Dec 21 2007
The Mao of management
The Economist has an interested piece on Mao and management. In the same spirit as Machiavelli, Chanakya and others, this article describes Mao as a management role model of sorts. It outlines four strategies from Mao’s turbulent political lifetime for executives who are finding it difficult to get their message across and be considered ’successful’ managers.
1. Have a powerful, mendacious slogan (”Serve the people”) - how many modern corporations can claim to have a 3 word slogan?
2. Do ruthless media manipulation - A clear message, hammered relentlessly often overrides inconvenient truths
3. Sacrifice your friends and colleagues - the objective evaluation of performance
4. Substitute activity for achievement - Do more things (more emails, project plans, visions, groups and committees….) and bail out before the results of these random activities start manifesting
