Economics-and-finance

I really enjoyed the book. It is a a no-nonsense, common sense approach to leadership, time management, communication skills, strategic planning, etc. When I was studying for my 6th year in Administration and Supervision (a required education degree for CT administrators), many of these topics were discussed.

This book applies to ALL who desire refining their leadership, business, and professional skills. The market expands well beyond the medical profession. Perhaps The 12-Minute MBA for Doctors should have been called The 12-Minute MBA for Professionals. Actually, when Charles Johnson and Andy Thibault write the sequels, they can be entitled The 12-Minute MBA for ________. Educators, Engineers, Attorneys, etc. There is a market for those books. I am sending this review and my personal recommendation to all members of the CT Council of Language Teachers for their dissemination to World Language teachers in CT. I look forward to reading the sequels myself!

Carol A. Kearns
Vice-President / President-Elect CT Council of Language Teachers
National Vice-President La Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica

Self-help manuals rarely impact professions other than their targeted audiences. "The 12-Minute MBA for Doctors," however, shatters that myth by providing practical skills for any novice trying to survive in today's chaotic business world.

You don't have to be a medical professional to benefit from this fluent and provocative book. Anyone who doesn't know how to negotiate a lease, hire staff or deal with an insurance company will learn how to build a successful business.

Written by two Litchfield, Connecticut friends and neighbors, "The 12-Minute MBA for Doctors" is a lively collaboration between Charles Johnson and Andy Thibault. Johnson's firm, Medical Education Training Associates of Woodbury, Connecticut, helps doctors, bankers and other professionals run their businesses.

A couple of years ago, Johnson delivered a 12-minute talk before the Society for University Surgeons in New Orleans. After several colleagues asked for help running their businesses, one of them suggested Johnson call his program "The 12-Minute MBA for Doctors." A book was born.

Thibault, a columnist for The Connecticut Law Tribune, is an award-winning feature writer and nationally known investigative reporter.

Together, Johnson and Thibault provide punchy insights in eight chapters on such practical business skills as persuasive communication, team building and conflict resolution. One section in the chapter on communication is applicable to the home front as well as the business world.

Johnson asks: "What are the first three answers you hear from your significant other when you get home. For most people, it's three words - fine, fine, chicken. Why is that? Simple. The questions you asked were probably: How was your day? How are the kids? What's for dinner?" Not exactly great conversation starters.

"After I spent a day with one of my sales managers," Johnson continues, "I was invited to his house for dinner. We talked about a strategy before we went home. We walked in the door and he says hello to his wife. He says, 'Tell me about your day.' She started to say, "Fine," but then she heard his question.'Well, the kids and I went shopping and we went to the park and we played on the swing, and.' He could actually hear information she was imparting and was able to give her positive feedback."

This is just one communication example of trying to persuade people with your people power instead of your position power. Communication, the book notes, is one of the five components of a successful team, along with leadership, defined roles, clear objectives and trust. Specific chapters deal with negotiating skills, interviewing and hiring skills, understanding financial issues, strategic and tactical planning, teamwork and leadership.

As Johnson and Thibault detail, surgeons are still trained like blacksmiths. Although they are at the pinnacle of their profession, they tend to know little about business - after four years of college, four years of medical school and then five more years of residency and fellowship education. They are turned loose in their early to mid-30s and expected to run a business that is not run by their peers.

Today, health care is run more and more by business people - not doctors. Hospital administrators tend to be business people. Insurance companies have everything to do with the running of health care today. Yet the highly skilled physician, untrained in management and economic matters, has to deal on an everyday basis with people who run business. How does he get his business started and survive?

The answers are in this book. But readers from many other disciplines will benefit significantly from any 12-minute helping of this management primer.

(Richard McGowan, former White House correspondent for the New York Daily News, retired from government service after
serving as spokesman for the federal Office of Personnel Management. He resides in Wicomico, Va. and lectures on the
modern presidency at universities.)

Generally informative, although I was hoping to learn more about why the executives (who unleash the dysfunctional managers and supervisors on the rest of us) think and act the way they do.

The advice in this book is strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

Karen Randall is very either/or about the office culture. Some offices are great and then there are the crazy ones. This is a survival guide for the office that is not nice, polite, fair, or even fun. Helps you to survive and succeed.

