Ready, Steady… Manage

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 [...]

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 [...]

Most management books offer some platitudes, have 2 or 3 useful sentences and then lots of padding. “The First 90 Days” offers a real exception I will not pretend to summarise all the useful information in this book for this book review. But I hope to whet your appetite so that you go out, buy [...]

I have a problem with many business and management books. so many of them seem to have one idea, or 10 ideas strung out for 250 pages with lots of boring stories and examples, or worse – written in parable form. I really just want to get to the meat and substance of the book. [...]

People tend to meet expectations, their own, and those of the people who they have a relationship with. I assume most people have encountered, even if 2nd hand, “Pygmalion In The Classroom” – the 1968 study of kids and teachers expectations. I see no reason why the same dynamic does not work in business.