Your Management Sucks

By: Mark Stevens

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

Like a mirror, Your Management Sucks reveals important truths that you may deal with or choose to ignore or put on the back burner.

Everyone manages someone or something: your own life and career, an administrative assistant, hundreds or thousands of people. How well or poorly you manage has a profound impact on your personal success. Mark Stevens makes the compelling point that, at any given time, everyone's management sucks. It can, however, be improved and rethought so you can move away from patterns and habits that you can easily fall victim to. Start by declaring constructive war on yourself. Look in the mirror and identify those invisible traps and barriers. Then leave the land of business-as-usual with the seven point plan Stevens has used to build both his own extraordinary career and his marketing and strategy consulting firm. You'll soon find that you're in the fast lane, easily outpacing your passive peers who rarely, if ever, challenge the how and why of what they do.

©2006 Mark Stevens (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"[Stevens'] blunt truthfulness is welcome in a world of management euphemisms." (Publishers Weekly)

A good kick in the Ass

This guy, Mark Stephens (which you will hear a few too many times), really doesn't mince words. His take no prisoners attitude about business is not for everyone, but even the weak kneed needs to hear this to get you off center for a moment and start thinking like a manager.

Outstanding book on marketing.

I'm shocked that others are giving this book less than 5 stars. This book is written as an "in your face" manner that gets you out of your marketing mediocrity (if you're marketing at all) and into an aggressive attitude that will empower you to take more risks and stand out in the crowd.

The narrator does a great job of conveying this attitude which may not be agreeable to the sensitive or easy offended listener. But if that's you, then you're probably not marketing anyways.

I listened to this book several times, then bought 5 physical copies to go through with some of my clients. The book offers great advise and even provides some of Mark Steven's real world marketing plans (which is why I bought the physical copies).

I love it

A perfect "call to action" and a wake up call for all managers and entrepreneurs. Another Must Read/listen :)

Old school - in your face management

The best use of this book is to gain an understanding of how the "maximum face time at the office" types think. In one section, the author brags about denieing an employee an "early" departure from the office at about 6pm so he could spend time with his young kids at dinner a couple of times a week. The author pointed out that the employee could spend full time at home as an alternative if he wasn't in the office serving clients - and how in the long run it was better to put in the office time so the family could have a better financial future with the dad employed. The result: a comprimise where the employee went home, had dinner with the family and came back to the office. The author states that he frequently slept at the office if only to set an example of dedication.

This book should have been released in 1970 when these attitudes prevailed - in the age of the Blackberry, etc - this is at best an example of abstract thinking.