Managing and Leading: Organizations and People

Being an effective leader and manager means being able to communicate well and be decisive without being rash. In order to be effective you need to know the terminology and how to use the tools. It's the application a knowledge set and the ability to know when to apply what, and how to best apply it. The purpose of this book is to set the stage and lay out the context for achieving those goals. The old barriers to creating, marketing, and selling products and services have been drastically reduced in the past decade. Now small groups and even solo entrepreneurs can harness the power of computers and leverage communications networks and social media to do work and undertake projects that took many more people and resources in the past. These opportunities create a new leadership and management challenges as one has to direct the actions of people over which you have no direct control. This new environment has big implications for corporate leaders and managers as well. Fast agile flexible competition is constantly emerging. The best way to compete is to have those techniques in your toolkit and adopt them when appropriate. With technical innovations and computational power and connectivity driving many traditional costs toward zero, the barriers to organizing enterprises for productive work and innovation have been removed, or at least extremely reduced. Start-ups are viable and scaling up is achievable. These new opportunities are having a huge impact on the direction and the story of the making and re-imagining of the world; and the making and re-imagining of our individual lives. This book is designed to give you an overview of the skills of management and leadership so you can fully participate in this self-creation and world-creation.