Book Review by Sec 3 Group P

WHAT MANAGEMENT IS: HOW IT WORKS AND WHY ITS EVERYONES BUSINESS Author: Joan Magretta with Nan Stone Publisher: Profile Books Ltd. Publication: 2003 Reprint: 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010 Genre: Management and Leadership Pages: 230 Price: Rs. 250/-

What management is, is a question that has baffled many a soul. Management is vaguely understood as maximising the output by optimising the resources at hand. If it were this simple, why would there be a need to study management as a discipline in itself and why would so much ink be spilt in attempting make sense of this one term. Joan Magretta, an award winning contributor to the Harvard Business Review and a strategy editor with HBR who as a management consultant, has advised several senior managers across industry domains, attempts to answer the above question, not just for the mangers in the professional sense but for everyone who manages something in their lives. But, is she successful in doing so? Management is defined by many as a process that is developed over time. In her well structured book, divided into two parts, she discusses about this very process. The first part of the book deals with planning to achieve organisational goals. This part is divided into 4 chapters, which speak about defining values, developing a business model, choosing the best strategy and finally creating an organisation that incorporates all of the above. The second part of the book, then, goes on to explain how to translate these goals into performance. This part of the book is divided into 5 chapters which talk about the importance numbers play in an organisation, making sense of these numbers, the need to invest in innovation, principles that help deliver results and people management. The author explains the different concepts of management by analysing various real life business scenarios. From the readers perspective, the book is a short read and is fast paced. It is a well structured book split into chapters that handle a specific aspect of management each. The author delivers on her promise of a jargon free management book that even a layman can comprehend. The book talks about business from the perspective of both profit as well as non-profit organisations. However, the author uses elaborate examples to substantiate each concept, which tends to be a bit of a drag. Also, the examples used are majorly from businesses in the US and the author doesnt look at business from a global perspective. Shortcomings aside, the book is successful in laying out the broad aspects essential to understand the why of theory and practice of management. It has rightly been selected as the Book of the Year by The Economist and BusinessWeek. In short, What Management is can be one of those handy tabletop books for anyone involved with management.

By : Preeti, Bijoy, Rohit , Vanshaj, Varsha, Ankit, Apporva, Rahul, Sidharth

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