[Like all my web articles this is a quick jot-down of ideas, often incomplete, with the intent of updating over time]

Management and leadership are often confused with charismatic, high-profile, hero-style people with larger-than-life abilities that can summon the hearts and minds of their minions. It’s not necessarily the extroverted or the controlling. Nor like me the easy-going reclusive.

Unfortunately, that is not so.

In my 12 years in management I have found the greatest successes to come from good decision making from communicating with stake holders and competitors and often sitting behind a desk and spending time thinking. Effectively executing decisions is another important aspect.

Business that I’d like to see in an airport

• Shoe Shiners
• Masseurs/Physios
• Hair Dressers

Quite a few Latin words and phrases have made their way into the English language with the Catholic Church, legal and medical fields having had the greatest influence.

Here are a few. I will keep adding to this list. Abbreviations are in block brackets [e.g.]

• ad hoc – for this special purpose
• anno domini [a.d.] – in the year of the Lord
• ante meridiem [a.m.] – before midday.
• carpe diem – seize the day
• circa [c.] – about
• curriculum vitae [c.v.] – a summary of a person’s career

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The top-down approach to management is no longer valid. The so called pyramid flow chart with the Managing Director/CEO at the top with his/her many minions in a multitude of levels below whilst still prevalent is flawed.

Is there a better way?

Following are some brief thoughts based on my last ten years in management. Whilst they are random thoughts jotted down on the back of an envelope, I do intend to expand them into a more serious better-constructed paper in the near future.

The pyramid organisational structure may have its purpose in a factory or industrial environment but not with white collar workers.