The Good Manager: A Model for the Twenty-First Century

by Dean Gualco

Overview

You can be the smartest person in the room and even the most experienced, but if youre not a good person, theres little chance youll succeed as a manager.

Thats one of the big takeaways from The Good Manager, which is based on Dean Gualcos decades of experience as a leader and manager. To be good person, he says, you must live a decent and honorable life, be kindhearted, control destructive human emotions, tell the truth, do whats right, and always look for the good.

In this guidebook to honing your leadership and management skills, youll learn how tounderstand how the view of managers has evolved over time;appreciate the most rewarding aspects of management;cultivate the ability to plan, delegate, and manage time; andmake work fun for yourself and others.

Being a good personas well as learning the necessary skills to excel as a managerare rarely taught at conferences or lectures or on the job. But if you want to move along the intellectual/moral spectrum from self-interest to human interest, negativity to positivity, darkness to enlightenment, and hate to friendship, then you need to learn the lessons in The Good Manager.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491798294
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/12/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
File size:	192 KB

About the Author

Dean Gualco is a public speaker and author who has also served as the owner of Torgun Consulting, a firm specializing in corporate change and management, an organizational leader, and university professor. He earned his doctorate from the University of the Pacific and a master’s degree from the University of Southern California.

Read an Excerpt

The Good Manager

A Model for the Twenty-First Century

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By Dean Gualco

iUniverse

Copyright © 2016 Dean Gualco
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-9827-0

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CHAPTER 1

The Changing Managerial Profession

From the earliest times of civilization, there have been those who have assumed leadership and managerial roles, including those of a king or queen, a chief, or a priest. Each held influence over a flock, directing efforts toward the communal benefit of the group. Over the centuries, the roles and responsibilities of a manager have evolved, requiring a broader and more intricate set of knowledge and skills today than in times previous. In fact, some of the greatest challenges to management have occurred in the first decade of the twenty-first century, caused by events and circumstances that were unforeseen save for a few.

The financial collapse of the world economy in the later part of the first decade of the twenty-first century has had a profound impact on the economic, political, and social fabric of our nation. Now known as the Great Recession, the reverberations of that cataclysmic event still haunt a society struggling to normalize and stabilize its economy and those who actively participate in it. Following catastrophic events of this nature, there is a natural tendency to find someone or something to blame, and two entities have received the most attention: the federal government (the politicians and the bureaucrats) and the managerial profession (managers and supervisors). The government's inability to accurately forecast and prevent this collapse has been well chronicled in a host of books and articles. Similarly, the mistakes by management to competently manage its business have grabbed the nation's attention — especially those in the banking profession — and provoked anger at some managers' unethical and duplicitous conduct.

Unfortunately, this anger has been targeted at the broader managerial profession rather than at a minute segment of the profession whose actions were irresponsible and unprofessional, if not immoral. Consequently, the image and reputation of the management profession in general, and a manager in particular, has been profoundly affected by the continued onslaught of blame for all that ills the economy and those people who seek to be employed by it. I am convinced, though, that the image and profession of a manager can be rehabilitated. Identifying the attributes of a good manager, as outlined in this book, is an important contribution to that effort. First, however, it is beneficial to provide a broad context on the role of the manager in organizations, along with how the circumstances and events of the past years have fundamentally altered the profession, thus requiring a new way of thinking from today's manager.

What Is a Manager?

"Manager" is a difficult term to define in business. This seems odd to some, especially since thousands of books have been written on the art and science of management, not including the countless books written about organizations, governments, and businesses, all in which a manager plays a key role in their success and failure. Yet it is also surprising how few managers can give a succinct and refined definition of their job and their profession, or understand the principal tenets, tasks, and responsibilities that form the core of the managerial profession.

Let's start with a fairly comprehensive definition of a manager: a manager is someone who has the responsibility to utilize an organization's material resources and to leverage cooperation from employees in order to attain a goal that is deemed important to the organization's success. More simply defined, a manager is the person in charge who uses certain resources to accomplish certain tasks. What are these resources? Resources primarily revolve around people, money, and physical and intellectual property. Some of the more prominent examples of resources would include employees, computers, budgets, patents, research, office space, and volunteers.

Managers hope to utilize these resources in the most efficient and effective manner. Efficiency is the use of a minimal amount of resources — raw materials, money, people, and time, to offer a few examples — to produce a desired volume of output; effectiveness is the degree to which the organization achieves a stated objective. If managers can accomplish their objectives in an efficient and effective manner, they can give the organization to which they belong a better chance of achieving its stated strategic objectives, whether that is producing a more innovative product or generating a more profitable service.

