Managing Strategic Relationships

Misplaced Key

Managing Strategic Relationships: The Key to Business Success

By Leonard Greenhalgh

The Free Press, 2001, $30

Leonard Greenhalgh’s academic background shines through in Managing Strategic Relationships: It reads like a freshman textbook. Despite having been written by a management consultant who has founded and run two companies, the book is decidedly lacking in real-life anecdotes. Instead, page after page is filled with scenarios beginning, “Joe and Josephine are twins”; dialogs between a fictitious husband and wife; and diagrams such as The Fractionated Organization (a triangle broken into, you guessed it, fractions). Greenhalgh also slips in a few company case studies and complex graphs. The studies, unfortunately, are shallow and the graphs lack practical value. Readers may fail to see how a statistical map featuring an imaginary landlord and vacationer will ultimately assist them in implementing new business strategies. That’s not to say there isn’t merit to the book. Like a set of Cliffs Notes, it broadly covers workplace sociology, makes valid points about interpersonal and corporate relationships, discusses some sticky situations, and offers a base for further investigation. Just don’t expect to pass any tests with it.

-Amanda S. Fox

And…

What Do I Do Now? Dr. Foster’s 30 Laws of Great Decision Making

By Charles Foster

Simon & Schuster,

2001, $24

Clinician and researcher Charles Foster has a serious goal?to demystify decision making and reassure readers that they can trust themselves to make sound choices. What Do I Do Now? is not a business book, and it is more enjoyable to read than it has any right to be. Its subtitle, however, might prompt cynics to decide that it’s all Letterman and no substance. And that would be the wrong decision.

-Carol Zarrow

CIO Best-Seller List

5. First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently

by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

Simon & Schuster, 1999

4.Now, Discover Your Strengths: The Revolutionary Program That Shows You How to Develop Your Unique Talents and Strengths?And Those of the People You Manage

by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton

The Free Press, 2001

3.Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results

by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen

Hyperion, 2000

2.Longaberger: An American Success Story

by Dave Longaberger

HarperCollins Publishers, 2001

1.Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

by Spencer Johnson

The Putnam Publishing Group, 1998

What They’re Reading

Michelle Brown, freelance Web producer, Los Angeles Joanne Eglash, How to Write a .com Business Plan: The Internet Entrepreneur’s Guide to Everything You Need to Know About Business Plans and Financing Options (McGraw-Hill, 2000) “I needed a book that combined sensible business plan information with an Internet slant, and this book is exactly what I wanted.”

Michael Gorrell, CIO, EBSCO Publishing, Ipswich, Mass. Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (Addison-Wesley, 1999); Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Addison-Wesley, 1995); Tom Gilb, Principles of Software Engineering Management (Addison-Wesley, 1988) “All three have offered good insights into the software development life cycle.”