Poetry of the Boss

Leadership in the workplace is more than a minor genre in business books. For decades, stretching back at least to the 1920swhen “management” began to emerge as a “science,” leadership has been a serious business subject to study, pursue, get a degree in, and apply. (Peter Drucker, for example, began writing on the subject in the late 1930s.)

What workplace leadership should – and shouldn’t – do has changed over the years, much as workplace structures have changed and are still changing. Corporations, for example, approached management in the command-and-control image of the military; consider the origin of “staff” functions we’re so familiar with in organizations today. The military metaphor fit a mass-production economy.

Command-and-control management didn’t inspire much poetry, but it did give birth to a considerable novel of novels.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetSpeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.