The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management: Lasting Lessons from the Best Leadership Minds of Our Time

The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management is part management overview, personal commentary and case study. The book written by Alan Murray offers an introductory review of key elements of management, leadership, strategy and execution. It is a Management 101 book written in a well paced and easy to read format. Recommended for those who are new to management or you want to have your team come up to speed with management and executive ideas and terms, then this book is recommended.Readers looking for new ideas concerning these issues will be disappointed as that is not the purpose of this book. It really is a primer for people about the major ideas and themes in management. Murray does a good job of going through a combination of thinkers like Porter, Pfeiffer and executives like Bossidy and others to give a landscape overview of the practice.Murray incorporates stories that help illustrate major ideas and concepts. Students of management will recognize just about all of the stories and some are presented in a rather simplistic but effective way for a first time reader. The book also has a logical order and do cover the essentials of management in the following chapters:ManagementLeadershipMotivationPeopleStrategyExecutionTeamChangeFinancial LiteracyGoing GlobalEthicsManaging YourselfThe book is challenged in a few areas. The book gives you the impression that technology has little to no role in management - except as the source of a stock market crash. Given the role of technology in shaping strategy, competition and our future, this is a serious omission. The ideas and strategies in the book are comprehensive up to about the mid 1990's. While Murray does mention Blue Ocean Strategy and some other more recent thinking, the book largely concentrates on the classical view of strategy rather than the new strategies that are shaping current leadership plans and thinking. A final weakness is Murray's occasional editorial asides that sometimes muddle the messages.I recommend as a general introduction (management 101) book to give to people who are interested in coming up to speed on management and strategy. Murray does a good job presenting these materials in an accessible, understandable and helpful way that explains ideas without trivializing them. That is what separates it from a `dummies' book.

I guess many of us called upon "Cliff's Notes" in our youth to get the gist of a book before we read it ;-) I would charecterize Alan Murray's "Essential Guide to Management" as the "Cliff's Notes" summary of most of the important literature in management over the last 30+ years.I bought this book after reading a recent related article by Murray in the WSJ. "Essential Guide to management" reduces a whole library of books into a very quick read by distilling the most important concepts from Peters & Waterman to Michael Porter to Clayton Christensen. Topics covered include everything from Leadership, to Strategy, to Financial Literacy to Managing Yourself. Each chapter is a concise (~10 pg) summary of the essential leading thought on the topic, wrapped up with bullets and recommended reading at the end.Although I might have summarized a few details on a few topics slightly differently myself, overall the key points are largely bang on with what I also understood to be the original writer's intent. In my opinion, the only thing missing was that the Financial Literacy could have used a dose of Buffet regarding understanding value-based management - something I wish more managers understood.So, if you don't know what to read on management, read this first, then dig deeper in a reference. If you already know a lot, it's a nice refresher.

Still worth reading, insights from CEO of Fortune 11 years ago, a blue-print he used to grow from journalist to capitalist. His new book? Tomorrow’s Capitalist.

Murray's overview of essential management provides future leaders with practical skills necessary to effective management. His concise, limpid prose never distracts the reader, and the illustrative anecdotes are timely and relevant. Each chapter concludes with summary statements and suggestions for further reading. For those new to fiduciary responsibilities, chapter nine, "Financial Literacy," contains a crucial primer in financial basics - a topic often overlooked in the management/leadership literature.I recommend this book as a refresher course for the veteran and as a primer for the neophyte.

Simple and basic management principals for a person taking on their first promotion. Great reminders for people who have been doing it for awhile as well.

We are using this book as a Management & Leadership Book Club for our managers and supervisors and leads. They are able to have meaningful discussions about the techniques. The reading goes fast so it doesn't take a lot of time to understand the points made by the authors. Excellent resource and great book for book club. Feedback from the group has been very positive.

Among the very best leadership/management books I've read. Combines the principles of management with the traits and characteristics of military leadership. Very thorough, easily read, covers all the important philosophies of management/leadership. I've bought several as gifts to friends in need of one good volume that covers all the principles of management/leadership. Highly recommend.

For those of us without an MBA or formal business training, this book is a must read. The book in itself was useful, and it also proved a great way to build a reading list to dive deeper.

Good read, insightful.

Fantastic read.

The book is an old one and dirty , it doesn't looks like a new book and seems to be a duplicate print bought from the by lanes of a street and shipped to me . It has a horrible appearance and I wanted to gift which I cannotPl get it replaced with a new book immediatelyashish9582215807

Great book, I recommend it