Philippe Graff, the founder of Switzerland-based international company Dynargie, recommends the members of our club to read a couple of books which he wrote.
1. What book will you recommend for our club members?
The first book that I wrote is called Win-Win-Win Management. I think everybody has heard about win-win management - it's the concept when you try to have two winners instead of making one winner and one looser. Because if you're making one winner and one looser you're frustrating the looser and the thing will not stop there, he will probably try to revenge. We have a very good example - the Second World War - people were expecting the fact that Germany had been humiliating at Versaille when they were putting them at the First World War, and because of this win-loose is not a good idea. In our company opinion there're three entities that must win and this is shown by the three circles here. The first entity that must win is the company itself because we're together to make the company successful. The second entity that must win is the management, they're giving a lot of themselves, they're investing a lot of their time, so they must win. And the third party is the staff members. For us a good manager is someone who understands this and who tries to make this overlapping of these three circles as big as possible, always keeping in mind the interest of the company, his own interest and the interest of his people. You have to understand it, you have to know the company policy. This is the win-win-win concept and you should manage this way.
2. What is your second book?
The second book is about managing your team in the best possible way, and it's called Peak Performance. We believe that the companies that have the highest chance to be successful are the companies that practice the teamwork. In this book which is aimed to people who manage the teams I wrote twelve chapters of the most important things to keep in mind when you manage a team in order to have a peak performing team. I'm not going to develop all the points there, but it's easy to read. Yesterday I had a conversation with a Russia friend of mine, and I told him that he can read this book in the plane between Geneva and Moscow. But he answered that he could read it in a taxi between the one part of Moscow and the other part of Moscow. But I really recommend it to people who want to have a peak performing team.