Without actually realizing it, I have, for the last few years, followed many of the rules of this book, and with great success. I can trace many of my failures and problems with work to *not* following these rules which I know to be true. Some of the primary ones: Do *not* get emotionally involved with your job. Do *not* get too involved with your co-workers, because when you start to like them too much, you will start to get involved with *their* work problems which will do nothing but cause you trouble. The only person who really has to like you is your boss, or the person who actually makes all the real decisions. Always act like a "team player" (it is totally true, from what I have observed, that all owners/managers like to live in some hallucination that their employes are one happy team going for the same goal) while actually watching out for yourself and keeping emotionally detached. These are not necessarily palatable realities to most people but they *are* realities. If you have ever had the experience of working hard and really trying in a job and it has not gotten you anywhere, or you have even gotten fired, this book could be an invaluable asset in turning your working life around.

As indicated in The Empire Strikes Back, the Yoda would agree with one of the 12 ("Perform, Perform, Perform"), advising Luke Skywalke:, "Do or do not. There is no try." Paradoxically, Microsoft's emphasis on performance (eg dominance of a market) co-exists with Microsoft's requirement of calculated risks because, as Thielen explains, "Fast failure is acceptable; slow failure is not. But even more unacceptable is no failure. If people never fail, then they are not trying hard enough. They are not pushing the envelope....There is no penalty for understandable failures on the road to success (aside from exceedingly stupid things), and there are substantial rewards for success. So employees at Microsoft will make attempt after attempt for success without worrying about the failures the unsuccessful attempts led to." But not indefinitely....

Throughout The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management, Thielen provides hundreds of specific examples of HOW these so-called "secrets" are consistently applied each and every day throughout the entire company. At least in theory, the Microsoft management strategies (with appropriate modifications) can be effective for any other organization, regardless of size or nature. For example, a family-owned dry cleaner experiments with several different coupon promotions until it finally comes up with one that substantially increases business. Past "failures" are often a necessary cost of eventual success. However, I caution those interested in this book to keep in mind that listing and then explaining 7-75 "secrets" is relatively easy; implementing them effectively and then remaining committed to them is (obviously) much more difficult. My own experience suggests that such a commitment should continue unless and until certain realities require the modification or even the replacement of a strategy. The corporate juggernaut we know as Microsoft is in a process of constant self-transformation. The same should also be true of that hypothetical family-owned dry cleaner.

The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management David Thielen presents Microsoft's management principles, which are the secrets to its marketplace dominance. He includes ample examples of what Microsoft does right and what most other corporations do wrong. You will learn why Microsoft's focus makes it the hardest company in the world to compete against. Yet, you will also find nuggets of management information that can be applied to your own workplace environment. Thielen has written a direct, refreshing, and sometimes brutal book. We [...] recommend this book to any business person who would like a quick review of the management principles that have guided Microsoft's success.

This book has a number of great principles, suggestions for implementation, and ample proof of their usefulness. Even adopting just a few of these ideas can make anyone a better manager. If this is not how you're company's being run, maybe your boss could use a copy. This book goes well with "The End of Office Politics as Usual" by L. B. M. Serven.

This book is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, and contains virtually no useful information. I am a first year MBA student, and found this book utterly useless and a waste of money. The book jacket should mention the fact that the "12 steps" only apply to marketing a product and not a service. Anything written by Roman Heibing is light-years more intelligent and informational.

The book gives basic suggestions on the individual parts of a plan, but then falls apart when it should tell you how to put those peices together (it says nothing - absolutely zero - on how to put the parts into a presentation. I wouldn't get this book if I were you.

I was Larkin's "associate" (fancy word for secretary) at Deloitte & Touche when she wrote this book. My position with her centered a great deal on helping organize a series of terrific seminars for fledgling businesses and hopeful entrepreneurs. This book is the result of one of the most popular of her seminars. Geri hired me to type her manuscript and I can tell you right now that this book is meant to emulate the seminar - not a technical, difficult to understand, boring textbook - but a real, hands-on, "this is your company so let's do it" workbook that will leave you with a solid marketing plan by the time you reach the back cover. I've seen lots of companies do it under Geri's tutelage. With this book in hand, you can too

This book was pleasant to read. It will serve as a positive and inspiring read for those times when the job gets me down. I have even posted quips and quotes from the pages on and around my desk at work. I'm sure you will be inspired as much as I was with this simple but effective book.