Title: 30 Key Questions That Unlock Management
Author: Brian Sutton and Robina Chatham
Publisher: IT Governance Publishing
Price: £49.95
ISBN: 978-1849283441

There is a gap in the market for a Blink, or Undercover Economist, for management– a book that translates academic research into practical language. The signs for 30 Key Questions that Unlock Management were encouraging. The authors are both academics but with wide experience in management practice. The reality, however, is disappointing.

The 30 key questions are usefully grouped into five categories on how to manage: team, boss, self, reputation, and personal growth, with each category further divided into six specific questions. Each question is answered in seven sections – from why the question is important, through to practical advice and ending with questions to think about and further reading.

Some of the content is excellent. The questions on giving and getting feedback, getting your boss to delegate more meaningful work, managing your time, and the sections on change management, creativity and innovation, are all useful and insightful.

Some of the content is less valuable. The sections dealing with poor performance and a bullying boss both appear to ignore psychological research. For example, the bullying section neglects much psychological research into reasons and typology in favour of the authors’ own bully typology (“brute, runaway train, bouncer and schemer”) that appears to owe more to Machiavelli than hard-headed psychology. And I do not agree with some of the advice: in my view, starting a meeting with a statement that an individual’s performance is poor and next asking for explanation or mitigation is not the best way of opening a discussion intended to improve performance.

In between those two extremes of good and bad comes a range of advice that is better than no advice at all, but not as helpful as it might be.

The style of writing is informal, engaging and lucid, but comes undone in places with unfortunate sound bites. “It is a truism that you tend to get the boss you deserve” was just one example where I almost threw the book out of the window. Although there is a further reading section in each chapter, much of the theory is unevidenced or unreferenced. I concede that this is not the type of book that should be bogged down by footnotes, but Blink and Undercover Economist both managed to be readable with full references in endnotes.

And then there is the price – £49.95. There are better practical management books at a fraction of that cost.


Harun Musho’d FCIPD is an HR and project manager in the House of Commons