The Ten Commandments of Management

By George W. Holland

It describes the ten essential behaviors required to be a successful manager in business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9780692855799

Book preview

Postface

In December of 2004, I retired as the Director of Information Technology for one of the largest counties in the United States. That brought to a conclusion a forty-year career that included thirty-two years of management at first, middle, and executive levels. In those years of management, I made many mistakes, and more than one was serious enough to cause me to seek other employment. Furthermore, I found that I was not unique, because I saw others making the same errors in management behavior as me, with similar results. I found this incongruous, because many of them, like me, had attended innumerable courses that offered instruction on effective management. At one point, I concluded that to be a good manager one had to be blessed with the appropriate gifts and personality at birth, and that perhaps I was just one of those that were not so fortunate. But, that contradicted much of what I had personally experienced during my career. Even when I didn’t seek open management positions, my supervisors would often recommend me to fill them, because of their confidence that I would be successful. And, often they were right.

Over the years I studied this conundrum and eventually came to the conclusion that our modern management training and instruction is missing one very key component; we are taught how to accomplish good management tasks, but not how to behave like good managers. In other words, we are given the tools and instructed how to perform the tasks of successful management. However, nothing, or at least very little, is offered to train us how to behave in a manner that will optimize success.

After I retired, I decided to study this theory to determine its accuracy. For the past twelve years I have been employed as a non-management individual contributor in a very large organization with multi-tiered management levels. I have observed good managers and recorded the characteristics that contributed to their success. I have done the same for poor managers, recording those characteristics that contributed to their lack of success. My conclusion is that successful management is comprised of two distinct components; one is the adherence to and the diligent performance of management tasks, while the other, no less important element, is adopting and implementing respectable management behaviors.

During my study, I was able to identify ten distinct management behaviors, any one of which, when missing, can prevent a person from being successful. I call them the Ten Commandments of Management, and I have written this book in order to share them with you. Furthermore, I am developing an online course of instruction based on this book that will instruct those wishing to integrate these behaviors with the tasks that, when successfully completed, will lead to a beneficial and prosperous future.

The industrial revolution came to America at the turn of the 19th century. With it, the United States moved from an agrarian economy to one driven by industry. Our innovation fueled technology so that in the course of a hundred years our country became one of the giants and leaders of the industrial world. Fast forward to the present and our advances in every area of industry are truly astonishing, except for one - management.

Since the late 1700’s management in almost all U.S. organizations has remained unchanged. Oh, we’ve adopted technology to make managerial jobs more streamlined and better able to analyze and predict productivity, revenue, and profit. But, with very few exceptions, we haven’t changed the culture, structure, or styles of our executives and their teams. In fact, we may have been better in the art of managing at the beginning of the industrial revolution than we are now.

When it all began, it wasn’t unusual to have a first-line production manager overseeing or supervising twenty or more workers performing the daily departmental tasks. Today, it is highly unlikely that any manager will have more than ten direct reports, and more likely will have five or less. In the 1980s, a major electronics firm in Silicon Valley proudly boasted a 5 wide-by-5 deep corporate structure that kept the direct reports for all managers in the organization at five. So, the company could have up to five divisions each reporting to the CEO. Each division was headed by a vice-president who could have up to five department directors reporting. Each department director