The Just Manage It! series has introduced never before seen managerial models and frameworks. For fuller descriptions and discussions please refer to each book within the series. Some examples from the first book – If You Cannot Manage Yourself You Cannot Manage Others – are detailed here:

The Mutual Support and Reinforcement of Personal and Organizational Goals.

This topic - contained in the first book in the series - forms a major foundation upon which other concepts are built. The distraction and devastation caused by a manager whose personal life is a mess can be quite alarming. As is pointed out in If You Cannot Manage Yourself You Cannot Manage Others, there is little sense emerging from chaos in the morning, going to work to manage and then returning home to chaos. The book argues that living and managing are inextricably linked: you cannot exist in life without engaging in management to some degree. By focusing upon the life of the manager first, the book demonstrates how building a secure and alert manager is the best starting point possible. It enables the manager to get out of his/her own way, to avoid creating difficulties for himself and others and to tackle a lot of problems before they even arise.

This diagram appears in Chapter 1 of If You Cannot Manage Yourself You Cannot Manage Others. It shows that organizational objectives and personal goals are not mutually exclusive: they should both be managed.

Starting at the top of the diagram, an organization has a vision - so too should the person. Planning across the various functions - cross-functional planning - is mirrored in personallife by planning across multiple aspects of life such as health, family, career, etc. This leads to a pool of Life Goals in personal life mirrored by a pool of cross-functional Corporate Objectives. All goals and objectives are constantly subject to reassessment and control. From this diagram we see how professional and personal life run in parallel at exactly the same time and both sets of objectives and goals require management to ensure an improved overall outcome.

As the book explains, far too many distractions and pressures intrude to cast the right side of the diagram as irrelevant. But it is precisely this side of the diagram that can lead to unhappiness if ignored, to distraction, to mood swings and, ultimately, to unsuitable managerial behavior that spreads out to affect others in unproductive ways. By starting at the real starting place - with the manager him/herself - the book does what so many others do not: it focuses on the person, life, and behavior of the manager since these aspects are projected outward to others as suitable or unsuitable example setting in organizational life.

Moving from "Balance" toward "Mix"

Chapter 1 moves the reader away from thinking in terms of Balance and toward thinking in terms of Mix. In order to demonstrate the need for this new definition and way of thinking, the book uses the above diagram to discuss the ways in which we can get side-tracked in our own lives thereby leading to us managing the wrong things and behaving differently in work as a result.

The circle on the right depicts the ideal. We must be mindful, however, that a person can revert to the circle on the left if tragedy strikes. For example, losing your job will suddenly see career and wealth become top priorities for you. The same with a health scare such as a heart attack or cancer-related illness: suddenly family and health grow in importance with everything else dropping off the radar. But what we are seeing here is a to-ing and fro-ing rather than an overall ideal mix.

Too much emphasis on any one factor arises due to poor planning or tragedy/scare: the Hedonic avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure. At all times, we must aim to move toward the circle on the right: a Eudemonic-style move toward achieving our full potential on all fronts. Sitting in the circle on the left must only be temporary - months and not years. As a manager it will soon become your job to move people in that direction too, i.e. if they can manage themselves, your job becomes easier.

The Five Constituency Model for Observing Behavioral Impact

This model - introduced in the first book - runs throughout the entire series. It is designed to enable a manager picture what is going on all around any person as they behave in any given way.

The person under observation (for example, an employee) is placed at the heart of the diagram as Constituency 1 with firm lines of direction to and from the People around them (Constituency 2), the Organization (Constituency 3), and External Stakeholders (Constituency 4). Each label in the diagram is a constituency hence the "Five Constituencies".

You (Constituency 5) are slightly removed due to you exercising observation and are not therefore actively taking part or allowing yourself to be influenced by proceedings. The lines connecting you with the other four Constituencies are depicted as dashed to represent your awareness through observation of what is going on. In other words, you are aware and you choose what you will and will not allow affect you and the extent of such affects.

