Management Rules E-Book

Jo Owen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 123

Beschreibung

Let's face it, if you want to get ahead in business you cannot avoid people management - but we're often promoted because we're good at what we do, not because we display great management skills. We owe it to the people we manage to read up on the subject and get skilled! Luckily Jo Owen has laid out 50 essential lessons we need to learn to become the best manager we can be. Jo has studied what makes a good manager everywhere from British soap powder companies, to inner city schools and Japanese banks. So whether becoming a manager has brought out the inner dictator in you or left you feeling painfully awkward, Management Rules will have you relaxed, confident and effective in no time.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

INTRODUCTION: MANAGEMENT RULES

MANAGE YOUR TEAM

CHAPTER 1 WHAT YOUR TEAM WANTS FROM YOU

CHAPTER 2 VISION: SETTING A DIRECTION

CHAPTER 3 HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM: PRINCIPLES

CHAPTER 4 HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM: PRACTICE

CHAPTER 5 MAKING DECISIONS IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD

CHAPTER 6 HANDLING CRISES

CHAPTER 7 HONESTY AND INTEGRITY: DITCH THE ETHICS COURSE

Values alignment

Credibility

Risk

CHAPTER 8 SETTING TARGETS

CHAPTER 9 HOW TO DELEGATE

CHAPTER 10 WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DELEGATE

CHAPTER 11 MANAGING OTHER PROFESSIONALS

CHAPTER 12 HOW TO COACH

MANAGE THE ORGANISATION

CHAPTER 13 TAKE CONTROL

CHAPTER 14 BUILD YOUR TRUSTED NETWORK

CHAPTER 15 INFLUENCING DECISIONS

CHAPTER 16 NEGOTIATING YOUR BUDGET

CHAPTER 17 MANAGING YOUR BUDGET

CHAPTER 18 CONTROLLING BUDGETS

CHAPTER 19 HANDLING BAD NEWS

CHAPTER 20 PROJECT MANAGEMENT

MANAGE YOUR COLLEAGUES

CHAPTER 21 MANAGING YOUR PEERS

CHAPTER 22 STYLES OF MANAGEMENT: THE THEORY

CHAPTER 23 MANAGING DIFFERENT STYLES: THE PRACTICE

CHAPTER 24 PUTTING PRAISE AND FLATTERY TO WORK

CHAPTER 25 PERSUASIVE CONVERSATIONS

P: Preparation

A: Alignment

S: Situation review

S: So what’s in it for me?

I: Idea, stated simply

O: Overcome objections

N: Next steps

CHAPTER 26 HOW TO SAY “NO”

CHAPTER 27 HOW TO DEAL WITH MR AND MRS NASTY

CHAPTER 28 PROFESSIONAL GUARD

THE DAILY SKILLS OF MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 29 THE DAILY SKILLS OF MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 30 MANAGE TIME EFFECTIVELY

CHAPTER 31 MANAGE TIME EFFICIENTLY

CHAPTER 32 HOW TO READ

CHAPTER 33 HOW TO WRITE

CHAPTER 34 HOW TO LISTEN

CHAPTER 35 HOW TO TALK

Enthusiasm

Expertise

Empathy

CHAPTER 36 THE ART OF A GOOD MEETING

CHAPTER 37 THE USE AND ABUSE OF POWERPOINT

CHAPTER 38 PREPARING SPREADSHEETS

Keep it simple

The spreadsheet is only as good as the person behind it

It’s not the numbers that count: it’s the assumptions

MANAGE YOUR CAREER

CHAPTER 39 MANAGE YOUR CAREER

CHAPTER 40 THE MANAGEMENT JOURNEY

CHAPTER 41 WHAT IT TAKES TO GET AHEAD

CHAPTER 42 HOW TO GET PROMOTED

CHAPTER 43 HOW NOT TO GET PROMOTED

CHAPTER 44 HOW TO GET FIRED

CHAPTER 45 WHEN TO MOVE ON

CHAPTER 46 FIND THE RIGHT BOSS

CHAPTER 47 WHAT YOUR BOSS WANTS FROM YOU

CHAPTER 48 MANAGE YOUR BOSS

CHAPTER 49 FIND THE RIGHT ASSIGNMENT

CHAPTER 50 MANAGEMENT OR LEADERSHIP?

