You grew from 15 people to 45 and something broke. Projects take longer. Margins are thinner. Your best people are stretched across too many things, and the managers you promoted are spending more time in meetings than actually helping anyone do the work. UNMANAGED explains why — and what to do about it.
Built on patterns identified across 200+ agencies, consultancies, and project-driven organizations, the book lays out why the standard management model is the thing that's slowing you down — and provides a practical framework for replacing it with something that lets your teams actually move.
Winner (2026) Independent Press Awards - Business - General
Gold Award Winner (2024) for Business - General (NYC Big Book Award)
Gold Award Winner (2024) for Independent Thought Leadership in Business Books (AXIOM)
Finalist (2024) for Business Books (National Indie Excellence Awards)Written for leaders and managers of complex, project-driven organizations like agencies, consultancies and dev shops. Former RAND researcher, Jack Skeels, shares game-changing insights on managing, drawn from his transformational work with over 200 companies, helping them master the art of making great teams and delivering well on projects.
From Kirkus Reviews:
A bracing, standard-resetting approach to doing management right.Skeels champions the idea of “unmanaging,” which cuts down on managerial overhead and encourages managers to get out of the way of their teams. The needs of workers and teams, the author insists, take precedence over one’s own managerial workflow; a manager’s most important goal is to enable employees to maximize their productivity. Throughout, the author delivers his insights with an effective combination of readable prose and clear-eyed pragmatism. His experience is evident on every page and should prove invaluable to readers in any managerial roles. He sympathizes with how these readers may feel they’re swimming against the tide of popular opinion: “If you are a manager who came up through the ranks as a specialist, then most of what you mastered will point you away from great managing,” he cautions, firmly but good-naturedly. “You’ll need to toss out that old compass.” This book will do very nicely as a new one.
Description (from the publisher)While
Unmanaged has its origins in digital and marketing agencies, Skeels, who spent much of his career in technology and management consulting, makes a compelling argument that the
project-driven workthat they perform (complex, unique, innovative or complex projects) represents the future of human work as AI and other forms of automation displace simpler factory and service style workers. The future of knowledge work is project work.
