Book summary “How to be an even better manager”: summary

Introduction

You face constant pressure to deliver results in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Managing people, executing strategy, and solving daily operational crises test your limits every single hour.

Michael Armstrong provides a practical, comprehensive guide covering everything from core leadership and motivation to time management, negotiation, and financial control. The central thesis is that management is the process of deciding what to do and getting it done through people. The book functions as a complete toolkit for modern managers seeking to elevate their performance.

How do you build high-performing teams, develop staff, and navigate difficult workplace behavior? How do you execute strategy, manage change, and control your time effectively?

1. Managing people and building teams

Management is the process of deciding what to do and getting it done through people while operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. The Management Standards Centre defines the key purpose of management as providing direction, facilitating change, and achieving results through efficient, creative, and responsible resource use. You must recognize that people are your primary resource. While classical theorists broke management down into planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling, researchers have observed that actual managerial work is fragmented, fast-paced, and largely governed by ongoing conversations and daily events.

High-performing management relies on treating employees with fairness, aligning intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, applying Adair's action-centred leadership model, and building cohesive teams.

Treating people right and motivating them

As Ed Lawler notes, organizations and individuals must succeed together. Treating people right involves respecting their dignity and differences, ensuring consistent and transparent policies without personal bias, providing worthwhile jobs with intrinsic motivation, and helping people develop their capabilities through coaching and support.

Motivation is goal-directed behavior driven by both extrinsic factors, such as pay and punishment, and intrinsic factors, such as interesting work, autonomy, and personal growth. According to expectancy theory, motivation only occurs when employees feel capable of changing behavior, are confident that the change will yield a reward, and value that reward enough. Dan Pink adds that you can improve motivation by fostering autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Research by Dilys Robinson of the Institute for Employment Studies shows that engaging managers cultivate high team engagement by being extremely clear about expectations and quality standards, avoiding micromanagement, giving frequent and timely feedback, welcoming mistakes as learning opportunities, and fostering positive team atmospheres.

You can direct these principles into daily action:

• Know where you are, where you are going, how you are going to get there and how you will know you have arrived.
• Aim to master the present and pre-empt the future.
• Communicate effectively – about what is happening, why it is happening, what is going to happen and why.
• Realize each person is different.
• Make it clear to people what you expect them to do.
• Let people know how they are getting on.
• Let people make mistakes.
• Be prepared to say 'no'.
• Build trust.
• Be business-like.

Leadership and team effectiveness

John Adair's action-centred leadership model demonstrates that leaders must define and achieve tasks, build and maintain group spirit, and satisfy individual needs simultaneously. Successful leaders can flexibly adapt their leadership styles, ranging from autocratic to democratic, and from task-oriented to people-centred, depending on the specific situation and team members.

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines grew the airline at a nearly constant annual rate of 10–15 per cent over 32 years by turning the organizational pyramid upside down to support front-line employees. Bill George increased Medtronic's market capitalization from $1.1 billion to $60 billion over 12 years by practicing authentic leadership, with market capitalization growing at 35 per cent per year under his tenure. Penny Tamkin and colleagues conducted 260 in-depth interviews across six high-profile organizations, interviewing 77 business leaders to examine effective practices.

An effective team consists of people with complementary skills working toward a common goal with high engagement. Team leaders must facilitate collaboration, support informal and relaxed atmospheres, reach decisions by consensus, and hold structured team performance reviews focusing on both work results and team processes. Traditional performance management systems relying on annual appraisals and forced distribution systems often degrade into bureaucratic box-ticking exercises resented by employees.

Your team leadership tasks require specific steps:

• Establish urgency and direction.
• Select members based on skills and skill potential who are good at working with others but capable of taking their own line.
• Pay particular attention to first meetings and actions.
• Agree immediate performance-orientated tasks and goals, including overlapping objectives.
• Assess performance on results achieved and teamwork degree.
• Recognize good team performance through praise and rewards for the whole team.
• Build team spirit at out-of-work activities.
• Hold team meetings to review performance, focusing on process and outputs.
• Provide learning and development opportunities for multi-skilling.
• Make use of organizational learning activities focused on teamwork.

