101 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them [Hardcover]

Mary Albright (Author), Clay Carr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

Now there's a comprehensive, instant-answer guide to avoiding over 100 of the most common mistakes made by managers that no business course ever told you about - until now. This valuable career-enhancing guide details where the pitfalls lie, so you can avoid them more easily, as well as how to recover from a mistake quickly and prevent it from happening again. You'll discover how to avoid such management blunders as not having clear objectives, delegating the wrong jobs, being defensive to criticism, ignoring office politics, taking on risky projects with little payoff, solving performance problems with new technology, getting caught up in the rumor mill, letting other managers steal away your staff, and much more!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 324 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall Trade (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132341883
• ISBN-13: 978-0132341882
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,562,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Teaches Modern Management in Many Practical Situations, April 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: 101 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them (Paperback)

I found this book easy and exciting to read. It is up-to-date in management theory and psychological knowledge. However, for the busy people that read such books, it could have been more concise. Several of the mistakes described in the book happened in my or my friends environment. The book gave an impressive explanation of what happened and why, and what to do then. So I recommend this book.

In general, I believe the proposed solutions are adequate. There are only a few situations where I believe another reaction could be even better. Example: Chapter 2-4, Mistake: Praising without knowing the facts. In this situation, the worker Tim accepts praise for a work he only achieved with help from others. The book recommends the following "thought-out response":

Albright and Carr:

>> A&C MANAGER: "Tim, I`m really disappointed in something I heard. When you showed me the Ames project, you made it sound as if you did it all yourself, but now I hear you got some really substantial help that you didn`t mention." <<

In this case, the manager had made a mistake at least as big as Tim`s, as he or she had praised too early and blames it on Tim. With this response, Tim will become defensive. How about the following alternative:

OV MANAGER: "Tim, I praised you for your work on the Ames project. Now I heard that Whitney and Astrid helped you significantly. Is this correct?" [gets his view]

TIM: "Ahem, yes, but they only did ... and ..."

OV MANAGER: "The project was successful, and you did it together, that is fine [think positive]. I don`t care about how many percent exactly every single person contributed [disencourage rivalry]. However, Whitney and Astrid are now unhappy because you were praised instead of them [give facts, don`t moralize]. If you act like this, others are not likely to help you anymore and that is something neither you and I want [explain why, be cooperative]. In the future, I would like you to communicate when others helped you so everybody gets the recognition they deserve [look forward]. Is this ok? [don`t command, make agreement]

TIM: Oh yes, certainly. I had no idea this would happen [he thought he could get away with it].

OV MANAGER: Just one more thing. If I were you, I`d go to Whitney and Astrid and explain the situation to them [try to improve work relations]. Of course, this is your choice, you will know best how to talk to them [offer Tim an initiative to solve his problem].

TIM: Thank you for this hint, I will think about it.

Albright and Carr, Chapter 11-7:

>> A&C MANAGER: "Boss, I don`t really mean to be critical, but the information you provided me for the Knudsen project wasn`t really enough. I had to spend one whole morning asking around ..." <<

Why not simply tell the facts:

OV MANAGER: "Boss, you briefed me for the Knudsen project in a short time. In order to start the project, I spent the next morning asking around. Did you intend me to do this?"

Anyway, the book is a great basis to improve in real-life management situations!

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pamphlet, June 5, 2005

By 

Kyle Smeby "kyle78" (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 101 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them (Paperback)

I should know better than to buy books with arbitrary numbers in the title; "101 this," "60 days to that," "10 simple whatever." How many mistakes did the authors really think of and how long did it take them to pad out the number to reach 101?

All that aside, this book reads like a PowerPoint presentation and with a good speaker it might be a really good one, but it doesn't make for compelling reading material. After 30 pages I was just scanning the bullet points.

The information and advice is valid (for the most part) but there just isn't enough of it here to justify a book.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love this book!, August 29, 2000

By 

Melody Liu "Melody" (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 101 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them (Paperback)

This book is great! I love how the book is organized. Every scenerio has these five elements: 1) Explain the situation (sample scenerio) 2) Why was it a mistake? 3) How you can recover from it quickly? 4) How you can consistently do it right from now on? 5) Is doing what you did ever right?

It is very easy to read. Kind of like a Q&A book. A must read for people beginning to manage, like me!

Melody