This edition first published 2011

© 2011 Jo Owen

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

(to follow)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

9780857082213 (paperback)    9780857082473 (epdf)

9780857082480 (epub)    9780857082447 (emobi)

INTRODUCTION: MANAGEMENT RULES

Times have changed, and management has changed. Managers are having to learn new rules of survival and success. Expectations are not getting lower: they are rising all the time. Management is not becoming simpler, it is becoming harder. But for successful managers, it is also becoming more rewarding, personally and professionally.

In the past, managers made things happen through people they controlled: now managers have to make things happen through people they may not control. That changes everything.

The old world was straightforward. The bosses had the brains and the workers had the hands. Workers were not meant to do too much thinking for themselves: tight supervision, simple jobs and clear rewards and sanctions for performance made things easy for bosses and uncomfortable for workers.

In the new world, managers have lost their coercive power. Command and control is over: commitment, persuasion and influence are the new skills that managers must master. Managers have lost their coercive power because:

Workers now have choices: if they do not like an employer, there are other employers or social security to fall back on.Workers have better education: they can do more, but they expect more. Managers have lost their monopoly on thinking.In flat organisations, managers have to make things happen with the help of other departments, and often other firms, over whom they have no direct control. Alliance building and political savvy are new skills to master.In a global, virtual world managers increasingly have to manage remote teams: that requires trust, finesse and motivational skill.The nature of work has become more ambiguous: you cannot judge productivity by the number of emails sent, or the weight of a report. Managing quality and uncertain workloads requires more judgement and skill than ever.

To succeed in this changing world you have to learn new skills, new ways of working. Intelligence still counts, but being a boffin in a box will not get you to the top. Universities are full of brilliant minds but lousy management. Now you need two new skill sets. First, you have to learn new ways of dealing with people: from command and control to motivating, persuading, coaching, influencing people and dealing with their many different styles. As you look around your own organisation you will find a few people who do this very well, but many more are mediocre at best: it is easy to identify these people skills, much harder to master them.

You need more than intelligence and an ability to handle people well. You also need to manage across the organisation. Managers used to be a cipher between top and bottom of the firm; they would relay orders down and information back up. But no one can last long like that now. Now you have to make things happen with the support of the rest of the organisation. That means making alliances, brokering deals, aligning agendas and building alliances of trust and support. These are intensely political skills. Only the most naive managers think that they can survive without political savvy.

Although the nature of management is becoming more demanding, in theory technology should come to the rescue, at least in part. It should make us more productive and remove much of the dead and inefficient time which was wasted in the past. In practice, technology does not save effort: it raises expectations. We are expected to do more with less; even when we leave the office, the office never leaves us. We wear an electronic ball and chain of email, internet and phone which keeps us constantly shackled to the office. Even if we are physically absent, it is ever harder to find the “off” switch in our minds which lets us relax. We have gone from the life of country club management to 24/7 management, while the workers have gone in the opposite direction.

The need for managers to keep on changing and adapting is mirrored by the need of firms to keep on changing and adapting. The FTSE 100 was set up in 1984. It consisted of the top 100 public companies in the UK. Only 28 survive today. The rest have been overtaken, taken over or gone plain bust. A 72% death rate inside a generation is not good. To survive, it is not enough to manage the status quo. We must always be seeking to change and improve if we are not to join the list of firms that become extinct, and the list of managers who land up on the scrap heap.

