The officer as manager: A reading list

By Michael Cummings

Best Defense guest columnist

A few
weeks back, a friend from my ROTC days asked for my thoughts on reading lists
for his platoon leaders. I instantly banged out a list of my favorites from
military history, doctrine, and leadership, including
the standard titles like A
History of Warfare, Fiasco, Learning
to Eat Soup with a Knife, etc.

As I
stared at my finished list (on my blog here), I realized it was a boring list. I mean, what junior
lieutenant hasn't heard of The
Defense of Duffer's Drift?

So I
asked myself, "If I could go back and read something before I took over of a
platoon, what would it be?" So I wrote that list. None of the books had to do
with the military; they had to do with management.

Last
fall, I started business school at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. While
"management" gets a bad rap in the Army (which prides itself on "leadership"),
most officers are managers, sitting at desks managing people, paper, tasks, and
information. Though military officers need to become masters of their craft -- be
it intelligence, maneuver, or firepower -- they also need to become masters of
management.

So
here's my list of the management texts every officer should read:

Getting
Things Done, by David
Allen. While often billed as a "time management" how-to book, it's
actually a "task management" book. Getting
Things Done helps managers or
anyone with too many things on their plate organize and prioritize their tasks.
I'd already read this book when I joined the Army and bought copies for the
first staff section I led.

To
paraphrase a review I once read, you'll get more out of the first chapter than
most books. A classic. (Plus, it's short and easy to read.)

The
Signal and the Noise, by Nate
Silver. If you practice intelligence, you must read this book. If you work in any
other field, then you should almost definitely read this book. Silver takes an
interesting starting point -- that virtually every decision is a prediction -- then
analyzes how different people and organizations make (and hopefully track)
these predictions. Basically, if you decide X over Y, you predict that X will have better outcomes than
Y.

Since
the U.S. Army (and every branch) makes predictions about the enemy, they should
read this book.

The
Cartoon Guide to Statistics. Consider this simple textbook on statistics with cartoon
graphics the companion piece to Silver's The
Signal and the Noise. If you don't know basic statistics, read this short
primer on the subject. If you do intelligence, read this book, then take an
advanced course. Actually, any organization managing inputs and outputs (that
means S-1 doing HR, S-4 doing logistics, S-6 doing tech support, and especially
the S-3s managing all training) should take advanced statistics to track and
analyze their work.

The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. The Goal brings
operations research -- a field developed by the British and U.S. Armies in
World War II to apply mathematical rigor to battlefield operations -- to the
modern audience, following one factory manager through a complete
reorganization of his company's manufacturing process. Every
unit/department/section in the Army which turns inputs into outputs could learn
from this book. (Again, every staff section turns inputs into outputs.)

Ever
wonder why your paperwork takes so long to get processed? Read The Goal and learn how the four-star general
who must sign every award is the bottleneck. Ever complain about Tricare's
waiting process? Read The Goal and understand how throughput
works. Ever wonder where
"hurry up and wait" comes from? Just read The
Goal already.

Manager-Tools.com. This
isn't a book, but a website with the single best collection of podcasts on
management on the web. I specifically recommend the podcasts on (in order):

One on Ones




Email




Coaching




Delegation




Meetings




Résumés (Don't
know how résumés help in the U.S. Army? They help you track goals, that's how.)




Goal Setting

Excel. The most used tool in modern business (after PowerPoint),
and few Army officers know how to use it like experts. Yet, by learning a few simple
tricks and techniques, Excel transforms into a powerful data calculator and
analytics engine. The best resource for me, and the best textbook from my first
year of classes, was Practical
Management Science, by Wayne L. Winston and S. Christian
Albright. It combines easy to follow explanations with lots of practice
problems.

I also
recommend Lynda.com. While it doesn't have as
many practice exercises as I would like, it does have videos on topics ranging
from Excel, to PowerPoint, to statistics.

Harvard
Business Review. Finally,
the gold standard for management research. Frankly, in most of my classes, we
don't use textbooks but the classic articles from the leader in management
research. While obviously most of the articles cover specific business problems,
many directly relate to the Army's operations. Some others require a little
creativity, but still have value. (For instance, asking what the U.S. Army's
"Brand Report Card" would look like in Afghanistan.)

Here are
a few of my favorites are (subscription required to view the full articles):

"Whatever Happened to the Take Charge
Manager?" by Nitin Nohria and James D. Berkley




"Putting the Balanced Scorecard to
Work," by Robert S. Kaplan and David P.
Norton




"Competing on Resources,"
by David J. Collis and Cynthia A. Montgomery




"The Brand Report Card,"
by Kevin Lane Keller




"What is Strategy?" by Michael
E. Porter

My first
battalion commander stressed that the two most important ways to improve as an
officer were to stay physically fit and constantly read. While I believe most
officers wholeheartedly embrace the former, not nearly enough take advantage of
the latter, especially when it comes to books outside the traditional military
strategy/theory/history/politics realms.

These
management texts could help transform the Army more than any new weapon system.

Michael
Cummings writes for  On Violence , a blog
on military and foreign affairs written by two brothers -- one a veteran and
the other a pacifist. He left the U.S. Army in 2011 after deployments to
Afghanistan and Iraq. He currently attends UCLA's Anderson School of Management.