My wife has had a hard week. Actually a few weeks where she's worked a lot of hours, lots of phone calls, computer work, all trying to get a big contract going with a customer. It's been stressful and hard on her, making her question this job a few times.

Apparently her boss has been paying attention and wants to let her know that he appreciates her and he's aware of how hard things have been. This morning, while Tia was on a conference call, the FedEx guy came and rang the doorbell. He dropped off a small box, about the size that a cell phone comes in. It was from her boss, so I took it in to her.

She opened it up, and inside was an envelope that contained 4 or 5 small chocolate Easter eggs and a handwritten note telling her that he appreciated her hard work and to hang in there as things would slow down soon.

It made her laugh, and made her morning.

That's a great sign that a manager is paying attention to how his direct reports are doing. Even doubly so since she's a remote employee and only sees him a couple of times a year.

I saw this book (It's Your Ship) in a Barnes and Noble and the title and cover attracted me. So I picked it up and read the back, thought it was interesting, and later grabbed it for the Kindle. I do still buy books from B&N, but for friends and family. I prefer my books on the Kindle.

As I started reading this book, I thought this was a book that everyone in management should read. And everyone that is a worker should recommend this to your managers, directors, VPs, and especially C-level people.

That thought hasn't wavered and now that I've finished it, I think more than ever this is a great management book that really describes well how you can lead. In the military or in business.

This is the story of Captain Michael Abrashoff's tour on the USS Benfold. He took over this ship, his first command, and a ship that was below average in many ways. After he received the command, he turned around the ship, making it the highest rated ship in the Navy. And not just in terms of getting people to perform as qualified sailors, but he reduced turnover, getting almost all of his sailors to re-enlist, he improved morale, lowered accidents, and really built an amazing group of people.

In many ways this reminded me of how great JD Edwards was to work for, though I think I recognize more flaws in their operations that Captain Abrashoff points out.

The book covers a variety of aspects of leadership, usually with stories about issues and problems encountered and how the Captain worked at it. Granted the job on a ship is different than a company, but with more serious consequences, however there are a lot of similarities.

There two big things I've gotten from the book. One is that you should empower your people, trusting them to make decisions, which is an old idea, but one that many managers overlook. The second is that you need to act quickly and decisively on issues, not letting them fester. In your actions, you have to show that people have to take responsibility, but that they also deserve a second chance.

Too many managers and attempted-leaders try to control workers, telling them what to do but not sending the message with their actions. Captain Abrashoff illustrates where he found ways to show people he meant what he said and I liked that.

I would have liked to hear more about things that didn't work since those mistakes can really help us grow, and there is a little at the end where he talks about problems he created with his policies, but they are problems with peers, not problems with his decisions. It's a motivational book, so I understand some of that, but it would have been a great learning experience to see mistakes being made and how they are corrected, or you back out of your actions.

I highly recommend this book.

It was really Andy Warren's presentation, but he usually ropes me in to add a different perspective on the various things he talks about. Over the years I've joined in on other sessions, though this time I didn't have a lot to say. I was beat and so I let him do most of the talking. He's good at it and this is a good subject about which he's learned a lot.

He paints a dark picture, but that's because he's fairly pragmatic, and he doesn't want to sugar coat things too much. Managing is hard and it's not for everyone. Andy brings up good points and I think things went well. Too often we aren't prepared as technical people, and we don't think about the fact that our intelligence and technical skills aren't applicable here. There are a whole other type of skills that you need to develop.

A lot of the things he talks about, avoiding technical work, not overworking yourself, and more, are things that I've learned the hard way. I did a better job managing the second time around at Peoplesoft, but I still didn't tackle it head on as he did, and wish I'd taken more management training. But I was in a place where I was thinking of leaving, actually looking for a technical job while I was trying to manage.

At the end, Andy did a small survey, with relatively few people changing their mind on being a manager (or not being one), which is interesting. I suspect more than a few people are rethinking things. I bet that a few people were hoping that he had some techniques to make it easier, ways to deal with the overload of work, but a lot of what he said was push back and don't do the technical work. Hard to do at times, but essential, in my mind.

Why did I write this? I got challenged by Andy Warren to write a bit about why I wrote something. I complained to him that he has some "mechanical" posts on this blog that just mention he wrote something with some questions, and don't really blog about why he wrote something. He challenged me to write about why I wrote something, so here I am.

I got an email from a friend with the article link that's mentioned in the editorial. The email said to read the first page and send him my response, so I promptly read all pages and sent a response back.

As I was reading, I felt quite a few emotions stirring. Frustration with some employees that have worked for me in the past, co-workers that have behaved similar to Eric in the article, and annoyance at the high pay mentioned. I typically haven't known what others are making, so I don't necessarily know if those people I found incompetent or not valuable were making more than me. I was the lowest paid person in my group when I managed a team of DBAs, but since I was the manager that was probably appropriate.

In any case, I thought Eric should be let go, probably after trying to work things out, but I tend to think it's hard to get people to change and if I had to constantly remind him and manage him to change, I'm not sure it's worth it. It's one thing to do that with someone at the bottom of your salary scale, quite another at the top.

As I wrote the editorial, I kept second guessing myself, wondering if I was being too hard, and that made me very curious to see what others would say.