This is for my wife.
She’s looking for a recommendation for some general books on management. She’s an academic materials specialist and has a couple of staff under her. It’s likely that she’ll be promoted to branch director sometime in early 2011 and so wants to start learning some more about management fundamentals. Any recommendations?
Thanks.
Good luck to her. Management is sooooo difficult. I handle extremely complex, multi-million dollar, cross-border disputes concerning everything from patents, to defects, AR and bankruptcy, as well mergers, acquisitions and investments involving public and private companies, and so forth, but nothing I do is half as difficult as assigning tasks to my lazy, know-it-all colleague in the cubicle next door, supervising his performance, training, educating and discipling him, in order to get more and better work out of him and hopefully some day lighten my workload instead of adding to it. To those who manage well . . . 
I’m working on it, but it takes great patience, perseverance, study and training.
I found this book pretty good for starting out.
amazon.com/gp/product/007135 … ss_product
Have her subscribe to this website (below). I’ve found it provides very good, and short tutorials and topical discussions. Much more practical than reading a book. (There are too many management books, and one will never be done reading them.)
Thanks, I’ll pass those on to her.
In Taiwan, I was involved in R&D and was the only native English speaker that collaborated with the owner’s family and a network of engineers of all types. These days, I don’t supervise anyone but realize it’s a difficult task–particularly in European and American environs where consensus management isn’t the norm and things can be much more confrontational.
I’d really recommend this book on management that urges people to concentrate on the strengths of their subordinates rather than the weaknesses as MT jus did when he called his subordinate lazy: 
Just calling a spade a spade. The guy has his head on his desk every day till 9:00 am, then till 1:00 pm, and he’s out the door at exactly 6:30 every day. He also has a regular habit of responding to requests for assistance in a manner designed to end his assistance ASAP rather than attempting to do a good job handling the task. Push tasks off on others, give completely inadequate one-sentence replies, find the quick way out, time after time after time.
But, I’m fully aware that good management requires more than just a big stick; sometimes one should search for carrots to inspire better performance. While I called him lazy bastard on this forum – because he is one – I use a different approach on the job and today was extremely pleased to receive an email from him thanking me for properly handling a job that he admitted he failed to handle properly. As with substance abuse, admitting one has a problem is the first step to recovery. It’s been a tough haul, but perhaps there’s hope with him after all. I hope so, because I recognize that if he fails I fail, because it’s my job to get him to perform better. No easy task, but with practice it should be possible for him and me to both learn.
Thanks Chewy.
I’ve ordered MT’s suggestion for now. I’ll save Chewy’s for the next Amazon order.