Customer Reviews

Harvard Business Review on Becoming a High-Performance Manager

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This review is supposed to tell the potential reader what to expect from this book, based on the confession that I highly recommend reading this book.

This book is NOT A RECIPE. If you look for a "recipe" as to how to become a high performance manager, I would recommend Stephen Covey's classic on the 7 habits of highly effective people.

This book IS a perfect checklist to compare your behvior as a manager to the recommendations of people who have given the topic "high performance management" much professional thought. The art of excellent delegation and time management is broadly discussed. Multiple warnings are placed concerning the "busy manager" - one of the most dangerous symptoms in management.

If you are one your way as a junior or senior manager, read this excellent checklist - the investment will pay off.

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes that comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarded experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section that usually includes suggestions of other sources that some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, the reader is provided with eight articles whose authors provide a variety of perspectives on how to become a high performance manager. Given when they first appeared in the HBR (1982-2002), some but remarkably little of the material is dated. Here are some of the important business issues to which the contributors respond:

How to delegate effectively so that report-to's are personally accountable for fulfilling their obligations? ("Who's Got the Monkey?," William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass)

How to focus only on what is most important? ("Beware the Busy Manager," Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghosal)

How to decide what to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of potentially relevant information? ("What Effective General Managers Really Do," John P. Kotter)

What is the "performance pyramid" and how can this model increase professional performance and improve quality of life? ("The Making of a Corporate Athlete," Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz)

How can executives effectively organize day-to-day activities, improve their performance under pressure, and get subordinates to become more productive? ("Managers Can Avoid Wasting Time," Ronald N. Ashkenas and Robert H. Schaffer)

What are some of "the very real dangers of executive coaching" and how to avoid them? (Steven Berglas)

Note: In another article, "All in a Day's Work," Harris Collinwood and Julia Kirby co-moderate a discussion of various leadership issues by six experts from the corporate world, the non-profit sector, and academia.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out the recently published Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decisions as well as other series title in the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series such as those on Change, Corporate Strategy, Decision Making, Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership, Leadership at the Top, and Measuring Corporate Performance.

Also Michael George's Authentic Leadership and True North, Jack Welch and Suzy Welch's Winning, Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, Ram Charan's Know-How, and James O'Toole's The Executive's Compass.

If you are a young manager or are new to management, check out the section on "Saving Rookie Managers from Themselves." I caught myself doing some of the rookie mistakes that they outline in here. It's difficult to make the transition from being an individual performer into someone that leads/directs others performance and it is also easy to alienate yourself from subordinates in the process. I found it to be insightful.

A great collection of wisdom about a difficult topic, this book is a must for any people manager. I had over 4 pages of notes, which to me tells me how impactful this book can be in my own life. I absolutely loved the first few articles and they involved time management, effective habits, basic management ideas and the physical stress of being a high performance manager. There are some serious life changing ideas in these pages. I cannot recommend this book more highly and it should be read immediately for anyone interested in becoming a much better manager.

I am amazed that the seller of the book shipped within record time. Anytime, I will always look for the same seller and even refer my friends. The book was in the state that was described on the website. Thanks.

What else is there to say, this is great for business owners. Want to learn how to be a manager, that is how to do it.