Management Lessons from the E.R.: Prescriptions for Success in Your Business - Softcover

Auerbach, Dr. Paul S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451606087 ISBN 13: 9781451606089

Publisher: Free Press, 2010

Synopsis

Life in the emergency room is often like that in the business world. Both are places of activity and excitement, unexpected developments, highs and lows, crises, and great intensity. On the treatment table and in the boardroom, problems must be diagnosed correctly and dealt with as effectively and quickly as possible. Now in Management Lessons from the E.R.: Prescriptions for Success in Your Business, Paul S. Auerbach, M.D. -- a doctor of medicine and of companies -- shows exactly how a professional healer's thought processes can be applied to a business. The result is enlightening, occasionally lighthearted advice that goes far beyond other business management tomes, offering readers real and surprising lessons.

Applying such medical truisms as "The patient who isn't screaming may be the one in the most trouble" and "Don't count on luck," Dr. Auerbach provides prescriptions for solving all types of managerial emergencies. Using real-life experiences from his many years as an E.R. physician, COO of public and private medical management companies, and venture capitalist, he teaches executives how to prepare for and remain calm in difficult situations. In this unique book, he shows how responsibility, great expectations, and the impact of failure force doctors to be at the top of their game at all times. From assessing the first symptoms of a patient's or company's problem to determining the quickest and most effective means for treatment, Auerbach details the true-to-life pressures, fears, and challenges one faces both in acute care medicine and in the most vital actions of one's career, and does so with humor, style, and grace. The effect of this wisdom: the ability to deal with any business dilemma, whether it be a short-term setback or the beginning of a more serious condition. The prescriptions here are lessons for success in business and, at the same time, for success in life.

About this title

Review:

Culling management advice from historical figures or contemporary experiences has become increasingly common in recent years, with the most helpful works offering identifiable real-life incidents or entertaining parables that both add to our understanding and point us in new directions. Paul S. Auerbach's Lessons from the E.R. fits into this category for senior managers, drawing from the author's background as an emergency-room physician and entrepreneur to identify similarities between day-to-day activities and long-term goals in each field, along with life-and-death lessons from the former that can be applied to dollars-and-cents realities of the latter. With wit and a true sense of how these seemingly disparate callings often converge, Auerbach makes this "stretch from medicine to management" to "help business leaders become problem solvers." He shows, for example, why it's crucial to make strategic decisions quickly, why squeaky wheels don't always indicate the most serious ailments, why evolving "care plans" can be more effective than static business plans, and why bleeding cannot be stopped in either environment until someone puts a finger on the real problem. While Auerbach can come off a bit imperiously at times, his unabashed confidence is undoubtedly another of the traits that has helped him in the operating room and the boardroom. --Howard Rothman

About the Author:

Paul S. Auerbach, M.D., is a practicing physician, serving as Clinical Professor of Surgery in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University, as well as a partner at Delphi Ventures. A founder of the Wilderness Medical Society, he has written classic wilderness medicine books. He lives with his wife and three children in Los Altos, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1451606087
• ISBN 13: 9781451606089
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272