Management Lessons from the Great Explorers

by Ralph L. Kliem

The early explorers up through those of the early part of the last century were the supreme users of management practices that have been formalized today. Their expeditions had all the characteristics of a business goal setting, strategizing, applying finite resources, risk-taking, keeping people, dealing with competitors, and many others. During actual expeditions, the leaders faced many risks, issues, and conflicts that challenge the best leaders today, from small to large enterprises. Like all projects and business ventures, the expeditions met their goal, either partially or entirely, and in some cases even exceeded it or failed it completely. Management Lessons from the Great Explorers selects the most famous, and in some cases infamous, explorers to discuss and analyze the good and bad management practices―even though these explorers may have never called them management practices―they used before, during, and even after their expeditions. Each chapter provides historical background about one explorer and the details about their explorations. The chapters then discuss the challenges the explorers faced when planning and executing their expeditions and examine their successes and failures from a management perspective. The book will help managers to The final chapter gives lessons learned that managers may take from the book and apply to their own business undertakings. These lessons include

152 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2022

Reviews

[Jester · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kliem had a good idea to bridge the topics of world exploration and project management. As a PMP, he may have been trying to bring together two of his interests, on which he likely has a good grasp. However, this book cannot be the result he wanted.

Kliem dedicates twelve chapters to providing background and lessons learned from twelve explorers. Chapter 1 is on George Vancouver and starts with, "James Cook is considered by many historians as one of the greatest explorers of England, if not the world." Should we be familiar with James Cook? Cook is the subject of Chapter 7. Should he be Chapter 1 so that we know Cook before learning about his protege, Vancouver? Another unfortunate mistake on page 1 is Kliem's reference to "indigent peoples" when he surely meant indigenous. I am also led to believe that Vancouver was on HMS Chatham and HMS Chatman (pgs 6-7). This book needed an editor.

The second paragraph of Chapter 2 tells us that Chistopher Columbus was a visionary. In four sentences, we are told three times. If the message is going to be monotonous, then perhaps vary the vocabulary. Unfortunately, the style does not improve as the book progresses.

What Kliem did well was provide background for a given explorer, describe some of their expeditions, then provide lessons. The lessons have a bulleted list followed by a paragraph for each bullet. The structure is strong, but the execution is flawed.