The Management Gurus: Lessons from the Best Management Books of All Time

by Chris Lauer, Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Insightful summaries of fifteen outstanding management books

Since 1978, Soundview Executive Book Summaries has offered its subscribers condensed versions of the most relevant and influential business books published each year. The company has won acclaim as the definitive selection service for business book readers.

Following its successful first collection, The Marketing Gurus , Soundview has now compiled The Management Gurus , which includes summaries of fifteen management classics. One of them is a previously unpublished Jack Welch and the 4 E?s of Leadership . Other featured books

? Winning with People by John Maxwell
? Judgment by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis
? Managing Crises Before They Happen by Ian I. Mitroff

These summaries distill thousands of pages about leadership, strategy, crisis management, organizational behavior, and more?perfect for busy executives and students.

Genres: Management, Business

288 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2008

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

The summaries are useful for anyone who doesn't have the time or doesn't want to read the original books. But they are incredibly dry, which made it very difficult to finish. A reader is better off scanning through this and picking out the parts that can help them with a particular problem, rather than try to read through the entire book.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Created by Chris Lauer in collaboration with the editors of Soundview Executive Book Summaries, this is one of two volumes in which readers are provided with the core concepts and most important insights of some of the most influential authors of books on management. There is a companion volume, The Marketing Gurus, created by Chris Murray, also in collaboration with the editors of Soundview Executive Book Summaries. The purpose of both volumes is to accommodate the needs, interests, and (yes) time constraints of executives who have more resources available than they are able to explore, and thus require guidance when determining which books to read. As with all other anthologies, there will always be quibbles with inclusions and omissions. (What about Blanchard, Charan, Collins, Covey, Deming, Drucker, Jennings, Kaplan and Norton, McGregor, Porter, Schumpeter, Taylor, and Womack? OK, but then who to leave out to make room for one or more of them?) Lauer and his associates decided to focus on specific works most of which are recently published and each representative of the "guru" who wrote it. I have no quarrel with any of their selections.

Lauer and his collaborators are to be commended on their brilliant use of a standard format that consists of basic components: a brief introduction to the given author or authors (e.g. Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter's What Got You Here Won't Get You There), a table of contents for a representative book, "The Summary in Brief" followed by "What You'll Learn in This Summary," and then "The Complete Summary." What amazes me, frankly, is how much coverage is provided in a series of 15 chapters, each devoted to one or a combination of business thinkers; also, having already read and reviewed most of the exemplary books, I can attest to the fact that there was no effort to "dumb down" the material. Moreover, the length of each commentary is significant. For example, 15 pages to John C. Maxwell (Winning with People), 16 pages to Bill George with Peter Sims (True North), 17 pages to Bo Burlingham (Small Giants), and 18 pages to Kenichi Ohmae (The Next Global Stage). Obviously, these commentaries are necessarily incomplete but they are certainly not "thumb nails." There is more than enough information to help a busy executive to decide whether or not to seek additional sources, several of which are identified in the brief introductions.

[Mimi Somsanith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Other than a few fine chapters on relationship building, influence, and leadership, this book can be a helpful reference by letting readers know which books not to buy. There are materials in the book that would open readers' minds in what they believe as compared to what famous authors/leaders experienced and shared. For example, did you ever think that the first 30 years are spent on developing your senses with 20 years of experience before you peak being a leader? Most of us feel that we're lagging behind instead. Such new perspective can bring renewed one's aspirations.

[Molly]

For work - I picked this up recently to see if I am even close to managing as the 'gurus' manage. Because I am so new at management I think sometimes I feel intuitive and good about the job I am doing and other times I feel like I could really use some advice.

[Niels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very powerful book serving as a teaser for more in depth material covering everything from people management, crisis management, leadership application etc. Highly recommended if you want to get a feel for what the concepts cover prior to buying the mammoth editions.

[Lori Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read book on management for knowledge workers, managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.