Simply Managing

6 Managing Effectively

Getting to the essence of managing

Trying to figure out what makes a manager effective, even whether a manager has been effective, is difficult. Believing in easy answers only makes it harder. Managers, and those who work with them, have to face the complexities. Helping to do so is the purpose of this chapter.

We begin with the supposedly effective but in fact inevitably flawed manager. This leads us into a brief discussion of unhappily managed organizational families, which we compare with happily managed ones. We turn then to the questions of selecting, assessing, and developing effective managers, asking along the way, “Where has all the judgment gone?” Woven throughout are many of the main points developed in this ...