Book Review: The EMyth Revisited
Posted in 01 - Leadership & Management, Book Review on January 1st, 2002 by Paul McArdle – 4 Comments.
I first read this book perhaps in 2002 or so (in the early days of the company, back when I had some involvement with a consulting company as well).
Hence, to put this review in context, I have used artistic licence with the post date…
Binary Review
Understanding the basic premise of the book (the need to work ON and not IN the business) is worth the cost of the book:
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “The EMyth Revisited” by Michael Gerber |
Worth reading, though it is a little over-hyped (so don’t expect a silver bullet). |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
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The underlying premise:
I read this book back in the days when I had a foot in both camps – i.e. I was actively involved in this company (developing shrink-wrapped software to corporates in a narrow, vertical industry) at the same time as being involved in a consulting company, as well.
The general focus on this book (in terms of process-ising the business for franchising – whether virtual or real) was much more applicable to the consulting company.
For us, we’re trying to go a step further and have much of what we do fully automated (i.e. not outsourced – but completely eliminating the need to have people do certain things). Time will tell how well we do at this!
Still – it’s a very useful exercise to draw an organisation chart and see all the boxes on the chart staring back at you, with your name in it. At least with our recent business autopsy, we have started to change this…