VMPL
Frankfurt [Germany], October 10: There is a curious scene on the cover of a business book displayed at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. One man appears bound by management maxims. Another seems to have broken free. Between them stands a prism, splitting conventional wisdom into a spectrum of possibilities.
And then there’s the title: Maxim(um) Management.
At first, nothing unusual. Until the two letters in parentheses begin to bother you. Remove “(um)” and it becomes Maxim Management. Restore them and it reads Maximum Management. A clever typographical trick, perhaps. But the distinction raises a question far more interesting than the wordplay itself.
Have we confused management by maxims with maximum management?
Indian author Hitesh Ahuja appears to think the distinction deserves an entire book.
“Work smarter, not harder.” “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Such expressions have travelled through generations of workplaces, acquiring the authority of accepted wisdom. But what happens when circumstances change? Can the same advice be brilliant in one situation and disastrous in another?
Rather than dismissing these maxims or replacing them with new commandments, Ahuja puts them on trial.
And he chooses an unusual courtroom: stories.
Eighty contrasting narratives, drawn from mythology, history, science, business, sport and philosophy, explore ten familiar maxims. Written with an almost novel-like approach, they challenge assumptions without rushing to deliver a moral. The reader is left to wrestle with the dilemmas before the book reveals its next surprise.
Decision matrices.
The stories are followed by structured decision matrices that examine circumstances, competing priorities and trade-offs. The proposition is intriguing: stories that challenge conventional thinking, followed by first-principles reasoning that helps leaders exercise their own judgment.
“Maxims are not the villains of this book. They often contain hard-won wisdom. The danger begins when we use them to avoid thinking rather than to improve our thinking,” says Ahuja.
An architect, entrepreneur and Indian School of Business alumnus, Ahuja brings over 25 years of multidisciplinary business and leadership experience to the subject.
Published by NuVoice Press, with distribution by Penguin Random House India, the pre-publication copy is being showcased at Hall 4.2, Stand D31, during the October 7–11 Frankfurt Book Fair.
For a genre crowded with promises of smarter, faster and more successful management, this is an unusual proposition. A book that uses stories not to preach, but to breach the dogmatic walls of conventional thinking.
For information and publication updates: https://hitopedesh.com/maximum-management
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