Developing Leaders in a Business

In his book The Will to Lead, Marvin Bower urges senior managers to abandon command-and-control structures and adopt a program to develop leaders, starting with themselves. In this excerpt, he explores the attributes of leadership.

Editor’s Note: for someone of the author’s experience and reputation, I expected more from this piece. I am not saying there isn’t anything of value, but much of it is … [ Read more ]

Company Philosophy: ‘The Way We Do Things Around Here’

In this adaptation of a chapter from The Will to Manage (1966), by the late McKinsey managing director Marvin Bower, the author writes that a company’s philosophy evolves as a set of rules or guidelines that gradually become established, through trial and error or through leadership, as expected patterns of behavior. Bower, who died in January 2003, explores five such basic beliefs found in the … [ Read more ]

Organization: Helping People Pull Together

In even the largest and best-managed companies, hundreds of organizational muddles take place every day. Throughout the economy, they add up to a staggering waste of our national resources.

Editor’s note: This article comes from the fifth chapter of Marvin Bower’s 1966 book, The Will to Manage. It is interesting how timeless the analysis is…