It is a common misunderstanding of the management profession to believe that managers and leaders are one and the same. It is also a misperception that a good manager will naturally be or become a good leader. It is true that a person can be both: some individuals can envision the future of an organization or an industry (a key trait of a leader) and then marshal the necessary organizational resources to achieve that vision (a key role of a manager). I believe, though, that distinction is more the exception than the rule. Each organizational role, both leader and a manager, has a different skill set, and it is the rare person who possesses both. Steve Jobs offers a good example. For a number of years after he and Steve Wozniak cofounded Apple in 1976, Steve Jobs was its chief executive officer. After the company's initial success building and selling the personal computer, however, he parted with the company in 1985, a victim not only of an internal power struggle among investors but also having found that managing an organization is much different, and less interesting, than creating it. Of course, he later made a triumphant return to the top position at Apple, having learned the skills necessary to manage an organization. Prior to his untimely death in 2011, his tenure at Apple provided a sterling example of how leadership abilities can coexist with managerial skills, and that management skills can be learned if you have the knowledge, desire, and ability to do so.

Estée Lauder was another example of a revolutionary businessperson with strong management skills and leadership abilities. It was her uncle that created the beauty products that initially launched the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, but it was Estée who foresaw the future of youth creams and other products that could be bought by the average woman. She had the innate skills to sell what her uncle created and also the unique and cunning ability to create products of her own, including Youth Dew bath oil/ perfume, a pioneering cosmetic that eventually sold hundreds of millions of bottles (and still is a major-selling cosmetic to this day). She believed in a simple marketing concept, "telephone, telegraph, tell-a-woman," yet also created groundbreaking marketing concepts such as the "gift with purchase," a concept where customers were given a sample of one product when they bought another.

From the launch of her original four products in 1946 until her retirement in 1995, Estée built a billion-dollar company that today sells products in over 150 countries and is as profitable and dynamic as when she initially started selling her uncle's inventions. Like Steve Jobs, she was the rare person who could combine the visionary and determined attributes of a leader with the broad knowledge and organizational skills typically ascribed to a manager.

A few more words need to be said about the distinction between a manager and a leader. Generally speaking, leaders set the overall direction of an organization. They foresee the future, creating the dream and vision that will determine the focus of the organization for the next ten to twenty years. They have a long-term, forward-thinking approach; they are less concerned with the trivial and routine aspects of organizational responsibilities but rather foreshadowing where the future of their industry lies and then searching broadly to determine those people (managers) who are best prepared to achieve that future.

Those in the field of management are more concerned with implementing the visions and dreams of their leaders. They have a more short-term focus, concentrating on determining the strategies and tactics that would best translate the future into the present. Their motivation is to make the future become a reality, for the dream to be realized. It is a different set of knowledge and skills, ones not foreign to leaders but ones that require an emphasis on rationality and practicality rather than the dream of something that may be, of something that could be.

Given their intrinsic knowledge of the present abilities of their organization, managers do have some influence on the direction of the organization. Their understanding of the organization's capabilities and limitations — in terms of employee skill sets, organizational structure, financial limitations, product quality, and customer expectations, to name a few — can be a factor in a leader's vision for the future. Without the proper vehicle to achieve grand ambitions, the dream would remain an unfulfilled prophecy. Thus, the role of a manager as a consultant and participant in determining the future cannot be underestimated, but their primary focus remains on how that future can best be achieved.

Successful organizations are created by visionary people with an idea or concept for something different and better. They have that singular idea to create a new and innovative product or service, one that may have market relevance and impact. Though they may have the idea for the product or service, they often do not have the strategy to bring that product or service to the market. On a smaller scale, the strategy may not be complex. Famously, William Hewlett and David Packard created their business in a garage, Mark Zuckerberg began his quest to create Facebook in his college dormitory, and Martha Stewart started a catering business in the kitchen of her home, an event that would launch her future decorating and home-improvement empire. Many other titans of their industries started in their home or a single storefront, but once success visited these pioneering entrepreneurs, their organization was insufficient to meet the growing public's demands for the product or service. This success forced the organization to grow in size and scope. It is at this point that it often becomes necessary to hire a professional manager, for — as we have seen — the knowledge and skills necessary to create an organization are largely different from the knowledge and skills necessary to manage an organization of a certain size.

Leaders and managers both play vital roles in the organization. Both must possess the required knowledge, skills, and abilities that are unique to their profession and their industry, along with an understanding of the economic, political, and social events of the day. And rarely have events so tested the knowledge, skills, and abilities of managers as those occurring during and after the Great Recession of 2008.

A Challenging Time for Management

A manager can have considerable influence in his or her environment, both professionally and personally. Yet circumstances beyond their control may inhibit the influence and success of some in management, and events over the past few years continue to impact the profession. To gain a better understanding of how events and circumstances impact the profession, along with the perils and promises of those working in management, it may be advantageous to assess how challenging times impact the duties and responsibilities of management.

