Buy this book at: Amazon Amazon: German translation Barnes and Noble
Since 2003, Dr. Antonella Mei-Pochtler has authored a series of highly successful and original columns on management in the leading Austrian daily, Der Standard. This volume presents a selection of these columns—in German and English.
From contemporary events and personal experience, Mei-Pochtler distills essential—and timeless—management topics in succinct form: strategy and leadership, organization and corporate culture, creativity and innovation.
As business expert and BCG brand guru, Mei-Pochtler allows herself the luxury of stretching the boundaries of "business" to all areas of life. She translates significant trends into facts and figures and questions them with regard to positive implications for concrete action.
The format of the book deliberately crosses boundaries, blending words and images, rationality and emotions, logic and intuition. Here, images function as more than just the usual ornamentation or editorial accessories; like the text, they are meant to provoke and inspire.
The book refuses to conform to any category: business topics in a coffee-table book, art book with management insight. It addresses the business-inclined reader, who—like many managers—among the flood of dryly factual, analytical information, appreciates the contrast of creativity and artistry all the more.
By Andrew Gowers
Former Editor-in-Chief, Financial Times
One of the irritating facts of life facing people in business and those who comment on business alike is the sheer volume of reading matter that is showered on them from all directions. "Management books" are among the most voluminous parts of this barrage—and I can report from experience that a large majority of what appears under that rubric is poorly argued, obscurely written, or disappointingly superficial.
How refreshing, then, to find a business book that suffers none of these defects. Acupuncture for Management is what its title suggests: a collection of sharp, well-targeted insights designed to make business better, in every sense of the word. Its unconventional presentation, accompanied with arresting and attractive pictures, also helps to make it unusually readable.
Antonella Mei-Pochtler, one of Germany's best-known and best-connected management consultants, brings to the exercise a lifetime of experience observing German and international business at close quarters—and a large degree of human wisdom.
We thus find the book ranging more widely than most—from the art and psychology of leadership through corporate social responsibility to the way the Internet is reshaping our world; from the future of Europe and the rise of China to the role of women in management and the lessons that football can teach us about how to run a business.
It is a book that stands well back from the fads, fashions, and monolithic formulae of management theory and focuses instead on practical business basics. Each essay comes packed with practical guidelines for action and nuggets of good sense. The message is: focus on benchmarking, shareholder value, or what you will, but don't forget that the secret of sustained business success is exercising judgment not just on one criterion but on a large and diverse combination of factors.
In other words, it is the art of managing contradictions: between strategy and execution, discipline and creativity, large organizations and entrepreneurial individuals. Mei-Pochtler's book will give anyone with an interest in business beyond the next quarter's bottom line stimulating insights on these big themes and much else besides.
Foreword
- Andrew Gowers, Former Editor-in-Chief, Financial Times
- Prof. Dr. Bolko von Oetinger, Senior Partner & Managing Director, The Boston Consulting Group
As Prelude: Countering the Tone of Doom and Gloom
Strategy & Action
- Pleading for Strategy
- Of Hawks and Doves
- A Choice of Values
- Currency Crisis-Currency War?
- David as Goliath
- A Christmas Story
- The Secrets of the Phoenix
- Just like Scrooge McDuck
Organization & Diversity
- Jazz vs. Symphony
- Winning à la Alinghi
- Porsche Wins-Nevertheless
- Hominis est errare ...
- Marriage Fever
- The Tyranny of Chance
- System Error
- Farewell to the Corporation?
Leadership & Happiness
- A "How-to" Guide to Being Happy
- Escaping the Curse of Narcissism
- The (Rationality-)Revolution
- The Power of Love
- Freud for Managers
- Football Superstar
- Out of Austria
- Goodbye, Gurus?
Competition & Responsibility
- Prosperity for the Many
- Countering the Plague
- Liberalization "Oblige"
- The War of Images
- The African Patient
- Of Bankruptcies, Breakdowns, and Bookkeeping
- Blown Trust
- Too Much of a Good Thing?
- Revolt of the Excluded
Performance & Creativity
- (Creative) Class instead of Mass
- Poor Alma (Mater)
- Let's Stay Childish
- Predictable Heroes
- How Much Service Will Serve Us?
- Where Have All the Women Gone?
- Fast Food for the Brain
- The Wellsprings of Innovation
Growth & Identity
- High Flyer China
- Europe's Future Looks Old
- The Car as Global Driving Force
- Europe–a Midsummer Night's (Bad) Dream?
- No Kids? No Future!
- I Google–Do You?
- Reform Wind from the East
- In Search of Soul
- Modern for All Eternity
- Very Healthy Prospects
Finally: A Prayer
Acknowledgements
Sources of Inspiration
Dr. Antonella Mei-Pochtler is a senior partner & managing director of The Boston Consulting Group with a focus on branding, media, and consumer goods. The power of uncompromising and creative strategies that go beyond apparent contradictions is at the core of her work with international corporations. She advocates for entrepreneurial thinking and action based on a strong belief in personal accountability and individual initiative.
Born and raised in Rome, she learned at an early age to live with cultural contrasts and make productive use of them. After obtaining her university entrance qualifications at the German School in Rome, she studied economics and business administration at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and the Università degli Studi in Rome; she holds an M.B.A., with the Dean's List Award, from INSEAD in Fontainebleau. She gained her first professional experience in Munich and New York. In 1992 she was awarded the Forbes Prize as best young professional of the year.
Antonella has been partner at The Boston Consulting Group since 1990 and a senior partner since 1998. She mainly works with companies from the consumer goods, retail, and media industries, in the development and implementation of strategic and organizational issues.
True to her belief that creativity requires diversity, she took on many functions in various areas of BCG at a very early stage in her career. She cofounded the Consumer & Retail, Pulp & Paper, and Media & Convergence practice areas, and subsequently helped to successfully build the Branding topic area, as well as the BCG office in Vienna.
Today she holds worldwide responsibility for the Brand Management topic area and is the initiator of the Brand Club, an informal association of leading-brand companies. As a member of the European Management Team at BCG, she is also responsible for overall European marketing activities.
Entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, and personal responsibility are the characteristics that typify her commitment outside of her outside of her work as a consultant and author. Antonella is a coinitiator of business@school, which was awarded the German Freedom and Responsibility prize in 2002. She also leads other BCG social-impact initiatives including BCG's work with the German Bone Marrow Donor Center(DKMS) and Europe's 500 Entrepreneurs for Growth, the European association of fast-growing companies.
Antonella Mei-Pochtler lives with her husband and her three daughters in Vienna.
Since 2003, Dr. Antonella Mei-Pochtler's column has been appearing biweekly in the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard.
