Customer Reviews

The E-Myth Manager: Why Management Doesn't Work--And What to Do About It

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book was a real disapointment. I really enjoyed Gerber's "E-Myth Revisited", and I was expecting something similar in this book -- wrong. After summarily lambasting practically every management practice, he offers his solution; which was written in a "One-minute Management" -story style. The book was little more than an expensive promotional piece for his consulting services. It told just enough to get you interested in learning more, but there was nothing tangible that you could really take and use in your business practice. Lots of philisophical fluff -- little substance.

This book is less enjoyable than Michael Gerber's original E-Myth Revisited super-success. However, it still has extremely valuable lessons to share with its readers.

In my opinion, you really NEED to read E-Myth Revisited BEFORE you get and read this book, as much of it's content and teachings requires a good understanding of the concepts and ideas he talks about in his previous bestseller. Believe me when I say that reading E-Myth Revisited will be worth your time and effort, so please do get your hands on it.

E-Myth Manager deals with the subject of Management in a way that most managers would probably never have thought of. He suggests managers need to think of themselves as mini-entrepreneurs within their organisation, and act accordingly. I suspect most managers (and business owners) reading this book will be somewhat horrified at Gerber's heretical ideas, but if you take the time to read the book fully and truly understand what it's trying to teach you, you will (hopefully) come to a realisation that Gerber's ideas are not as dumb as you may initially have thought. :-)

It took me time to understand that what he was recommending was a PARADIGM shift in the thinking of managers and business owners - one that would empower and respect all of them as both individuals AND business people.

In my opinion, MANY business owners and managers have set up an adversarial environment in their workplace, which explains why their staff are never as dedicated, loyal, accurate and hard working as they would like. Yet the STUPID thing is that many businesses continue to perpetuate that self-destructive model, all in the pursuit of the short-term buck! One of the very reasons trade unions exist (and cause problems for many companies) is solely because of this adversarial model (just for the record: by no means am I implying or saying that trade unions are perfect either!), and until managers and business owners understand that EVERY SINGLE PERSON in their company is a individual human being first, and treat them with basic respect and value their contribution, things probably won't improve much.

E-Myth Manager, while not a thesis on worker/management matters, does cover the value created when all employees are given basic respect and treated as individuals, and vice versa. Managers are often the people implementing these policies and procedures, so it's valuable for them to see the big picture.

Gerber paints a picture that shows current day management as archaic and ineffective. In fact, he even goes so far as to say it is partially responsible for some of the more common problems in many businesses today, and why.

Now, don't go getting all defensive on me. Gerber is NOT taking cheap shots at managers, just for the sake of selling his book. Rather, he is trying to show current managers and owners a better way - one that will improve everybody's life in business.

As I said at the top of this review, while I found this book less enjoyable than his original E-Myth Revisited, it was still an extremely valuable read, and it deserves a 4 star rating, if only for it's ideas, if not for its delivery.

First of all, the E stands for Entrepreneur, not anything to do with E-commerce. I bought this book and the "E-Myth Revisited" to better understand my husband and his approach to business. He took the "E-Myth Manager" on a business trip, and immediately ordered a copy for each of his managers. The tools and concepts in this book will be the topic for his next management retreat. What did I get out of the book? A much better understanding of how to work and live with an Entrepreneur.

I have used the principles of this book along with several other books by Mr.Gerber to perfect my financial brokerage company. Mr.Gerber has written a phenomenal series of books that show you a better way of thinking about your business. I use this book to train my managers and employees so that they can have a better context of my business.

This book is one of the bible's of the entrepreneurial world, I believe that any entrepreneur that doesn't have this book is making their business harder than it should be.

I was hired as a cable subcontractor last summer, under the assumption that the contract owner was going to make me his company manager and crew supervisor. Knowing more about public relations, marketing and journalism than management, I did what any good college student would do - I ordered some books and got to studying.

