The Manager's Handbook

Introduction: Five Must‐Have Skills from People Who Get Things Done

Vision without execution is daydreaming.

—Bill Gates

Despite earning an economics degree, working at McKinsey & Company, and then receiving an MBA from Stanford's elite business school, no one taught me the basic skills necessary to lead an organization. I had assumed that all of that prior experience had given me the tools to lead, but when I started my first company, I faced the not‐so‐pleasant reality that I'd never actually hired anyone, run a management meeting, or designed a compensation plan. Despite all the expensive business training, no one had taught me how to delegate effectively, let someone go, provide useful feedback, or create an annual operating plan—let alone how to do any of those things well. This was the work that now mattered. I discovered that credentials are not skills.

Instead, I learned on the job. Slowly and expensively. I made horrendous hiring mistakes, wasted cash, misused my team's time as well as my own. Along the way I lost great employees and valuable customers. Those missteps are the inspiration for this book.

Having now backed more than 100 entrepreneurs and taught several thousand MBA candidates, I know those early experiences of mine were not unique. There needed to be a better way to prepare people for leadership, and I became obsessed with the realization that the answer to great management lies not with the talent to see around corners, or by inventing the next big ...