A Business Book that Doesn't Suck

Joan Magretta, (with the collaboration of Nan Stone), What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business, New York: The Free Press, 2002. 244 pp.


It is not easy to classify this work. It does not present a new management theory not is it a study of a single industry or company. Although short, it is not a primer: Magretta takes for granted that the reader is knowledgeable about business leaders such as Jack Welch and theorists like Drucker. The book does not focus on a single element of management (strategy, say, or innovation), but it does not try to be encyclopedic.

Perhaps the best description is this: What Management Is is an able precis of the best current thinking on the critical elements of general management.

The book starts at the very beginning by defending management while defining it. Magretta points out that the we often misallocate the credit for the economic progress we see all around us. "When we take stock of the productivity gains that drive our prosperity, technology gets all the credit. In fact, management is doing a lot of the heavy lifting."

That s a breath-taking assertion, but she makes a strong case. As she points out, modern economies require intense specialization on one hand and then the integration of those specialist's output into a complex whole. This requires management and therefore, "management's real genius is turning complexity and specialization into performance."

That is the real strength of this work. Time-strapped managers will welcome Magretta's clarity and brevity. The book is a good read and a relatively fast read as well. The author produces crisp statements on complicated subjects that possess a gem-like clarity:

"One of the most powerful insights of modern management, however, is that there is really only one test of a job well done- a customer who is willing to pay for it."

"Unlike most other professions-- law or medicine or accounting, for example-- you don't need a license to practice management. In fact, it's the only field we can think of where practice precedes formal training."