Announcing: The ASTD Management Development Handbook

American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) recently released a fantastic collection titled “The ASTD Management Development Handbook”. This book provides current thinking on various management aspects by practicing management professionals. Lisa Haneberg, the editor of this book invited about 37 bloggers/authors to contribute their thinking – people who are active NOW, who are exploring the emerging trends in management and are willing to share their thinking on the best management practices. This is a very non-traditional approach to write a handbook of management development!

I am grateful to Lisa for inviting me to write in this book. I contributed a 23 page chapter titled “From Quality to Excellence: Essential Strategies for Building a Quality-Oriented Culture” (download the table of contents and a sample chapter here). My chapter covers key insights to lead for excellence.

In her foreword, Betsy Myers writes,

“The book in your hands is a remarkable compendium of fresh perspectives on management and leadership. As richly diverse as these authors and approaches are, they have one thing in common: They all are aimed at helping you become better at bringing out the best in yourself and the people around you.”

This is a management compendium for people who are already managing, people who are responsible for developing managers and the ones who aspire to manage someday. I think this book is also a very useful resource for the management students because it is a forward-looking book that touches upon very important topics which may not still be a part of their curriculum.

In management, it’s the soft stuff – the people stuff – that’s actually very hard as Tom Peters rightly says. People are right in the center of any excellence program and chapters in this book lay enough emphasis on this all-important human aspect of leading others towards greatness.

Management is important – a crucial link between strategic intentions at the top and real actions on the floor. It is also a privilege, an opportunity to make a huge difference in lives of others while getting important things done.

I hope you will pick up a copy of this book, have it in your library and share it with those you think will benefit out of it.