Imagine the number of hours, days, weeks, and months most successful leaders and managers spend throughout their professional careers reading leadership and management books and attending training courses, classes, seminars, and workshops to stay current and up-to-date on the latest theories and process improvement methodologies? More importantly, how much of that knowledge and effort do you suppose has actually improved performance and productivity and been sustainable in today’s hyper-competitive global business environment?
What happened to all those past theories and programs that were meant to transform our companies and revolutionize our lives? Remember Peter Drucker’s Management by Objectives, Douglas McGregor’s Theory “X”/ Theory “Y,” Edwards Deming’s Total Quality Management, Tom Peters’ and Robert Waterman’s Management by Wandering Around, Rensis Likert’s Leadership Model, Robert Blake’s and Jane Mouton’s Leadership Grid, Robert Tannenbaum’s and Warren Schmidt’s Continuum of Leadership Behavior Model, Fred Fielder’s Contingency Model, John Adair’s Action-Central Leadership, Robert House’s Path-Goal Theory, Philip Crosby’s Zero Defects (Step 7 of his 14 Step Quality Improvement Process) and Bill Smith’s Six Sigma, to name just a few?

If you have been in charge of people for more than just a few years, chances are you have tried to implement a few of them in your own office. If so, ask yourself this question: Was any of it life-changing? Did you improve your leadership and management style and implement lasting new processes that increased productivity and efficiency, and enhanced the working environment for the employees? If you can honestly answer that question with an unequivocal “yes;” congratulations! You are indeed fortunate to be working (or have worked) in such a progressive, consultative or participative management environment with the full support and cooperation of your supervisors as well as enlightened and motivated colleagues, peers, and subordinates who have fully embraced and internalized the same leadership/management principles. This book should serve as a handy reference for you reinforcing what you are doing so successfully.
For those of us less fortunate—leaders and managers who may have spent years acquiring vast emporiums of leadership/management techniques and principles but have often felt nil desperandum with frustrated and futile attempts to successfully implement and sustain them after having been inspired by motivational lectures, classes, and books, please continue reading—this book will help you join those folks I congratulated in the previous paragraph.
It explores the notion that often the most effective way to lead and manage people, especially highly diversified workforces operating in today’s hyper-competitive global business environment, is to keep it simple; id est, to set and enforce standards of behavior and performance based on common sense principles, expectations, and basic moral values.
The principles, expectations, and basic moral values discussed in this book are grounded in the belief that most corporations are not exclusively staffed with highly skilled and talented, self-motivated and socially actualized subject matter experts who only need their supervisors to serve as “caretakers.” Such environments may indeed exist, especially in highly technical and focused areas staffed with skilled professionals sharing common missions and purpose but probably not in the average American office.
Rather, it is assumed that most workplaces they are staffed with diversified groups of mostly average people possessing different degrees of skills, competencies, and “emotional baggage.” Most likely, they possess wide ranges and ever-changing levels and mixes of loyalty, motivation, attitude, commitment, dedication, ambition, and initiative.
In such environments, no leadership/management model or theory can be expected to work brilliantly for everyone all the time. So, why bother? Instead of chasing after the proverbial black cat in the dark room that isn’t actually there, metaphorically speaking, which can be emotionally exhausting and extremely frustrating as well as futile—similar to trying to satisfy everyone’s individual needs and wants and striving to cater to all of their feelings and sensibilities, let’s try setting and enforcing standards of behavior and performance based on, and undergirded by, common sense principles, expectations, and basic moral values, which all rational homo sapiens can understand and respect regardless of their nationality, age, sex, culture, ethnicity, religion, education, and labor category.

Target Audience: Leaders and managers (supervisors) emotionally exhausted and profoundly dismayed with repeated failed attempts to adopt and implement the latest “flavor-of-the-month” leadership/management theories and process improvement methodologies that try to cater to everyone’s individual needs, wants, and desires and seek to embrace and celebrate everyone’s personal feelings and sensibilities.
Assumptions: Most U.S. corporations operate in a hyper-competitive global business environment with highly diversified workforces consisting of mostly average people with different degrees of skills, competencies, and “emotional baggage.” They tend to possess wide ranges and ever-changing levels and mixes of loyalty, ethics, motivation, attitude, commitment, dedication, ambition, and initiative.
Hypothesis: Often, the most effective leadership and management style and approach is to “keep it simple”—set and enforce standards of behavior and performance based on common sense principles, expectations, and basic moral values.