I've just been briefly reading a book by former Harvard Business Review editors Joan Magretta and Nan Stone, What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business, which offers some interesting insights into management and thought I would share a few key points with you that may offer you food for thought:

• The human ability to manage is to organise purposefully.

• 'Dealing effectively with change requires a clear understanding of what does not change.'

• ‘...companies have confused the measurement of shareholder value (i.e. today’s stock price) with the actual creation of it. Shareholder value is a result, not a goal.’

• ‘Matching an organisation’s measures to its mission is one of management’s most difficult and creative challenges.’

• ‘Long term performance is impossible without the right values.'

• ‘Management’s real genius is turning complexity and specialisation into performance. As the world economy becomes increasingly knowledge based and global, work will continue to grow more specialised and complex, not less. So management will play a larger role in our lives, not a smaller one.’

• ‘The more highly educated and specialised we become, the more we need other people to perform... We think we live in worlds of our own and can contribute as individuals, but this is only possible because some form of organisation makes the specialised work we do productive.