The Great Management Reset: 27 Ways to be a Better Manager isn’t about the latest trends in leadership or the newest buzzword in the ever-growing list of fancy leadership techniques. It’s a book about the basics. The focus is on management, but the emphasis is on how to build (or reinforce) your management skills by resetting back to the timeless principles that separate great managers from ones that only exist to get a paycheck.
What is The Great Management Reset About?
What exactly is “management”?
You may know intuitively what it means (aka “the person you ask for when the customer or employee has a problem”). But you’ve never taken the time to really define what it means. In failing to do so, you are missing the opportunity to distinguish between average and excellent management. The Great Management Reset doesn’t want you to fall into that trap, so it provides a clear definition for its readers:
“Management is the identification, organization, deployment, and control of available resources to accomplish a stated goal.” (p.3)
That’s it.
Management isn’t a fancy or vague terms in the eyes of this book. It’s just the art and science of using resources to accomplish something. This concise definition doesn’t make practicing management any easier, however. The Great Management Reset breaks up this definition into 10 distinct categories (task management, service management, reputation management, etc.) to show just how complex management is. In each category, which conveniently has its own chapter, the author (Leslie Kaminoff) focuses on the central issue readers need to master. These categories make up the “science” of the book’s “management reset”
The last portion of The Great Management Reset deals with the “art” of management. The art of management isn’t as easily categorized as the science of management, but it is equally (if not more) important. It involves concepts like courage and passion forming the perspective from which mangers view and respond to the world. Without courage, for example, a manager will be afraid to address obstacles in his or her path. Without passion, a manager won’t invest in the process.
So, in answering the question, “What is management?” the author of “The Great Management Reset” might say that management is the art and science of closing the gap between a goal on paper and a goal in reality.
Kaminoff is an expert in the professional training of leaders, particularly in the real estate industry. He is the founder of AKAM Living Services, the co-creator of the only accredited training program for program managers and the winner of several prestigious awards in the real estate industry. Kaminoff is also an occasional lecturer at New York University’s Real Estate Institute and a keynote speaker in addition to serving as a writer of several articles in the real estate and leadership industries.
What Was Best About The Great Management Reset?
The Great Management Reset is an upfront book that embodies in the text the characteristics that it wants to see in readers. The book is centered around simplicity, focus and a clear direction in every single chapter. No matter how complex the topic is, Kaminoff breaks that topic down into a central core concept and then provides a simple easy-to-follow guide to addressing it. That feature is extremely important for new managers or managers who want to start anew by refocusing on the basic principles.
What Could Have Been Done Differently?
The single-minded focus in The Great Management Reset can be a blessing but also an obstacle for readers. Particularly for those readers who have mastered the concepts in the book. One possible way that the book might address this paradox is by providing two things. The first is to use the pre-reader survey as a diagnostic, rather than reflective, tool. Readers could be directed to specific chapters in areas where they failed. The second is to include more examples and resources for readers to see how the book’s principles look in the face of real life.
Why Read The Great Management Reset?
As mentioned above, The Great Management Reset is best suited for new managers or those seeking to make their management “anew” by refocusing on the basic fundamentals. If you are a reader who has become frustrated with advice loaded with buzzwords and trendy techniques that are popular one minute and gone the next, this book offers you something different. It offers readers the opportunity to get reacquainted with the core principles and functions of management so they can get back to the timeless principles effective in any situation at any time.
This article, “The Great Management Reset Focuses on Timeless Principles, Not Trendy Buzzwords” was first published on Small Business Trends