Looking for a good management book

[RipCurl]

I'm in an airline management class, and I have an assignment for what basically amounts to a book report for some sort of management book. I'm currently looking for a book to use.

"The book you select should cover some facet of management. While the book itself need not specifically pertain to airline management, you should apply the book’s major ideas to airline management in your analysis."

I was thinking about doing Iacocca, as it's the only one I can think of, but I'd reather do one that pertains to our industry. Any ideas? Thanks for the help.

 

[pilotyip]

Look for "Duh!, Lessons that every business should learn from the world’s best and worst managed airlines” by David Forward. "Nuts" a classic about SWA, and "flying high" about Jet Blue by James Wynbrandt. The Fortune Magazine from Jan-31 this year has an article about SWA being one of the best companies to work for. In addition, you can see if you can find old issues of ATW the Airline Management Magazine. Hope this helps.

 

[enigma]

The Fortune Magazine from Jan-31 this year has an article about SWA being one of the best companies to work for. In addition, you can see if you can find old issues of ATW the Airline Management Magazine. Hope this helps.

And they don't even require a bachelors degree. Just giving credit where credit's due

enigma

 

[pilotyip]

Point well taken

Exactly; SWA is a smart company does let the possession of a 4-yr degee get in the way of hiring the right guy.

 

[ifly4food]

"From Worst to First, behind the scenes of Continental's remarkable comeback", by Gordon Bethune. The story of turning around Continental airlines. A must read if you've never seen it.

 

[AcroChik]

Ernest Shackleton, The Heart Of The Antarctic

I would like to offer what may seem at first to be an unusual suggestion. That is, that you not grab from the list of usual suspects a traditional management textbook or the puffed-up (auto)biography of one of the great industrialists or financiers of modern America. Instead, I recommend the book in the title-line, above.

If you haven't heard of him, Ernest Shackleton commanded what may be the most famous exploratory expedition ever mounted to the Antarctic, famous not only because everything that might have gone wrong did, but after, literally, years of horrific conditions, near starvation and illness, every man on the journey was safely rescued.

The story of how Shackleton led his men, managed resources, held the team together, has every challenge business enterprises face in competing for survival, except they are lived at ground level in an environment determined to exterminate the inhabitants, not in the plush confines of a deluxe office suite.

The life or death of the enterprise depended, quite literally, on the quality of each and every management decision made.

There are some amazing photographs in the book. The story of how the glass photographic plates themselves were recovered (diving naked into ice-encrusted Antarctic water) so that the lives, or probable deaths, of the crew could be recorded, is in itself a "chilling" read.

The story includes a 3,000-mile sail across the Southern Ocean through seas with 60-foot waves in a small open boat. Navigation was by sextant and dead reckoning ~ a crossing still considered to be the greatest feat of ocean navigation in history.

This was followed immediately by a crossing of glaciated mountain ranges without technical climbing gear to a whaling station from which a ship could be dispatched to save the rest of the crew, who huddled exposed on a rock shore for many months.

On the downside, this is an older book and the writing style, until the story grips you (it will), may seem a bit stilted.

On the same topic, Alfred Lansing's Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, is a bit shorter, in slightly easier language, novelistic in structure (but still totally accurate).

Here are links to the books:

By Shackleton:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786706848/qid=1108142397/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0128042-2939227?v=glance&s=books

By Lansing:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/078670621X/qid=1108142467/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-0128042-2939227?v=glance&s=books

As an older man, Ernest Shackleton returned to the Antarctic, where he died and was buried. I've just recently stood at his grave.

 

[SDF2BUF2MCO]

To compliment your aviation management library, I suggest reading the cartoon Dilbert by Scott Adams. Think he also has a book coming out in the early summer. While it is satire it also has a lot of truth to it.

 

[80/20]

As AeroChik says there are lots of good practical real life books out there that are not directly related to aviation. Sounds as if you are looking for something directly related to specific airline topics, you might want to take a closer look at these:

Airline Marketing and Management, Stephen Shaw
Straight and Level, Practical Airline Economics, Stephen Holloway
Simply Flying - Optimizing the Airline Business Model, Nawal K. & T Taneja
Cleared for Take-Off Structure and Strategy in the Low Fare Airline Business, Thomas C. Lawton
Airlines: Managing to Make Money, Stephen Holloway
Buying the Big Jets Fleet Planning for Airlines, Paul Clark
Changing Planes: A Strategic Management Perspective on an Industry in Transition, Stephen Holloway

 

[mar]

In that case...

As AeroChik says there are lots of good practical real life books out there that are not directly related to aviation.

...I recommend one of the classics: The Prince by Niccolo' Machiavelli.

 

[LearLove]

Playboy or Hustler