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Managing for Success
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Managing for Success

Practical Advice for Managers

Steven R. Smith
Cambridge Hill Press, 2014
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Calling upon his more than four decades of management and executive experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Steven R. Smith presents a clear, intelligent, highly useful manual for all modern managers. Smith covers every area of responsibility – with a focus on hiring – and begins from a compelling position: Most managers who are promoted due to their skills and achievements in various areas of business performance are ill-prepared for management jobs and could benefit from any guidance they can get. Smith’s pragmatic – if mainstream – advice provides very concise basic management training while offering worthwhile insights into employee-manager and manager-boss relations. getAbstract recommends Smith’s unpretentious, valuable primer to managers who could use a refresher and to those who are mostly winging it for now.

Summary

Managers Need Training

Research indicates that 40% of first-time managers can’t do their jobs. Most of the remaining 60% lack basic managerial skills. Only a few new managers manage well. This endemic lack of management know-how manifests as a corporate problem in a variety of ways. Poor management cuts productivity, and bad managers fuel costly employee turnover. Employees who leave their jobs often do so because they dislike their managers.

Most new managers learn how to do their jobs from their old managers, who also don’t know what they’re doing. Bad practices persist and become entrenched. One problem is that excellent employees usually get promoted to management positions as a reward for good service. However, they advance without ever gaining management skills.

Being expert in a technical or professional field does not make you a good manager – but it can help you earn a promotion. What if the executive in charge of your operation assigned you to become your firm’s official pilot? You’d say, “I can’t fly a plane. I need training!” Flying part of a fast-moving company also requires training, even though companies often promote people into a pilot’s seat...

About the Author

Steven R. Smith, a registered pharmacist, spent 42 years serving in management and executive positions in the pharmaceutical industry.

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