Book Recommendation: “The Manager’s Book Of Decencies” by Steve Harrison

One of the best leadership books I have ever read is: The Manager’s Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies, by Steve Harrison (McGraw-Hill), for all project managers, team leaders, and executives.

Steve Harrison is Chairman of Lee, Hecht, Harrison, the premier career management and leadership consulting firm. He is also the former Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer of Adecco Group, the largest HR Solutions Company in the world. As such, he carries around a wealth of personal experience and unique knowledge about companies, management, leadership, morale, and ethics.  And it is impressive how much of this knowledge he was able to share in this excellent book, which is brimming with actionable tips.

The basic premise of the book is that it takes more than rules and laws to build an ethical culture at a company.  “Decencies” are all kinds of things that managers can do to set examples of good ethics and to foster an environment where ethical behavior is encouraged and rewarded.  And Steve’s book provides a wealth of examples from his own hands-on experience helping many companies in his positions at Adecco and later the company that shares his name: Lee, Hecht, Harrison.

Since reading this book, I recommend it for advanced reading in my PMP Project Management classes.  It’s written for a general audience of managers and leaders, but I recommend it specifically for Project Managers as well.  Many of the ideas will work on the project-level, as well as on a company-level.