The Four Elements of Successful Management: Select, Direct, Evaluate, Reward

Rating:
Summary: Management primer full of good advice
Review: Don R. Marshall is president of the Marshall Group; a consulting firm that helps companies improve their quality and productivity with more than thirty years' experience in operations, HR management and performance planning. This light and enjoyable read presents how-to advice and timesaving tools for fine-tuning anyone's management skills. With an easily absorbed style, sans the usual drone of statistics or graphs, he explodes each of the title elements into distinct and definable lessons on modern reality management. I couldn't put it down. If that seems too early for such a biased endorsement, forgive my enthusiasm. Normally, a book-reviewer would parade their knowledge base against the author in a subtle battle of opinion. Not this time. The first element, "Select", is particularly useful for HR personnel or management within any size organization. Marshall correctly relates that hiring and retaining top performing people is crucial to business success, therefore the level of strategic planning to address that objective is a measure of business potential. He guides the reader in the selection process with a range of practices beginning with expected axioms such as "defining the job before trying to find a candidate" through more elaborate and sadly, less frequently utilized managerial activities like "conducting a job audit." An interesting side benefit of performing a comprehensive job audit is that information gathered during the audit might suggest a better way of accomplishing the job, or, possibly eliminating it entirely. The next two chapters on selection explore deeper dimensions of screening, interviewing and selection of candidates. The second element for successful management presented is "Direct." It is here that Marshall introduces training, both of management and non-management and, the importance of it being a continuous process. He briefly slips into PC speech by attempting to rename training "Strategic Plan Implementation Program", unnecessary and condescending. Just call it training, why cloud the issue. Direction distills the fundamental responsibilities of management as... * Direct employees toward objectives. * Oversee the work effort and address immediate problems. * Report information on the progress of the work to their superiors.

Evaluation is the next element covered and enlists sample forms and outlines for objective evaluation of managers and non-managers. Meetings are included and condensed into three rules for productive evaluation. 1) Don't say anything if there is nothing more to say. 2) Don't say it here if it should have been said somewhere else 3) If there wasn't anywhere else to say it, say it here. Don't leave it unsaid. In other words, deal with performance deficiencies as they surface, not at a performance review meeting. The closing chapters are a examination of rewards, their various types and purposes. He makes clear the distinction between reward and compensation. Compensation, of course, is what people receive for putting in their time, i.e., money. A reward is whatever someone has coming as a result of their performance. Interestingly, he expands the connotation of reward to include something negative like a demotion, a transfer, or termination. He continues the section with subcategorical headings of non-pay rewards, variable rewards, withholding rewards and others. Another break with the norm comes in his insistence that rewards are presented according to results, not simply the effort. The elements again are 1)Selection of employees who have the necessary attitudes, skills and energy to perform the specific job required. 2)Direction of employees through clear, concise and frequent outlining of required activities 3)Evaluation of employees against schedules events and dates that ensure accomplishment of the key objectives 4)Reward of employees that is appropriate to the level of accomplishment, not the effort

Marshall through this book has provided an excellent framework and reference for managers struggling to translate and transfer objectives to subordinates.

Rating:
Summary: Elementary Wisdom
Review: The book's thesis is that four basic elements of management (Select, Direct, Evaluate, and Reward) form the "framework of all people and performance management." Throughout his book, Marshall provides what he calls "incremental lessons in understanding and applying these basic elements." At one point, he suggests that his book is directed primarily to entry-level and mid-level managers.

Perhaps. But in fact, The Four Elements of Successful Management can be of substantial value to anyone who has management responsibilities (regardless of level) or who reports to those who do. Many CEOs and COOs need reminders of what they presumably have already learned but perhaps forgotten or neglected. Moreover, entry-level and mid-level managers are provided with a comprehensive frame of reference within which to understand the interdependence of the four elements. After reading Marshall's book, they will have greater respect for the complicated challenges which their own supervisors must face each day. And perhaps be better prepared to face those and/or other challenges in years to come.

It is Marshall's assertion that "the reason managers spend so much time directing is that they do a poor job on selection." Direction should begin "with a strategic plan or business plan that outlines the principal products and services a business wants to produce for a specified market over a specified period of time."

Throughout The Four Elements of Successful Management, Marshall shares a wealth of information and counsel. To at least some executives, perhaps, his ideas may seem obvious...if not simplistic. Be that as it may, he raises all the right questions and then provides answers which are sensible, practical, and cohesive.