For ages, Nick McCormick's little book on leadership, Lead Well and Prosper has been lying on my desk waiting for me to blog about it. I've moved offices. The first copy got lost. He had to send me another one. :-S But finally I'm managing to blog about it.
It's under 100 pages and has 15 chapters. 15 successful strategies for becoming a good manager. One in each chapter. It's a very readable straightforward little book. You could read it all in a single sitting. It's got some lovely funny cartoons. The end of each chapter has a short bullet point summary of do's and dont's.
You might find yourself nodding thinking - yep, I know that! yep, that too! But it is often advice we struggle to use in our lives as managers and our relationships with others in the workplace. However, this stuff is so hard to do. Take Chapter 11 for example, "Clean up your own house first" (actually advice I heard continuously from my boss at Sprint, John Yuzdepski. He really believed that as a business unit we had to demonstrate we could run the web site perfectly before we raised issues with the IT or network folks). So here are the bullet point advice from the end of chapter 11.
Do's
Don'ts
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Disparage other people or groups within your company
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Be a whiner. It is OK to raise concerns
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Vent to peers or team members
This is great advice! It is just hard to do. The suggested action is to pick a problem you have with another group and pull the team together and try to work it out. Encourage collaboration. Don't let it turn in to a blame fest. Keep the focus on the solution.
Of course, all of this assumes the manager of the other group actually wants the problem solved and that they are willing to collaborate with you. They might want the problem solved but only if they get to take credit for it. So it doesn't work if the initiative comes from someone else. Good management and (some aspects of) leadership can be taught/learned. This is a great little book for that. But ultimately, no end of advice will overcome dysfunctional people in your organization. Technorati tag: Management,.Leadership, Book+Review, Nick+McCormick
