Effective managers understand their role, focus on what's important, and don't complicate their work with details that are better left delegated to others. It is our experience that you will be an effective manager - no matter what business you are in - if you do the following things:

Years ago Harvey Sherman wrote a book entitled It All Depends; A Pragmatic Approach To Organization in which he systematically debunked textbook principles of organizational structure. The overall thesis of Sherman's book was that you cannot use organizational principles alone to design the right structure for an organization. Creating the best organizational structure depends on a myriad of factors. There is no one single right or wrong answer and no formula that can be applied. "It all depends." We couldn't agree with Sherman more. However, in our work we have found there are certain approaches that can be applied to most organizations in trying to arrive at a suitable structure.

Senior managers, as a rule, are generalists who oversee specialists who lead the departments that report to them. Over the years, we have observed that generalists often abdicate their managerial responsibilities when dealing with specialized or technical functions with which they are not familiar. They assume that they are not competent to oversee specialized functions. Well, they figure wrong. Generalist managers need to be willing to take the upper hand when dealing with the specialists they oversee. To do so they need to become “snow proof” and be willing to “explode tanks”.

If you are a manager it is not as important to understand why people act the way they do as it is to understand that for whatever reason, some people are going to act the way they do and there is nothing you or anyone can do to change it. Over the years we have made a number of observations about people and about how they act, which have important implications for management.

Here are a few tips, techniques, and tidbits of knowledge that we've picked up over the years. Keep them in mind as you manage your organization.