Managing and Leading

Organizations and People

Becoming a well-rounded business leader and manager means learning to apply a varied toolkit and skill sets, and the ability to know when to apply what, and how to best apply it. The purpose of this book is to set the stage and lay out the context for achieving these goals. Being an effective leader and manager means being able to communicate well and be decisive without being rash. In order to be effective you need to know the terminology and how to use the tools. We live in a time of incredibly varied opportunities to pursue our dreams of creating and running businesses. The convergence of computer and communication technologies is transforming all businesses, industries, and societies. The rapidly increasing power of these tools available to each of us, and our ability to harness them towards new and focused ends, has motivated me to write down my ideas about essential business management and leadership knowledge and skill sets. The barriers to creating, marketing, and selling products and services have been drastically reduced in the past decade. Now small groups and even solo entrepreneurs can harness the power of computers and leverage communications networks and social media to do work and undertake projects that took many more people and resources in the past and, as such, were prohibitively expensive and difficult. In the past, corporations were a way to concentrate capital and resources and bring professional management to bear to mass-produce and mass-market products and services. Now with technical innovations and computational power and connectivity driving many traditional costs toward zero, the barriers to organizing enterprises for productive work and innovation have been removed, or at least extremely reduced. Start-ups are viable and scaling up is achievable. These new opportunities are having a huge impact on the direction and the story of the making and reimagining of the world; and the making and reimagining of our individual lives. This book is designed to give you an overview of the skills of management and leadership so you can fully participate in this self-creation and world-creation.