Management gurus

Management gurus are influential teachers, educators, and even mentors on such topics as global business, human resources, and productivity. They study a company’s operations and recommend improvements in such things as customer relations / satisfaction, management practices, organizational structure, employee / labor relations, etc. Management gurus share their knowledge and expertise through writing books, consulting, speaking at conferences, and teaching workshops. Following are some of the top management gurus in the United States.

Kenneth Blanchard

Dr. Kenneth Blanchard is a business writer, consultant, and cofounder of the Ken Blanchard Companies of Escondido, California. He has made many contributions in the field of human resources development and formulated the situation leadership model and several management styles. Blanchard is most famous for coauthoring the book The One Minute Manager (1981). This book shows how managers can set goals and give feedback to employees with advice such as “Everyone is a winner” and “Catch someone doing something right.” The book states that one should look at the goals set and then look at performance to see if performance matches goals. Managers should praise employees for what they are doing right and, if they are doing something wrong, tell them how to fix it and reaffirm them. Kenneth Blanchard also coauthored Management of Organization Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (1969).

Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey is a lecturer, author, and founder of the Covey Leadership Center in Provo, Utah. He focuses on subjects including leadership and personal and organizational effectiveness. He has a unique style of personaldevelopment teaching that involves promoting individual development, discipline, and self-control, and he challenges organizations to treat their employees more holistically as a way to achieve greater productivity. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) Covey states:
1. Be proactive. Be responsible and take the initiative.
2. Begin with the end in mind. When you start anything such as a day at the office or a meeting, make a mental image of an outcome that conforms to your values.
3. Put first things first. Discipline yourself to subordinate your feelings, moods, etc.
4. Think win/win.
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Listen with the intent to empathize, not with intent to reply.
6. Synergize. Create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
7. Sharpen the saw. Engage one’s mental, emotional, physical and spiritual capabilities.
Stephen Covey is also the author of How to Succeed with People (1971); Principle-Centered Leadership (1991); and Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People (1994).

W. Edward Deming

Deming (1900–93) was a mathematical physicist, a teacher, and a management consultant. He had a significant impact on business managers, first in Japan and then in the United States. He was an advocate of quality control methods and industrial production. Deming’s 14 points, referred to as “A System of Profound Knowledge,” are a basis for transformation for industry. They can apply to small and large organizations, to the service industry as well as to the manufacturing. Deming brought together ideas from many sources and emphasized the importance of human factors in achieving excellence and the importance of continuous improvement. Deming also wrote Out of the Crisis (1986).

Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker is a management consultant, economist, author, and teacher specializing in strategy and policy for businesses and nonprofit organizations and in the work and organization of senior management. One of the most influential writers and speakers on organization and management, Drucker thinks management is an important component to all organizations in society. The Essential Drucker (2001) summarizes key points from Drucker’s works from 1954 to 1999. It covers such topics as management in the organization, society and management, and management and the individual. Highlights of Drucker’s thoughts on management include:

Management is about human beings. It makes people capable of making their weaknesses irrelevant and their strengths effectual—this is what an organization is about and what makes management important.
Management is a part of culture. It deals with uniting people in a common venture.
An enterprise or business does not exist unless there is a commitment to common goals and shared values.
training and development must be ongoing for businesses and enterprises so that their members can grow as needs and opportunities change.
Every business or enterprise should be built on individual responsibility and communication amongst its members.
In addition to the amount of output and the bottom line, productivity, market standing, development of people, and good financial results are important to an organization’s performance and survival.
One of the most important results of a business is a satisfied customer. Other books by Peter F. Drucker include
The Concepts of the Corporation (1946, rev. 1972)
The New Society: The Anatomy of the Industrial Order (1950)
The Practice of Management (1954)
The Effective Executive (1967)
Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1990)
The Executive in Action (1996)

Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt is an Israeli physicist, business consultant and chairman of the Goldratt Institute in New Haven, Connecticut. He is a recognized leader in developing new management concepts and systems. One of Goldratt’s most famous philosophies is the theory of constraints (TOC). It argues that every organization has something (a constraint) that is preventing it from making bigger profits. Examples of constraints could be a machine that is working inadequately or employees that aren’t directed well. If the constraint is removed, production rates are increased, which can help increase profits. TOC also focuses on the importance of time, or throughput, which is the rate at which a system generates money. If time is reduced and a company’s product can be manufactured quicker, that means faster throughput and increased revenues. Other books by Eliyahu Goldratt include

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (1986)
The Race (1986)
The Haystack Syndrome: Sifting Information Out of the Data Ocean (1990)
An Introduction to the Theory of Constraints: The Production Approach; Workshop Description (1992)

Dr. Michael Hammer

Dr. Hammer is a management consultant, author, lecturer, former MIT computer science professor, and president of Hammer and Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the originator of the business concept called “reengineering,” which in the 1990s encouraged many companies to restructure themselves. Reengineering is the redesign of a company’s important business processes after thorough analysis. It achieves substantial performance improvements in quality, service, speed, and cost and enables the company to better meet the demands of the economy. In his 2001 book, The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade. Hammer presents these core principles:
1. Make your company easy to do business with.
2. Provide more added value for your customers.
3. Obsess about your company’s process in order to achieve high performance for your customers.
4. Turn innovative work into process work.
5. Use measurement for improving, not accounting.
6. Loosen up the structure of your organization.
7. Sell through your distribution channels.
8. Push past boundaries in the pursuit of efficiency.
9. Lose your identity in an extended enterprise.
Other books by Dr. Michael Hammer include

Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (1993)
The Reengineering Revolution: A Handbook (1995)
Beyond Reengineering: How the Processed-Center Organization is Changing Our Work and Lives (1996)
The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade (2001)

Tom Peters

Tom Peters is a management consultant, author, and lecturer. He founded the Tom Peters Company in California in the early 1980s. His books focus on successful corporate practices. In his book In Search of Excellence (1982), Peters discusses eight principles for companies to stay on top:
1. a bias for action—a preference for doing something
2. staying close to the customers—knowing what they prefer and catering to them
3. entrepreneurship and autonomy—separating the corporation into smaller companies encourages them to be competitive and independent
4. productivity through people—telling employees how essential their best efforts are and how they’ll share the rewards of the company’s success
5. hands-on value-driven—demanding that management keeps in touch with the firm’s essential business
6. stick to the knitting—the company should stick with the business it knows best
7. simple form, lean stuff—there should be few administrative layers and only a small number of people at upper levels
8. simultaneous loose-tight properties—fostering a climate where there is dedication to the central values of the company combined with the tolerance for all employees who accept these values
Tom Peters also wrote A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference (1985).