Book Summary Preview : It’s Ok to Ask ‘Em to Work

The Big Idea
If you find yourself with a packed to-do list, an overflowing briefcase and a schedule that won’t budge, this book teaches you to regroup, re-organize and delegate tasks -- while staying true to the leadership qualities your subordinates have come to respect.

With his insightful prose based on years of public speaking and management consultancy work, Frank McNair teaches you how to approach pressing business matters and deal with difficult employees in simple, ready-to-access steps you’ll have no trouble remembering.

Unlike other technical, text-heavy management books, McNair’s work offers business maxims in readable, bite-sized portions that suit your already overflowing portfolio. (Think managerial fast-food, minus the junk!)

Four Key Managerial Maxims

1. Setting a vision for your organization
2. Articulating vision to your employees
3. Painting realistic targets
4. Creating an environment where employees can meet targets

3 Steps to Efficient and Improved Employee Relations

• Teaching and coaching
• Measuring performance
• Offering rewards

Chapter 1: Vision and Planning

Following Signs
A good management vision is akin to having plotted and followed road signs to efficient and lucrative business dealings. Vision is about understanding your working environment, like a ship that plans its course before it sets out to sail. It is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of your crew and select a unified goal that would yield the highest profits for the enterprise; all while keeping fair (if not highly satisfactory) wages for services and manpower rendered.

A Management Plan is Crucial yet FLEXIBLE
Movement and flexibility are important in sticking to a business plan. A plan is a guide, a snapshot of the course you intend to take. However, as a manager you must consider unforeseen and unexpected circumstances. Competitors grow (or weaken), your market grows (or shrinks) and consumers tend to be fickle. A good manager would know when to bend and improvise.

There is No One Perfect Strategy
Your strategy should depend on the nature of your business. If you are in the automobile industry, producing high-quality, mass-marketed cars may prove to be the most financially rewarding. If you are in the tools business, it could make more sense to supply your high-powered, niche-demand equipment to select distributors. Neither strategy is wrong or right; it is about finding your match and the plan that would produce the highest-yielding profit.

Know Where You Are Going
The fundamental task of managers is to define a coherent business vision, and to articulate the objectives, strategies and tactics to support this vision. While planning does not guarantee success, as a manager, it is your job to lead the organization to a united vision, and towards promising goals. Planning is critical to you and your company. If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else. . . . . . . . . . . . .

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