The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management, by Alan Murray

This book was recommended to me by Sam Wilkins, Director of South Carolina's Office of Human Resources, an organization that delivers HR expertise to that state's agencies and Assembly.

Here is what Mr Wilkins wrote to me :

"The most recent book I read is 'The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management' by Alan Murray.  While this book targets all managers, I think it is particularly relevant to human resources managers who are helping their agencies find the 'new normal' after the Great Recession."



A short overview of contemporary management thought

Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, finds himself in contact with a lot of CEOs. He asked them what management books have had the strongest influence on them. Their answers included Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma", Cialdini's "Influence", "Blue Ocean Strategy", by Kim and Mauborgne, "Good to Great" by Collins, "The Black Swan", by Taleb, and many, many others.

Murray's guide offers a short overview of all that management knowledge. It offers simple explanations and useful tips about twelve subjects:

• Management
• Leadership
• Motivation
• People
• Strategy
• Execution
• Teams
• Change
• Financial Literacy
• Going Global
• Ethics
• Managing Yourself

How is it useful to an HR practitioner?

Several of theses subjects, like People, Motivation, or Teams, are directly relevant to HR managers. Others, like Strategy, Financial Literacy, or Going Global, help us developing our general management knowledge and skills.

If you have read this book, please share your comments!

References

• The Wall Street Journal. Essential Guide to Management
• By Alan Murray
• HarperCollins Publishers
• 207 pages
• Available on Amazon: The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management: Lasting Lessons from the Best Leadership Minds of Our Time

"Power", by Jeffrey Pfeffer

I am an INFP. If you are familiar with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, you may know that this stands for 'idealist'.

So this book was sort of a cure to me, a great lesson of pragmatism.

Some of the advices Pfeffer gives us might seem somewhat cynical. For example:

• As long as you keep your bosses happy, performance doesn't matter that much.
• Established rules play in favor of those who already have the power. If you are in a high position, you should play by the rules and invite others to do so. If you aren't, you best interest might be to break them.
• Likability is overrated.
• The secret of leadership is the ability to play a role, to pretend, to be skilled in the theatrical arts.

I am not a person who likes this kind of ideas, but Pfeffer shows with great talent how true they are.A Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford, Pfeffer knows a lot about how people reach power, or lose it. This book is Machiavelli 2.0.

Building on scientific studies and empirical evidence, he shows that we have no choice but recognizing the necessity of organizational politics and tells us how to act strategically to reach a position of power.

This brilliant book is a must-read if your ambition is to become a CEO... or just to keep your job!

From an HR point of view, this book is also very useful, as it helps us identify the personal characteristics that will allow someone to become a real leader: ambition, energy, focus, self-knowledge, confidence, empathy, capacity to tolerate conflict.

References

• Power
• By Jeffrey Pfeffer (Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford)
• HarperCollins Publishers
• 288 pages
• Available on Amazon: Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't

Leading Teams. Setting the Stage for Great Performance. By J. Richard Hackman

What is it about?

Hackman used experimental data and field analysis to find out what are the main conditions that make a team effective.

He defines an effective team as one that:

1. Serves its clients well
2. Gets better and better
3. Helps each member achieve personal fulfillment

Hackman thinks that a team's performances are much too often attributed to its leader's coaching style. He finds other conditions much more relevant: it should be a real team, with a compelling direction and an enabling structure (defined in terms of design of the work, norms of conduct, composition). A supportive context (reward, information and educational systems) and expert coaching also help a lot.

The book has much scientific rigor but it is also fun to read: written with clarity an humour, full of interesting examples.


How is it useful to an HR practitioner?

We HR people tend to see a strong relationship between performance and people: we think that people's styles, traits and states of mind determine how well they perform.

This book can help us think differently about teams. Among many other things, it provides an insightful criticism about leadership programmes that seek to teach managers how to behave with their teams.

If there are any underperforming teams in your organization, reading this book will undoubtedly help you understand better what's wrong with them, and what you could do about it.


Who recommended this book to me?

Steward Friedman, author of "Total Leadership" simply told me: "I like Richard Hackman's book, Leading Teams, and I recommend it to you".



References

• Leading Teams. Setting the Stage for Great Performances
• By J. Richard HACKMAN
• Harvard Business Press
• 312 pages
• Available on Amazon: Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances

Total Leadership. Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. By Steward D. Friedman

What is it about?

Take the 5 to 10 people that are most important to you, in any domain of your life: your partner, your boss, your main client, your children: whoever they are. Consider them as stakeholders of your success in life. Have a conversation with each of them to talk about your future and your mutual expectations. This simple but very powerful  experience is what Steward Friedman calls "stakeholders' dialogues", a part of the Total Leadership programme.

I know: "Total Leadership programme" sounds a bit guru-ish. But it is very serious, methodical and efficient.

The book is full of examples and self-development exercises. It makes you think, but also makes you act for the sake of your own successes.

It shows that the notion of work-life balance needs to be surpassed and explains how to do it, by taking initiatives that can have simultaneously a positive effect on the four domains of your life: Work, Home (i.e. family), Community (i.e. friends and the public interest) and Self (i.e. your mental, emotional and physical fitness).

How is it useful to an HR practitioner? 

Firstly, it has the potential to change your life. Not every book does!

For example, it provides excellent tools to help you see what objectives you should define for yourself. It also helps you strengthen your relationships with those who have the greatest impact on your life.

Secondly, once you have tried the method on yourself, you will want to use it to help other people be better leaders. If some manager in your society seems overwhelmed, unhappy, misunderstood, inefficient, lacking passion, or badly evaluated, you will find in this book an excellent personal development method.

Who recommended this book to me?

I listened to an interview of Steward Friedman on Harvard Business Review's Ideacast.

References

• Total Leadership. Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. 
• By Steward D. Friedman
• Harvard Business Press
• 248 pages
• Available on Amazon: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life