Audiobook
This book’s title borrows from Peter Drucker’s famous distinction that management is doing things right and leadership is doing the right things. In the introduction, Slack says that she aspires to update Drucker’s work on the executive worker for the Internet age. She does just that, incorporating advice for new situations throughout her work while remaining true to Drucker’s principles.
That being said, she is no Drucker. Drucker’s strength is focusing on the concepts in management. Most managers write management books as a bunch of tips. Drucker instead focuses on how to think as a manager. This is likely because Drucker never worked as a manager himself. He just coached managers in founding the field of management. He is the ultimate psychologist of management.
It’s a high task to ask Slack to fill Drucker’s shoes. In so doing, she reverts back to the “tips” style of writing, focusing on how to manage situations instead of how to think as a manager. She is compatible with Drucker’s way of thinking, no doubt. And for this, she deserves a B or a B-minus. But somewhere along the way, she began to focus on situations more than thought.
I find reading books like hers nonetheless helpful check-ups on carrying myself at work. Management is more than being a manager. It is comporting one’s self in a professional manner. It is managing one’s own affairs rightly. It is prioritizing. It is making good judgments about resource allocation and conflict resolution.
Slack’s book indeed touches on all of these areas and does an above-average job in each. She thinks through how email impacts time management and how the Information Superhighway impacts Drucker’s concept of the knowledge worker well. (Doing email in bursts and segmenting time away from email helps productivity; the Internet discourages worker loyalty.)
I’m going to queue in my On Deck section Drucker’s The Effective Executive, on which this book was patterned. I suspect Drucker will outclass Slack significantly in the ways described. Perhaps if I could find this book on audiobook, I would just read more of my favorite on management: Peter Drucker.