Will Manley promotes “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as the ultimate management book in the column “Tom Sawyer and the Art of Good Management” in the July issue of Booklist Magazine. (sadly the current issue is not online yet) He says, “I routinely give Tom Sawyer to my new managers and tell them to throw away their management textbooks.”

Tom re-frames the “work” of white-washing a large fence as “creative play” to convince others to do what needs to be done. It’s difficult for those who have been trained to have a strong work ethic to understand how productive his laziness is. The job of a manager is not to do the job, it is to dream up ways to motivate others. The less work a manger does, the more effective they are.  Motivation is “nothing more than an advanced form of con-artistry.”