$24.95 / Perfectbound
ISBN: 9781608440344
312 pages
Also available at fine
bookstores everywhere

A friend recently asked me what my book, Natural Born Manager (NBM), was about. My straightforward answer was “It’s a leadership transformation & management handbook.” However, the fundamental truth is that this book is about YOU. It’s about…

• Finding YOUR PASSION in life and YOUR JOY in work,
• Identifying YOUR PLACE in this world, and
• Fulfilling YOUR DESTINY.

How can a management book address such weighty personal aspirations? It turns out the very process detailed in my book for identifying and selecting GREAT MANAGERS is exactly the same process one uses to identify individual strengths, talents, and abilities also known as APTITUDES. Knowing your unique aptitudes and how to use them is the KEY to becoming the best you can be. I was driven to write this book on management and leadership exactly for the reason that I knew it would help the everyday worker. An interesting fact is that every time I sat down to write it over the years, the content came to me without resistance. In fact, I never experienced writer’s block once throughout its 15-year evolution. This fact reinforced for me how important this business management book is for those who long for better management, a more enjoyable workplace, or fulfilling career.

As a professional management consultant, I found myself continuously seeking to identify good management practices and good managers while also looking for a great boss who could serve as a leadership role model and mentor. For reasons unknown to me at the time, finding a great manager was not “in the cards” until very late in my career. It seemed that I was condemned to working for difficult managers or problem managers, which significantly lessened my job satisfaction. Over the years, this circumstance caused me to lose trust in management and faith in the process of how managers are identified and selected. I noticed other things as well. My coworkers experienced their own frustrations with management, which led to workplace negativity, an increase in workplace problems, and eventually a high employee turnover rate, often as high as 25% and higher. And because I was a manager trying to learn how to manage better, I found these recurring bad management situations very perplexing. As a result, I began asking myself deeper questions like: What is purpose of management? What is effective management? Are management and leadership different? What is management’s role in the organization and in society? Is managing different than supervision? Why are some people better at building effective teams than others? What are the aptitudes of great managers? Later, as a managing director for a start-up technology center, management recruitment became a focus of mine. At the time, I needed to hire several managers for various key leadership roles. The management lessons learned from this recruiting experience further increased my resolve to understand what leadership skills or management training would lead to identifying compassionate and effective front line management.

In mid-career I turned to the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation (JOCRF) for career management advice. At this point, I found myself strongly considering a career change. I learned from JOCRF that aptitudes are the key to finding one’s natural strengths for doing things faster and better and therefore their identification and measurement are essential to making the right career choice. This awareness caused me to choose a management role as my next career. Because I was effective and happy as a manager, I theorized that aptitude testing might work on a broader scale to help others find their true passion in their jobs and perhaps might even be used to help employers identify and hire great managers too. As I observed good and bad managers over the ensuing years, I learned which leadership aptitudes good managers possess. I also discovered these are the same aptitudes that poor leaders and managers lack. My epiphany was that APTITUDES are the KEY to identifying and selecting the very best managers. After many soul-searching discussions with several outstanding managers with whom I had worked and discussions with various HR management professionals, I decided it was time to write this book.

Why the title Natural Born Manager? Because great managers are quite literally born with innate managerial talents that all too often go unrecognized and untapped. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it turns out that testing managerial candidates for their innate abilities, called aptitudes, is the best way to identify managers with authentic leadership talent. These Accountability Managers, as I call them, can be identified by applying the theories of renowned psychologist Howard Gardner, author of Multiple Intelligences, and the aptitude testing methods of the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation (JOCRF), whose namesake and founder pioneered such testing for General Electric Corp. (GE) during the 1930s.

Some will read this book cover to cover to satisfy their curiosity about aptitude testing and its efficacy for choosing great leaders. Others will study the innovative best practices provided to improve their leadership skills and the quality of their work environment. Still others will use this book to answer fundamental questions like “What is the social role of management? How can I become a better manager? Who are the most qualified to manage? How does management add to shareholder value? What is the best path to fulfilling my greatest potential? or What is my calling in life?”

