We tend to look in specific places for specific characteristics – to entrepreneurs for innovation, the military for courage and resolution, firefighters and police for unflinching service, to government for stability in crisis, and in particular to politicians for astute direction in the midst of disorder. It’s normal enough. It is better to think of these characteristics, though . . .
Traction – an apt and reassuring title for one of an increasingly rare breed of truly satisfying and rewarding management books. Gino Wickman’s “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business” aims to help the owners and managers of a small business to formulate a concrete, actionable picture of the business, and then to use that to develop equally concrete action to create more productive and profitable pictures with each forward step – generate traction to move forward into a position affording new and greater traction. Who doesn’t want to feel they have such a profound understanding of and contact with the reality that drives their business?
I once heard a company commander in the Marines criticize a then-common means of dealing with individuals who were chronic discipline problems: arrange for their reassignment to someone else’s unit. “I don’t transfer problems,” he said with a resolute determination that brooked no argument. “I fix them.” I was impressed by that, and inclined to follow his highly responsible sounding no-excuses attitude. But I later learned that he was mostly wrong . . .
The question of how negative individual behavior affects the workplace has received considerable attention over the past few years. And it’s good that it should do so, for at least two reasons. . .
Sramana Mitra is a successful businesswoman who has developed specific and focused ideas on how entrepreneurs can improve their chances, how this can help the economy, and how the economy itself might better be structured to encourage this worthwhile outcome. She promotes this thinking through her consulting, and then spins her carefully organized observations into a series of wonderful books on the theme. We have looked at two of these . . .
With his previous book, “The No Asshole Rule,” Stanford University Management Professor Bob Sutton struck a powerful chord, resonating strongly with many of us – most of us – struggling mightily to do good, decent work in organizations of all sorts all around the land. In this one, he has picked out an important theme to carry his message effectively and meaningfully forward. It is: bosses matter. Discussed in the same context of the previous book, “Good Boss, Bad Boss” establishes the case for why bosses are so vital to the establishment of a healthy, personally satisfying, organizationally productive workplace – and why those who are dismissive of this fact for that very reason so often wind up actually being so toxic. In a very strong stage-setting chapter Sutton makes it clear why bosses matter. Quoting a researcher, he points out that “people do not quit organizations, they quit bad bosses.”
Sramana Mitra has plotted out a series of books on various aspects of entrepreneurial activity with regard to its effects on management and on the general economy. They all are formed around interviews with entrepreneurs whose experiences illustrate the main theme of each volume. The first . . .
Or:
Jim Stroup's Business card:
Come visit the Managing Leadership
Managing Leadership® is a registered trademark of the author
