I am working on a proposal to improve manager skills and productivity. Here is my thinking on the fundamentals of Managing others.
Managing yourself: Before you can manage others, you need to be able to manage your own commitments. This includes time management and planning.
Communications: Knowing your own communication style, how to best communicate with others, active listening, making requests and having conversations for action and results.
Managing Knowledge Workers: The people that you will be managing today are different than the laborers of past generations. Management theory is just catching up, and there are plenty of practices for management in our culture that just dont work with knowledge workers. This segment explores what is different about knowledge workers and includes practices for aligning goals and getting the most out of the whole person.
Managing an organization: Whether it is is a team of people, or a complex organization, management is organizing and managing a network of commitments. This section includes relationships with customers, building a high performance team, strategic planning and change management.