"The New Manager's Tool Kit: 21 Things You Need
to Know to Hit the Ground Running "
By Don & Sheryl Grimme; AMACOM; New York,
New York; 2009; 256 pages; $16.95
Despite the title, there’s a lot of good information in the book that’s also appropriate to experienced people who are higher on the organization chart than recently arrived managers. As co-authors Don and Sheryl Grimme note, the book was designed to be “both a how-to and why-to” project. The authors’ expectation is that first-time managers will be best served reading in a very linear fashion from cover to cover. It’s also their belief that more experienced members of management will focus on areas of immediate concern first, then prioritize any remaining issues.
The 21 tools in the manager’s tool kit “address principles and techniques, skills to implement those techniques, skills for personal and interpersonal effectiveness, and barriers to an effective workplace.” These tools were derived from the training programs developed by the authors for clients among business and government organizations.
The authors base their need for the book on the frequent disconnects between manager opinion and employee fact. They note that for some 60 years, managers have always rated good wages and job security are the top things that employees want from their jobs. Oddly enough, most studies indicate that employees rank these below appreciation for work done, good working conditions, and interesting work. That’s what the authors mean by the difference between opinion and fact.
The tools, themselves, are divided among six categories: Leading People, Diversity, Leader Effectiveness, Optimizing Contributions, Personal and Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Eliminating Conflict.
Contained within each category are several tools. For example, under the category “Leading People,” are three tools: “Turn on Talent…and Turn off Turnover”; “Unleash Their Productivity”; and “Balance Their Work and Life.” Within each tool are suggestions or “tips” and a “secret” The tips elaborate on “secret,” which is usually a simple, fairly obvious reminder of what makes people tick.
All of which is good advice for managers, or at least was good advice until August 2008. It will probably take until 2010 for the well researched information that is the foundation for the tips, secrets, and suggestions to be valid once again. For example, we have to go back to 1932 when so many businesses laid off large numbers of people and closed their doors to look at information that was then current. In that year deflation, not inflation, had become a fact. People would do whatever the boss wanted, if it meant a paycheck at the end of the week. Employee turnover had ceased to be an issue until 1941. In far too many cases management enforced employee policy and procedures handbooks could be summarized in five words: “My way or the highway.”
Fortunately, there are too many federal and state equal opportunity laws on the books these days for us ever to sink back into the worst excesses of employment practices that existed during The Great Depression. That’s especially the case while the enforcement of those laws are under the eyes of a new federal administration that will likely reinstate more than a few elements of the Roosevelt anti-depression laws.
Ironically, some of the Congressional Statutes might themselves be a cause for turnover among managers. In the 1930s, managers who were capable turning a private company around came to the attention of federal agencies on the lookout for the best and brightest. They offered immediate job security and always dangled the carrot of a nationwide reputation. This often meant senior positions in giant corporations after the Depression.
If we re-run the experience of 1932, one of the private sector’s greatest challenges will again be the loss of experienced people to the government. That might be a darn good reason to get the book and see how it applies to your own situation, either as a manager in the private sector or for a government agency.
-- Henry Holtzman
Here are the current top 10 bestselling books for business. The list is compiled based on information
received from retail bookstores throughout the U.S.A.
1. “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,”
by Alice Schroeder (Bantam Books…$35.00) (1)*
Why there has always been far more to Buffet than meets the eye.
2. “Debt Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,”
by Kevin Trudeau (Equity Press…$25.95) (2)
What banks and credit card companies prefer you not to know.
3. “The Post-American World”
by Fareed Zakaria (W.W. Norton & Co …$25.95) (3)
Why the 21st Century will not be “the American Century.”
4. “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America,”
by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux…$27.95) (5)
Why and how “green alternatives” can save the planet and the USA.
5. “Bad Money, Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism,”
by Kevin Phillips (Penguin Group…$25.95) (6)
How the global economy dropped into an intensive care situation.
6. “The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World,”
by Neil Ferguson (Penguin Group…$29.95) (**)
Why money can make the world go around or brake it to a halt.
7. “Outliers: The Story of Success,”
by Malcolm Gladwell (Little,Brown & Co…$27.99) (**)
Why the cause of success can be linked to where you were born.
8. “Call Me Ted,”
by Ted Turner (Grand Central Publishing…$30.00) (**)
How a highly complex visionary became both complex and visionary.
9. “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008,”
by Paul Krugman (W.W. Norton & Co…$24.95 (8)
Why 2009 is beginning to look a lot like 1933.
10. “Go Put Your Strengths to Work: Six Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance,”
by Marcus Buckingham (The Free Press…$30.00) (4)
How to identify and use your unique strengths at work.
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(1)* -- Indicates a book’s previous position on the list.
** -- Indicates a book’s first appearance on the list.