Management books

I asked a friend for suggestion on management books. He suggested a couple and then made a rather cryptic comment on the authors.. There are two types of management gurus - one who talk generic stuff and quote anecdotes but have actually never been in a company and "applied" their theories and the other are former CEO's, CFO's who relate their experiences and talk of actual scenarios and how they dealt with it.

The person that I am, I decided to explore both types and bought a book in each of the above genre's - Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Straight from the gut by Jack Welch.

Since the first book got delivered earlier, I started off with it. I have been unable to proceed beyond the first 50 pages without stifling a good number of yawns.. but I am still trying to get past it hoping the next page will be more interesting!!

They say never judge a book by the cover.. Similarly, never judge a book by its first few pages too!! Some of the best books that I have ever read - Ayn Rand's Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged are quite a bore for the first few(600!!) pages.. But once you get past them... its one of the most beautiful books that one can ever find. I have actually went down and re-read all those so called boring pages and understood their actual worth the second time round...


Getting back to management books.. why am I reading them? Thats a question for which I don't have a clear answer.. part of it is to fuel my MBA ambitions, part of it to understand how companies actually work and make decisions and part of it to learn small nuggets that may help me at work. I have realized that by far, the most difficult job is to make others work for you.

So, hopefully the above two books should help me in some manner atleast :)