Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program [Paperback]

Mark Stevens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2002

The Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (AMP) is an exhaustive nine-week boot camp that prepares the business elite for the highly competitive global marketplace. For the first time, these closely guarded secrets are available to executives and management personnel everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally created to provide the U.S. government with industrial managers who could address the business side of military logistics during WWII, Harvard's intensive nine-week curriculum for senior managers focuses on decision making, global competition, corporate finance, organizational competence and teamwork. Here, marketing consultant Stevens (King Icahn; Sudden Death: The Rise and Fall of E.F. Hutton) aims to distill the program's lessons, drawing on anecdotes from corporate executives who have completed the program and some faculty members (the school did not authorize this book). For example, one sales executive, a former military man, learned to change his authoritarian, micromanaging style to one that allows him to act as a source of experience and information, resulting in his subordinates more actively following his lead and working harder for him. Another learned that he is not always the expert; faced with employees trying to unionize, he reflected on the lessons of the Harvard course and rather than firing the union supporters, which would have been both incendiary and illegal he hired an accomplished labor lawyer. While it may appeal to executives accustomed to self-analysis and who have sought additional professional training, the book falls predictably short of its goal to recreate the Harvard experience for the reader.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile

The program summarizes what's taught at the renowned management school, which was started during WWII and flourishes today as a rite of passage for top corporate executives. After framing the program's inception as a response to Hitler and then using Truman's decision to bomb Japan as an example of management resolve, the military emphasis diminishes, but not much. The writing is combative, even for today's take-no-prisoners corporations, and the reader needlessly exaggerates this. The program covers a lot of ground so quickly that the ideas sound like platitudes or clichés. This and the wordiness of the writing make it hard to tolerate despite the basic soundness of the management lessons. T.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446678295
• ISBN-13: 978-0446678292
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #704,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Stevens is a best selling author, CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm, and a popular media commentator on a host of business matters including marketing, branding, management and sales. Mr. Stevens is known for delivering business insights with blunt truths and unconventional wisdom.

Stevens shook the marketing establishment with his Business Week best seller, "Your Marketing Sucks" (Random House/Crown Business), and redefined the rules of management with "Your Management Sucks" (Random House/Crown Business, 2006).

Stevens' latest book, Your Company Sucks: It's Time To Declare War On Yourself (to be published Aug 2, 2011)idetifies the four reasons companies fail or simply get stuck in neutral and how to identify and address them so the business can break through the ice to new levels of success. Stevens also demonstrates that "customer satisfaction" is no longer acceptable: winning companies must Thrill their customers/clients.

Stevens is the author of 24 business-related books including the best sellers: "The Big Eight"; "King Icahn"; "Sudden Death: The Rise and Fall of EF Hutton" (a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Library Journal "Business Book of the Year"); and the enormously popular "Your Marketing Sucks."

Stevens' firm, MSCO--founded in 1995-- has representsed a stellar roster of clients including Nike, Starwood, GE, Guardian Life, Intrawest, Estee Lauder, The MONY group, Environmental Systems Products, Saturday Evening Post , Virgin Atlantic, and many others.. Through integrated marketing campaigns, MSCO focuses on achieving results for its clients instead of awards that serve egos. Mark Stevens possesses an innovative and iconoclastic view of the business world, having served as a journalist and nationally syndicated columnist and having held management positions at several global corporations. His incisive understanding of critical business issues is geared toward achieving extraordinary growth and success for his clients.

Stevens is an in-demand speaker and a frequent guest commentator on Fox Business Channel and a wide range of media from Entrepreneur to Dow Jones.

Stevens writes the wildly successful blog, "Unconventional Thinking."

Books by Mark Stevens have been published in USA, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, China, Germany, Spain, Japan, Russia and Brazil.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising title does not deliver, March 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (Hardcover)

I was hoping for insight into the training that goes on in Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (AMP). It appears the author did not himself attend, and he presents mostly a collection of anecdotes from various past attendees. Homage is paid to the usual luminaries -- Jack Welch, Sam Walton et al. The book is not cutting edge or "extreme". Capitalizing on the Harvard name was a smart marketing move, but the consumer is left with mostly a light-weight read. Rather than a peephole into the exclusive training of elite management, I felt the book was more about the authors own ideals of management as supported by quotes from AMP graduates. The best that can be said of the book is that it encourages managers to become perpetual students, which is laudable.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extreme is Extremely Lacking, August 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (Hardcover)

I was very excited when I purchased this book. I fully expected to at least learn some of the theory and thought behind the much-acclaimed Harvard B School's Advanced Management Program. The book failed to deliver. Contrary to what the cover implies, this book is NOT authorized by Harvard. The author did NOT even attend the program he wrote about. (The author SHOULD have taken some basic writing classes, as his writing style is positively painful. His thoughts meander, his concepts are clouded, he chooses awkward examples, and he has an uncanny gift for confusing what was clear, and complicating what was simple. While he may be bombastic and pretentious, a communicator he is not.)

Publisher's Weekly had it right when they said that "the book falls predictably short..." I also agree with the AudioFile reviewer who pointed out the "writing is combative... the ideas sound like platitudes or clichés...this and the wordiness of the writing make it hard to tolerate..."

My views might not have been so extreme had the book and its description not promised so much. Clearly, the book doesn't cover the curriculum of the Advanced Management Program. For the most part, it is a poorly organized summary of some of the author's interviews with a sampling of some the people who attended the Harvard program over the years. Extreme Management is extremely lacking to say the least. I would add that the name of the book and its cover are an embarrassingly transparent attempt to make money off the Harvard name.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save Your Money!, January 2, 2004

By 

Michael A. Falkowitz (Brookline, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (Paperback)

This book has a great title but little else. I was not inspired and learned very little from the book. Based on this book, if I were responsible for Harvard's AMP Program I'd be distancing myself from Mark Stevens.

It's a better investment to spend your moeny on a bag of jelly beans than to purchase this book. Can I have my time back that was wasted reading this book?