I’m currently reading The Effective Manager with my group at work. To keep things moving and not overburden the group we’ll be taking it chapter by chapter.

This book has a lot of good information on management. The original edition was written by Mark Horstman as a collection of his years of experience in the U.S. Army and industry as well as co host of the “Manager Tools” podcast. He is a former Army Officer and West Point graduate and much of his guidance I’ve found to be consistant with my own thinking.

In The Effective Manager, Mark Horstman, co-host of the popular “Manager Tools” podcast and a seasoned veteran of both the U.S. Army and industry, distills his wealth of experience into actionable advice on effective management. As a former Army Officer and West Point graduate, Horstman brings a unique perspective to the world of management. I’ve found much of his guidance to be consistent with my own approach, making this book a valuable resource for my team as we discuss our approach.

Introduction

My takeaways from the introduction:

• “Managers #1 job is to get the most out of their people. Most managers are bad at this.”
• “This Book is going to tell you exactly what to do in detail.”
  • I like this approach. They make the case that most books are written at a theoretical level. This one will be diffewrent and give real ideas of what to actually say or do. The only other book on leadership I’ve read that claimed that was Dandridge Malone’s Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach. This is also a great book if more structured specifically for military leadership.

Chapter 1: What Is An Effective Manager?

My takeaways from chapter one:

• Your first responsibility as a manager is to achieve results.
  • First responsibility NOT to your team of directs.
  • A manager loved by their team but who doesn’t their goals is not doing their job.
  • Mirrors the Patrick Lencioni concept of “First Team” from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
  • Army’s concept of Mission First, Troops Always.
  • “About the only way to really feel good about what your responsibilities are is to have quantified goals.”
    • Questions to ask:
      • What results do you expect of me?
      • What are the measures you’re going to compare me against?
      • What are the objective standards?
      • What subjective things do you look at to round out your evaluation of me?
• “You’ve met at least one manager who gets great results and does well and whom you despise.”
  • “When the ends justify the means for managers, bad things happen to the workers who report to them.”
  • “A focus only on results far too often leads to abuse of workers.”

• Your second responsibility as a manager is to retain your people.

• These don’t change in a remote/hybrid setting - just make it harder.
  • Communication is critical to management and communication ina remote/hybrid environment is very much harder.