The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems - Hardcover

The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems

This book is based on twenty years of workplace research conducted by my company, RainmakerThinking, Inc. We’ve asked hundreds of thousands of managers—in our management seminars, focus groups, interviews, and surveys—some version of this open-ended question: “Which employee situations are most challenging for you as a manager?” Despite the diversity of people and situations, the same basic challenges come up repeatedly. In fact, more than 90 percent of responses over the years refer to these same 27 challenges, including the superstar the manager is afraid of losing, the slacker the manager cannot figure out how to motivate, the employee with an attitude problem, and the two people who cannot get along, to name a few.

The age-old reality is that human beings have weaknesses as well as strengths. Humans are not always great at self-management, much less at managing others. Human beings have habits—not always good ones. Not only that, but everybody has bad days. Some people have bad weeks, months, and years. Productivity and quality of work are highly variable, sometimes due to employee performance. On top of all that, humans have attitudes—not always good ones.

That is due in large part to the incredible complexities of today’s workplace in today’s world, in what I like to call the “real new economy.” First, people come and go. That’s always been true, but employment relationships today are far more short-term and fluid than they have been before in the modern economy. So you are always losing good people, and you are always trying to get new people on board and up to speed. Second, change is constantly coming at you from every direction. Change forces rework, often involving lots of moving parts, and therefore lots of employees in multiple departments of the organization. Third, most people must rely on many others within and without their immediate work group in order to do their own work. Finally, everybody is expected now to do more with less. Increasingly, people report that they are making do with tighter resources, longer and more complex supply lines, with shorter lead times. Often people find themselves trying to do their jobs with what they feel are insufficient resources.

It turns out that when things are going wrong in a management relationship, almost always the common denominator is unstructured, low substance, hit-or-miss communication. And almost always the solution comes from applying the fundamentals of management. Throughout the book, you’ll see—one challenge at a time—how the most effective managers apply the fundamentals of management to gain control of any situation with a step-by-step solution to the problem at hand. Almost always, the ad hoc manner in which most managers talk to their direct-reports every day actually makes inevitable the most difficult employee situations that tend to vex managers. What is the key to avoiding most of these problems and the key to solving them quickly and with relative ease as soon as they appear? High-structure, high-substance, one-on-one dialogues with every direct-report.

Both! This book is intentionally designed to be used and reused as a reference book—a hands-on management tool you can go back to over and over again throughout your career as a leader/manager/supervisor. Reading the whole thing beginning to end is sort of like putting one’s self through “management fundamentals” boot camp, which I hope is a very worthwhile thing to do. But I also encourage readers to go ahead and skip right to the specific challenge they are facing today. And keep it on your shelf as a resource for the next time you run into a daunting challenge. Chances are, if you go to the table of contents, the challenge you are facing will be right there with a step-by-step solution waiting for you.

“In a large, complex organization, a culture of strong, highly engaged, and collaborative management is critical. There are not too many management challenges that are not addressed in The 27 Challenges Managers Face. Managers at all levels would be well served to have a copy on the shelf.”
―David Zaslav, president and CEO, Discovery Communications

“As someone whose early management career was shaped by Bruce Tulgan’s other books and programs, I’m not surprised to see this book applies to everyone, no matter what your position or stage in your leadership journey. The 27 Challenges Managers Face takes his prescriptive approach to a new level of relevance with specific tips to address the most common management challenges―right on!”
―Kat Cole, president, Cinnabon

“Bruce Tulgan’s decades of exhaustive research and the collected works that have resulted have had a profound impact on how I lead. His action-oriented ideas have genuine practical utility for leaders in any organization. The ideas in The 27 Challenges Managers Face comport perfectly with what I call engaged leadership and serve as the perfect antidote for what Bruce calls the epidemic of undermanagement in America today. This terrific new book is a powerful tool for all leaders.”
—Kevin J. Jacobsen, Brigadier General, United States Air Force

“Our nation could save billions in productivity losses and lawsuits resulting from poor management and employee disengagement if only it heeded the very practical step-by-step advice that Bruce Tulgan’s thoroughly researched book offers. Every chapter contains real-life challenges (all twenty-seven of them!) with fundamental solutions that enlightened managers must practice. Brilliant in its simplicity!”
—Cari M. Dominguez, former chair, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and senior vice president, human resources and chief talent and diversity officer, Loma Linda University Health

“Bruce Tulgan’s latest work addresses the fundamentals of management, undervalued in most companies today but essential to the successful operation of complex businesses. Highly integrated products demand accurate data, complete communication, concise direction, and timely decision making from typically segmented teams and systems. Use The 27 Challenges Managers Face to take advantage of actual lessons learned.”
—Larry A. Lawson, CEO and president, Spirit AeroSystems, Inc.

“Bruce Tulgan’s latest book provides exceptional practical advice on how to execute the huge responsibility of leadership. The last chapter, renewing a commitment to effective management, will be particularly helpful to leaders who think they already know how to manage the first twenty-six challenges.”
—Alan J. Kreczko, general counsel and executive vice president, The Hartford

“Bruce Tulgan masterfully delivers a simple, transparent, and powerful message about the fundamentals of management. I have always been a fan of Tulgan’s work, and we frequently reference his teachings throughout our training and development. The 27 Challenges Managers Face tackles everyday situations and provides powerful and effective solutions for producing winning results. I am excited to introduce this masterpiece to our team.”
—Jim Mazany, president, Joe’s Crab Shack