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

This is a book of book summaries. Soundview is a company that creates and sells these summaries and there are many other companies that provide them. This book has 15 of these summaries. I have read and reviewed several of these books already and can vouch for them as very good books. However, the title of the sub-book is pure hyperbole. These are NOT the "best management books of all time". I can point to books by books by Drucker, Jack Welch, and others that are not included here. These may be the best books of the past few years, but even that is pretty subjective given the huge number of forests that get consumed in printing management books each and every year. However, using a subtitle something like "some pretty good books on management from the past couple of years" just doesn't have the same punch even if it is more accurate. The books included are: "Winning with People" by John C. Maxwell "Topgrading" by Bradford D. Smart, Ph.D. "Jack Welch and the 4 E's of Leadership" by Jeffrey A. Krames "The Leadership Challenge" by James Kouzes and Barry Posner "Gods of Management" by Charles Handy "Influencer" by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, et al "True North" By Bill George and Peter E. Sims "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter "Judgment" by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis "Small Giants" by Bo Burlingham "Dealing with Darwin" by Geoffrey A. Moore "Wikinomics" by Tapscott and Williams "Managing Crises Before They Happen" by Mitroff and Anagnos "The Leader of the Future" by Hesselbein, Goldsmith, and Beckhard "The Next Global Stage" by Kenichi Ohmae I have to say that the summaries of the books read well and are nicely organized. Of course, I recommend reading the actual books if you are interested in the topics. Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

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. At first glance, some readers may question the inclusion of certain "gurus" (e.g. Bradford Smart, Charles Handy, Bo Burlingham, and Ian Mitroff with Gus Agnos), especially if they ask "What about Jim Collins and Peter Drucker?" Granted, some of the business thinkers are much more familiar than are others. The fact remains that all of the "others" deserve far more attention than they seem to have received thus far. Also, my guess (only a guess) is that if all of those discussed in this book were asked for their own opinions of Smart, Handy et al, they would eagerly acknowledge th