Greater explanation of each of the labels in the model are provided in If You Cannot Manage Yourself You Cannot Manage Others. While further guidance in the use of the Five Constituency Model is provided in Just Manage THEM!, the first book in the series offers the P.R.I.C.E. guidelines as depicted in the table below:

Inverting the Five Constituency Model

In If You Cannot Manage Yourself You Cannot Manage Others, the Five Constituency Model is inverted to allow the manager to consider his own actions and not just those of the people around him. Take a look at the Inverted model below:

Note how You are now the center of observational attention and another person has sat into the position of observing. This should enable you to gain an insight into the ways in which your own behavior so much more around you than is usually within your contemplation. Would all others view you favorably?

The book lists example questions for the manager to answer of himself and of others in order to gain a deeper understanding of the context in which he is standing and the dynamics of behavior in operation all around him.

Positive Consistency

A clear distinction is made in book one between a Lack of Consistency, Negative Consistency, and Positive Consistency. The goal of the series is to push managers toward Positive Consistency of behavior to avoid error, failure, and the concept referred to in the first book as All Blame Migrates (see Chapter 3). Chapter 7 summarizes the process of Positive Consistency with the following diagram:

As the book explains, this diagram can be read both clockwise and anti-clockwise. Clockwise, Action is dictated by the Context in which you are standing with both Context and Action subject to Constant Reassessment. Anti-clockwise, Action should always be reassessed on an ongoing basis to ensure it suits the Context in play.

Explanations and discussions in Book 1 are detailed and in-depth thereby ensuring that the reader fully understands the process and is fluent in its operation.

The Ten Ps of Constituency and Context Awareness

As the first book in the series explains, none of the concepts contained within its pages promote paralysis-by-analysis, indecision, or delay. The Five Constituency Model is designed to introduce a broader perspective to the manager's thinking and to get him/her accustomed to the habitual behavior of briefly assessing Context before diving in to tackle any given situation.

Creating "Context Intelligent" Managers features as a major theme of Chapter 7. As the book points out, the use of the Five Constituency Model should bring about the Ten-Ps of Constituency and Context Awareness as depicted in the following diagram:

Reference to the book is required to fully understand each label in this diagram, but for now simply know that the book summarizes the Ten-Ps as follows:

Pause to consider Position and Perspective to Prevent you making the wrong choices thereby enabling you to adopt a Positive, well Prepared and Pro-active approach to improve potential Performance all of which represents Positive consistency and is something you should Perpetuate to the benefit of all Five Constituencies since it ensures that Action is dictated by Context and is regulated by Constantly Reassess.

Factors that Influence Constituency Behavior

The Five Constituency Model is expanded upon in Just Manage THEM! Effective People Management For Today's Manager - the second book in the series - by highlighting the factors that influence the behavior of the Constituencies:

The 8-Factors of Context

Creating "Context Intelligent" Managers and instilling Constantly Reassess as the psychological default setting are major aims of the Just Manage It! series. Elements of context and methodology for examining each element are discussed. The diagram here depicts the 8 Contextual Factors identified in the book that a manager should be alert to and assess constantly:

"Time" appears both as a factor of context but also at the center of the wheel as an over-riding condition. Time, Timing, and Timeliness in this regard are explained in the book.

The Context Intelligence Process Model

Through a process of learning, reflecting, observing, reassessing, homework activities...and more, the aim of the series is to push managers toward becoming Context Intelligent and getting them to champion behaviors and ways of thinking that will keep them there and, in time, radiate outward to employees, peers, and superiors for the benefit of all concerned. The process is summarized briefly in the following diagram taken from Chapter 7:

As with previous diagrams, the labels are fully explained and discussed in the book. It is also crucial to recognize that all concepts discussed throughout the series apply not just to the work setting but also to the home setting and our personal lives. This reflects a major philosophy underpinning the series: living and managing are inextricably linked and not mutually exclusive. Simple management principles enable us to have easier lives both at work and at home.

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