Ebook: What Every New Manager Needs to Know: Making a Successful Transition to Management

I read WHAT EVERY NEW MANAGER SHOULD KNOW: MAKING A SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION TO MANAGEMENT by Gerard H. (Gus) Gaynor so that I could evaluate it for use in a course I'm teaching next semester. Since one of my coures objectives is to switch the mindset of students from that of tacticians to that of managers, I thought this would be a good way to start.

The book is an easy 229-page read, and with bulleted summaries and lists in larger type, the book is also easily scannable, especially for those who might read it "from the back" primarily (through indexed entries on specific topics).

Gaynor begins the book with a likely scenario for the reader: YOU have just been promoted at your organization to head a team or division, and you have until Monday morning to prepare yourself for the work of a manager. He stresses that management is a profession, with necessary core knowledge areas and skills and abilities, just as is the speciality from which you were promoted. The chapters of the book include:
1. Getting Started as a Manager
2. The Seven Management Hats
3. Making the Critical People Decisions
4. Managing Individual and Team Relationships
5. Project Management
6. Finding the Time and Doing the Work
7. Leadership and Communications
8. Thinking your Way to Success
9. Measuring your Chances of Success
10. Managing your Career

Several main ideas of Gaynor's focus on the ethical and people-oriented aspects of management. He states several times that managers do not manage people; they manage activities. Also, when writing about promotion and job assignments, he states that a manager can ruin someone's career by giving him or her the wrong assignment. Change agents aren't good at maintenance and vice-versa. If you give such a person responsibilities their natural talents don't lend themselves to, you could be dead-ending a perfectly good, contributing member of the organization. He also deals with leadership issues interestingly, and the notes sections at the end of each chapter offer other interesting reads, such as Senge's The Fifth Discipline and Henry Mintzberg's "The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact," from the Harvard Business Review.

I don't know that I will have my students read every chapter. The section on project management may be a little too detailed and contextual for students in a seminar, but I think the last chapter on self-assessment of managerial abilities is a good way to start them off on their consideration of their own strengths and weaknesses. I wished I had had this book when I first became the boss of people! It underscored some of my instincts (like never to be disrespectful to your employees) and provided sound reasoning for alternate points of view.

If you want more applied knowledge for new managers, want to improve your management skills or want to teach a class for new managers, I recommend this book, published by the American Management Association. Gaynor, who lives in Minneapolis, worked as a manager for more than 24 years at 3M and now has his own consulting firm.