Ready, Steady… Manage

I normally hate business books written in a fictional fable storytelling style. But for some reason I managed to read and enjoy this one – with one or two minor annoyances which we can cover later.

The book suggests that sometimes we cause our own problems, or at least make problem situations worse through our own attitudes and behaviours. We do this when we fail to view other people as people – instead viewing them as object, and view their needs and desires as less important than our own.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

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A highly relevant book to read in these cost cutting times. Andrew Wileman evidently having seen it and done it – and now presenting useful advice on the art of cost cutting.

Before started reading I noted down what I expected to see advice about:

• becoming more effective,
• getting rid of underperforming staff now and quickly,
• driving out a bonus on sales culture,
• etc.

I did have the concern that I would see too much advice on short term unitary costs and ignoring end to end transaction costs – and after reading I think I still have the concern that Wileman didn’t deal with that topic effectively.

All other topics get excellent coverage and worth a read. Andrew provides a lot of other useful advice that I did not initially think of.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

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This great little book acts as an introduction and summary to Deming’s ideas:

• his ‘system of profound knowledge’
• the purpose of management
• removal of numeric targets and incentives
• the Shewhart Cycle for learning and improvement
• Variation
• the Red Bead Game
• control charts

A highly recommended read because ….

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

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I promise, I shall make this my last post on CVs and recruitment for a while. (see notes, and more notes)

But I just wanted to mention the only useful book I read about CVs when researching the CV book market. When I read this book I gave up on writing a CV book because it pretty much covered the notes I had made (previous 2 blog posts) and gave useful information for building up an effective CV.

Pitch Yourself, by Bill Faust and Michael Faust.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

The basic summary: You have less than 30 seconds to impress. You’re CV needs to answer the question “What can you offer me?”. CV needs to provide evidence, create interest. Make your next employer buy you.

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So the last post described what I wanted.

Now some tips about how I read a CV. So make sure you write your CV to support my reading of it.

Contrary to some advice – I don’t really mind how many pages the CV has. I care about the relevancy of the information and that it demonstrates to me what you will bring to the role.

I have a multi-pass approach to CVs:

• pass one: Is this CV even worth reading?
• pass two: Who is this person?
• pass three: Could they meet my needs?
• pass four: Are they lying?
• pass five: Do I want to speak to them?

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This post started as notes for a book. “What would be better?” I thought “In this time of recession, than to prey on peoples fears of losing their job and write a book on how to write a CV.” And then I did the research and read through about 15 books on how to write a CV and I could barely keep them apart. They all follow the same formula and cover the same stuff. So instead of adding to the dung heap category of ‘how to write a CV’ I thought I’d pull together my thoughts and explain what I look for in a CV. Hopefully other managers looking for this stuff as well.

First some don’ts – so if your CV does any of these… stop it, now, edit it, fix it:

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I have grown more aware of the passage of time over the years. Not just in the sense of growing older, but as a manager my time gets split between multiple foci.

As a team member I typically had one or two tasks or priorities. At the end of the day I generally knew what I had done.

As a manager I have more priorities, more ‘things’ on the go, a broader view of the work going on. If I don’t have a good handle on that then I start to question if I really know the activities and work done on a project.

A result of this:

• I plan my day,
• I track my day,
• I evaluate my day.

I have changed the way I do this over the years, and I will continue changing this as each project has different needs, each company I work for has different tools and I learn to track what I do better.

I shall describe my experiences with, and with not, tracking time.

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Subtitled “How to Sell yourself and your brilliant ideas” this dual-authored book has two parts. One for each author. And yes this has made it schizophrenic.

The first half by Roger Mavity tells the hard won lessons from a marketeer. The second half by Stephen Bayley reads like a standard book researched management text.

I only found value in part one so this review has its basis in that text.

The first half of the book roars along, peppered with anecdotes and words of wisdom.

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

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So, from the title, do you expect a kind of folksy tale of happy families and happy teams? Good, because that describes the book well. The books starts very un-managerially with the birth details of the children and then ties ‘becoming a parent’ in to ‘becoming a manager’. I actually think I would enjoy working with more people who read this book since, I cannot imagine that some of the managers I work with treat their children like they treat their staff – at least I hope for the child’s sake that they don’t.

So… what do we learn?

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

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Yet another time management book. This one starts well and by page xi in the introduction I have warmed to the notion of a “zero tolerance workspace”. But then we hit an “analysis” phase and we learn…nothing for a while. I suppose this section tries to build up the belief set that we need to change our habits and why, and point out your bad habits.

But really we already bought the book to change our habits – so give me the details. Tell me the system…

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

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