Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management is a definitive work describing what a manager is supposed to be doing on the job. Those promoted to supervisory positions would be wise to consider this one a must-read.

Drucker’s work is not for the lazy reader who expects there to be three ideas in a book that he will easily remember after casually skimming the surface of the book. Drucker’s writing is must more dense than most management authors’ works. Every sentence is an important point. Every paragraph is rich enough to provide a manager with six months of developmental activities.

I have met plenty of people who tell me that they have read Drucker’s books. But have they studied them? Anyone coming away from this reading experience without at least ten pages of notes may as well have not bothered reading. Drucker’s ideas are not few but rather are over a hundred concepts.

Drucker does not attempt to create the perfect work environment nor create a humanitarian world in which all people are treated as furry animals that require love and hugs in order to complete their work day. His work focuses on pure effectiveness and results: How can you better manage and operate your business?

Drucker focuses on how to use reports to collect summary data, what major 8 elements of business in which to drive progress, and what business is all about in the first place. Studying this particular book can result in someone who thinks of themselves as a supervisor of people mostly concerned with tardiness and shift scheduling realize that they are managing a business - probably VERY BADLY!

Concepts from Practice of Management:

• What is our business?
• The Eight Objectives in areas of performance
• Five ways objectives help
• Contributed value
• Four styles of industrial production
• Four fundamental problems of enterprise
• Three misuses of reports and procedures
• Five steps to building organizational spirit
• The difference between leadership and management
• Why job rotation fails
• How to develop managers
• and much, much, much more than will fit here…

Everyone, from a team leader in a customer service center to a store manager to the CEO of a major corporation would do well to familiarize themselves with this book to a point that they can recite some of the areas of focus from memory.

Powerful stuff, hard to read and digest, unique, and brilliant. A must-read - not a first-read, but definitely a good second behind The Effective Executive.

Grab a copy of The Practice of Management from Amazon.com today!