2. Developing staff and handling difficult situations

Managers carry prime responsibility for staff training and development through continuous review, analysis, and on-the-job application.

You must actively analyze job roles and review performance gaps. Treat every instruction as a learning opportunity.

Coaching and developing staff

Coaching provides a personal approach to help team members develop competence. You guide individuals to work out their own learning while offering encouragement and specific advice.

• Identify the areas of knowledge, skills or capabilities where learning needs to take place to qualify people to carry out the task, provide for continuous development, enhance transferable skills or improve performance.
• Ensure that the person understands and accepts the need to learn.
• Discuss with the person what needs to be learnt and the best way to undertake the learning.
• Get the person to work out how they can manage their own learning while identifying where they will need help from you or someone else.
• Provide encouragement and advice to the person in pursuing the self-learning programme.
• Provide specific guidance as required where the person needs your help.
• Agree how progress should be monitored and reviewed.

Specific tasks involving basic administrative or manual skills should be taught through a structured job instruction technique.

• Prepare – Decide how the instruction should be given and encourage the trainee to learn.
• Present – Explain what is going to be covered and the key things that are to be learnt.
• Demonstrate – Show how the task is done. If it is complex, first show the whole task and then demonstrate the key elements of the task in sequence.
• Practise – Get the trainee to practise carrying out the task as a whole or element-by-element, building up to the complete task. Get the trainee to repeat the practice until the level of proficiency required is reached. The trainee should now be ready to start work.
• Follow up – Check how well the trainee is doing. Provide any help required to carry out more difficult tasks or overcome any setbacks.

Handling difficult situations

Managers must anticipate problems, act quickly, and scrutinize their own behavior when confronting difficult workplace situations.

Dilys Robinson researched engaging managers and found they tackled issues quickly and stood their ground with aggressive people.

• Anticipate problems as far as possible.
• Act quickly.
• Subject your own behaviour to close scrutiny.
• Analyse the possible cause or causes.
• Try to reach agreement that a problem exists.
• Discuss the issue with the individual using a joint problem-solving approach.
• Stand your ground when dealing with aggressive people.
• Always be calm.
• Try to reason with the difficult person, withdrawing temporarily if they are too upset.
• Think carefully about the words you use.

Dismissal due to misconduct or failure to meet standards must be handled quickly, firmly, and without apology.

• Come straight to the point. Tell the person within 30 seconds of starting the interview that he or she has to go.
• Be clear about shortcomings, giving examples, but avoid badmouthing the individual.
• Keep the meeting brief.
• Don’t say you’re sorry.
• Make it plain that the decision is irrevocable but the employee has the right to appeal.
• Ensure that you have a witness.
• Carry out the dismissal on the last day of the working week.
• Ensure that the individual leaves immediately without access to confidential information.

3. Executing strategy, change, and crisis management

Effective execution requires rigorous delegation, political sensitivity, proactive change management, and rapid crisis response.

Delegation is the process of allocating work to team members, but you remain entirely accountable for the results. You extend management capacity, reduce decision-making delays, and develop staff abilities through this allocation. You must balance control and supervision without breathing down people's necks.

Hard delegation assigns specific tasks with clear boundaries. Soft delegation gives broad outcomes and lets people choose their own methods. You manage the workload using river banking to guide the flow of tasks.

You address delegation through specific choices:

• what to delegate;
• to whom you delegate – choosing who does the work;
• how to inform or brief the individual – giving out the work;
• how you will guide and develop the individual;
• how you will monitor the individual’s performance.

Managing your boss requires understanding their expectations and securing agreements. You present completed staff work and handle problems transparently rather than bringing half-baked ideas forward. You avoid open confrontation and respect preferred communication styles.

