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How much, if anything, has changed in management thinking in the past 20 years? Can management and employees ever work together in harmony to create the mythical ?best organisation?? Or is your office The Office?

Management f-LAWS: How Organizations Really Work

f-Law: Management handles heretics more humanely than religious institutions. It does not burn them; it fires them.

Every year organisations across the world spend billions on management consultancy, professional development and organisational change and learning. But despite our best efforts, dysfunctional organisations and bad bosses endure. Devised by Wharton Emeritus Professor Russell Ackoff, one of the world?s top management thinkers and author of more than 20 titles on Management Systems, F-Laws are the hard facts about organisations that we might wish to deny or ignore. Witty and deliciously ironic, they not only elucidate all that is wrong with organisations today, they also pack a punch ? and as the saying goes, sometimes the truth hurts.

f-Law: A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say 'no' but none to say 'yes'.

F-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management by Russell Ackoff, Herbert Addison & Sally Bibb is a wry and unashamedly un-PC little book that explores the realities of today?s organisations. It will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been part of an institution, whether it is a school, university, office, church or prison! In fact, its publishers believe that if everyone had one ? and really took its contents on board ? then the world would be a better place. Which is why they are sending a free copy to every major business school and FTSE 100 company in the UK. This timely 'amuse-bouche' is a teaser that offers a taste of the forthcoming Management F-Laws: How organisations really work by Russell Ackoff, Herbert Addison & Sally Bibb. The 'Big Book' comprises more than 70 f-Laws. Set to become a modern business classic, it will be published by Triarchy Press on 24 January 2007 to coincide with a rare visit to the UK by Russ Ackoff.

f-Law: The legibility of a male manager?s handwriting is in inverse proportion to his seniority. Female managers are genetically incapable of writing illegibly unless they are physicians.

At age 88, Professor Ackoff has a lifetime's experience to draw on and a unique overview of the development of the organisation throughout the 20th Century. But while age brings wisdom and one or two wrinkles, is it enough to convince today's Young Turks that life in the modern organisation is as f-Lawed as Ackoff and his co-author Herbert Addison would have it? Award-winning management writer and senior executive at the Economist Group Sally Bibb responds with her own choice observations on life in the modern organisation. The result is a pithy and engaged dialogue between three of the most original thinkers in business today across two generations and two continents.

What they are already saying about f-laws:

?The ancient laws of management suck...this unique little book has a go at assessing them, dismissing them and revealing them for what they are ? a hindrance to good business.? - Dan Germain, Head of Creative, innocent drinks

?Wit and wisdom is small doses on the deep rooted abuse of hierarchical power. It takes a Russ Ackoff to unveil myths and illusions of this kind.? - G?ran Carstedt, former President, Volvo and President, IKEA, Europe.

"This book is an instructive gem that should be required reading for anyone in effective management." - Professor Sheldon Rovin, Wharton Business School.

?Profound thoughts in digestible bites. It's easy to read an entertaining, yet full of wisdom. How much better our organisations would be if managers could really learn these lessons!? - Michael C Jackson, Dean, Hull University Business School.

?I recommend that every corporate meeting starts with the collective reading of one f-Law this book is a must.? - Professor Vladimir Sachs, CERAM Sophia-Antopolis.

About The Authors

Russell Ackoff is the Anheuser-Busch Emeritus Professor of Management Science at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has written numerous books on Systems Management, the most recent of which are Beating the System, co-authored with Sheldon Rovin, Re-Designing the Corporation, Ackoff?s Best and Idealized Design, co-authored with Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison. A founding member of the Institute of Management Sciences, his work in consulting and education has involved more than 350 corporations and 75 government agencies in the United States and beyond. Management grandee, he was ranked 26 in the most recent list of the world?s most influential business thinkers.

Herbert Addison was VP/executive editor for Oxford University Press. He has spent his career in book publishing, with the past two decades devoted mainly to publishing books in business and management for practicing managers, business academics, and business students. He is co-author, along with Russell Ackoff and Jason Magidson of Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow's Crisis...Today. He is the author of the business section in the ?New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge? and is a close friend of Russ Ackoff.

Sally Bibb is author of The Stone Age Company and co-author of the award-winning Trust Matters and she is series editor for the ?Truths about Business? series. Sally?s work interests centre on understanding people and organisations and helping them to work more effectively. She has specialised in organisation and executive development for 15 years and has a Masters Degree in organisational change. Sally?s day job is Director, Group Sales Development for the Economist Group. She is based in London with responsibility for UK, Europe, Asia and North America. Her non-work passion is dancing Argentine tango.

A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management is in the shops 20 November 2006 (?5.00, paperback only). Management f-Laws: How organisations really work follows 24 January 2007 (?20.00, paperback), both from Triarchy Press. For more information about F-Laws visit: www.f-laws.com/preview

Special Event

Triarchy Publishing/Management f-Laws: LSE Event Information

Russ Ackoff in Conversation with Sally Bibb: Systems Thinking, Idealized Design and Management f-Laws

A rare occasion to hear Russ Ackoff, doyen of Systems Thinking, in conversation with Sally Bibb, pioneer of organisational change.

Russell L. Ackoff is the Anheuser-Busch Emeritus Professor of Management Science at the University of Pennsylvania. A founding member of the Institute of Management Sciences, his work in consulting and education has involved more than 350 corporations and 75 government agencies in the States and beyond. Management grandee, he was ranked 26 in the recent list of top business brains in the world, in The Times. He has authored 22 books on Systems Management.

Sally Bibb is Director of Group Sales Development for the Economist Group. She has specialised in organisation and executive development for 15 years. She has authored several books on organisational change.

Eugene Sadler-Smith is Director of the Centre for Management Learning & Development at the School of Management, University of Surrey. Eve Mitleton-Kelly is founder and Director of the Complexity Research Programme at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Russ Ackoff in Conversation with Sally Bibb: Systems Thinking, Idealized Design and Management f-Laws is taking place 29 January 2007, 6.30pm at the LSE New Theatre, Public Lecture

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