Rating: 
Summary: Maister does it again - literally
Review: I have been a CPA and an organizational consultant for over twenty years. Through these years I have read hundereds of books on organizational "how tos". Two books stand out head and sholders above all the rest. Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline Field Book" (to expand leadership's awarness) and finally an increadable piece of work on how to pragmatically engineer profit into one's business. An Executive DashBoard that surpasses the "Balance Scorecard" by miles will be found in David Maister's book "Practice What You Preach".I personally go on record that when David's model of "Civility Driving Commerce" becomes integrated into our financial models and reporting standards, the world will become a totally different place. In fact I am betting that in time ... these concepts will inspire the spirit of commerce to create a world of dignity, peace, and joy. L.J. Carson II
Rating: 
Summary: Practice What You Preach
Review: I have been a CPA and an organizational consultant for over twenty years. Through these years I have read hundereds of books on organizational "how tos". Two books stand out head and sholders above all the rest. Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline Field Book" (to expand leadership's awarness) and finally an increadable piece of work on how to pragmatically engineer profit into one's business. An Executive DashBoard that surpasses the "Balance Scorecard" by miles will be found in David Maister's book "Practice What You Preach". I personally go on record that when David's model of "Civility Driving Commerce" becomes integrated into our financial models and reporting standards, the world will become a totally different place. In fact I am betting that in time ... these concepts will inspire the spirit of commerce to create a world of dignity, peace, and joy. L.J. Carson II
Rating:
Summary: Maister does it again - literally
Review: I'm a great fan of Maister's and have been since "Managing the Professional Service Firm" first came out. I was a struggling manager of an IT services firm, and David's book gave me a context and discipline to make an impact in my firm. His insights in that book, and in his subsequent works, have informed my professional career and helped me be a coach and mentor to my teams. That's why it pains me to give this four starts instead of five. David's work, though still important, is becoming repetitive and glib. While there is great value in the remarks that David gleans from his surveys, his lists of sunshiney beliefs and axioms are a little too reminiscent of the same material in "True Professionalism" and "Trusted Advisor". Stuff like "Ensure the workplace is a comfortable, friendly place" and "It's more fun to work in groups" are certainly true, but a bit simplistic and obvious. This book is worth reading, don't get me wrong. I just hope David isn't in danger of becoming Tom Peters, repeating the same material in thinner and thinner volumes with less and less originality and value.
Rating:
Summary: Maister does it again - literally
Review: I'm a great fan of Maister's and have been since "Managing the Professional Service Firm" first came out. I was a struggling manager of an IT services firm, and David's book gave me a context and discipline to make an impact in my firm. His insights in that book, and in his subsequent works, have informed my professional career and helped me be a coach and mentor to my teams. That's why it pains me to give this four starts instead of five. David's work, though still important, is becoming repetitive and glib. While there is great value in the remarks that David gleans from his surveys, his lists of sunshiney beliefs and axioms are a little too reminiscent of the same material in "True Professionalism" and "Trusted Advisor". Stuff like "Ensure the workplace is a comfortable, friendly place" and "It's more fun to work in groups" are certainly true, but a bit simplistic and obvious. This book is worth reading, don't get me wrong. I just hope David isn't in danger of becoming Tom Peters, repeating the same material in thinner and thinner volumes with less and less originality and value.
Rating:
Summary: Achieving success by never compromising your high standards
Review: Many books before this one have made the case for doing good business by treating people respectfully and in a trustworthy way. And several books before this one have preached courageous and long term oriented leadership. This book confirms these messages but does more: it presents convincing evidence to support these well known conclusions. Maister has done a very elegant yet sophisticated study which he very lucidly and accessibly explains throughout the book and which very clearly proves his point. But don't worry: the book isn't dull and boring. Maister illustrates his research conclusions with fascinating case stories. Of course the message of this book is very positive and hopeful. Like Maister says: "Making money by having high standards [respect, trustworthyness, courage, etc] and never compromising them. What a concept!" But, you might think, is this not all idealistic soft talk? Is this not too good to be true? Is it that easy? Not really! Practising what you preach requires courage and determination. What I found particularly interesting is the following: this book is more than anything about the difference in what you believe in and what you actually execute. And this is where courage comes in. For example the courage to say 'This far and no further!' when people show disrespect to others, or when other essential standards are violated. It also means saying 'no' to lucrative business which does not fit with your companies' vision/mission. And there is more, but you can read that in the book.
This book can inspire you to escape from the idea that you have to find the right balance between idealism and profitability; it invites you to be both highly idealistic and higly profitable. It can be done. Maister proves it.
