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MBA: MANAGEMENT BY AUERBACH, by Red Auerbach with Ken Dooley, Macmillan, 254 pages, $19.95.
Call it one final lesson by the master. A reservoir of common sense, if you will.
When the Boston Celtics president, Arnold “Red” Auerbach, sat down with management expert, Ken Dooley, and penned “MBA — Management with Aurbach,” the business world was about to experience what the sports world already knew: Auerbach could manage people.
The business world, you ask? That’s right.
The head of the most visible sports franchise in the world unveils the organizational techniques that have made him and the Boston Celtics famous. And it won’t take readers long to figure out just why this guy is a winner.
In a nutshell, Auerbach loves people, and through his attention to detail and his knack for nurturing individual needs, he outlines what the manager of any successful organization must have to be productive, competitive, and up to date in today’s business world.
Auerbach is aggressive in his approach to crisis. He is dynamic in style, and, at times, surprisingly literate in his approach to problems in the modern, computer age. After all, we’re talking about a street kid, with street smarts, not some Ph.D. with mere book knowledge, and a briefcase full of flow charts and colorful graphs. Auerbach gets right to the heart of every issue, and basketball fans and managers of all types of organizations will revel in his blunt, no-nonsense approach to leadership.
As a coach, general manager, and president of the Boston Celtics, Auerbach’s impact on professional basketball has been profound. From the time he was hired in 1950 to coach the fledgling Celtics franchise until today, where he serves the team as its chief executive officer, Auerbach has kept his troops ahead of the pack.
As coach of the Celtics from 1950 to 1966, Auerbach’s teams won nine NBA championships. As general manager and president, he has directed the team to seven more titles.
But “MBA” is not just a basketball book by any stretch of the imagination. Through anecdotal use of past Celtics history, Auerbach and Dooley outline a plan of strategy for leadership that would serve any organization well. Topics range from motivating employees to handling worker burnout, but through it all, the text is vintage Auerbach.
In his heyday, Auerbach and his teams were loved by their fans and hated by the opposition.
“I was a lousy loser,” states Auerbach. “What’s the sense of coaching if you’re not going to win? If I was a doctor, and my patients kept dying, what kind of doctor would I be?”
Auerbach feels the same way about the world of business.
“A professional sports team has a great deal in common with any other business,” states Auerbach. “We all have a product, with people making and selling that product. So we all need an overall goal for our product and a specific strategy for reaching that goal.”
Sounds simple enough, right? And for Auerbach it is. In fact, according to the authors, simplicity in approach is the watchword.
Auerbach enlightens readers on the human side of management as well. Allowing employee input, caring for their families, and developing team spirit all go into making an organization successful.
“Management by Auerbach” is a tidy piece of leadership theory. For those who love professional basketball and the Boston Celtics, this is enjoyable reading, indeed, but for those who appreciate the work of one man who built a multimillion dollar franchise from the ground up, this book is more than applicable in the business world and should soon appear on required reading lists in MBA programs everywhere.
Ron Brown is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.
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