Our nation's confidence and respect for management has been slowly eroding for many years. Over the past few decades, we have seen employees who no longer have access to good jobs, shareholders who have seen their investments fall as vast uncertainty enters into the marketplace, and average Americans who have either lost their home or found themselves unable to afford the rising cost of the American dream, which not only begins with a good job but continues with owning your own home. Trillions of dollars vanished during the stock market collapse of 2008, and we have been told that there is a new normal, that it may take years for the average American to recoup the investment in their home and retirement funds (a retirement that is increasingly funded by the employee rather than by the employer). We witness entire industries outsourced to foreign countries, along with the chance to obtain a solid middle-class job — one with a retirement plan and health benefits — that now seems out of reach for the average American.

For far too many, the fact is that the middle-class job has become a faded relic of the past. For most employees in the United States, inflation-adjusted wages were about the same in 2014 as they were in 1979 and have fallen 3 percent from 2000 to 2014. There are jobs available in the marketplace, just not good ones. Educated, professional, and talented employees are forced to take part-time and lower-paying jobs to provide for their families, and though their numbers do not appear in the monthly unemployment figures produced by the United States Department of Labor, their plight to achieve some semblance of financial security continues without success.

Not many have been immune to the economic reversal that started in 2008, though the foundation for our nation's (and, in reality, global) economic instability was sown several decades earlier. Whether the fault lies with the federal government or the much broader economic and societal forces that have been in effect over this time, there has been a cataclysmic setback of the American economy that began in 2008 and continues to this day. As in any time of pronounced economic stress, however, there are those whose fortunes have risen, or at least have not fallen as appreciatively as others. Those in the higher echelons of the organization have done reasonably well over the years, increasing both their salaries and ownership stake in the organization. The field of management, it seems, has weathered the financial storms rather well, at least financially. Yet these often contradictory movements — of the relative stability in the management profession and the comparative instability for the average worker — have caused stresses in our political, economic, and social systems, and they have contributed to the negative public perception of managers and their organizations that arose much more prominently following the economic collapse of the Great Recession. This has led to many in management becoming the face of what is wrong with our world; management and especially those in larger corporations seem to typify the ruthless, conniving symbol of what has destroyed the American dream for many in this country.

Blame the Managers

As mentioned, originating before and continuing through the Great Recession in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there have been continued stresses throughout the American economy. From the manufacturing sector through real estate and financial services, the very foundation of a profitable and employment-producing private enterprise system was rocked, still unable to rebound to its former glories these many years later. In these continuing times of uncertainty and instability, the initial response for some is to look for someone to take responsibility for what happened. Sadly, it has become all too American to look for someone, anyone, to blame for our own and our nation's plight. The response by some to the events surrounding the Great Recession offers a telling yet regrettable example. This search for blame has included the following:

• We should blame the thousands of real-estate agents and mortgage brokers who created, sold, and financed homes to people who clearly could not qualify for the home, or afford the home once it was purchased.

• We should blame the political administrations of former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who encouraged (and, in some cases, coerced) banks and other financial institutions to lower their loan requirements for first-time homeowners.

• We should blame the political administration of former president George W. Bush, who failed to properly oversee the financial markets prior to the collapse.

• We should blame the banks and financial institutions, which developed and promoted high-risk financial instruments that some believe were doomed — in the long term — to fail.

• We should blame those who manage our nation's businesses for their inability to act in a wise and prudent manner. Their actions to invest in high-risk enterprises compromised the safety of their business.

In fairness, all may deserve some part of the blame. But there is merit to the assertion that at least some blame rests with a most uncomfortable segment of the population: the American people. Many have not only condoned the actions by some of those listed above but profited from the very financial transactions that helped cause the collapse. We have the story about families who lost their homes and blame the increase on their adjustable mortgage rate. On further investigation, we find out that these families never had the financial capability to purchase their homes in the first place. Rather, they were speculating that their homes would go up in value, at which time they could then sell their home and make a fantastic profit. All this was slated to occur before interest rates rose because, at that point, they would not have been able to afford the monthly payment.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Good Manager by Dean Gualco. Copyright © 2016 Dean Gualco. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Chapter 1: The Changing Managerial Profession, 1,
Chapter 2: Like What You Do, 20,
Chapter 3: Know Your Job, 32,
Chapter 4: Exceptional Organizational Skills, 52,
Chapter 5: Work Hard, 66,
Chapter 6: Make Work Fun, 79,
Chapter 7: Be a Good Person, 93,
Chapter 8: The Last Word, 110,
Appendix — The Story of the Backpack, 115,
Endnotes, 117,