From the Alamo to Houston

Thank you so much!

When we announced our “Alamo” initiative, last week  – promising relief to today’s hard pressed managers – we didn’t expect a great response. After all, we know most managers are just too busy with their own problems to take time to make suggestions and propose ideas on ways that we can help .

Well, you really surprised us!  Not only did we receive ideas from so many of you but the quality of your suggestions really surpassed all our expectations.

 

Here are just three…

Ken, from Seattle, said we should sharpen up our Team Effective registration process. Not only did he give details of what we needed to do but also recommended the software we should use to do it.

Ken’s an engineering manager who used to work for NASA so we weren’t surprised when we were able to implement his ideas so quickly.

We’re really pleased with the result. Check it out and let us know what you think. 

Maybe not as awesome as one of Ken’s earlier projects – see the picture – but we think it’s great. Thanks Ken.

 

Joanne is an H.R. manager for a health food company in Manchester, England. She’s put forward a fantastic “just eat what you need”  idea,  incorporating  “supported”, downloadable content.

Elizabeth’s particularly excited about this one and judging by the hours she spent at her keyboard over the weekend, we’ll soon have more news on this.

One of the first managers to join Team Effective  – Kim from Singapore, has outlined a really provocative  idea on structuring the access permissions  to our site. We need to work some more on this but it’s already looking very promising.  Huge thanks, Kim.

 

So we’ve lots to do. Your ideas have really motivated us and confirmed our commitment to the “Alamo Initiative”.

It’s not too late to send us your own thoughts on how we can help managers through the current recession. Every idea helps.

Your thoughts?

Thanks

Hard pressed managers – on the walls of the Alamo!

Elizabeth has been away on an arduous nationwide seminar tour. Last night, she flew in from her final seminar in San Antonio, Texas. As her flight was late, I had arranged to collect her from the airport.

Whilst driving Elizabeth home, I thought she seemed distracted and unusually quiet. I knew it had been a long journey, not helped by the lousy airline food and the uncomfortable seats – no foot rests in coach! But those of you who’ve met Elizabeth know that it’s extraordinary for her to be so quiet.

“What happened?” I quipped, “Has the Alamo fallen?”

For those who don’t know, The Alamo – that shrine to American heroism and perseverance – is in San Antonio.

“Not yet,” Elizabeth smiled “but I don’t know how long they can hold out”

You’ll know that Elizabeth always starts with the positive. So she began with three sterling examples of how managers she had met at her seminars had dealt with the current recession.

The Production Manager in Tucson who, in 30 days (30 days straight, mind), had completely redesigned his corporation’s production process. Allowing them to implement a 4 day work week and avoiding having to let any employees go.

In L.A., the IT manager, who had encouraged his team in volunteering to run free training courses at local schools – improving their own skill sets and boosting morale out of sight.

And finally, the Sales Manager of a Service Center in Bangalore, India who Elizabeth met at the L.A. seminar. This manager had paid for her flight and accommodation (and Elizabeth’s seminar) from her own funds. She’d declared “I am not going home without twelve new orders!”

All heroes of this Economic Downturn.

However, these were the bright spots of Elizabeth’s tour. For the most part, what she learned from all the other managers she had met reflected my own impressions of the current situation.

Times are hard – really hard. Order books are at “Low” and future prospects uncertain. Budgets have been pared to the bone – and then cut again. Teams that were carefully crafted over time have had to be disbanded. Projects that managers had firmly committed to now lay abandoned or permanently shelved. Good staff, including colleagues have been let go. Uncertainty and a lack of clear vision inevitably lead to a sharp fall in motivation and inhibit purposeful planning.

Phrases like “Invest for the future”; “Management development” and “Training courses” have been removed from every manager’s dictionary.

And the word from the Top is…

“Get more done with less… much, much less”

“We have to do something to help” Elizabeth concluded. “The guys out there are giving it 500%. We can’t give away the farm but Team Effective owes it to them to help and to, at least, match their efforts.”

During the rest of the drive we threw around some ideas. How can we provide our resources to managers more effectively and more affordably? In these uncertain times, is it wrong to ask managers to commit to a monthly subscription? Would they prefer a “one off” fee that covers everything they need? And so on…

By the time we arrived at Elizabeth’s home, we had decided that we must finalize our plans and have taken steps to “Relieve the Alamo” by midnight, Monday (goodbye Labor  Day weekend!).

