Agatha Christie — A Management Thinker in Disguise!

I picked up a collection of Agatha Christie novels nearly five years ago, hoping that “someday” I would read them. That someday finally arrived last weekend, 5 years later, when I rediscovered The Case of the Missing Will in my library and decided to remove the vob-webs to read it.

Christie is, of course, celebrated as a master of crime and mystery fiction. But I was struck by something else: beneath the mystery lies a remarkably contemporary management lesson.

Violet Marsh faces a challenge designed around her uncle’s deep-seated prejudice about women and education. Instead of trying to solve it herself, she engages Hercule Poirot. And Poirot succeeds not by searching harder, but by questioning the assumptions everyone else had accepted.

The 5 management lessons I picked up are striking:

• Know when to delegate — smart leaders recognise when an expert can do better.

• Question the obvious — the answer may be hiding in plain sight.

• Look at the details — tiny clues can overturn big assumptions.

• Challenge bias — outdated beliefs can blind even intelligent people.

• Let competence speak — results, not stereotypes, establish capability.

Perhaps Agatha Christie was not writing management books after all. Or perhaps, in a way, she was — she just chose to disguise them as mysteries to create learner engagement and interest !!!

And that, I suspect, is where the real fun begins. What do you think ? Do read this 102 page thriller, if you find the time.