Direct and Deploy
Aligning people with what matters, and placing them where they create the most value. Chapters on strategy, goal-setting, prioritization, and delegation.
A principles-of-management text, organized around what managers actually do.
This is a principles-of-management text organized around the DART model, which names the four paired activities every manager performs on the people around them: Direct and Deploy, Attract and Assess, Reward and Retain, Teach and Transform.
A textbook that teaches management the way management actually gets done.
Most principles-of-management textbooks are still organized around the four functions Henri Fayol proposed in 1916. Plan, organize, lead, control. That worked for the twentieth century. It does not describe what a manager in 2026 does at 9 in the morning when the AI has already drafted the memo, a report needs to go to the CFO by lunch, and one of the team's best performers has just resigned.
This textbook is organized differently. Around the DART model, which names four paired activities every manager performs on the people around them: Direct and Deploy, Attract and Assess, Reward and Retain, Teach and Transform. Students learn management as a set of concrete practices, not a set of abstract functions.
Performance = Direct × Deploy × Attract × Assess × Reward × Retain, and Teaching and Transforming compound the value of that talent over a second time period.
Live 2026 material is integrated throughout: the manager's shifting role as AI absorbs routine cognitive work, remote and hybrid team design, and the labor-market conditions students will actually meet.
Four paired activities, one framework students can carry from the classroom to the workplace and use on Monday.
Aligning people with what matters, and placing them where they create the most value. Chapters on strategy, goal-setting, prioritization, and delegation.
Bringing the right people in and judging both what they can do now and what they might become. Chapters on hiring, selection, performance management, and coaching feedback.
Using pay, recognition, and engagement to keep people committed to meaningful work. Chapters on compensation, motivation, engagement, and turnover.
Developing people so they are worth more over time than the day they arrived. Chapters on learning, career development, and building a team that compounds.
Review copies and adoption materials go out the same week you ask. Tell me the course, the term, and roughly how many seats, and I will send what you need to evaluate the book for your syllabus.
Thomas J. Norman, Ph.D. is a Professor of Management at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he teaches management theory, compensation, and industrial-organizational psychology. He is also a Gallup-certified executive coach working with C-suite leaders on integrating AI into growing companies.
He is the author of a Compensation textbook (California Edition) and the forthcoming More Capable trade book series (Judgment Call, Lead What Lasts, and Unreplaceable).