Essential Managers: Achieving Excellence [Paperback]

Roy Johnson (Author), John P. Eaton (Author), Robert Heller (Author), Adele Hayward (Author)

Book Description

Series: DK Essential Managers | Publication Date: November 29, 1999

Practical techniques show you how to form realistic ambitions, develop your skills, and achieve your objectives.

Learn all you need to know to make the most of your potential at work, from setting goals to developing the determination, energy, and skills required to achieve them. Achieving Excellence not only shows you how to network effectively and make the most of your time, but also provides practical techniques for improving your memory, sharpening mental agility, thinking creatively, and reducing stress. Power tips help you to overcome every obstacle in the quest to fulfill your ambitions and achieve success in the workplace. The Essential Manager have sold more than 1.9 million copies worldwide! Experienced and novice managers alike can benefit from these compact guides that slip easily into a briefcase or a portfolio. The topics are relevant to every work environment, from large corporations to small businesses. Concise treatments of dozens of business techniques, skills, methods, and problems are presented with hundreds of photos, charts, and diagrams. It is the most exciting and accessible approach to business and self-improvement available.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're in search of career or managerial excellence in 72 short 'n' sweet pages or less, you'll love this visually snappy, pintsize guide to doing just that, from setting goals to developing the determination, energy, and skills required to achieve them. Here, you'll learn not only how to network effectively and make the most of your time, but how to master practical techniques for improving your memory, sharpening your mental agility, thinking creatively, and reducing stress. Lots of fun checklists and flow charts help you get a grip on such key building blocks to excellence as guided risk-taking, staying in top physical and mental shape, writing and speaking more fluently, prioritizing, and influencing others. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do you just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so damned cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy

About the Author

Simon Howard is a Chairman of Park Human Resources and a director of SHL Group, one of the world's leaders in the design and publishing of psychometric tests and other recruitment systems. He writes a weekly column on recruitment and employment issues and regularly contributes to People Management.

Robert Heller is a leading authority on management consulting and was the founding editor of Management Today. He is the author of many acclaimed and worldwide best selling books, including The Naked Manager, Culture Shock, and The Way to Win.

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: DK ADULT (November 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789448637
• ISBN-13: 978-0789448637
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #818,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Business & Investing > Business Life > General
  • #20 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Business & Investing > Reference > Office Skills

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Realistic Ambitions, June 19, 2001

By 

Rebecca Johnson "The Rebecca Review" (Washington State) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential Managers: Achieving Excellence (Paperback)

Since excellence in today's highly competitive workplace demands more than knowledge of your field, people skills are essential.

If you want to develop your management skills and achieve your objectives, take a peek at this tiny resource book. While it isn't an all encompassing management book like the Essential Manager's Manual, it is easy to read and you can deal with one specific issue at a time. There are many books in the Essential Managers Series.

Robert Heller will show you how to build key attributes, develop confidence, master risk taking, lead effectively, stay in shape, increase learning, think more effectively, write and speak more fluently, boost your creativity, choose priorities, understand money, reduce stress, reassess your goals, find a mentor, take the lead and plan ahead.

I especially enjoyed the little hints placed in yellow boxes throughout the book. Here are some of my favorites:

Hint 97: Avoid changing your opinions to match those of the majority. Hint 42: Do not confuse wild, far-out, impractical ideas with creativity.

So, how will you know if you have achieved success in a particular area of your personal management qualities portfolio? Page 66-69 is a self-assessment which you can take to evaluate your achievement. As you work towards excellence, realize this is a lifelong challenge.

~The Rebecca Review

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential Managers: Achieving Excellence, February 20, 2008

By 

Maurizio Tomasi - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential Managers: Achieving Excellence (Paperback)

It's a good book, a concentration of good tips how to manage the career developing.