1. The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels,  Michael Watkins, 2003
   Start right!  Practical steps managers can take to get on top of things including checklists, planning exercises and detailed guidelines on how to have conversations with your staff and your boss.

2. First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham, 1999
   Discover the "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager - finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and selecting staff for talent--not just knowledge and skills.  Learn specific action steps for helping people perform better on the job.

3. Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results, Stephen C. Lundin, 2000
   Based on a best-selling corporate education video, Fish! helps employees find their way to a fun and happy workplace. Good source for motivational management techniques.

4. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, Patrick M. Lencioni, 2002
   Contains easy to understand and easy to implement information.  Includes a questionnaire to use in evaluating your team and specific steps to help you understand and overcome common problems. 

5. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, Jim Collins, 2001 
   Stories and examples from the great and not so great companies show the way to excellence. Discover the importance of corporate culture and disciplined people.

Essentials

1. Company policies and manuals

2. Labor agreements

3. Applicable Local, State and Federal regulations and laws

The Basics 

1. The American Bar Association Guide to Workplace Law: Everything You Need to Know About Your Rights as an Employee or Employer, Barbara J. Fick, 1997
   Protect yourself.  A clear and comprehensive guide to federal law in the workplace covers such topics as The Family and Medical Leave Act, workers' compensation, and unemployment benefits.

2. What Every Supervisor Should Know, Lester R. Bittel, 1992
   Here are the basics.  A practical, point-by-point guide to every major issue a supervisor can face.  This guide is a must-have for the new supervisor and great for updating skills for the seasoned manager.

3. The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker, 2003 (e-book Adobe Reader)  (e-book Microsoft Reader)
   The Essential Drucker contains twenty-six selections on management in the organization, management and the individual, and management and society. It covers the basic principles and concerns of management and its problems, challenges, and opportunities, giving managers, executives, and professionals the tools to perform the tasks that the economy and society of tomorrow will demand of them.

4. The Effective Executive Revised, Peter F. Drucker, 2002 
   Peter Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness - management of time, choosing what to contribute to the practical organization, knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect, setting up the right priorities, and knitting all of them together with effective decision making.

5. The Practice of Management, Peter F. Drucker, 1993 (audio cassette)
   Peter Drucker covers the basics for management as a separate responsibility.

6. Managing for Results, Peter F. Drucker, 1993
   Peter Drucker addresses how to move an organization forward.

7. Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Peter F. Drucker, 2001
   Peter Drucker focuses on the critical issues, problems, practices, and strategies management faces in the 21st century.

8. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Peter F. Drucker, 1993
   Peter Drucker discusses the tools and techniques of successful management practice.