Ten great (and timeless) Leadership Articles

🚨 2023 update: If Leadership at your company is considering layoffs as a way to cut costs we suggest exploring how employee ideas can save your corporation money. In this Continuous Improvement case study (link) you can see how just a handful of ideas saved one location $360,000.

If there’s one good thing about the digital age, it’s that the internet brings everything to you. Gone are the days of attending conference after conference to learn better management procedures. Now, you can read about it in the comfort of your own home or office. To help you get started in your education, we’ve listed (in no particular order) ten articles on leadership from the greats that came before you.

1) Jack Welch on How to Manage Employees

According to Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, a company’s greatest asset is its team. "This whole game of business revolves around one thing," he said at New York's World Business Forum in 2012. "You build the best team, you win." Author Nadia Goodman outlines some of Jack Welch’s favorite management tips from that conference. Click here for the full article...

2) Will the corporation survive?

Peter Drucker is considered the founder of modern management. During his storied life, Drucker wrote 39 books including his 811-page, opus, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices from 1973. More recently (2001), Drucker wrote a shorter, albeit still excellent, nine-page introduction to his way of thinking for The Economist. The article is aptly entitled, Will the Corporation Survive? Click here for the full article...

3) What Bad Managers, Good Managers, and Great Managers Do

Author Mark Graban talks about his time at General Motors and elaborates on the Lean Management style. Simply put, bad managers tell, good managers explain why, and great managers go beyond this. Click here for the full article...

 
4) What Great Managers Do

Harvard Business Review writer Marcus Buckingham helps answer the questions, “What sets the great boss apart from the average boss?” and, “What do great managers do?” In the process, Mr. Buckingham reminds us that the job of a manager is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance. Click here for the full article...

5) The Meaning of Management: The Great Awakening

Forbes contributor Steve Denning reminds us that what happens in management determines the quality of life for most people for most of their waking hours. In any society, management is the biggest single determinant of the quality of life of the people in that society. Mr. Denning writes, “In our time, we suffer from management that is wrong for its time.” Find out what he means and how this problem can be fixed. Click here for the full article...

6) 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses

Inc.com contributing editor Geoffrey James firmly believes that the best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. See what they get right in this article. Click here for the full article...

7) Why Great Managers Are So Rare

Gallup knows people. The company has made that its goal for the past eighty years. So if you want to know what your workers (your team, your employees) think about (fill in the blank), you go where the numbers are. You go to Gallup. This article shows us why companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time and how we can be in that desirable 18%. Click here for the full article...
 

8) 7 Management Traits of Great Leaders

LinkedIn contributor John White starts this article with a quote from legendary football coach Vince Lombardi that is as true today as it was back then: “…leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort…the price all of us must pat to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.” And that’s just the opening paragraph. Click here for the full article...

9) The Six Deadly Sins of Leadership

Jack Welch (and new wife, former Harvard Business Review editor, Suzy Welch) wrote this article in 2013 to highlight six common leadership pitfalls. Welch writes, “Being a leader is perhaps the hardest challenge any of us will ever face. No matter how long we work at it, practicing the right behaviors is a never-ending task. Knowing – and avoiding – the wrong ones is too.” This article will help with the latter. Click here for the full article...

10) Drucker on Management: The Five Deadly Business Sins

Peter Drucker originally published this article in 1993 but it’s been reprinted so many times over the past twenty-two years that it has almost become gospel for managers the world over. As the title suggests, managers need to be on the lookout for these no-no’s: worship of high profit margins, mispricing a new product, cost-driven pricing, slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday, and feeding problems while starving opportunities. Click here for the full article...

Conclusion - So don’t reinvent the wheel...

...use the wheels forged by others to improve your management style, create and keep happy team members, generate revenue, and make your business better. All it takes is a small investment in time. Happy reading.