How best to use a management book

 

Question

Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for your recommendation on books  to help with Change Management. I must say your own book Effective Management Skills – Doing the Right Things in The Right Way is just great and I would recommend that one too.

Have you any advice on how to use a management book? I have to say most of the management books I’ve read so far are long-winded and it’s hard to get to the heart of what they are trying to say. They’re not the best “bed time reading” either – too heavy, too dull and they send me to sleep.

G.

Answer

Hi there G,

How to use a management book. Hmmm…..

Great question! You obviously know that a management book should be used differently from other books. A management book isn’t a novel. It’s not meant to be read cover to cover in content-sequence-page-order. A management book is to be flicked though. Look at everything it contains right at the start, then go first to what interests you most right now.

Tony Buzan, pioneer of the mind-mapping technique, makes reference to a man who found the exact book he needed, full of great information and ideas. The guy was so pleased with the information and so impressed with all the book contained that he made extensive notes as he went along – probably prolonging his reading time by 50%.

38 pages from the end of the 350 page book ….he found that pages and pages of wonderful summary notes were included…as an appendix!

If only he’d flicked through the book before he began to read it.

We’ve recently added to the Team Effective material that is published as downloadable eBooks.

Check out Best Management Books Online.

Best Conflict Management Book

Question.

My boss has just declined my request to go on a conflict management course but says he will pay for a few books on the topic. Can you recommend any?

Are there any downloadable books? For me they’re better than hard copy.

Do you think management books are the best way for me to learn management? Are there any downsides to a management book?

Answer

One conflict management book we like is:

Tongue Fu! – By Sam Horn.

We’re not alone either. Jack Canfield who’s positive thinking methods we also like says that he thinks this is a "handbook for verbal self-defence that provides dozens of real-life, constructive alternatives to giving a tongue lashing or to being tongue-tied". (Jack Canfield is also author of the Chicken Soup books).

We like also like:

Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict into Collaboration – By Stewart Levine

It’s a tool-set for resolving all conflicts – personal conflicts – marriage, neighbors etc -and also business conflicts including the pain and anger from layoffs. They are some of the conflicts he discusses.

I’m not sure if you can get them downloadable but an internet search would tell you.

I know how you feel. It’s great to just decide you need/want a book and be reading it less than 10 minutes later. It doesn’t get better than that.

Nothing beats practical experience in management. What books give you is the ideas and techniques but it takes an author who has done the job themselves to write great information which is practical, real, true to life and applicable to the work a manager does today.

What’s not good about books?

Well…not much except…you can’t ask a book a question!

You can’t say “Hey that’s great Mr Drucker/ Peters/Walsh. How would you apply that to my work situation where ……..?”

Have you checked out  Elizabeth’s  Best Management Books yet?

You get instantly downloadable eBooks – “real-life”, practical, focused and written in a “how to” style by a manager with excellent qualifications and 20 years practical experience – you read and feel experience in every word.

The dreaded departmental monthly meeting

Hi Jack and Elizabeth,

I’ve just been given a permanent new role as chair of our departmental monthly meeting and it feels like a huge weight round my neck.

It’s the booby prize. It feels like someone is punishing me!! These meetings have been a nightmare and a joke for years. Nobody takes them seriously, nobody does any prep, people arrive late and everyone dreads them. Help ! My first is next week!

GT

 

Hi GT,

Ok, first, go and look at our 5 Minute Guides (in this order) on “Managing a Meeting”, “Preparing for a Meeting” and “Setting an Agenda”.

You will have to make some big changes to turn this situation around and you won’t succeed overnight but it can be done successfully. Absorb the information in those Need it Now Guides.

Your first job is to get out the agenda for the next meeting and you need to shake this bag and let people know there will be changes.

Actions which can herald change:

– If possible, delay the meeting by a week and just send a memo with the new date. That buys you a week to set the agenda for the next meeting and a further week to get yourself prepared. If possible, also change the regular day of the meeting and change it to a “good” time e.g. 11am. Early morning is a bad time and also immediately after lunch is a bad time.

If you can’t delay the meeting, let us know and we can plan some quick e-mail help for you.

Elizabeth

Follow up to the concerns about an older employee coping with new systems

Follow up
Hi Elizabeth. It wasn’t easy finding the right moment to ask a few casual questions but I have the information now ….It’s love of everything about the work and fear of retirement. PL

 

Hi PL,
I’m pleased you didn’t rush in to get the information you needed. The right moment usually presents itself if time constraints allow you to be patient. Managers don’t always have that degree of flexibility though in determining when they choose to act.

Here’s what I think:
You could give them a specific new role with a firm end date and they could retire at that end date. That would provide a
wind-down period and yet a feeling of having made a valuable contribution. You may even be surprised at how well the person adapts.

The person could work part time and a decreasing time over a year e.g. work full time for 3 months after the change, then 3 days per week for a month, then 2 days etc down to a few hours a week after a few months. A win/win situation for everyone. It’s often found that after such a wind-down, the person actually suggests termination themselves as they become comfortable with leisure time and also realize that the changes are profound and the company situation vastly changed.