Just as firms have to change to stay in the race, so we have to change to stay in the management race. Management Rules is a snapshot of best practice as it is today. But it goes further: it looks not just at best practice but also at common practice. A lot of management falls far short of best practice. Most of us have suffered at the hands of a poor manager who thinks that he or she is a great manager. We can learn from bad practice as well as good practice. Bad practice tells us what not to do: if we can avoid the most common mistakes of management, then we will do much better than most of our peers. And bad practice also helps us see why good practice is so good. There is a reason why best practice is good, and bad practice often reveals that reason.

You can read this book any way you want. You can start at the beginning and read through to the end. You can pick and choose which sections to read and which to skip: each section should stand on its own feet. This lets you focus on the areas which are of most interest to you. You can use this book as your personal, just-in-time coach: you can keep it on your desk and refer to it whenever you need advice on a particular subject. And make notes about what works and what does not work for you. Although the principles of best practice may be universal, how you apply those principles will be unique to your style and situation.

This book assumes that you are smart. Each rule and each principle is outlined briefly: you will be smart enough to see how it relates to your daily experience of management, and you can also work out how to put the rule into practice. If you want more detail on any of the principles, you can find plenty of other books to help you. This book gives you the headlines and lets you fill in the detail.

Management Rules sits alongside the Timeless Lessons of Leadership. If management is a new art, then leadership is an ancient art. Every year a new theory of leadership emerges, but in practice the essence of good leadership is little changed over the last 5000 years or so. Inevitably, there is some overlap between management and leadership. But I have attempted to keep the overlaps to the minimum, while avoiding too many gaps in either of the books.

Management Rules does not attempt to set out any theory. It simply sets out what works best today. The rules are culled from direct work with over 100 of the best, and a few of the worst, organisations on our planet: they cover every major continent and industry group. This is your handbook to what works today.

MANAGE YOUR TEAM

CHAPTER 1

WHAT YOUR TEAM WANTS FROM YOU

Much has been written about managers and how they can excel. But more or less nothing has been written about what followers expect from their manager. So I spent two years finding out by asking followers across industries and continents what they want from their boss. Followers consistently expect their boss to show five qualities:

VisionAbility to motivateDecisivenessGood in crisesHonesty and integrity

From the perspective of your followers, these are the new rules of management. Do well on these qualities, and you will be seen as a good boss.

There is plenty to like about what is in this list, and what is not in this list.

The good news is that the top four qualities can all be learned. And followers do not require their leaders to be charismatic and inspirational. This is just as well: most of us were not born charismatic and you cannot train people to be charismatic. But you must learn how to master the basic skills of management and meet the expectations of your bosses and colleagues. If you do this, you can become devastatingly effective and professional. As a result, people may even start to think you are inspirational.

Words can mean anything, especially on planet business. So the following sections decipher the words that followers use to describe their ideal boss, and show how you can live up to their expectations.

CHAPTER 2

VISION: SETTING A DIRECTION

Should managers have visions? In the past, managers were mere ciphers between top management and workers: they carried orders down the chain of command and fed information back up. Managers now have to do more: they have to take control and make things happen. So you need a plan, but is that a vision?

Perhaps a vision is too grand. But your team definitely wants to know where they are going and how they are going to get there. You have to give them a sense of direction and purpose. You can do that by telling them a simple story about your direction:

This is where we areThis is where we are goingThis is how we will get there

Once you have told them that story, you have given them the vision they want. You are now a fully qualified visionary. As a practical visionary, you do not predict the future; you create the future. That is the purpose of your story.

To make the story really motivational, you add a fourth ingredient: “This is your important role in helping us get there”. Show how each team member can contribute and you give them both meaning and purpose. Visions only work when they are personal: each of your team members must see what it means for them. Increasing earnings per share is not a highly motivational vision: creating delighted and loyal customers or achieving a challenging task are more relevant, immediate and motivational visions.

Many things in management which seem sophisticated and complicated are very simple in practice. Visions can be as grand or as simple as you choose.

CHAPTER 3

HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM: PRINCIPLES