How F-lawed is your organization?

3 January 2007

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. The key questions are; 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’?

On 24 January 2007, Wharton Emiterus Professor Russell Ackoff – one of the world’s top management thinkers and author of more than 20 titles on Management Systems – will launch his latest book, ‘Management f-Laws: How organisations really work’.

F-laws (or flaws) are truths about the way organisations are run; they provide an insightful guide to management behaviour. The book has been written in conjunction with Herbert Addison and Sally Bibb, a Director at The Economist and graduate of the University of Hull.

To celebrate this launch, Hull University Business School and Triarchy Press have organised a discussion panel event to be held at the School’s state-of-the-art facilities. The event presents a rare opportunity to hear the originator of systems thinking, Professor Ackoff, in conversation with his co-author Sally Bibb. Professor Mike Jackson, Dean of Hull University Business School, will chair the event.

Sally says, ‘This book is about how organisations really work as opposed to how we like to think, or pretend, they work. The depressing thing is that there is more than 40 years between Russ and I and our experience of organisations is remarkably similar. But there is hope - and we give lots of suggestions in the book for what companies can do to change and become more inspiring and successful places.’

Ackoff’s f-Laws has been widely acclaimed as a book that delivers home truths about management techniques. Witty and deliciously ironic, it highlights all that is wrong with organisations today.

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. With her experience of life in the modern organisation, award-winning management writer and senior executive at the Economist Group, Sally Bibb, provides a rather different perspective to Ackoff’s observations. 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 people are saying about f-Laws…

‘The ancient laws of management suck. And in this unique little book, Russ and Sally have a go at assessing them, dismissing them and revealing them for what they are - a hindrance to good business, and something that we can have a good chuckle about.’ Dan Germain – Head of Creative, innocent drinks

‘This book offers profound thoughts in digestible bites. It is easy to read and entertaining, yet full of wisdom. How much better our organisations would be if managers could really learn these lessons!’

Mike Jackson – Professor of Management Systems and Dean of Hull University Business School.

The discussion panel will be held at Hull University’s Business School at 6.30pm and there will be a drinks and light buffet reception from 5.30pm. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Editors Notes

Press are invited to attend the event from 4.30 pm, when speakers will be available for comment.

Professor 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 Idealised 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.

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.

Professor Mike Jackson is Professor of Management Systems and Dean of Hull University Business School. After studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University, he spent 4 years in the civil service before returning to academic life. He has since studied and taught at Lancaster, Warwick, Lincoln and Hull Universities, being appointed a full professor in 1989. Professor Jackson is a past President of the UK Systems Society, the International Federation for Systems Research and the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He has also served on the Council of the Operational Research Society. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Chartered Management Institute, The Cybernetic Society and the Operational Research Society. He is a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi) and an Honorary Professor at the Universidad Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru