John Cioffi - The Winning Managers Playbook: 6 Practices Every Manager Needs to Succeed

John and Ken have hit a homerun with this book. By adopting these practices and concise habits, our company transformed from a family business to a professionally managed business. In todays economy and business environment, nothing less will suffice.

Terry Morse, CEO, Morse Industries

The Winning Managers Playbook provides an approach to goal-setting and instituting an inclusive planning process that is very practical and yields real near-term and long-term results. The right people with clearly integrated personal and company goals yield real value increases in any company, and this book shows you how to do it.

Jim Warjone, former CEO of Port Blakely Companies

The key to success for managers is to learn how to improve the processes they use to conduct their business activities. All managers face similar challenges, and this book puts a proven and practical knowledge base at their fingertips and will be of tremendous value to all of them.

Glenn Duarte, CEO, Ambia Architecture

This book cuts through all the smoke screens and tangents to get to the heart of an issue. The concepts in The Winning Managers Playbook helped my company along our path to both survival and growth in a world that is changing faster than anyone can track. The authors have a way of grabbing our feet and pulling us back down to the real world, while still allowing us to excel as a creative firm.

Karl Bischoff, president, Phinney Bischoff Design House

The authors commonsense approach to business basics combined with their fluid writing style makes this a valuable book for any manager. It is articulate, focused, and full of valuable experience. This book is beautifully written, and unlike most business books the text flows extremely well. Great job!

Richard Rhodes, owner, Rhodes Architectural Stone

This is a great book. We applied the effective practices in this book to produce a company with strong growth, solid profitability, and empowered employees who exceed their goals and are commensurately rewarded. Not too many furniture companies can say this in the current economy.

Dan Kennedy, president, Belfort Furniture

6 Practices Every Manager Needs to Succeed

JOHN CIOFFI
AND
KEN WILLIG

Copyright 2013 by John Cioffi and Ken Willig

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

THE WINNING MANAGERS PLAYBOOK

TYPESET BY GINA TALUCCI

Cover design by Joanna Williams Designs

Printed in the U.S.A.

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS 6 HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL MANAGERS

To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press.

The Career Press, Inc.

220 West Parkway, Unit 12

Pompton Plains, NJ 07444

www.careerpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Cioffi, John.

The winning managers playbook : 6 practices every manager needs to succeed / By John Cioffi and Ken Willig.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-273-9 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-520-4 (ebook) 1. Management. 2. Leadership. 3. Customer services. 4. Success in business. I. Willig, Ken. II. Title.

HD31.C5335 2013

658.409--dc23

2012049265

To our clients: We are forever grateful to all of our clients for your trust and confidence. You allow us to speak candidly, encouragingly, and, at times, critically. We love our role as coaches, and we treasure the opportunities you have given us to participate in your successes.

Our association with you has always resulted in measurable changes to your company as well as to us, and in some cases we have forged fabulous friendships, which we treasure greatly. Youve taught us much of what we know about how to create successful businesses, and we learned something valuable from each of you. Thank you!

Our clients have always been the focus of our activities. Were forever grateful for the opportunities you provided to us to coach you and learn from you.

Many of our friends, colleagues, and family members provided us with advice and critique early in the development of this book as well as during its production. We are enormously grateful to all of you.

Helping us to put this book in your hands were Ellen Neuborne, who assisted us in navigating the publishing industry, and Cynthia Zigmund, our wonderful literary agent, who provided us with startlingly good advice and critique and found the right publisher for us at Career Press.

Finally, though certainly not least, we are thankful to our wives for their patience and understanding. They believed in us and in our goal of bringing our ideas to the printed page and thus to a broader audience.

Like quiz show contestants, managers are constantly guessing at the right answers. Unfortunately, they often dont know if they even have the right questions, and rarely has anyone coached them on being effective managers. No wonder theyre stressed, second-guessing their actions, and fearful for their positions.

This is especially true today, when change is rapid, frequent, and almost routine. Our businesses are in constant flux, customers are global and ever-changing, markets quickly emerge and wane, and product life cycles are shorter than ever. CEOs and owners challenge their managers to adapt to this changing environment, while expectations for a life-long career at National Widget have long disappeared (along with the pension).

So what will you do? How can you be a successful manager in todays environment?

Weve looked at many successful companies and read countless stories of successful and unsuccessful organizations across decades of varying economic conditions. Weve concluded that there are six key and basic practices that you need in order to be a successful manager. These practices are basic building blocksthey are neither faddish nor outdated, but enduring in their value and effectiveness.

The Winning Managers Playbook describes these six practices. Using these six practices will compel you to do the Right Things (good leadership) as well as to do Things Right (good management). In effect, The Winning Managers Playbook provides you with a road map for doing the Right Things Right. It also helps you avoid the other three options, which are roads to failure.

Doing the Right Things Right

Many managers use one or more of these practices at one time or another. For example, after a long period of aimlessness, a manager may decide to define her divisions goals and to construct a plan for the coming year. Another manager might adopt some effective management practices in response to a period of chaos, while yet another might decide to improve his operations by weeding out the dead wood and replacing the non-performers with folks who can do the job.