Ask HR or someone in payroll have a look at the persons retirement situation. Sometimes people think they have to keep going till e.g 65 to get a certain pension. Maybe the difference in retiring in 6 months time as opposed to 3 years time is only a small monetary difference. Is it possible to convince the person the difference isn’t worth loss of 2 years of leisure? Could you give them a “Loyalty” bonus if they retire which would bridge the monetary difference.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. If none of those work for you, give me more detail and I’ll think again.

Elizabeth

Planning and Assessing Staff Training

Hi everyone,
At the weekend we had a question about staff training. The question just said ” can you give some pointers about staff training please”. I’m not too sure what focus the questioner had in mind so today I wrote a 5 Minute Guide. I hope it helps the person who asked the question and maybe it will help the rest of you too. If the person who asked the question wants to give me some further detail, I’ll address the topic more specifically.

Elizabeth

An older employee concerns

I have on my team a person who has been with the company 30 years. This person is still a great worker and the company has no criticisms to make of the person’s work or the way they relate to younger workers. In fact, I feel quite embarassed to say that we want the person to retire. The reason is, we are about to introduce a totally new system into the company and we feel this employee may not adapt well to the new system. Any ideas? PL

 

Hi PL,

The company certainly owes this person some consideration for the years of loyal service.

I’m having to make a few assumptions here – I’m going to assume that the employee is 50+, maybe nearer to 60.

Let me ask you a few questions…

Do you know what the employee enjoys about working for your company which has kept them there so long?

Is it the actual work? Is it social interaction with co-workers? Is it need for income? Is it lack of anything else in their lives? Is it fear of retirement.

Your answers to those questions would point the way for you.

Your worse situation is if the person is in financial need – you have a problem because they won’t voluntarily give up vital income. I’ll leave that scenario hanging.

Talk to your bosses and one or two people who have a long service with your company and try to get some background and get back to me.

Elizabeth

Open door or door ajar ?

Question

I started my management job 9 weeks ago and I manage a team of 12 people. I really want to have an “open door” policy of access to me for my team and that’s what I told them when I started. Trouble is – they took me at my word which is what I thought I wanted but I find I’m continually interupted to the point I have to stay late every night to get my own work done. My team are great. They are good workers and not time wasters. What they come to me with is important to the work. What can I do? Basically I really believe in “open door” but in practice it’s driving me nuts.

Answer

We really sympathise with your situation, T. You had no choice but to start as you did. In your situation (of which we know more detail) your team had to feel comfortable about their access to you and to trust that they had all the access to you that they needed. By now, they will be comfortable with you and trust in your support so now you can ease them into being on a longer rope.

You need 2 things – a “door ajar” policy and a schedule of times when people can come to see you .

How about creating an occasion to meet briefly with your whole team? You could even make it a half -hour special coffee break, bring in coffee and cookies or get the team to bring their own drink and you bring cookies – whatever seems right and fits best for you. Don’t make too big a deal of it but use it as a “we’ve done a great job so far” situation or a “thanks for a good start”.

Tell them you really appreciate the communication between all of you. Say that now you have all been working together for 9 weeks, and you’ve proved you all work well together, you’d like to suggest a few refinements. If appropriate, you might also say that you also have a special project of your own which has been assigned to you. Say there’s a deadline on it of 2 weeks from now and you have to work on that. Don’t over play your own work though – the team still needs to feel important to you but it’s ok to gently remind them that you have your own tasks. Say that you feel everyone can now adjust to “normal access”.

1. Describe that you’d like to try out – just for a month – a system where you have a couple or just one “open door” time per day when you can see the team. Decide times to suit yourself – e.g. one morning and one afternoon – perhaps 10-11am and 4-5pm. The early one would allow you to get your own vital tasks done before 10am and the afternoon time would be just before day end (so you can be pretty sure people won’t over-run that session). On a good day, this should allow you 6 hours of time for yourself. Have an appointment list for the whole work week hung near your door for the team to sign up to your “open door” sessions. Make the appointments in blocks of 10 minutes, and ask that the team work co-operatively and consult together to sign up according to their needs. The team are likely then to self regulate and not over-run because they know they are taking someone else’s time. In 2 x one hour sessions per day, you could see the whole team every day if necessary. We hope you don’t need that but to begin with, the team are assured they have the access they need.

2. Say that for the rest of the day, outside the 2 sessions, your door will be “ajar” and you should actually half close it. Say that of course you can be interrupted but only for emergencies.

3. Say you’ll review how the new system is working after a month. That should give enough time to let the new system embed and work well and reassure the team.

Caution – don’t put the new system in place during a crisis. If a crisis develops, suspend the system for a day or so but re-instate it after the crisis passes. Don’t scare the team. They had a bad time before you arrived and you don’t want to spook them into thinking you’re withdrawing from them just when it’s starting to go well.

Hope that helps.
Elizabeth