Common Management
Library
Common Management names the everyday work of management as such: the work itself, before any sector or function or framework attaches.
A manager is anyone authorised to decide about work, systems, or shared arrangements they do not simply own or personally operate. The work of that position has no literature of its own. This site is the beginning of one.
The Library is published slowly and freely, from Australia.
The Library
First-Person Management
The first volume in the Library. It describes the three domains a manager acts within — people, systems, and the surfaces between them — and works through what can be known, what is right, and what can actually be done from where a manager stands. Read in the browser, or download the PDF.
Short pieces that take specific problems in management practice — decisions that won’t resolve, projects that won’t stop, governance that doesn’t govern — and show what becomes visible when the book’s argument is brought to bear on them. New essays every fortnight or so.
Practical artefacts for managers: meeting agendas, decision tests, governance constitutions, and similar. Each one comes with a short framing that explains what it is for, why it works, and what it does not solve.
The Library is open to correspondence. Real questions about applying the work, disagreements, stories from your own practice, pointers to relevant literature. Direct contact is welcome.
Common Management Library 