Customer Reviews

Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After starting to read this book my reaction was WOW! I've never seen so many practical ideas for leaders in one book. John Pearson draws on a vast array of sources that he came across over his long career including time he spent with Peter Drucker. The book describes 20 critical competencies are broad and include topics you don't usually find in books on leadership such as systems, board, budget, operations and crisis.

The competencies are what Pearson calls "management buckets." Some people will like this description, others may be tempted to dismiss the bucket metaphor as lite. That would be a mistake. The book is jam-packed with substantive ideas and insights. I was glad to see that Pearson covers the "hard" issues such as being results oriented to the "soft" issues such as caring for employees. I'm recommending this book to leaders as one to take their leadership team through. It will surely stimulate a list of actions that will benefit their team and organization.

The book does have a lot of references to Christianity because John is a Christian and he has primarily worked for and with Christian organizations. If you work for a Christian organization, this is a must read. If not, or if you are not a Christian, you will still benefit from the ideas and practices described in the book. Because social sector organizations rely so much on volunteers they have learned much about motivating them and for-profit organizations can learn a lot from effective social sector leaders such as Pearson.

I also want to point out that the book is well-organized into short sections so it's ideal for most leaders who prefer bite-sized readings. Too many books these days fail to include end notes and I was glad to see that Pearson provided extensive endnotes that will allow readers to dig even deeper into the many sources he drew upon to write the book.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this book!

Only John Pearson could pour the insights gleaned from twenty five years in chief executive roles at three different associations into twenty management buckets: six buckets focused on The Cause, seven buckets for The Community, and seven buckets for The Corporation. The language of The Cause is purpose driven. The language of the Community is warm affirmation. The language of The Corporation focuses on operations, systems and fiduciary responsibilities.
Chapter by chapter each of Pearson's twenty buckets gets filled with "strategic balls" that leaders can utilize to enhance their management of each bucket theme. The chapters are filled with anecdotes about real life experiences in the workplace.
My favorite is The Hoopla! Bucket. Spring-boarding from Dennis Bakke's Joy at Work, Pearson articulates a value proposition for Hoopla as a way to relieve stress and build team spirit in the workplace. This is a critical concept for the great number of nonprofit organizations that have squeezed the pennies so tightly that they have made their workplaces blatantly undesirable and unhealthy.
Mastering the Management Buckets is a straightforward refresher course in critical competencies critical for successful leadership in organizations of all kinds. The book serves it up straight, consistent with Pearson's persona as a straight shooting leader, a man of integrity and a follower of Jesus. If you're looking for ways to enhance your management skills, built on a Biblical platform that views leadership as a spiritual exercise, this book is for you.

Mastering the Management Buckets provides invaluable guidelines, profound insight, and clear direction. There's more solid, practical advice for managers and leaders than can be received in many of the books I've read in my forty-years of ministry. I'm a visual guy. So the illustrations of the 20 buckets concept really rivots my attention. This book is a hands-on resource, it transforms my leadership thinking. I only wish I had this resource in my hands ten years ago!

I'm often daunted by how much there is to master in running a nonprofit organisation. What should I be an expert in? What niche publications should I be reading? What training do I need?

The thing I love about John's book is that if I didn't read anything else, but just mastered each of the 20 buckets he talks about, then I'd be in the top few percentile of my game. I can't think of anything of substance that is missing from the book, it covers such a wide range of practical topics. But it somehow covers them in enough depth to be really helpful.

I wish I had come across this earlier - but since I'm still relatively young, there's hope for me yet that I'll have time to integrate the good common sense that John outlines! The book is easy to read in its style, bite-sized and practical in its format, and one of the very best books I've come across for nonprofit leaders.

John packs 25 years of experience into 270 pages of management insights, written in the breezy Pearsonian style that makes the material as fun to read as it is easy to absorb and apply. Although geared primarily to the nonprofit world, Management Buckets will inform and stimulate managers in any organization on the full spectrum of functions. An excellent value and terrific reference book. My copy is already well-thumbed.

Fredric L. Laughlin, DBA [co-author: Good Governance for Nonprofits]

Pearson writes from a lifetime of experience in managing and consulting with many kinds of ministries. This book is practical, easy-to-read and filled with helpful principles and specific actions to help leaders and managers of ministries. For experienced leaders there are probably not many new insights here, but Pearson has a winsome way of reminding us of things we have neglected or forgotten or even, have done badly. I especially appreciate his emphasis that ministries do not have to be just like businesses. There is a difference.

Leaders have to be competent, or the whole thing won't work. "Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business Or Nonprofit" is a crash course in leadership skills for those who want to learn everything they need to know about company management. With nearly one hundred pieces of invaluable advice, as well as an index and bibliography, "Mastering the Management Buckets" is an excellent choice for prospective leaders and for community library business collections.

John communicates his approach to managing literally hundreds of details in this easy to understand book. I wish I could have read the book before joining him on the management team at Christian Management Association; I would have been far more productive from my first day on the job. It took me a full year to learn to comprehend how John kept all the plates spinning day after day, year in and year out.

Excellent book! It opens the door to more research material and reading opportunities. Love it!

OK, I'm not Christian. But I bought this book as a leader of a religious non-profit, figuring that I could translate whatever Christian ideas expressed in it into my own faith's terms, and that the management ideas would shine through.

Regrettably, I found this to be an almost random collection of happy irrelevant ideas, full of references to go buy other people's books if you really want to learn anything. I should have known from the title and the structure of this book: a bucket is a catch-all for whatever falls into it. This book comes up with 20 of them, with a few random ideas in each.

I can't deny how ecstatic the other reviewers have been, and I'm glad the book worked for them. But there really isn't very much content in this book to guide either a new or experienced leader of a religious non-profit, and even less a business.

One example: "Every minute the meeting facilitator invests in preparation ... reduces, on average, the actual meeting time by 25 percent" (p. 266). Swell; invest 4 minutes in preparing, and you can cancel the meeting altogether. Somehow, that doesn't cut it as serious management advice.

I'll save your reading time: don't bother with this book.