13 Fatal Errors Managers Make and How You Can Avoid Them

Rating:
Summary: Tremendous training tool for our sales managers
Review: 13 Fatal Errors serves as required reading for our regional sales managers. We have created role play scenarios to use skills to prevent the mistakes outlined in the book. The book helped us with the value of ensuring our job descriptions were up to date and helped understand the importance of setting real first-year objectives for new salespeople. A must read for sales managers.

Rating:
Summary: Tremendous training tool for our sales managers
Review: 13 Fatal Errors serves as required reading for our regional sales managers. We have created role play scenarios to use skills to prevent the mistakes outlined in the book. The book helped us with the value of ensuring our job descriptions were up to date and helped understand the importance of setting real first-year objectives for new salespeople. A must read for sales managers.

Rating:
Summary: Only for beginners
Review: After reading many other managerial texts, I find this book to be standard and common sense. I would only recommend this book to those who are very knew to management and have not read much on this topic.

Rating:
Summary: Only for beginners
Review: I wish I can give away the books to everyone I know. It is very good, down-to-earth and practical rules of managing. And the exercises and the contracts at the end of each chapter really works!
I am a new person in the workforce with no prior experience, and now I understand the grounds on how effective and successful managers operates. I am also impressed by the usability of the content, meaning that even where I come from (which is not US) the errors and how to avoid it is amazingly applicable. Some people who I respected are also showing the qualities described by the book. Excellent reading. Highly recommended for young executives and newly appointed managers. It might be helpful to buy extra copies to be forwarded to some ineffective managers :P

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reading for New and Old
Review: I wish I can give away the books to everyone I know. It is very good, down-to-earth and practical rules of managing. And the exercises and the contracts at the end of each chapter really works!
I am a new person in the workforce with no prior experience, and now I understand the grounds on how effective and successful managers operates. I am also impressed by the usability of the content, meaning that even where I come from (which is not US) the errors and how to avoid it is amazingly applicable. Some people who I respected are also showing the qualities described by the book. Excellent reading. Highly recommended for young executives and newly appointed managers. It might be helpful to buy extra copies to be forwarded to some ineffective managers :P

Rating:
Summary: Pretend profits don't count
Review: I'm not a manager, and don't aspire to be one. Except to manage myself, that's plenty.

As far as other people, well, yes, I see that managers are needed in the profit economy: They have to make sure that the workers (labor) help maximize the profit of the company.

W. Steven Brown does have experience in this area, and he sprinkles his personal stories throughout this book. The personal stories are the best part. I think he should have written a book only with personal stories. A lot of the other stuff is dull and common sensical.

Brown comes through this book as a reasonable person, a consultant and a self-described teacher. What he seems to lack, what the whole capitalist system seems to lack, is heart, not the organ itself of course but the feeling of thinking beyond the system, outside of the system. Heart could mean treating people as individuals rather than a piece of the system. It's not Brown's fault, that's just the way the capitalist system works.

And it probably wouldn't work if managers were humanitarians and altruists. This is what Brown is emphasizing. Yes, they have to give the illusion of being humanitarians and altruists, but they can't actually be that. They have to ensure that the bottom line is black, or, guess what, they lose.

I like John Heider's book, The Tao of Leadership, better. Those who lead least lead best. Yes, this may be an unachievable ideal in the capitalist society, but I'm a dreamer, I mentioned that, not a manager.

Diximus.

Rating:
Summary: The best practical guide to managing people and businesses.
Review: If you're trying to find out why things are not working in your organization, this book is a gold mine. Each error points out management weaknesses that are easily corrected. If you recognize the errors and fix them, your company is going to way better off. These are not difficult adjustments, but they require that managers should in fact manage.

Rating:
Summary: This should be the first book to read when you get promoted
Review: My review will reflect the readability of this book - simple. I highly recommend this book to a person (like me) that is new to "management". I'm sure others can find it useful as well, but there were some simple mistakes that I had been making that were quickly corected after reading this book. It is so inexpesive, but do not mistake that "low price must equal low content"...that wasn't the case at all. As this text points out...the worst mistake you can make is to run an "unprofitable" business. If you are running a profitable business in this economy you are probably doing a lot of things right! I actually loaned this book to a peer and he hadn't returned it yet, so I am getting another copy so I can go back to it when needed.

Rating:
Summary: This should be the first book to read when you get promoted
Review: My review will reflect the readability of this book - simple. I highly recommend this book to a person (like me) that is new to "management". I'm sure others can find it useful as well, but there were some simple mistakes that I had been making that were quickly corected after reading this book. It is so inexpesive, but do not mistake that "low price must equal low content"...that wasn't the case at all. As this text points out...the worst mistake you can make is to run an "unprofitable" business. If you are running a profitable business in this economy you are probably doing a lot of things right! I actually loaned this book to a peer and he hadn't returned it yet, so I am getting another copy so I can go back to it when needed.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for business administration students
Review: The book is really simple, it finds, explains, make examples, and solve 13 of the most common and fatal errors managers commit. I used this book on college for my bachellor's and it helped me a lot.