Ackoff's F/laws: The Cards
Russell L. Ackoff   

Hierarchy: A cartoon by Russ Ackoff

Russ Ackoff’s witty and subversive "F/laws of Management" have become well known around the world and are regularly recommended as an introduction to his thinking. They cover areas like leadership, teams, hierarchy, creativity and innovation, motivation and management. (All of the F/laws appear in the orange covered book on the right: The Cake).

As he was writing, he illustrated a number of them with his inimitable cartoons. We've turned some of them into postcard-sized cards (well postcards) and you can buy them in packs of 5 for those occasions when a post-it note or an email won't do and you'd like something more tangible to get your message across to a colleague or friend. 

The cartoons are on the usual themes of hierarchy, bureaucracy, leadership, office politics, communication and so on.

Some of the cartoons are illustrated here - each pack contains 5 different cards (not all shown here) and costs £4 plus postage (so do buy a book to go with them to keep the postage costs in proportion!)

Buy the cards (they come in packs of 5, all different)

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Russell Ackoff, who died in 2009, was one of the world's leading business thinkers and one of the founding fathers of Systems Thinking. 
Read more about his life here

Also by Russ Ackoff:

List Price: £35.00  ~ Offer price: £17.50
Hardback ~ 156 pages

All 122 of Russ Ackoff's F/laws challenge a received wisdom about management and will get you thinking about the realities of work and organisations: what really motivates managers, why companies are run the way they are, what  PR is really trying to do.

As Ackoff himself says:
"Over time I have become aware of some very important truths about the practice of management. 

These simple management truths are much more important than the fundamental, but complex, truths revealed by scientists, economists, politicians, or philosophers. The truths these wise thinkers reveal are at most frosting on the cake. The truths presented here are the cake."

Hence the title! Read more about The Cake or...

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Buy the eBook:

Buy the ePub version for PC/Mac/Smartphone/Tablet/iPad
Buy Kindle versions: 
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
List Price: £18.00  ~ Offer: £14.00
Paperback ~ 96 pages

Featuring 40 of Ackoff's F/laws, this little book also includes an extended essay written by Andrew Carey (edited and approved by Ackoff) which introduces Ackoff's approach to Systems Thinking and ties it in to his collection of f-LAWS. For anyone new to Ackoff's work or Systems Thinking in organisations, this is the ideal starting point. Sections cover:

Systems Thinking in the Crossfire ~ The Feedback Loop ~ Tropisms ~ Self-Organisation ~ Equifinality
Change ~ Interconnectedness ~ Events vs Systems ~ Mess ~ Parts vs the Whole ~ Failure to Learn
Analysis vs Synthesis ~ People

Read more about Curious Managers or...

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E-book version: Epub 
Kindle versions: 
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com