Book Review: At the Heart of Management

Reviewed by Toni Woodruff

A creative pathway to better understanding management theory

Managers are expected to do a lot. Across a variety of professional and personal fields, if you are managing, you’ve likely got your hands full. People to guide, to teach; pathways to take in order to transcend expectations. Managers can feel pressure from a variety of angles, and they are often asked to feel around in the dark on their way to the top. Ineffective managers leave too much work and not enough guidance, or too much work and too much guidance. Author Lino F. Ciceri wants to open up the conversation on management so that you can recognize your tasks from new angles and put priority on what’s most important: growth.

A former research chemist, Ciceri takes an approach to management I’m certain that you have not read before. Filled with scientific analogies and MBA essentials, this book takes a circuitous path to help you see through the fog of effective leadership. Ciceri does provide answers, but he provides even more questions—asking readers to be aware that there’s not one way to lead and that easy, quick fixes either don’t exist or won’t take you where you want to go. 

There are direct processes, questionnaires, business plans, and more embedded in the text that you can use in a practical sense at different phases of your business. Readers are shown how to think logically and given specific ways that they can test theories and strategies before investing their time and money into ones that don’t work. At the Heart of Management includes a number of important concepts to understand before and in the midst of business and financial management.

However, while this book has practical application in business, it can be easy to get lost in its theory and vagueness. There are very few examples to tie to your own business, and some managers may feel left out of the conversation even with the glossary at the end of the book. There is plenty of math, science, and theory involved which means that some readers will feel specifically catered to—perhaps those who are already in Ciceri’s field—but for those who are starting their own business or operating one in separate sectors might feel the need to put the book down and pick up one a bit more inclusive of their needs. The concepts and theories are complicated, but with such little application across business needs, I have trouble seeing this book as practical for all business owners or managers. 

This is a well-researched and intelligent book that may get in its own way sometimes, but readers who are involved in business theory will likely gain from the circuitous and open-ended conversations included.

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