Books for new managers...

As part of building a new team, I am spending sometime thinking about what makes a good manager... In particular, I have a couple of brave souls on my team that are taking the big step to managing people for the first time.

In the process, I have been thinking about the books that I have read that have directly or indirectly influence my management philosophy... It is a bit of an odd list I know, but my general philosophy is that the core issue with management is about understanding people...

Here is my quick list in no particular order..

Getting to Yes There is certainly an art to negotiations and I have found the principle based approach is easily applicable.

Jack: Straight from the Gut This is great for the war stories...

Freakonomics At its heart, economics is about people, specifically, how people deal with scarcity. Living up to its name, this book looks at some common problems in a new way... great for getting insight into people.

Blink Another good way to understand people.. :

Good to Great The case studies here are the best it does bring home the point about finding what you love doing, that there is a market for, and that you can be the best at and doing just that.. I think it applies to individuals as much as companies. A great manager can help people find how these intersect.

The Design of Everyday Things If you have read this and the Framework Design Guidelines, I hope you see that it is effected my technical work. But I have found that it does given a deeper understanding of people as well.

I am sure a missed a bunch. These are just the ones off the top of my head...

what else would you recommend?

 

2-01: fixed some formatting issues