Ready, Steady… Manage

I normally hate business books written in a fictional fable storytelling style. But for some reason I managed to read and enjoy this one – with one or two minor annoyances which we can cover later. The book suggests that sometimes we cause our own problems, or at least make problem situations worse through our [...]

A highly relevant book to read in these cost cutting times. Andrew Wileman evidently having seen it and done it – and now presenting useful advice on the art of cost cutting. Before started reading I noted down what I expected to see advice about: becoming more effective, getting rid of underperforming staff now and [...]

This great little book acts as an introduction and summary to Deming’s ideas: his ‘system of profound knowledge’ the purpose of management removal of numeric targets and incentives the Shewhart Cycle for learning and improvement Variation the Red Bead Game control charts A highly recommended read because …. ( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Subtitled “How to Sell yourself and your brilliant ideas” this dual-authored book has two parts. One for each author. And yes this has made it schizophrenic. The first half by Roger Mavity tells the hard won lessons from a marketeer. The second half by Stephen Bayley reads like a standard book researched management text. I [...]

So, from the title, do you expect a kind of folksy tale of happy families and happy teams? Good, because that describes the book well. The books starts very un-managerially with the birth details of the children and then ties ‘becoming a parent’ in to ‘becoming a manager’. I actually think I would enjoy working [...]

Yet another time management book. This one starts well and by page xi in the introduction I have warmed to the notion of a “zero tolerance workspace”. But then we hit an “analysis” phase and we learn…nothing for a while. I suppose this section tries to build up the belief set that we need to [...]

Most management books offer some platitudes, have 2 or 3 useful sentences and then lots of padding. “The First 90 Days” offers a real exception I will not pretend to summarise all the useful information in this book for this book review. But I hope to whet your appetite so that you go out, buy [...]

So a cash-in on the ever popular “Dragon’s Den” BBC programme – at least popular in my house. Is it too much to hope for some good well spun and hard earned business lessons from reading the book? well…. amazon.co.uk amazon.com

Subtitled “How to Transform Chaos and Conflict”, and further subtitled “Strategies from The Art of War”. Which one of these attracts you to the book most? We could derive some sort of psychoanalytical analysis from that choice, or we could just class it as clever marketing – targeting the management book crowd, the self-help crowd [...]

Subtitled “Secrets of Great Management” this book has a condensed set of wisdom to spout to us. I dislike the fictional “Sam the Manager” approach – but so much good advice lies in here that I found it a useful read. [amazon.co.uk] [amazon.com]