Harvard Business Review on Becoming a High-Performance Manager

The muddled state of thinking on the qualities of a good manager is reflected in this uneven collection of papers reprinted from the Harvard Business Review. The best of them are the most prosaic. Carol A. Walker pinpoints some of the common people-management mistakes made by rookie managers; Steven Berglas warns of the damage caused by Svengali-like executive coaches who impose superficial managerial nostrums and overlook or exacerbate deeper psychological problems; and in the collection's high point, William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass give a funny and perceptive account of the ways subordinates shift their problems onto their supervisors' shoulders. Other selections are less substantive: "The Making of a Corporate Athlete" includes tips on diet, weight-training and "spiritual capacity," while an esoteric round-table of leadership experts mixes vague talk of managerial "vision" with the latest results in primatology. Confusion reigns even on such a basic issue as managerial time wasting. A leadership researcher and a management professor blame "unproductive busyness" on a lack of "focus" and "energy;" two management consultants argue that managers' retreat into busywork as a comforting escape from their anxiety over more challenging and unfamiliar problems; while leadership guru John P. Kotter contends that wasting time on seemingly insignificant chats and socializing is actually the key to executives' success. This anthology makes it clear that being a good manager is still more art than science.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.