You navigate upward relationships by observing key behaviors:

• Find out what they expect.
• Learn about their likes and dislikes, their quirks and their prejudices.
• Establish how they like things presented to them.
• Get to know how they like things done – by observation and by asking other people.
• Find out the right time to approach them.

Office politics involves influencing stakeholders when formal authority is insufficient. You map out power bases, understand hidden agendas, and test opinions before launching proposals. You avoid malicious behaviors like back-biting and email wars.

James Hale used a subtle political strategy by running pilot courses and leveraging key directors to successfully establish a group management training centre despite financial objections. Internal political maneuvering caused an 18-month delay to a new technology implementation in another case study.

You handle political dynamics by tracking specific behaviors:

• Identify the stakeholders – those who have commitment to act in a particular way.
• Keep the stakeholders comfortable, concentrating on behavior, values, attitudes, fears and drives.
• Fit the image – work on comfort zones and align image to those with power.
• Use the network – identify interest groups and people of influence.
• Enter the network – identify gatekeepers and adhere to norms.
• Make deals – agree to support other people where mutually beneficial.
• Withhold and withdraw – withhold information appropriately and withdraw judiciously when rough.

High-achieving managers are primarily motivated by the need for achievement rather than just power or affiliation. David McClelland published his research on these drivers in his 1961 book The Achieving Society. You thrive under VUCA conditions when you set realistic stretch goals and take personal responsibility for outcomes.

Managing change and crises

Resistance to organizational change is a rational response when individuals perceive a threat to their security, status, or routines.

Change moves through present, transitional, and future states under conditions that Heraclitus commented on around 500 BC. Because employees often fear economic loss, inconvenience, or the shock of the new, you must actively involve them to secure ownership. You act as a change agent to move processes until they are institutionalized.

You manage transitions using a structured sequence:

• Preparation – contact persons likely to be affected to make them aware of proposed changes.
• Acceptance – provide information on purpose, implementation, and effects to build understanding.
• Commitment – implement the operation while continuously monitoring reactions and resolving setbacks.

Conflict is inevitable in organizations, but it can generate creative conflict when managed through problem-solving or constructive confrontation rather than peaceful coexistence or compromise. You resolve interpersonal friction by acting as a neutral facilitator.

You guide conflict resolution through targeted interactions:

• Listen actively.
• Observe as well as listen.
• Help people to understand and define the problem by asking pertinent, open-ended questions.
• Recognize feelings and allow them to be expressed.
• Help people to define problems for themselves.
• Encourage people to explore alternative solutions.
• Get people to develop their own implementation plans but provide advice and help if asked.

Crisis management requires rapidly planning, organizing, directing, and controlling interrelated operations to guide decision-making under severe pressure. You keep cool, accelerate standard problem-solving sequences, and load shed peripheral problems. You place secondary issues on the back burner.

You regain stability using a structured intervention checklist:

• Sit back as coolly as you can and assess the situation.
• Draw up your preliminary plan of action step by step.
• Line up a crisis management team to deal with the situation and allocate roles.
• Set up a crisis management centre.
• Set up a communications system for instant intelligence.
• Load shed peripheral problems as quickly as possible.
• Put items on the back burner.
• Prepare detailed plans including timescales and contingency protocols.
• Monitor continuously exactly what is happening.
• Evaluate actions and reactions continuously to modify the plan.

4. Operational tools for time, negotiation, and problem solving

Managerial productivity is sustained through disciplined project execution, time analysis, structured persuasion, and logical problem solving.

