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You hardly need a crystal ball to know the prospects of most newly managers in the UK. The evidence suggests they have a 40% chance within the next 18 months of receiving a bad report, being sacked, or deciding this role is not for her and choosing to step down.

Similarly, if the manager has any kind of specialist or technical background then they may need to transform their approach to getting results. Becoming a manager is a big change from being a technical person or specialist professional where you rely mainly on yourself to achieve success. In fact the change can be so significant that it can cause as much stress and even trauma as the equivalent of a bereavement in her family. So any new manager had better learn quickly how to deal with stress. We also know that UK managers are expected to work extremely hard. In fact, most put in far longer hours than their contracted ones and well beyond those of most colleagues in the rest of Europe. All this extra work though won’t make the UK more efficient or effective, in fact probably less.

As for the people most UK managers will inherit to manage the evidence about levels of engagement is fairly daunting. It is rather like having a football team with only a couple of members who really care whether the team scores or not. if you lived in China over 2500 years ago it was tough to survive and at least three approaches emerged to guide people. Confucius said the best way was to be obedient, do as you’re told, don’t rock the boat and pay careful attention to who is in charge. Another philosopher Lau-Tzu suggested the way to survive was to withdraw from the world, have few needs and you’ll be fine. These two approaches plus a sprinkling of Buddhism, all added up to being humble and staying out of harm’s way.

A few millennia later, Gary Hamel, recently writing about the Future of Management, suggests the way to survive in our fast moving, constantly changing world where adaptability and creativity count, is for managers to become boldly innovative and look for the unconventional. In essence says Hamel, the whole notion of management needs a complete re-think.

Somewhere between these two extremes of how to survive, the Secrets of Success, identifies the essence of what it takes to survive and thrive. The basic message of the book is that it starts with managers developing their insight: insight into how to manage themselves, how to manage others and finally how to manage the organisation.

Manage Yourself

If you want to be a lifeguard, able to help other swimmers, it obviously makes sense if first you become a strong swimmer yourself. Much the same principle applies to being a manager. Before you can expect to assist others or to affect positively your organisation, first you need to manage yourself well. Managing yourself starts with becoming more self-aware. It means knowing your strengths and development needs and using this awareness to generate the necessary insight to improve your own performance. Those managers who succeed need to constantly search for personal feedback and possess a strong sense of personal values. In even more practical terms, survival means becoming good at presentations, being a great networker, a good listener and be able to handle stress well.

Manage Others

Managing others is obviously a core part of what managers do. This means developing awareness to see behind the invisible mask that people wear that often hides anxiety, resistance, disagreement, or confusion. Developing this kind of insight takes time and experience, which means we need to narrow down to some of the essentials of managing others. This section of the book suggests seven key processes that the new manager had better master, sooner, rather than later. These include, showing leadership, managing one’s team, managing one’s boss, learning to coach and that dreaded word appraisals, or performance reviews. You may not necessarily agree with the seven processes identified, but they have stood the test of time and wherever you go you find successful managers able to use these capabilities.