Say Thank You for Everything is a bullshit-free guide to management that shows you the right way to lead a business, inspired by Jim Edwards's experience of helping to transform a small unread blog into a business with 200 million readers and hundreds of employees, which finally sold for $442m.
Based on a legendary internal email that distilled 19 things a new manager might find helpful, Say Thank You for Everything will show you:
- the 'whales and fails' method of decision-making that systematically improves your team's results
- the incredible power of being slightly better than average
- why good hiring is 80% of everything
- how to increase productivity and reduce burnout at the same time
- why your teams should never be bigger than five people
- the importance of taking your enemies to lunch
- the surprising places great ideas actually come from
- the dark arts of successful management
- and much, much more.
You might be a brand-new boss unsure where to start, or a struggling supervisor thinking of throwing it in, or perhaps someone who just doesn't want to lose their humanity on the way to the executive suite. Say Thank You for Everything will help you look after your people, get results for your business, and be the kind of boss you always wanted to have yourself. Say Thank You for Everything is a bullshit-free guide to management that shows you the right way to lead a business, inspired by Jim Edwards's experience of helping to transform a small unread blog into a business with 200 million readers and hundreds of employees, which finally sold for $442m. Jim Edwards was the editor-in-chief of Insider's news division and was the founding editor of Business Insider UK. He has also been a managing editor at Adweek, and a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at the Columbia Business School. His work has appeared in Slate, Salon, the Independent, the Nation and on AOL and MTV. He won the Neal award for business journalism in 2005 for a series investigating bribes and kickbacks in the advertising business. Most management advice books are incredibly boring. This one most definitely isn't. It's a great read for new managers. As the original recipient of Jim's email that inspired this book, I can tell you first hand that his management advice is truly timeless. It has helped me time and again throughout my career. And true to Jim's own management style, this book is equal parts smart, funny, blunt and helpful. Gossipy, fun, insightful and simple – Say Thank You For Everything is the management book that works on great anecdotes, not tenuous metaphors. Enjoy these memorable examples of how to get it right at work and in life – as well as how to get it spectacularly wrong. So, Jim, as everyone is probably saying, thank you. We've all had bad managers. Some of them horrible. We've all had good managers. Some of them we love as if they were family. (And honestly we might prefer them.) But what truly separates the good from the bad, the beloved from the atrocious? Never has a book answered that very question until now. With his signature wisdom and wit, Jim Edwards has created the ultimate instruction manual for how to manage, lead, and inspire a team -- and how not to fuck it up along the way. This is officially now required reading for all current or aspiring bosses. Say Thank You For Everything is a deeply entertaining and educational look at leadership. The anecdotes gleaned from Edwards's 30-year career in media will make you laugh and gasp in horror, but at its heart this is a book about breaking the cycle of bad leadership. It's also an antidote to the 'cult of personality' model of being a boss; out with eccentric buffoonery, in with tangible takeaways to make you and your team better. One of the big problems with leadership is that it's never taught. You do well as a contributor and then, if you're really good, you get promoted - as Jim did - to the confounding, uncomfortable and totally unfami