Projects, time, and persuasion

Project management delivers outcomes at a predetermined time, specified quality, and budgeted cost. It relies on proper planning, setting up resources, and controlling time, quality, and cost. You can follow a disciplined sequence:

• Specify objectives and deliverables.
• Carry out cost-benefit analysis or investment appraisal to justify project.
• Determine what should be done, who does what, when it should be done broken down into stages, and how much it should cost.
• Define resource requirements people, money, materials, systems, equipment, etc.
• Programme prepare, identify stages.
• Define methods of control charts, network analysis, progress reports, progress milestone meetings.
• Ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them and has the resources required.
• Monitor progress continuously against the plan as well as at formal meetings.
• Take corrective action as required, for example, reallocating resources.
• Evaluate the end result against the objectives and deliverables.

To improve time management, you must systematically analyze how you spend your days using a detailed diary. Divide the day into 15-minute sections and note down what you did in each period. Summarize how effectively you spent your time by writing V for valuable, D for doubtful, and U for useless. Analyse your time at the end of the week under headings such as reading, writing, dictating, sending and receiving e-mails, telephoning, dealing with people, attending meetings, travelling, and other. Use the time-consumer's checklist to identify problems and possible remedies.

A director of administration with a ragbag of responsibilities took a day off to rethink his priorities. He separated preventive maintenance from emergency fire-fighting.

Managers spend significant time persuading because people naturally resist change and view new ideas with suspicion. Persuasion requires treating proposals from the receiver's perception. You can apply specific rules:

• Define your objective and get the facts.
• Find out what the other party wants.
• Define any problem that might limit your ability to persuade.
• Accentuate the benefits.
• Predict the other person's response.
• Create the other person's next move.
• Convince people by reference to their own perceptions.
• Prepare a simple and attractive proposition.
• Make the other person a party to your ideas.
• Clinch and take action.

Negotiation and problem solving

Business negotiations focus on price and terms while trade union negotiations involve packages and bargaining conventions. Successful negotiators establish ideal, minimum, and target objectives and avoid piece-by-piece concessions. You must manage conflicts through structured preparation and conditional proposals. Follow these practical steps:

• Define your bargaining objectives as ideal, minimum, and target.
• Consider how you might build up a package that would allow concessions to be exchanged.
• Select a negotiating team of at least two members with defined roles.
• Brief and rehearse the members of the negotiating team.
• Open realistically and move moderately during the opening stage.
• Always make conditional proposals and trade off concessions.
• Negotiate on the whole package rather than item by item.

Logical problem-solving and decision-making follow a step-by-step analytical process combined with imagination, consequence management, and decisiveness. Problems require moving from definition and hypotheses to fact gathering, analysis, and implementation planning. You can resolve issues through a structured sequence:

• Define the situation and specify objectives.
• Develop hypotheses about what has caused the problem.
• Get the facts and analyse them to diagnose root causes.
• Identify and evaluate possible courses of action.
• Weigh and decide on the most practical solution.
• Plan implementation, monitor progress, and evaluate success.

10 Key Ideas

1. Management is the process of deciding what to do and getting it done through people while operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
2. High-performing management relies on treating employees with fairness, aligning intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, applying Adair's action-centred leadership model, and building cohesive teams.
3. Engaging managers cultivate high team engagement by being extremely clear about expectations and quality standards, avoiding micromanagement, giving frequent and timely feedback, welcoming mistakes as learning opportunities, and fostering positive team atmospheres.
4. Managers carry prime responsibility for staff training and development through continuous review, analysis, and on-the-job application.
5. Managers must anticipate problems, act quickly, and scrutinize their own behavior when confronting difficult workplace situations.
6. Effective execution requires rigorous delegation, political sensitivity, proactive change management, and rapid crisis response.
7. Resistance to organizational change is a rational response when individuals perceive a threat to their security, status, or routines.
8. Crisis management requires rapidly planning, organizing, directing, and controlling interrelated operations to guide decision-making under severe pressure.
9. Managerial productivity is sustained through disciplined project execution, time analysis, structured persuasion, and logical problem solving.
10. Successful negotiators establish ideal, minimum, and target objectives and avoid piece-by-piece concessions.