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Summary
Summary
Reveals how to immediately improve profits with over 100 innovative profit building ideas
We all want to be in control-of our jobs, our relationships, our lives. However, the autocratic behaviors stemming from our desire for control are proving less and less effective in today's more participative organizational cultures.
In Memoirs of a Recovering Autocrat, Richard Hallstein speaks to all of us. Through revealing anecdotes and personal examples, he helps us see the many ways in which we manifest our constant struggle for control and thereby make our work and our lives more difficult for ourselves and those around us. And he offers practical help for learning more participative styles of managing and living a more joyous and satisfying life, both personal and professional.
Written with an intimacy rare in business books, the twenty-one vignettes in this enlightening and entertaining confession evoke twinges of recognition in all of us. Through Richard Hallstein's experiences, we recognize our own autocratic behaviors-encouraging competition instead of collaboration; demanding perfection from ourselves and others; hanging on to power instead of sharing it; even surrounding ourselves with people just like ourselves in order to avoid conflict. His prescription for overcoming the autocrat within us not only creates new possibilities for getting a job done, but releases us from having to know everything, do everything, and control everything.
Author Notes
Richard W. Hallstein is CEO of McLagan International, a management consulting and training firm. His previous career included 23 years' experience as a senior executive in line management, strategic planning, and human resources. He is the author of Memoirs of a Recovering Autocrat.
Reviews 2
Publisher's Weekly Review
The CEO of McLagen International, a management training and consulting firm, Hallstein explores the place of autocracy in today's workplace and finds that it is doomed as a style of management. Instead, he argues, in our diverse society a ``participative'' philosophy is required in order to create a ``nourishing and supportive community'' with ``dramatic new ways of engaging with others at work and outside work.'' Hallstein's analysis of the weaknesses of ``command and control'' tactics and his personal thoughts, notably on incompetence, competition and collaboration, are enlightening. Ironically, however, he does not satisfactorily answer the questions he raises about what kinds of management practices will work and how. Overall, this work is jagged and often falls short of the mark. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
In today's complex, rapidly changing business environment, managers are confronted with the need to change their behavior fundamentally, facing an Indiana Jones-like leap of faith into the unknown without any visible means of support. Hallstein's testimony of his own agony is based on personal management experience. Although revealing, this account of his crossover into 12-step recovery methods and other personal self-help ideas offer little practical, concrete help. Hallstein nicely summarizes the present state of flux, but readers should look to Jack Hawley's Reawakening the Spirit in Work ( LJ 5/15/93) to address this issue more fully and Peter Block's Stewardship ( LJ 6/15/93) to explain soundly what will replace the autocratic directing and controlling management style that is no longer relevant in today's harried business world.-- Dale Farris, Groves, Tex. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