Michael Gerber's books sounded good in the summaries and had promising endorsements and blurbs on the jackets, but they were misleading. His books (Manager and Contractor) have little in the way of tangible methods and practices that you can jot down into notes and use. The book seemed to focus on anecdotes and points that were spread out over so many meaningless paragraphs that their consistency was almost that of vapor.

As I said, I tried taking notes. Or, more accurately, I sat there with a pad of paper and pen on the verge of jotting something down. None of it seemed worthy of the effort and what little of value there was was spread out over so many pages of verbosity that the undertaking would have been headache inducing.

This book, and his others, seem to be aimed at managers who need self-help assistance to fix their life away from management. In this case, the subtitles should read "The E-Myth Manger: Why your life sucks as a manager - and what to do about it" and "The E-Myth Contractor: Why most contractors' marriages don't work and what to do about it."

Seriously, these books are that bad.

I would have given this book 4 stars for the idea of allowing each manager to work towards his or her own personal aim in life, whilst helping to achieve the aims of the organization as a secondary concern.

However, as most people have already identified, the way the material is presented is quite sloppy: mostly casual and anecdotal in an effort to make the material more digestible. It simply doesn't work.

What makes the book especially infuriating is that the ideas seem to be really useful but are rehashed needlessly. He belabors each point repetitively. It was really difficult to tease out the essence of the various concepts. Also irritating is his almost biblical pronouncements as to how his approach will save the souls of the poor unfortunate employees who otherwise have no purpose in life.

Saying that, I did find the ideas useful enough to develop a short course for managers and CEO's. I managed to condense his entire book to approximately 140 paragraphs.

One of the most useful ideas is that if someone is working on his or her personal aspirations then he or she is far more likely to be motivated to succeed. The implications are that you only employ people who can personally benefit from working for your organization, meaning that the recruitment process becomes quite different.

It also changes the focus of the business to delivering a consistent and reliable *experience* for the customer in a way that also serves the personal aims of the individuals in the organization. The details of how this is done is somewhat vague; and there is little discussion of the typical issues that may arise when trying to implement this approach in practice. After 15,000 clients, the author should have a pretty good notion of the sticking points; but this isn't clear in the book.

Another important idea is to think of the business as a system requiring certain tasks to be completed; then assigning the tasks to the appropriate people - not looking for jobs for people to do.

In his other book, The E-Myth Revisited, he talks about the idea that a successful business is a stand-alone ('turnkey') system. In reality, it isn't as easy as that. And in this regard, I think the book is a little superficial.

Nonetheless, these books are thought-provoking, providing a new and relatively straight-forward approach to running a successful business.

I would have preferred a format where the broad ideas are sketched out in the first 1-2 chapters (succinctly!), followed by discussions about typical issues that you are likely to encounter when implementing these ideas for your own business. That might have given the book a 5* rating.

If you are looking for the original emyth book that is LOADED with earth shattering ideas about how small business owners should look at their business - this is NOT it.

A very dissappointing philosophical book that meanders around with little inspiring points.

The emyth original is at the top of the must read books for business owners and this one might be near the bottom. Not to say that there are not some bright spots, but they are few.

What a dissapointing offering from the creator of such a brilliant previous work.

INC magazine panned the book, and I can see why. Gerber shows a disdainful lack of understanding of management practices and principles.

(This book has nothing to do with e-business by the way. The title is terrible.)

Great stuff and a must have - appears to be simplistic but after you really study Gerber's well articulated strategy carefully - it will then reveal its true value.

This book effectively deals with the real issues of management - people, and there unsuitability to be part of a mere prescribed and mechanical process. It needs to be read at least three times and then to be re-enforced through a one to one (preferably) session(s) with an experienced practitioner in order that implementation is effective. This publication should be mandatory reading for all those "managers" in the public and voluntary sector - when they read it they will undertstand why.

Andrew Lamb FSCA, FIPD, FInstD

Author: Predicting Business failure