The Four Elements of Successful Management: Select, Direct, Evaluate, Reward [Hardcover]

Don R. Marshall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 6, 1998

As management trends and fads swirl around us, it's easy to lose sight of the basics. In fact, a manager's responsibilities always boil down to selecting, directing, evaluating, and rewarding people. Get these not-so-easy pieces right, and management success is virtually guaranteed. That's why this engaging book will be embraced by seasoned managers and novices alike. It provides a structured framework for developing and fine-tuning the only four skills they ultimately need.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Marshall, president of a human resources consulting firm, has worked for over 30 years in operations and human relations management. He discusses what he considers to be the four elements of management: selecting, directing, evaluating, and rewarding people. He discusses each in depth, reviews their key aspects, and offers the pros and cons of the practices that work best. Marshall is unimpressed with flavor-of-the-month management theories and other fads and stresses what he feels are the true basics of supervising employees. The book is written in a straightforward style that should appeal to managers at any level. The management elements are discussed succinctly and thoroughly. An index would have been helpful, but the book's arrangement and extensive table of contents make it easy to navigate. Recommended for all public, academic, and corporate libraries.?Littleton M. Maxwell, Business Information Ctr., Univ. of Richmond, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description

"As management trends and fads swirl around us, it's easy to lose sight of the basics. In fact, a manager's responsibilities always boil down to selecting, directing, evaluating, and rewarding people. Get these not-so-easy pieces right, and management success is virtually guaranteed. That's why this engaging book will be embraced by seasoned managers and novices alike. It provides a structured framework for developing and fine-tuning the only four skills they ultimately need.

For each of the elements, Don Marshall reviews the key issues, discusses the pros and cons of various practices, and offers candid advice on what works best. This lucid approach is both time-saving and liberating: The Four Elements of Successful Management shows managers how to focus on the big picture -- where the major gains are made -- rather than

the complicating details. For a succinct and timeless ""short course"" in the fundamentals of management, no other guide even comes close."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 1 edition (December 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814404243
• ISBN-13: 978-0814404249
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,633,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elementary Wisdom, January 6, 2000

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Four Elements of Successful Management: Select, Direct, Evaluate, Reward (Hardcover)

The book's thesis is that four basic elements of management (Select, Direct, Evaluate, and Reward) form the "framework of all people and performance management." Throughout his book, Marshall provides what he calls "incremental lessons in understanding and applying these basic elements." At one point, he suggests that his book is directed primarily to entry-level and mid-level managers.

Perhaps. But in fact, The Four Elements of Successful Management can be of substantial value to anyone who has management responsibilities (regardless of level) or who reports to those who do. Many CEOs and COOs need reminders of what they presumably have already learned but perhaps forgotten or neglected. Moreover, entry-level and mid-level managers are provided with a comprehensive frame of reference within which to understand the interdependence of the four elements. After reading Marshall's book, they will have greater respect for the complicated challenges which their own supervisors must face each day. And perhaps be better prepared to face those and/or other challenges in years to come.

It is Marshall's assertion that "the reason managers spend so much time directing is that they do a poor job on selection." Direction should begin "with a strategic plan or business plan that outlines the principal products and services a business wants to produce for a specified market over a specified period of time."

Throughout The Four Elements of Successful Management, Marshall shares a wealth of information and counsel. To at least some executives, perhaps, his ideas may seem obvious...if not simplistic. Be that as it may, he raises all the right questions and then provides answers which are sensible, practical, and cohesive.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Management primer full of good advice, December 15, 1999

By 

James J. Trombetti (Eminence, Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Four Elements of Successful Management: Select, Direct, Evaluate, Reward (Hardcover)

