The book and library shelves groan from the amount of books that tell you how to manage more effectively. And if you have the time to pore through these tomes, there are bound to be some gems to be found. When we (Jarvis Finger and I) wrote our best-selling management books, we identified four main qualities of people in management positions. These were as follows.1. Most people become managers ‘overnight’ with limited preparation for their new roles. A successful salesperson, for example, soon becomes the sales manager; an enthusiastic and thorough auditor is soon promoted to audit manager. And one of the ‘rewards’ for their success is an increasing amount of management responsibilities.2. Most people don’t have the time (or the inclination) to read all of the management literature in their field – to be ‘rewarded’ with one or two ideas. If only someone else were able to do this for them! We started with Management in a Minute, progressed to Just About Everything a Manager Needs to Know, and arrived at The Management Bible and The Online Manager (TOM).3. Most managers today have, of necessity, to become ‘generally’ responsible, with a working knowledge of a broad range of issues including substance abuse, sexual harassment, diversity in the workplace, grief counseling, security, and workplace health and safety.4. Most managers can’t be expected to know everything. Instead, they need to know where to go when they need to know. Albert Einstein brought this to our attention decades ago.Our contributions on how to manage even more effectively are available for all the world to see. Here are nine things you must do if your management is to continue to improve.1) You must never tolerate unacceptable behavior from employees. One of your key tasks is to create a culture that makes your workplace a place where people want to be. If you’re going to achieve that you will need to crack down on ‘bad’ and reward ‘good’ behaviors.2) You must build strong personal rapport with staff. Gaining the trust and confidence of your people will enable you to have open communication that is a necessary requirement of successful management.3) You must set clear goals and, where possible, involve staff in the establishment of those goals. Once those goals have been set, you need to communicate these regularly to your staff–on a weekly or monthly basis.4) You must realize the importance of staff rewards and recognition. Whether it’s something as straightforward as a thank-you note or dinners-for-two. You need to ensure that the form of reward is valued by the recipient: reward need not mean ‘money’.5) You must look for opportunities for people to develop. Self-development can take the forms of promotions, external training, or giving increase responsibilities with corresponding freedoms.6) You must confront problems head-on when they arise. Failure to act is not something that you want to be recognized for. And when you’ve taken appropriate action, spend time discussing the problems and actions with those immediately concerned.7) You must reduce or eliminate bureaucratic regulations (get rid of so-called ‘red tape’), recognize individuals’ and group contributions, and focus on creating a fun environment. At the same time, you need to make sure that people are doing what’s required of them-not necessarily their ‘best’ but what achieves the desired outcomes (sometimes ‘best’ is not good enough).8) You must persuade those people whose contributions you value to stay and encourage those who don’t have anything meaningful to offer the organization and customers to find a place that best suits their way of operating.9) You must make use of key resources such as The Online Manager (TOM) and The Management Bible. What Albert Einstein called ‘lumber knowledge’ (storing stuff that you think might someday be useful) is unlikely to help make you a better manager.