Contents
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
Round 1: Look in the Mirror
Let’s Start with Tough Talk
Round 2: Understand the Truth about Titles
Opening Bell
Leading without a Title
It Is Your Job to Serve and Not to Wait to Be Served
Equal Application for Rookie and Veteran Managers Alike
Round 3: Balance Solid Management Skill with Strong Leadership Ability
How to Excel As a Manager
Overmanaged/Underled
Round 4: Create a Winning Workplace Environment
Opening Bell
Environment Dictates Behavior
Round 5: Become a Powerful Motivator
Opening Bell: Motivation by Granddaughter
Find Their Hot Buttons
Round 6: Train and Coach Your People to Reach Their Fullest Potential
Opening Bell
Seven Simple Strategies
The Manager As a Coach
Round 7: Create a Dynamic Vision and Strategy for Your Organization
It’s Your Job
The Vital Role of Strategy
Round 8: Hold People Accountable for Results
Opening Bell
Round 9: Deal Effectively with Poor Performers
Opening Bell
The Penalties of Poor Performance
Round 10: Knockout Summary for Follow-Through
TKO Summary
Bibliography
Index
Praise for TKO Series
“Dave Anderson’s TKO series is a genuine knockout! The fast flowing format combined with high impact-content ensures that readers in any business and in any country will benefit from the universally sound principles presented.”
—Sir Peter Vardy, former chairman and CEO of Reg Vardy PLC
“Leadership guru Dave Anderson’s new TKO series guides you through the most important management moments in an innovative, down-to-earth, and short format. These highly readable, action-packed guides bring Anderson’s insights straight into your world, usable from the CEO to the newest trainee.”
—James Strock, author, Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership
“Want to go the distance and be a champion? Let Dave Anderson add power to your punch. The TKO series is loaded with hard-hitting strategies that will knock your competition out of contention.”
—Randy Pennington, author, Results Rule!: Build a Culture that Blows the Competition Away!
“Don’t be fooled by the slim size of Dave Anderson’s TKO series books—they each pack a knockout punch. Forget sales and management theory, these bantamweight books hit right at the gut of your business—what you must to do succeed. Quick reads—and if applied, they’ll provide you with life-long results.”
—Paul McCord, author, How to Build a Million Dollar Sales Income through Referrals
Copyright © 2008 by Dave Anderson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
Wiley Bicentennial Logo: Richard J. Pacifico
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Anderson, Dave, 1961-
TKO management! : Ten knockout strategies for becoming the manager your people deserve / Dave Anderson.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-470-17177-6 (pbk.)
1. Management. 2. Executive ability. 3. Leadership. 4. Organizational effectiveness. I. Title.
HD31.A548 2007
658.4–dc22
2007012409
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my wife, Rhonda, who runs our business, covers my back, and keeps it all together as I jet around the world acting like I have a “real” job. Thanks also to the outstanding support staff and work partners in our California, Texas, and Virginia offices. You’re my very own dream team.
About the Author
Dave Anderson is president of LearnToLead, an international sales and leadership training organization. Dave has authored nine books, including the Wiley titles, Up Your Business, If You Don’t Make Waves You’ll Drown, and How to Deal with Difficult Customers. He gives over 100 seminars and keynote speeches internationally each year and writes leadership columns for two national magazines. His web site, www.learntolead.com, has tens of thousands of subscribers in forty countries that enjoy an archive of over 400 free training articles. To inquire about having Dave speak to your group contact his Agoura Hills, California office at 800-519-8224 or 818-735-9503 (Intl). Dave is a member of the National Speaker’s Association.
Introduction
With today’s pace of business and as thin as you’re spread as an employee, spouse, parent, and friend, you need high-impact information on how to improve your skills and elevate your organization—and you need it fast, without the hype, void of academics and lacking complexity. This management edition of Wiley’s TKO series is the answer.
This book has ten short Rounds that all get to the point and are filled with meaty strategies you can apply right away. In each chapter you’ll find Right Hook Rules quotes and sound bites that reinforce what you’re learning. You’ll also relate to the TKO Tales that take true-life situations and use them as a context for how the principles you’re learning can be applied for greater results. If you’re looking for an academic recipe for getting better as a manager you won’t find it in TKO Management. But you will find no-nonsense, in-the-trenches strategies that work in the real-world management arena. Finally, throughout each Round you’ll find key Left Jab Laws that will be the catalysts to turning this book into a change agent for your business.
Each Round in TKO Management concludes with a series of action-oriented Standing Eight Count Questions and the book finishes up with a bullet-point summary of each Round’s key points for quick reference and review. It’s the Cliff Notes version of the manuscript and I encourage you to refer to it over again as you convert the process of becoming a better manager from a fast reading of this book into a process of continual improvement.
A few words of caution on the TKO series: while the strategies presented in this book are not academic and easy to apply, they’re still hard work. Nonetheless, anything worthwhile is worth breaking a sweat for, and the TKO format will make the hard work you have ahead of you more doable, enjoyable, and rewarding.
One of the biggest mistakes managers make is running around all day trying to improve everyone who is working for them. They say things like, “if we could just get these people better—get them more serious and committed to success—then everything would be all right.” But the fact is that nothing gets better in your organization measurably or sustainably until the managers themselves improve. Training and improving everyone around the managers is important; but that amounts to hacking at the leaves of what it takes to improve an organization, whereas developing managers into better leaders is truly striking at the root. Suffice it to say that, in order to become the manager your people deserve, you must continue to work as hard on yourself as you work on your job. In the words of Jim Rohn, “The business gets better when you get better. Never wish it were easier, wish you were better!” Reading and applying what is in this book is your next step in attaining that goal.
Many managers today live in denial. Rather than look in the mirror and face their own shortfalls and responsibilities, they look out the window and sink into the blame game to try and explain away their lack of greater success. It’s become too easy to fault the economy; the competition; the rising interest rates and fuel prices; world conditions; the weather; the time of year; and the list goes on and on. Normally, it is the factors one cannot control that dominate a manager’s scapegoat list. The problem is that these uncontrollable issues take your focus, energy, and resources away from the things you can actually do something about! It goes back to the good old 80/20 rule, which tells us that 80 percent of what holds us back from greater results is within our control, while 20 percent is not. Certainly there are things beyond your control that negatively impact your results, but the activities most necessary for greater success are the ones you can do something about. Even in the toughest of times there is a lot you can control: your attitude; work ethic; level of discipline; character choices; where you spend your time and with whom you spend it; who can join the team and who has to leave it. Most would agree that if you spend more time on these controllable factors then the outside conditions won’t be as relevant. Or, to put it less delicately, it’s helpful to remember the well-known business law, “A fish rots at the head.” In other words, when things aren’t going well in an operation, or if they are falling short in some area, you don’t try to fix matters at the bottom of the hierarchy or in the middle of an organization—or by looking out the window for help. Nope, a fish rots at the head. Quite frankly, it starts to stink at the top first. This, of course, indicts the management of an organization, and that is just as it should be.