The Manager's Handbook

IMPLEMENTING THE FIVE MUST‐HAVE SKILLS FROM THE MANAGER’S HANDBOOK

Go out there and try to be good. If you go out there and try to be good, you’ve got a chance to be great.

—Rich Dubee, pitching coach

At the beginning of this book, I told you the story of Roy Halladay pitching a no‐hitter and how his coach told him before the game, “Go out there and try to be good. If you go out there and try to be good, you’ve got a chance to be great.” I wrote this book because I care about leadership. I also know that great leaders have the potential to do great things—and this world needs some of that right now. In so doing, you'll have a positive impact on people's lives—maybe even more than that. I'd like you to get your shot at being great. Which is why in our final moments together, I want to make the case that you should not pick and choose which among the five skills you'll now decide to implement.

In learning to play the piano, mastering both hands moving together is one of the most difficult steps—but if you don't do so, you'll never get past “Chopsticks.” There are things in this book that are like that—harder and less appealing to implement than others. Just like you can't skip steps in learning the piano, there is no shortcut to great management. Organizing a team interview with structured questions is harder than breezing over the resume a few minutes before you meet the candidate. Shallow work is easier than deep work. So too is sending to your customers an online quality ...