We are convinced that, by working together, we can all help each other. So I’m calling on your assistance.

If you have any ideas or suggestions as to how we can better support you in these hard times, please send them to me via our Suggestions Page

…Or drop me a quick e-mail.

jack@managersneedtoknow.com

By Sunday PM, please!

In the film “The Alamo”, Davy Crockett (played by my hero, John Wayne) draws a line in the sand and asks that those men who are prepared to stay in the Alamo and fight  “cross the line”. They all crossed.

I’m asking you to “cross the line” too. Take the time to send me your ideas and suggestions and do it today.  Relief is on the way!

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Best Management Books Online

How we rate the Best Management Books.

What puts a management book in the” best” list?

We’re often asked what makes a “best management book”.

Here’s what we think is important to deserve the rating of “best management book”:

• Practical advice – advice that’s presented in practical terms. Many management books are written as abstract views on management theory. Sometimes theory can be tortuous to get through and….even more time-consuming to work out how to apply it to a practical work situation.

• We think the information should be addressed to and appropriate for “Effective Executives” – not just “managers”. Often executives aren’t called managers but do manager work without all the manager responsibilities. At Team Effective we use the term “manager” as shorthand but we include “Effective Executives” in that term.

• Advice and suggestions should be real and practical. You can always tell when advice comes from a university academic who has never had to work with and be responsible for a team of people. Managers and executives sometimes need advice from someone who has clearly done the job themselves – you know – you can tell by how they write about a subject.

• Many management books concentrate on topics such as project management, setting goals and objectives, and fail to give enough time to the so called “soft skills”. That’s a very bad name we think for skills which are so vitally important. Soft skills are the skills of communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, active listening and showing consideration, empathy and care. Those skills are vitally important for all managers and particularly for people with a technical background. Often technical university courses and technical backgrounds don’t include these skills in the curriculum and so, when a technical expert becomes a people manager, there’s a gap in their necessary skills to do the job well.

• To be a “best management book”, a book should offer new ideas and ways to approach the challenges a manager faces every day. Most days your normal range of ideas work fine but sometimes you need something else – something extra – but it has to be something directly relevant to your situation.

• Managers hit low points or even just “stale times” and they need inspiring and motivating themselves. They spend all their energies motivating and inspiring their teams with little left over for themselves. A “best management book” will also inspire and motivate a manager to take action on the content they’ve just read. That could be just the idea they need to lift their game to another level.

• Managers explain that they want focused advice and information – set out in a “how to” style which they can use directly and immediately without interpreting and applying woolly non-specific “talking around an issue”.

• Information and advice needs to be relevant to the modern work environment. So many management books were written decades ago. The essentials are still sound but need to be updated and applied to the present day. workplace and work ethic. There have been huge changes in culture in the last 5 years.

• Managers need to feel that a “best management book” reflects true, real-life management as it is on the action floors of organizations  – situations that managers will recognize.

• We’re told that management books which are the best for managers should be concise. Quality is far more important that quantity. 50 great pages are better than 437 mediocre ones. Managers haven’t got spare time to read, let alone plough through 437 pages of which only 50 “do the job” and are “on the button”.

• Another huge problem can be that the best management book isn’t available for sale in every country – it may be the best but it’s no good if you can’t get it.

• It has to be immediately accessible to be the best – managers can’t wait a week or more for a book to be delivered – problems are NOW. Therefore books which can be downloaded immediately are the best.

• Even the best management book may not go far enough or go deeply enough into a topic. Often managers need additional support from extra materials which they can use with the book and as supplements to the book

Here are just 4 of the best management books online that we’d recommend.

 

• The Executive in Action: Managing for Results, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.
  This book contains three of the “best management books” in one.

• Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices by Peter Drucker  
  is a true-to-life account of management and we think it should be required reading for all managers.

• Listening: The Forgotten Skill: A Self-Teaching Guide (Wiley Self-Teaching Guides) by Madelyn Burley-Allen. 
  Listening is an essential manager skill and knowing exactly when to stop talking and listen to  people is an extension of that skill.

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – by Stephen R Covey
  is an integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems

Please also look at my own Best Management Books Online  – eBooks that you can download today.