My objectives for helping readers are as follows:
• To awaken readers to the lack of best management practices and the dearth of management skills being used in global business and government and how to change this for the better.
• To accelerate the deployment of great managers, leaders who are adept facilitators, proficient in expectations management, enthusiastic about employee motivation, who possess refined interpersonal skills and practice leadership accountability.
• To facilitate the identification of leaders who are naturals at time management, effective communication, productive decision-making, human relations and business performance management.
• To advocate employee recruitment and job assignment decisions based on aptitude testing supported by the organization’s human resources management team and / or outside consultants.
• To promote the assessment of organizational management by looking at management’s track record of employee retention and labor turnover.
• To offer readers/employees a career assessment process that empowers them to identify their innate performance strengths (aptitudes) thus providing them a means to achieve their highest purpose in life (self-actualization).
• To educate people about the role of management and how it relates to organizational stakeholders and the fulfillment of their interests.
• To enable all managers to self-assess whether enterprise management is the right career for them, and if not, show them HOW TO make a change for the better by leveraging their performance strengths, talents and abilities (aptitudes).
• To give owners and senior managers the means to transform their leadership management team into an Accountability Management team.
• To teach managers HOW TO become better managers by giving them the best practices and managerial tools they need to promote accountability and create better team effectiveness.
• To introduce human resources managers to the benefits of the Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception & The Anatomy of Peace), their leadership training, and team building methods.

How does my book achieve these goals? As mentioned, NBM is founded upon the pioneering work of human intelligence expert Howard Gardner and the aptitude research of human engineering scientist Johnson O’Connor. By leveraging their work, I provide an innovative management theory that advances the idea that great managers possess specific leadership aptitudes. I call these the Sublime Nine Accountability Management Aptitudes. In the book, I offer case studies that specifically demonstrate how leadership talents identified by these nine aptitudes make managers successful. I also teach owners how to use leadership transformation to change their organizational management into Accountability Managers, leaders who represent the very best managerial talent anywhere. What this means to you is that you can use this same methodology to determine whether you are right for the job of manager or, if you aren’t, what other career development path you should choose based on your strongest aptitudes. The reason I say your “strongest aptitudes” is that when we use our natural talents, called aptitudes, we leverage our competitive advantage over others, which drives success. And, everyone agrees that success and winning at work or play is fun!

In addition to the innovative management theory, management recruiting, and organizational consulting ideas presented in this book, I provide several managerial best practices including the following:

o Business management insights from world renowned quality expert W. Edwards Deming (Out of the Crisis), management guru Peter Drucker (Post-Capitalist Society), employee motivation expert Aubrey Daniels (Bringing Out the Best in People), and business management innovator Jack Stack (The Great Game of Business)
o A checklist for the transition manager accepting a new job, assignment, or project that will help him or her get started and successfully implement change management.
o How to use a technique called solution analysis for team problem solving and how to use brainstorming techniques in problem solving to advance organizational goals.
o How to recruit staff and assign them to job duties or enhance their leadership development based on their aptitude strengths.
o How to use an organization chart to create an organization structure consistent with people’s natural affinity for working within a pecking order structure.
o A step-by-step methodology for creating and implementing a mission statement, a business plan, and individual and team action plans.
o A chapter devoted to scheduling and conducting staff meetings to reinforce leadership authority, to administer efficient delegation of work, to promote team building, and to achieve effective communication.
o A step-by-step methodology that leverages the organizational structure to help managers and supervisors deal with employee conflict by deploying an issue tracking system to manage workplace conflict resolution.
o How to use skip-level status reporting to shrink span of control confusion and misinformation while providing management greater visibility to lower-level issues/problems enabling early intervention and decision-making.
o A chapter devoted to effective email usage as a tool for instilling employee and leadership accountability as well as explaining common forms of email abuse and what to do about them.
o A behavioral accountability model (BAM) that shows managers how to set goals, motivate employees, execute employee recognition programs, raise employee satisfaction, and increase management trust on the way to achieving exceptional results.
o A step-by-step procedure to address problem employees and workplace negativity with employee counseling that incorporates deadlines, performance benchmarks, and succession planning to enforce consequences for behavior, even job termination, when necessary.

The bottom line is this: This book outlines a bold program for how to capitalize on human aptitudes, implement managerial best practices, and achieve unprecedented success. If you desire to learn how to manage effectively, solve complex organizational and social problems, or clarify and pursue your life’s purpose, this book is for you. Your perspective on management, management’s role in society, and how your innate abilities can empower you in your workplace are about to change forever!