Foreword and Introduction
This book answers the question of what people should know and be able to do if they wish to be effective and successful, in their profession primarily, but also in their lives, as managers as well as specialists. This book is the "equipment" required by every person in an organization always and everywhere. It is a book about the effectiveness of people in the organizations of the future.
Managing Performing Living contains the knowledge and tools that should always be available and ready for use in all organizations - of companies as well as in the various other institutions and organizations of society. This book shows what is required in every position, if a person has to manage and perform and also live as a human being would like to.
Managing Performing Living is a book about correct and good management. Whether people consider themselves to be managers and describe themselves as such is secondary; what is important is what the profession, activity, function, and position within an organization demands. Though this book is written for managers in the business world, it is by no means intended only for them. Management extends beyond the business world to all areas of society.
Senior physicians, directors of scientific institutions, theater managers, civil servants, rectors and deans, directors and secondary school teachers, program managers in science, and museum curators are also faced with management tasks. In modern society, almost everyone spends their professional life within organizations. Never before in history have so many people, both in absolute and relative terms, had to carry out de facto management tasks. This is set to increase dramatically in the future, with the advent of the service, information and knowledge society, and the requirements will also visibly increase. Most of us will have to manage, whether we want to or not; whether we are aware of it or not; whether we have to manage other people such as staff, colleagues or superiors, or "just" ourselves. However, only a few of us are adequately prepared for this.
We are all, without exception, affected by management. And we should have an interest in the quality of management whether we like it or not. It is useful and in many cases critical for success to be able to differentiate between good and bad, correct and incorrect management. This will determine the efficiency of every social organization, their competitiveness in the business world as well as the quality of life of most people.
Management is the most important function in society. This is true for developed countries and perhaps even more so for the less developed. Many facts indicate that the actual cause of the predicament of the so-called underdeveloped countries is underdeveloped management - the fact that management cannot function in that society or that it has developed in an undesirable way. This alone makes the question of good and bad management important, because management is the organizing and driving element of a society and its institutions. Whether this is something positive or desirable or even representative of progress can be decided by the individual alone. What is undisputed, is that management is a reality that can no longer be wished away. We must come to terms with it.
However, we need not resign ourselves to the way social organizations are managed, to the existing quality of management, to its effectiveness and efficiency. These can be improved and I believe they must be improved, radically in some cases. Similarly, we do not have to put up with the ever increasing amount of rubbish that is disseminated under the guise of "management".
From a historical perspective, management is still very young, not even a hundred years old, and most of its development has ensued since the Second World War. That is why more tolerance is called for here than in the well-established areas of science that have a very long history of development. However, even with great tolerance we cannot close our eyes to the fact that there is no other field in which so much rubbish can be advocated without opposition and in which fads, charlatanism, superficiality, and pseudo-scientific nonsense lacking any logic are disseminated arbitrarily at will and accepted without criticism. This would be unimaginable in any science or in any of the practical professions based on the sciences, be they those of doctors, engineers, lawyers, or specialists in finance and accountancy. In view of the importance of management as a social function, this is at the very least noteworthy. In reality it is dangerous.
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