EXTREME MANAGEMENT What They Teach at Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program

The program summarizes what’s taught at the renowned management school, which was started during WWII and flourishes today as a rite of passage for top corporate executives. After framing the program’s inception as a response to Hitler and then using Truman’s decision to bomb Japan as an example of management resolve, the military emphasis diminishes, but not much. The writing is combative, even for today’s take-no-prisoners corporations, and the reader needlessly exaggerates this. The program covers a lot of ground so quickly that the ideas sound like platitudes or clichés. This and the wordiness of the writing make it hard to tolerate despite the basic soundness of the management lessons. T.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 01]