Rating:
Summary: The Appendix alone are worth the price of the book
Review: Picture this: People are standing outside your offices, in the rain, wating for an opportunity to be considered for a position with your company! Wouldn't we all like to know how to make that happen? For me, "Practice What You Preach" gives you the guidance and tools to convert what is all too often hollow rhetoric into an action plan that can drive performance. Bravo Maister. Keep it coming.
Rating:
Summary: The ROI of Employee Attitudes
Review: The dust jacket suggests that Mister is "widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading authorities on the management of professional service firms." To me, his intellectual curiosity and reasoning skills resemble those of a highly-skilled anthropologist who has studied hundreds of cultures throughout the world inorder to understand why some are healthy and others are not. The results of his research are obviously of interest and value to professional service firms but also, in my opinion, of greater importance to organizations which are not (as literally defined) professional service firms. I presume to assert, moreover, that precisely the same values and principles which Maister affirms are those which characterize any healthy community. Specifically, one in which trust, respect, and integrity are cherished; in which there is an appropriate combination of fun and discipline; in which there is an uncompromising determination to achieve excellence; and one in which the development of each person is a shared commitment. In this book, Maister shares the results of his study of 139 offices of 29 firms in 15 countries in 15 different lines of business. To the approximately 6,500 people who participated in this study, he asked "a simple question": Are employees' attitudes correlated with financial success? The answer is an unequivocal "Yes!" Maister already knows that the world's most highly admired companies (e.g. those at which competitors' employees seek employment) are also the most profitable and have the greatest cap value in their respective industries. "What is even more powerful, as the book shows, it is [employee] attitudes that drive financial results, and not (predominantly) the other way around. Why do so many people want to work for Southwest Airlines? The airlines' most frequent fliers know the answer: employee attitudes. It is no coincidence that Southwest Airlines has consistently out-performed all other airlines, financially and operationally, for more than 20 years. Maister offers what he characterizes as "new evidence to support important, but perhaps familiar, conclusions. (Hence the book's title: the message is not to preach new things, but to practice what most managers and firms already preach.)...The summary is deferred until the latter portion of the book." As is his style, Maister urges his reader to be alert to "lessons" he (Maister) may have missed or failed to stress. He also urges the reader to judge for herself or himself which "lessons" are most important. For me, the most valuable material is found in Chapter 7 when Maister explains what he calls "The Predictive Package." He identifies and discusses nine key statements such as "Client satisfaction is a top priority in our firm." He suggests that affirmations of these nine statements "represent a great place to get started" and that is true IF everyone involved fully understands what the implications of each "key statement" are, especially insofar as each member of the organization is concerned. In the last chapter, Maister observes: "People must believe that the manager has the courage to believe in something and, more importantly, the guts to stick with it. There is no greater condemnation of a manager than to say that he or she is expedient, and no greater commendation than to say that he or she truly lives and acts in accordance with what he or she preaches." I am reminded of the fact that Dante reserved the last and worst ring in Hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserved their neutrality. The manager Maister describes so well in Chapter 20 is also a leader....a moral leader, with or without title or social station...whose values and behavior nourish the lives of others. Although Maister's most recent study has finite evidence to support his affirmations, we need only reflect on our own abundance of experience to appreciate those affirmations and, more to the point, to then live our lives accordingly.
Rating:
Summary: Just get this book!
Review: This book has it all: a complete vision on managing a profitable business as we have come to know and expect from Maister; emperical evidence that focusing on people-issues (clients and personell) instead of money will do it; scientific back-up of the 'complex-approach' and true life stories that, again, prove the case. Not many books survive the hype. Maister's "Managing the Professional Service Firm" did, and this book certainly will. Any manager worth his/her paycheck should read this book and give themselves, and their subordinates, the chance of succes. I own many books, most of which came from Amazon, but if I were to select only five to rescue from a fire, this one would most certainly be among them.
Rating: 
Summary: Managers can skim for value, but probably not worth the time
Review: While there's definitely some value in the things he says about the relationships between work environment and client respect, it was hard to say that his use of statistics matched what I remember from college. It would've been worth either eliding the high-level use of statistics entirely or just subjugating larger sections on the correlations and significance to a detailed appendix -- like papers on new type systems, people want to know that the semantics are sound in detail, but don't necessarily want to see every proof of every lemma interspersed with the text. Additionally, it wasn't clear how to turn this into anything other than personal action items. It was easy to understand that you should change things in your company, but there wasn't a ton of advice around how to actually make the changes suggested.
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