Book Reviews: The Essential Manager

The Essential Manager

Author: Enda Larkin

ISBN-13: 9781908199720

Publisher: CAI

Guideline Price: €17.99

This is management consultant Larkin’s fifth title. It is subtitled “30 Core Elements of Leadership”. It is split into three parts, the first focusing on yourself as a manager, the second is about leading your employees, and the final part is about your organisation and how to plan and manage business strategy and change.

One of the most important tasks is to visualise and get “buy in” for business goals, he says. Effective managers are never headless chickens nor are they spineless individuals who avoid difficult issues.

Managers who excel have a clear idea of where they want the business – or that part of it for which they are responsible – to go and those views are based on solid evidence with a bit of intuition thrown in. When that vision is clear, they flesh it out and modify it with their senior people if necessary until they feel it is right.

Personal characteristics are extremely important, he notes. One of these is having a moral compass. In recent years, many business leaders have fallen from grace. While the specific reasons and circumstances differ, a common denominator was that each had either lost this compass or had never had it in the first place.