Managing to Stay Out of Court: How to Avoid the 8 Deadly Sins of Mismanagement – Jathan Janove, Esq.

The book “Managing to Stay Out of Court: How to Avoid the 8 Deadly Sins of Mismanagment” by Jathan Janove, Esq. is an interesting look at management from the perspective of someone who has gleaned his information from lawsuits. In the end he basically recommends honesty, openness, communication and respect as being the best management style, especially if you don’t want to get sued for firing someone who isn’t performing well enough for the needs of the business. This book is worth reading just for the stories that Janove relates from his career, some of which are quite eye opening.

For example, his story about a suit regarding untruthfully good reviews was very revealing to me. A terminated employee sued his former employer (and won) because his reviews had always claimed he was doing a good job, and when he was terminated he argued that he now was no longer able to get a job at the level he had been previous employed because his employer had lied to him about what the expectations were for accomplishing that sort of job. It reminded me that “lying to be nice” is just a way to avoid potential confrontation, and is fact a terrible way to treat people who report to you in the workplace. I suspect it’s a bad habit in the rest of life as well.