Brendan's Reflections

Not many of the HBR articles speak so clearly to the challenges I experienced as a new manager (and still experience) as this one. (photo: community-manager by Enrique Martinez Bermej In the fourth entry in HBR’s Must Reads on Managing People, “Saving Your Rookie Managers from Themselves”, Carol A. Walker identifies several areas likely to be…

Sometimes, it’s the manager’s fault.  That’s the core idea in the third article in the volume “On Managing People” in Harvard Business Review’s collection of Must Reads. This 1998 article (followed up in a book with the same title in 2002), describes “a dynamic in which employees perceived to be mediocre or weak performers live down…

This is the second article in the volume “On Managing People” in Harvard Business Review’s collection of Must Reads. Frederick Herzberg This article was originally published in 1968.  Herzberg begins by examining the classic Kick In The Ass (KITA) as motivator.  Both physical, and psychological KITAs are examined, and of the latter he notes “since…

As a sort of poor-man’s MBA I’m planning to work my way through Harvard Business Review’s “HBR’s Must Reads”, a 6-volume collection of curated articles on business.  Since I’m relatively new to management and find myself building and managing a new team, I’m starting with the volume “On Managing People”. The first article in the…