The Art of ManagementAll Episodes
13 episodes exploring the lost art of being an amazing manager and leader.
Why the AI Bots Think You Should Read UNMANAGED
This episode is guest-hosted by two NotebookLM AI Chatbots. We fed them a few simple instructions, and then the first 30-plus pages of the book. Let us know if you like this and we’ll ask them to produce some more episodes.
Episode 12While the Cat's away: What happens when the managers leave
What would happen if we send all of the managers away for a day…or more? This is one of the many counter-intuitive yet enlightening topics that are part of AgencyAgile’s leadership workshops, and also part of Jack’s new book, Unmanaged, Mas...
Episode 11The Making of Unmanaged, the Book.
You know less about managing than you think. These misperceptions and fallacies include theidea that managing creates productivity, that managers can solve everything, that more managing equals better managing, and that work...
Episode 10I Hate Your Stupid Meeting
Many meetings are like unpleasant dinner guests who have come uninvited. They intrude on your productive time, drone on with unnecessary conversation, and you can’t wait for them to leave. Does that mean useful, effective meetings are a hop...
Episode 09Your Meeting Sucks
Do your Meetings Suck? The answer is a pretty-much unqualified “yes.” Does it need to be that way? Of course not, but it is not easy. Meetings were horrible prior to 2020, and though we are in a different pl...
Episode 08King Kong, please sit down and wait your turn
Can you be a better manager by stepping back and letting teams manage themselves? As strange as this may sound, the answer is yes. Often managers stop all over the landscape like monsters in a 1950’s B-movie. Small teams actually work bette...
Episode 07The manager of the future is chill
Can a manager manage better by stepping back and letting teams manage themselves? As strange as this may sound, the answer is yes. Small teams work better when there is less management over them, and this has as much to do with the way ordi...
Episode 06The Art of the Lazy Manager
Lazy gets a bad rap. Managing and managers can be costly to your organization’s productivity (listen to episode 2.1, The Natural Tax of Managing ) and in fact less managing can be better! Can you be a better manager b...
Episode 056 and 8, The Dark Side of Estimates
Peter Drucker is famous for pointing out how much better managers could manage if they only used numbers. His message: “…if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Managing is the business of numbers…or is it? Certainly, Frederick...
Episode 04Theory X and Theory Y Management
In the 1950s, a distinction was made between the underlying beliefs about workers – Theory X and Theory Y. Depending on which you believe, it would influence your behavior as a manager, causing you to either be more controlling or mor...
Episode 03The Birth of Bad Managing
Just over 100 years ago, our culture’s ideas of what “managing” meant changed dramatically. In the late 1800’s, after millennia of craftsman-type commerce – a global network of artisans who did things with simple tools – gave wa...
Episode 02The Natural Tax of Managing
Is managing a generally good thing? Like, is more managing better? How much managing is too much? How would we know? This idea is not new, that management can be costly to productivity. But why do managers never speak of it? It ...
Episode 01An Invitation to Explore the Art of Management
The Art of Management educates and guides managers in how to be a better manager, empower teams, increase inclusion, and be prepared for the future of knowledge work organizations. Our model is Artisanal Management, which e...