Every edifice has a cornerstone and every corporate system has cardinal areas to harp on making furtherance of its reach out. The cornerstone size is nondescript compared to their enormity of service it doles out.

Corporate acumen accrues through imperceptible habits. Randall Haug brings out this compact management primer as a subtle beacon for course correction in the American corporate sector. He fervently believes in, ‘People change, People can change’. There is an enormity of scope for human resources to flourish aplomb. A prudent approach to setting seven cardinal areas can decide the sustainable course of surging business. To iron out those workforce digressions and managerial detours and cut down frittering expenses to overhaul optimisation is a surefire. 

Negativity is spilling over in the American corporate workplace. Yet there is the dazzle of bright hope flaming across for you to seize that beacon of inspiration page from the books of those management mavens whom Randall encountered during his extensive presence in the American corporate scene. He strikes lapidary dictums for even willy-nilly readers to turn diehard followers.

Formative years leave a deep impact and Randall relates his experiences with his coach for baseball league at the tender age of eight years - as to what should a leader do to motivate his team take up a grueling chunk? The downside of domineering bosses is rampant to do more harm. Certain innate qualities of employees get nipped out. It takes wits and guts to cajole team mates. Incredulously, Randall’s childhood baseball coach crisscrosses key moments of his entire life leaving indubitable lessons. ‘It was his way or the highway [that did]… rub off on me while parenting my own children as they grew up.’  Randall is a loving father of two and a devoted husband vouching for a conjoint authorship of this book.

There’s a chapter on ‘Mistakes with three giants of leadership’ prodding readers to take the bull by its horns, on how to stem the rot requiring a subtle strategy and gumption. It all begins with a quote from Nido Qubein. It’s such an engrossing chapter to blow your minds. ‘Every leader …made a vital mistake that almost caused them to have to start over.’ Mistakes from leaders flow galore. Randall goes back citing incisive stats for his leitmotif of Baseball league that shows most of the failed major players hit the Hall of Fame.  The book establishes ‘failing’ to be the hallowed rite of passage to flourish subsequently. The chapter is highly motivational with witty jabs. Abraham Lincoln is discussed – an excerpt from his second inaugural address finds a mention of redeeming ‘malice towards none’. The author trenchantly claims, ‘There is one section in this book that is obviously not written during this millennium, and you just read it…it’s sheer gold.’ Then Malala Yousafzai comes up, the young girl who was brazenly shot thrice to hold up love all around.  There’s Mark Cuban’s ‘How to Win at the Sport of Business’ advocating – ‘Self-Educate. Win the Game’.    

How to lead to a customer or a solution? Mark Cuban quips in with a ready solution easy to adopt. “The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.”. Again there’s the ‘last excerpt short-and-sweet from Mark Cuban’s How to Win at the Sport of Business. With a statement like this Cuban empowers the reader with an admonition: learn everything you can to be as dangerous as you can. You know what made Abraham Lincoln and Malala Yousafzai so dangerous?”  The book maintains such a tempo to rope in readers.

Randall digs into common psyche and maps their traits to accordingly lay down common follies and foibles exemplified with real life instances. The book is marked with well-segregated sections for quick reference and succinctly narrates case scenarios. Witty anecdotes make it an exhilarating affair to lap up what remains ahead in the read.

The book gets further engrossing with the depiction of historical precepts as well as contemporary management masters. Down the ages, human ego has been blamed for stalling progress becoming discordant to human harmony. The book chastises common personal interests that often crop up to lasso business interests. Historical references and copious mention of maxims and quotes from the custodians of society instill the veracity of the author’s intentions.

The lucid solutions to profound problems make this handbook worth a try.   “It’s not about me. The mantra is simple enough, but, when taken to heart and lived out on a day-to-day basis, will make a bigger difference than you might realize. A difference that corporate America is in need of. A difference that starts at the bottom and trickles its way up. A difference that doesn’t happen overnight, but will take years to implement. And it starts on page one.”

One of the mentors Randall was fortunate to have been Brent Witthuhn who “altered the trajectory of my corporate career when he infused the power of “asking leading questions” to achieve employee-to-employee or employee-to-client interactions for targeted benefits the book devises. Randall is emphatic on pointing out glaring lapses in our stereotyped education that hold back the corporate workhorse from hitting the desired course of business and … says –‘Peel back the layers’.   

Thus Randall entwines anecdotal history-in-the-making vis-à-vis history-in-the-breaking to illustrate the prudent approach to set the cardinal areas that bolster the course of business. The book instills the sagacious four-worded dictum, ‘IT’S NOT ABOUT ME’ producing a wondrous upturn in everyone’s corporate health, and leaves you hugging Mr Haug. 

Print length: 77 pages

Randall Haug