The Best Management (and everyday life) Book You Have Never Read

The Bad Title and Cover Kept You Away; Here is What it Says:

“Gung Ho!”

Are you ready to learn the best secrets of management? What if I printed that title on a white cover jacket with blocky black letters? Psyched now?

If you are like me, probably not. This is a book I would have flitted past every single time on the bookshelf and ignored even if Amazon had its best bots pushing it on me in every browser window.

The title and cover don’t bring you in. Yet it is probably one of the most succinct and on-point management books I have ever read.

Not only that, the basic principles outlined within also go a long way to explain personal motivations outside a traditional workplace. In short, the message applies to more than production plant managers, and even the most casually interested readers can pull out some gems about what motivates people to work and create.

I have read a million management and leadership books. Okay, not really a million, but a whole bunch.

A lot of them I read because they pulled me in with a promise of some insight that I felt I wanted based on their title and cover. “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is one of those. A classic.

“Gung Ho”, written by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles was foisted on me as obligatory reading in my business degree path and since then I find myself referring back to its core message time and again, even though I can never remember the name of the book.

Not only just a phrase from some bygone era, Gung Ho is purportedly the Chinese language equivalent of “let’s work together”; so, I get the temptation to mention that in the book somewhere. It just makes a super crappy title.

Having digested more than my share of management books, I know what works for me in delivering a message on how I can improve my management and leadership skills.

As counterintuitive as it may seem the use of allegory works really well in a management book setting. One such example is “Our Iceberg is Melting” by John Kotter. This is a cute story about penguins and managing change and not what we are talking about today, but worth a read if you have spare time.

In Gung Ho one of the characters use the allegory method to teach a new plant manager what it is that makes people motivated to work and be productive.

This character uses the examples of squirrels, beavers and geese to explain the base human motivators that lead to a more productive workforce.

I will save you the reverse-anthropomorphizing and boil it down to the three salient points:

1. People want to do work that matters.

2. People want autonomy.

3. People want to be acknowledged for good work.

That’s it. Pretty simple, pretty elegant and exactly on point. And it applies to everyone and every job.

Heck, I could not possibly have articulated it by any means, but deep down I knew this about myself back when I was a young child doing chores around the house.

I was far more likely to throw myself into a chore if those three elements were going to be present. If I could see value (i.e. set the table and you get to eat dinner), then I was particularly motivated to do the task.

If I was allowed some amount of leeway in how I accomplished the task (as long as I met the objective), I was far more motivated.

And, if my parents reinforced my behavior with a compliment when it was deserved (if I had actually done a decent job), then they were far more likely to hook me in again in the future to do other chores.

Fast forward to any job I have ever had, and these three principles have always held true. If I believed in the value of what I was doing, had at least some minimum amount of autonomy to do my job, and received occasional praise when warranted, I was reasonably happy in my work.

It is, of course, even true with my writing now. I want to feel like what I write matters, so I pick topics poignant to me and that contain information that I think others will want to hear.

With writing I get to work on my own with very few outside rules, there is a ton of autonomy.

And, occasionally I get some positive feedback if I am curated, people make comments or applaud my work. That makes me excited about tackling my next piece of writing.

I am pretty sure that if left entirely up to chance, artwork and title that you would never read “Gung Ho” on your own. It’s a shame that the authors didn’t have better advice about cover art and the title, because their message is about as brilliant as can be.

That is why I am sharing this story with you. Take the Gung Ho principles with you on your journey. If something isn’t going well, see if there isn’t an element missing from this timeless motivational formula. If something is missing, work it back in and see if you don’t experience some instant motivation.

Gung Ho!

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. Now moving forward to writing and consulting. For more articles like this, join the mail list.