Don R. Marshall is president of the Marshall Group; a consulting firm that helps companies improve their quality and productivity with more than thirty years' experience in operations, HR management and performance planning. This light and enjoyable read presents how-to advice and timesaving tools for fine-tuning anyone's management skills. With an easily absorbed style, sans the usual drone of statistics or graphs, he explodes each of the title elements into distinct and definable lessons on modern reality management. I couldn't put it down. If that seems too early for such a biased endorsement, forgive my enthusiasm. Normally, a book-reviewer would parade their knowledge base against the author in a subtle battle of opinion. Not this time. The first element, "Select", is particularly useful for HR personnel or management within any size organization. Marshall correctly relates that hiring and retaining top performing people is crucial to business success, therefore the level of strategic planning to address that objective is a measure of business potential. He guides the reader in the selection process with a range of practices beginning with expected axioms such as "defining the job before trying to find a candidate" through more elaborate and sadly, less frequently utilized managerial activities like "conducting a job audit." An interesting side benefit of performing a comprehensive job audit is that information gathered during the audit might suggest a better way of accomplishing the job, or, possibly eliminating it entirely. The next two chapters on selection explore deeper dimensions of screening, interviewing and selection of candidates. The second element for successful management presented is "Direct." It is here that Marshall introduces training, both of management and non-management and, the importance of it being a continuous process. He briefly slips into PC speech by attempting to rename training "Strategic Plan Implementation Program", unnecessary and condescending. Just call it training, why cloud the issue. Direction distills the fundamental responsibilities of management as... * Direct employees toward objectives. * Oversee the work effort and address immediate problems. * Report information on the progress of the work to their superiors.

Evaluation is the next element covered and enlists sample forms and outlines for objective evaluation of managers and non-managers. Meetings are included and condensed into three rules for productive evaluation. 1) Don't say anything if there is nothing more to say. 2) Don't say it here if it should have been said somewhere else 3) If there wasn't anywhere else to say it, say it here. Don't leave it unsaid. In other words, deal with performance deficiencies as they surface, not at a performance review meeting. The closing chapters are a examination of rewards, their various types and purposes. He makes clear the distinction between reward and compensation. Compensation, of course, is what people receive for putting in their time, i.e., money. A reward is whatever someone has coming as a result of their performance. Interestingly, he expands the connotation of reward to include something negative like a demotion, a transfer, or termination. He continues the section with subcategorical headings of non-pay rewards, variable rewards, withholding rewards and others. Another break with the norm comes in his insistence that rewards are presented according to results, not simply the effort. The elements again are 1)Selection of employees who have the necessary attitudes, skills and energy to perform the specific job required. 2)Direction of employees through clear, concise and frequent outlining of required activities 3)Evaluation of employees against schedules events and dates that ensure accomplishment of the key objectives 4)Reward of employees that is appropriate to the level of accomplishment, not the effort

Marshall through this book has provided an excellent framework and reference for managers struggling to translate and transfer objectives to subordinates.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of good content here, April 1, 2006

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Four Elements of Successful Management: Select, Direct, Evaluate, Reward (Hardcover)

This book does a pretty good job of covering issues relevant to operations and human resource management. It is highly structured, very well written for the most part, and full of content. I am very glad I pulled it off the shelf of my public library and read it cover to cover in a few hours. Even though I liked the book very much, I did not feel the title matched the content. I think a more apt title would have been: Strategic Planning and Getting the Most from Your Employees - A Manager's Guide.

Someone who read this book before me had gone through the text with a wooden pencil and underlined a bunch of paragraphs. It actually was not all that obnoxious reading it all marked up because the marks helped break out the points being made. There were quite a few points! I recommend this book to anyone wanting to become a manager. I also recommend it to anyone interested in strategic planning.

The book covers the following six points that managers must be capable of doing:

1. Understand company goals and objectives (DIRECT?) (STRATEGIC PLAN)
2. Identify jobs that will help the company meet those goals and objectives (DIRECT?) (STRATEGIC PLAN)
3. Hire or promote people to fill those jobs (SELECT)
4. Direct or coach employees to do those jobs (DIRECT)
5. Evaluate whether people hired are performing their jobs (EVALUATE)
6. Reward employees that perform and fire employees that don't (REWARD)

The book's title refers to four elements of management: select, direct, evaluate, and reward. When I first read the book's title, I expected the book to talk about (1) how to hire workers, (2) how to direct or coach workers to do their jobs, (3) how to evaluate the performance of workers, and (4) how to reward or terminate workers. Each one of these questions is covered in a separate section in the book. The book is comprised of four sections.

While the author does a great job answering questions 1, 3 and 4, he loses his focus when discussing question 2. Instead of telling us how to direct employees, he gets involved in the topic of strategic planning and how to relate job descriptions, goals and objectives to worker tasks. I think the book would have been better if the author had devoted an entire section (a 5th section) to strategic planning and put it at the front of the book. By doing that he could have better developed his discussion regarding question 2: How to direct or coach workers to do their jobs.

After reading this book I am convinced that the author has years of experience in operations and human resource management, and is very much an expert on the subject matter. Learn from him by reading this book. It'll be a worthwhile investment of your time.