Welcome to Dragon Slaying
Dragon Slaying is Mark Woods’ long awaited book which introduces a practical theory of management based on both the need to understand the ‘trade-offs’ necessary to attain optimum performance and four fundamental principles, arguably irrefutable laws, of management:
• Understanding an organisation as a network of connected parts
• Understanding people and why they behave as they do
• Understanding variation; a real understanding of the key performance indicators and their predictive abilities
• Understanding how an organisation learns and improves
These four principles are inextricably interlinked and, as in any system, the strength of the whole rests not in the strength of the individual principles but in the strength of the relationships and the interactions between them.
Mark is a practitioner so the book is practical, easy to read and packed with examples that explode a number of management myths. The benefits in adopting the philosophy, ideas and approach set out in Dragon Slaying are:
• You will have a clear and concise understanding of how your organisation adds and delivers value to clients, customers or stakeholders and of your key interactions necessary to do so
• You will have directly aligned your people’s efforts to how the organisation adds value
• Your organisation will have more tolerance/compassion and less stress, and your people will make better decisions as measurement systems are used to predict future performance
• Your people will be able to demonstrate that a change has resulted in a real improvement
• You will develop an organisation in which everyone’s efforts result in:
- Improved performance
- Less stress
- Improved profit
The book is practical, easy to read and packed with examples that explode a number of management myths. The benefits in adopting the philosophy, ideas and approach set out in Dragon Slaying are:
• Better strategies;
• Better systems;
• Better measurement; and
• Engaged people delivering better results
Dragon Slaying can be ordered on-line by following the links below
Mark is already planning the second edition which will include separate chapters with detailed organisation by organisation case studies. So, as it says in the book, “don’t just be a passive reader, engage with us and become part of the story” and one of the case studies in the second edition could be yours.
Mark can be contacted on 07976 426 286 or, by email, at mwoods@statius.uk.com