How to Manage ^{2nd Ed.}

Managing is about getting things done. Busy managers need to know what to do and how to do it in order to be as effective, productive and successful as possible.

How to Manage is the ultimate how-to of management. Based in years of management practice, it cuts through all the noise of management theory to show you, in real terms, how to develop the skills and behavious to thrive as a a manager.

In thirty simple steps find out how to:

• Make things happen
• Handle tasks, problems and money
• Manage and deal with people
• Shape your own journey

If you are going to read one book on management, this is it.

• Chapter 1: Introduction and Summary : Real managers for the real world.
  1. IQ: rational management
  2. EQ: emotional management
  3. PQ skills: political management
  4. MQ: the management quotient
• Chapter 2: IQ skills: dealing with tasks, problems and money
  1. Starting at the end: focus on outcomes
  2. Achieving results: performance and perceptions
  3. Making decisions: acquiring intuition fast
  4. Solving problems: Prisons and frameworks — and tools
     
  5. Strategic thinking: floors, romantics and the classics.
  6. Financial skills
  7. Setting budgets: the politics of performance
  8. Managing budgets:the annual dance routine
  9. Managing costs: minimising pain
  10. Surviving spreadsheets: assumptions, not maths
  11. Knowing numbers: playing the numbers game
• Chapter 3: EQ skills: dealing with people.
  1. Motivating people: creating willing followers
  2. Influencing people: how to sell anything
  3. Coaching: no more training
  4. Delegating: doing better by doing less
  5. Handling conflict: from FEAR to EAR
  6. Giving informal feedback: making the negative positive
  7. Managing yourself: personal EQ
  8. Using time effectively: activity versus achievement
  9. Surviving the management marathon: from days to decades
  10. Learning the right behaviours: what managers really want
• Chapter 4: PQ skills: making things happen
  1. The seven key power sources: building a power base
  2. Acquiring power: shining a light on the dark arts
  3. Building power networks: becoming irreplaceable
  4. Using power: setting your agenda
  5. The art of unreasonable management: ruthlessness
  6. Political games: morality and survival
     
  7. Taking control: telling stories
  8. Managing change: people, not projects
  9. People and change: through the valley of death
  10. The ten laws of power: achieving PQ
      
• Chapter 5: MQ skills: Managing your journey
  1. Acquiring MQ: how to learn success
  2. Using MQ: uses and  abuses
  3. Decoding the success formula: happy endings

A very positive surprise!

I must admit that I thought this was one of the hundreds "self-help" books that seems to flood the market, without giving any usable advice, but I was mistaken. This is a very practical, down-to-earth book, full of usable advice and grounded in theory as well. What most strikes a manager, is the tone of someone like himself, talking to a peer, which is a relief from the more prevalent "guru-sound".

Definetely recommended reading, both for an experienced manager as well as an aspiring one (even thoughI expect the latter to be the target group).

A pleasure to read (and learn from).