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

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