A review by jrobles76
The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman

5.0

This is really a great introduction to what it takes to be an effective manager. They use the term effective as Peter Drucker meant it and the title is obviously an homage to Drucker's seminal The Effective Executive. Like Drucker's book, this one should be required reading for those starting a path towards a business degree. The book is short and contains actionable items that one can begin implementing and a timeline for rolling out the full set of Manager Tools. For those, like myself, who are fans of the podcast it is a nice refresher. For those new to Manager Tools, it is a good introduction. They even included "There's a cast for that" which highlights areas where if you want more information, you can turn to their podcast. Thanks to this book I finally downloaded the Manager Tools app and relistened to the One on One's podcast as that is something we just started rolling out in our company.

If you are a manager and wish to be better, I can't recommend this book enough. These guys aren't gurus selling you some "ideas" they had, they did the research. I did not realize how much work they put into testing One on Ones to find the best duration and recurrence (30 mins, once a week). It is as quick read at about 190 pages (I took longer to finish because it was a review for me rather than new material, thus I read other books) and if implemented will really change how good you are at your job and make you a leader rather than a manager.