Management Wisdom

How many books of wisdom have to be written about good management practices before bad practices actually diminish in the workplace? It seems that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of books and articles readily available to anyone with even a grain of sand's interest in improving their concepts. Especially if the subject(manager) has responsibilities in the medium of the object (workplace or other environment) where motivating people, improving productivity and maintaining high morale is critical to a company's success or survival.

Even so, the same sins appear to be committed time and again both in the macro sense of high level strategic direction and corporate survival as well as in the trenches of middle management where direct interaction with individual contributors is most important. Why is this? Lack of fundamental ability or skills? Ignorance? Lack of a desire to learn? Hubris?

Two books that are very interesting on this topic include: "The Ten Commandments for Business Failure" by Donald R. Keough and, of course, "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. These two books explore good and bad habits for steering companies at the executive level and at the middle management level respectively.

The DeMarco book is especially applicable to the software development arena, where my primary interest lies. Keough was a C-level executive for Coca-Cola for many years and offers very interesting insights into corporate management techniques.