“If you think about which of your organs is active as you manage, the head doesn’t come into it much at all. Management is in the gut, in the heart, and in the soul.”

Oh sure, there some easy bugs in the middle, totally local to that one module, but those are the ones that get picked up easily in inspections. The real bugs, the ones that take up your time, are the ones that have something to do with the interface between that module and the rest of its world.”

Hiring is only the most important thing a manager does.”

“You’re going to teach us the hard science of management without even touching on people selection, task matching, motivation or team formation, the four most essential ingredients of management?”

And did you notice how his office was set up?” “Uh . . .” “It wasn’t an office at all. It was set up like a war room, a command center, with all the work artifacts pasted up onto the walls.” “I did notice that the walls were totally papered with drawings.” “Designs, interface templates, schedules, milestone charts. It was beautiful. And no desk. On

Four Essentials of Good Management: Get the right people. Match them to the right jobs. Keep them motivated. Help their teams to jell and stay jelled. (All the rest is Administrivia.)

Battle Metaphor for Management By the time the battle begins, the manager’s real work is already done.

Negative Reinforcement Threats are an imperfect way to motivate performance. No matter how serious the threat, the work still won’t get done on time if the time originally allocated for it was not sufficient. Worse still, if the target doesn’t get met, you may actually have to make good on your threats.

The Manager’s Essential Body Parts Management involves heart, gut, soul, and nose So . . . lead with your heart trust your gut (trust your hunches) build soul into the organization and develop a nose for bullshit