SO...YOU WANT TO BE A MANAGER

A guide to the basics of management and beyond.

In his nonfiction debut, Heckler draws on his decades of managerial and CIO experience in order to lay out a blueprint for managers and provide the “aha” moments that will help readers discover that management can be “interesting, enjoyable, and rewarding.” Although he includes plenty of tactics and priorities for new managers (“Tackle the low-hanging fruit quickly to demonstrate your capability,” he writes for instance. “Rack up some early wins…first perceptions matter”), the primary focus of most of his advice is communication. Whether it’s dealing with vendor contracts, building networks (“Never eat alone,” he stresses, echoing Keith Ferrazi’s book of the same title), or dealing with subordinates, Heckler spends a good deal of time sorting out the nuances of how managers should and shouldn’t communicate. “Be conscious of how your receiver will see and hear your message and whether that’s what you actually want them to hear,” he cautions, warning that, for instance, managers should never give negative feedback by email. “Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself,” he writes. Naturally, this approach has its limits; managers must fire people, after all (focus on keeping your top performers rather than your failing team members, he advises), and they must be “politically savvy” about the way power works in their company. Heckler is an effective, unassuming writer, plainly making his case for a more people-oriented kind of manager. Some of his points are self-evident but perhaps worth reiterating (“You’ll cross plenty of hurdles,” he mentions. “You’ll get some things right, and some wrong”), and his hope that all managers will show personal humility is obviously delusional, but even so, this book will provide many valuable reminders of the fundamentals.

A companionable, ground-up review of the basics of human management.