{"id":102172,"date":"2026-07-30T01:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=102172"},"modified":"2026-07-29T09:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:10:08","slug":"qotd-the-three-most-important-books-on-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/07\/30\/qotd-the-three-most-important-books-on-management\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The three most important books on management"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There are three management books — and only three — that need to be read. They also need to be read by everyone. The Peter Principle<\/em>, Up the Organisation<\/em> and Parkinson’s Law<\/em>. Which state, in reverse order, that bureaucracies will always grow until they eat the organisation, that management’s proper job is preventing them from ever starting and that if they’re there then you promote them out of the way. In our case, in this grassroots political movement which is the Hang the Lanyards Party, promote them to transcendence and their eternal rewards. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This is also what needs to be done with every bureaucracy from time to time. Those management books insist — nay prove — that every organisation always ends up like this. For the driving force of any organisation is the survival of the organisation. To be, not to do, is the aim.<\/p>\n

Yes, this does apply to private sector ones but we’ve a natural corrective for those. Other organisations which arrive and not yet having created an all encompassing bureaucracy they outcompete them. So the old bureaucracies die, the new ones grow until they too start hiring power skirts and the decay sets in.<\/p>\n

A government bureaucracy does not have that outside force culling it when its time has come. Therefore we must be the merciful farmer taking them out given that we’ve killed off the wolves that thin the herd of the old and lame.<\/p>\n

As we can see 65 years is long enough for such a bureaucracy to reach this stage. Rather Brave New World<\/em> in fact as that was the age at which all reported to be turned off.<\/p>\n

So, every bureaucracy, every department, gets closed after 60 to 65 years. Some sooner, just to keep people on their toes. Yes, every. Say, the Department of Education. Or of Defence. Once we’ve killed it and fired everyone just leave be for a few years. If we still have some problems that really do need to be dealt with we can always hire a few, give ’em a corner of a desk somewhere, and we get the vigour and growth of a new organisation actually trying to solve things.<\/p>\n

Until, obviously, the arrival of power skirts and the renewal process starts again. <\/p>\n

Tim Worstall, “Closing US AID is What We Should Do To All Government”, It’s all obvious or trivial except …<\/em><\/a>, 2026-04-29.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are three management books — and only three — that need to be read. They also need to be read by everyone. The Peter Principle, Up the Organisation and Parkinson’s Law. Which state, in reverse order, that bureaucracies will always grow until they eat the organisation, that management’s proper job is preventing them from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,8,831,84,41],"tags":[261,326,1574],"class_list":["post-102172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-government","category-quotations","tag-management","tag-parkinsonslaw","tag-technocracy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qzW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102172"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103935,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102172\/revisions\/103935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}