Being the Boss

Get the Work Done

By: Deaver Brown

Narrated by: Deaver Brown

Being the Boss starts and ends with doing the work. The role models should be Jack Welch, ex-CEO of GE; Steve Jobs at Apple; and Jeff Bezos at Amazon. They get out in front of the work and lead the charge. Only then do they assess their talent to see who to enlist to help them. This audiobook emphasizes that, even if you get the boss job because you get along with people, have leadership skills, or network well, the key is doing the work - getting the job done. And checking with your boss to be sure you are doing exactly what he or she wants. Once a day is not too often.

"Boss, am I focused on what you want me to be?" Few say it; hard to get very off course if you keep calibrating, says the author. The author suggests exactly what you should do on each day in week one and in your second week of bossing. Don't sit back and assess, he advises, as so many people do. Get after it, get things done, and enlist those you need to support your efforts, both people reporting to you and those that don't, inside and outside your organization.

Lou Gerstner, when he became IBM's CEO, famously started by talking to customers: "What do you want? What can we do better?" He scheduled 40% of his time with customers. And lhe eft a can do, get it done, sales VP in charge as CEO when he left.

The work always starts with the customer, the author points out. Start there. And he provides interesting tips about how to deal with the people reporting to you: keep the ones that can help; return the ones that can't to HR, but keep them in your budget until HR can place them elsewhere or eliminate them. Don't harm people; just move them out. And quickly. You should get this done by Friday of your first week when still in your honeymoon period with your boss. The author says he has never met an effective CEO or boss who said he or she acted too quickly in removing people. But, and this is a big but, don't harm them. Move them to HR; keep them on the budget; support their transition; just not in your shop.

A great listening experience, and with humor too - not easy in a talk about bossing.

©2011 Simply Magazine (P)2011 Christina Brown