua non of leadership is talent, and talent cannot be taught
51. Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure
52. A great big happy family requires more loyalty than competence, but a great big happy business requires more competence than loyalty
53. If an organisation must grow, it is better for it to grow horizontally than vertically
54. Corporate development and corporate growth are not the same thing and neither requires the other
55. The uniqueness of an organisation lies more in what it hides than what it exposes
56. The telephone, which once facilitated communication, now increasingly obstructs it
57. Managers cannot learn from doing things right, only from doing things wrong
58. The principle objective of corporate executives is to provide themselves with the standard of living and quality of work life to which they aspire
59. The principal obstruction to an organisation getting to where its managers most want it to be lies in the minds of its managers
60. A corporation’s external boundaries are generally much more penetrable than its internal ones
61. It is very difficult for those inside a box to think outside of it
62. The level of organisational development is directly proportional to the size of the gap between where the organisation is and where it wants to be
63. Most stated, corporate objectives are platitudes —they say nothing, but hide this fact behind words
64. Most corporations and business schools are less than the sum of their parts
65. Managers who try to make themselves look good by making others look bad, look worse than those they try to make look bad
66. The morality that many managers espouse in public is inversely proportional to the morality they practise in private
67. The higher their rank, the less managers perceive a need for continuing education, but the greater the need for it
68. The number of references and citations in a book is inversely proportional to the amount of thinking the author has done
69. No computer is smarter than those who program it. Those who program computers are seldom smarter than those who try to use their output
70. Managers cannot talk and listen at the same time; in fact, most managers find it very difficult to listen even when they are not talking
71. Overheads, slides and PowerPoint projectors are not visual aids to managers. They transform managers into auditory aids to the visuals
72. Conversations in a lavatory are more productive than those in the boardroom
73. To managers an ounce of wisdom is worth a pound of understanding
74. The press is the sword of Damocles that hangs over the head of every organisation
75. The more managers try to get rid of what they don’t want, the less likely they are to get what they do want
76. Focusing on an organisation’s ‘core competency’ diverts attention from its core competencies
77. The greater the fee paid to corporate directors, the less their contributions are likely to be
78. A manager’s fear of computers is directly proportional to the square of his/her age
79. Most managers know less about managing people than the conductor of an orchestra does
80. Complex problems do not have simple solutions, only simple minded managers and their consultants think they do
81. When nothing can make things worse, anything can make them better 35.In Transforming the Systems Movement, at www.acasa.upenn.edu/RLAConfPaper.pdf The New Management f-Laws
82. To do more of what is not working currently, is to do more of what will not work in the future
83. Those who successfully managed a company to maturity are unlikely to be able to manage it back to youth
84. Maldistribution of the quality of life at work reduces morale and results in poor quality products and services
85. Greed at the top is the fuel used to increase the maldistribution of wealth within and between corporations, and within and between societies
86. Viewing things differently is not a defect: it is an advantage
87. It is better to dissolve a problem than solve it
88. Giving managers the information needed to (dis)solve a problem does not necessarily improve their performance
89. The best way to find out how to get from here to there is to find out how to get from there to here
90. The best place to begin an intellectual journey is at its end
91. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but invention is the father of desire
92. Managers should never accept the output of a technologically-based support system unless they understand exactly what the system does and why
93. The amount of profit that can be got from the sale of a product or service is inversely proportional to the need for it
94. Meetings that share ignorance cannot produce knowledge
95. Employees, and even managers, are not expected to be smarter than their bosses
96. Continuous improvement is the longest distance between two points: where an organisation is and where it wants to be
97. Benchmarking is a not-very-subtle form of imitation. It condemns organisations to following not leading
98. Consensus is practical, not necessarily principled, agreement
99. In a classroom, the teacher learns most
100. There is never a better place to initiate a change than where the one who asks where the best place is, is
101. Risk aversion is a core competency of most managers
102. The more managers believe in a democratic society the more they insist on autocratic corporations
103. The one thing that every individual and organisation must want is the ability to obtain whatever they want
104. There is no such thing as risk-free agreement
105. CEOs should never select their successors
106. To managers, an ounce of information is worth a pound of data
107. To managers, an ounce of knowledge is worth a pound of information
108. To managers, an ounce of understanding is worth a pound of knowledge
109. To managers an ounce of wisdom is worth a pound of understanding
110. Giving managers the information they want may not improve their performance
111. Rightsizing treats a symptom but not the disease
112. Improving communication between the parts of an organisation may destroy it
113. The stability of a family business and of the family that owns it are inversely proportional to the number of family members employed in the business
114. Communication is never good in itself
115. The prominence of a business author is proportional to the number of times he or she has published the same article or book
116. Organisations fail more often because of what they have not done than because of what they have done
117. The quality of a business school is inversely proportional to the average amount of teaching its faculty does
118. Successful management consultants are ones who support managers’ unsupportable beliefs
119. Problems are not objects of experience, but mental constructs extracted from it by analysis
120. It is better to control the future imperfectly than to forecast it perfectly
121. Competition is conflict embedded in cooperation; the more conflict there is, the more cooperation there is
122. How far an organisation can evade government regulations is proportional to the amount it contributed to the election of successful candidates
123. In advertising, all competing products or services have a common property: each is better than the others