About the Book
The author provides hard-earned career and management advice, using many examples, stories, and scenarios, of successes and failures, from his own on-the-job experiences. He provides context and depth to his lessons learned, so the advice offered will be meaningful, understandable, and useable for the reader.
Excerpts from Individual Performer to Manager:
"If your main concern is for people to always “like” you, then you will never be a respected and successful leader. When people are not performing satisfactorily, when they are behaving in a manner that does not meet your or the company’s standards, you must have the courage to confront people one-on-one to make sure they understand from you directly, that they are not meeting your expectations. If you don’t take any action, or send someone else to do it, you will undermine and diminish people’s respect for you…. "
“As a leader, you should acknowledge your people in your day-to-day interactions with them, not once a month, or during a six-month or annual review. You should seek out and always give credit where credit is due, never take credit when it belongs elsewhere, and never take credit alone for something you should be sharing with others.”
Author’s management progression: The topics and scenarios discussed in Individual Performer to Manager, and the advice offered, come primarily from the experiences that Oshiro lived through, working with people day in and day out, starting as an individual performer, then progressively rising through the ranks to become a team leader, supervisor, manager, then manager of the 192-person Southern California Systems Engineering/Solution Center, and last as a credentialed Project Manager, all over a thirty-year career with large multinational corporations, Electronic Data Systems (EDS)/Hewlett-Packard (HP).
Management experience: Captured in this book, are some of the most noteworthy experiences over those years, where the author had to compare and contrast the work and contributions of many employees. He had to assess people's performance; confront people face-to-face with performance issues, including terminating employees; mentored and provided guidance on how to improve performance; ranked people one above the other; determined who will receive perks, bonuses, and salary increases; decided on who earned promotions and new opportunities; and also had the painful and demoralizing experience of having to lay many people off, not because of performance issues, but due to corporate cutbacks. The author recognized and celebrated with people and teams on individual and project successes, but also had to call together and stand up at all-hands meetings to announce to every one of impending budget cutbacks and salary freezes, as well as layoffs.
First and foremost: The author’s goal with Individual Performer to Manager is to help people enhance their success as an individual performer, and this comes from the perspective where the author always wondered himself whether he had the “right stuff” to keep advancing in his career. The book discusses how he worked through self-doubt and his lack of self-confidence.
He hopes to reach people who think, like he once thought, that they don’t have the needed traits or aptitude, or may not be smart enough, or who think they are too quiet and timid to progress to higher levels in their careers. Even if the reader has no desire to move into management, the topics on management should broaden the reader’s perspective and understanding of that role, and provide him/her greater insight into how they and their work are being assessed and judged by management, to help them enhance their impact, performance, and value.
If the reader is targeting a management career track, this book, through many examples, covers some of the key aspects that Oshiro experienced and learned, which will help to prepare the reader to face, including project management.
The author discusses these subjects on a very personal, experiential level, and not from a typical business management textbook perspective.
The author provides hard-earned career and management advice, using many examples, stories, and scenarios, of successes and failures, from his own on-the-job experiences. He provides context and depth to his lessons learned, so the advice offered will be meaningful, understandable, and useable for the reader.
Excerpts from Individual Performer to Manager:
"If your main concern is for people to always “like” you, then you will never be a respected and successful leader. When people are not performing satisfactorily, when they are behaving in a manner that does not meet your or the company’s standards, you must have the courage to confront people one-on-one to make sure they understand from you directly, that they are not meeting your expectations. If you don’t take any action, or send someone else to do it, you will undermine and diminish people’s respect for you…. "
“As a leader, you should acknowledge your people in your day-to-day interactions with them, not once a month, or during a six-month or annual review. You should seek out and always give credit where credit is due, never take credit when it belongs elsewhere, and never take credit alone for something you should be sharing with others.”
Author’s management progression: The topics and scenarios discussed in Individual Performer to Manager, and the advice offered, come primarily from the experiences that Oshiro lived through, working with people day in and day out, starting as an individual performer, then progressively rising through the ranks to become a team leader, supervisor, manager, then manager of the 192-person Southern California Systems Engineering/Solution Center, and last as a credentialed Project Manager, all over a thirty-year career with large multinational corporations, Electronic Data Systems (EDS)/Hewlett-Packard (HP).
Management experience: Captured in this book, are some of the most noteworthy experiences over those years, where the author had to compare and contrast the work and contributions of many employees. He had to assess people's performance; confront people face-to-face with performance issues, including terminating employees; mentored and provided guidance on how to improve performance; ranked people one above the other; determined who will receive perks, bonuses, and salary increases; decided on who earned promotions and new opportunities; and also had the painful and demoralizing experience of having to lay many people off, not because of performance issues, but due to corporate cutbacks. The author recognized and celebrated with people and teams on individual and project successes, but also had to call together and stand up at all-hands meetings to announce to every one of impending budget cutbacks and salary freezes, as well as layoffs.
First and foremost: The author’s goal with Individual Performer to Manager is to help people enhance their success as an individual performer, and this comes from the perspective where the author always wondered himself whether he had the “right stuff” to keep advancing in his career. The book discusses how he worked through self-doubt and his lack of self-confidence.
He hopes to reach people who think, like he once thought, that they don’t have the needed traits or aptitude, or may not be smart enough, or who think they are too quiet and timid to progress to higher levels in their careers. Even if the reader has no desire to move into management, the topics on management should broaden the reader’s perspective and understanding of that role, and provide him/her greater insight into how they and their work are being assessed and judged by management, to help them enhance their impact, performance, and value.
If the reader is targeting a management career track, this book, through many examples, covers some of the key aspects that Oshiro experienced and learned, which will help to prepare the reader to face, including project management.
The author discusses these subjects on a very personal, experiential level, and not from a typical business management textbook perspective.