Management Lessons from the E.R.: Prescriptions for Success in Your Business

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans", John Lennon. Or, if you prefer, "Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves", Italian proverb. This is an excellent book that uses the "parabolic" method of crisis experiences as comparitive guideposts to deal with life's contingencies. As it has been said the first casualty of war is the plan. Paul provides some rather calm and sage advises on how to handle the inevitable often shocking circumstances that present opportunities in life and business. You can't change what happens to complicate one's life, but with the proper actions taken, one can correct the course with an eye to the future.

This is a very good book. Paul is the only person in the world that I would entrust my company and life to.Guy KawasakiCEO Garage Technology Ventures

Drawing from extensive experience in the emergency room and in the boardroom, the author identifies lessons he learned while practicing good medicine that can be applied in corporate management. At a time when corporate America is faced with a crisis of consciousness concerning effective and perhaps even ethical management practices (Enron, Imclone, Supreme Specialties, Steve Madden) it's helpful to be reminded how simple lessons can lead to successful management. Thankfully, the author doesn't provide a checklist or formula but identifiable lessons by way of entertaining examples. The book is written in a casual narrative form, which makes it a quick (I finished it in 3 hours) and entertaining read. After putting the book down, I was left with a handful of insightful lessons, which I am confident I can apply to my work.

As an Executive Coach who works often with emergency room physicians, I approached this new management advice book with great enthusiasm. Organized as a series of management prescriptions drawing from the field of emergency medicine, Management Lessons From the E.R., is a quick and enjoyable read chock full of healthy vitamins that can help revitalize the managerial heart and mind. I will highlight just a few of the many metaphorical tonics served up in the book. The author, Paul Auerbach, a practicing physician and successful businessman, draws upon real-life experiences in the E.R. to instruct the reader as to how he or she might approach various management issues. In the introduction, Auerbach states that nothing is more revealing than letting your customers and employees tell you what they think and that if you set up a way to periodically endure unfiltered comments it can become the best stethoscope into the heart of your business. This insightful statement hit home for me, as it is the foundation of my coaching philosophy. I suspect it will ring true for you too. The author shows us how the field of applied medicine can inform management. For example, just as most physicians possess a knowledge base that can be difficult to translate effectively into lay language for patients, so too do business leaders need to cut through their technical jargon in order to communicate effectively with their employees and customers. Whether in clinical medicine or a consumer electronics company, the leader must make information accessible to his or her followers. I recommend this book to all organizational leaders - not only to those in the medical profession - without hesitation. For much less than the cost of a visit to your local hospital emergency room, Management Lessons From the E.R. is a valuable addition to your management toolbox. Betty TillExecutive Coach...

Inciteful and amusing. Not just a mindless list of rules and formulas for addressing business issues. Dr. Auerbach's analogy of the descision process for diagnosing and curing critically ill patients and that of fixing critically ill businesses is right on.From my 10 plus years senior management experience in building high performance product development organizations and helping business fix their product development problems, "Management Lessons from the E.R. : Prescriptions for Success in your Business" is just what the doctor ordered.