Book Description
This book represents the best thinking of experts on every aspect of the game ... how they bid, play hands, defend, choose leads and decide when and when not to double. Special coverage is given also to team games, building successful partnerships and conventions most regularly used by experts. Finally, there is a designated self-study program to help you be the very best you can be. The unique things about this book are that:
(1) It is the first book in 40 years to deal with the entire game of bridge.
(2) It represents the modern thinking of today's experts who win national championships.
(3) It is especially well-organized and easy to read.
For these reasons the book received the "1997 Book of the Year" award from the American Bridge Teacher's Association and continues to be a best-seller at national tournaments.
Customer Reviews:
Great Intermediate Level Book.......2007-04-11
This is a great intermediate level book for people wanting to take their game to the next level. It has a great study guide at the back that should really help you as well. Like all good bridge books this one focuses on the logic behind the decisions. It shows you how experts think about the game and how to recognize and make strategic decisions.
My one gripe is that the bibliography on bidding is a bit sparse. It includes some very simple books and some very advanced ones, but doesn't have anything to help you make the transition. Here are my suggestions for taking your bidding to the next level:
Most tournament players in the US use a system called Two-over-one. Hall lists the "bible" on the method in his bibliography, but doesn't list any of the books designed to help you learn and use it. I suggest:
Bridge: 25 Steps to learning 2/1
Workbook on the Two Over One System
The first book will walk you through learning the system and the Lawrence book will help you and your partner use the system effectively. It may be useful to get a book on tournament conventions while reading these books (Root & Pavlicek have one and Segram & Smith have a 2 volume set; both are useful; the R&P tend to have more thorough explanations, but S&S is more complete.)
The other problem with the Hall biblography is that while 2/1 is popular among US tournament players, it generally isn't used by the top-tier players. Honestly, the Precision system used by those experts is much easier to use than 2/1, it's just not popular here in the US for some reason. I suggest that you learn it if you are a serious tournament player with a regular partner; it is much better than 2/1 and takes less time to master. Books to help:
Natural precision: Effective, aggressive, but natural precision bidding, Precision in the 90s, Precision Today: Your Guide To Learning The System -- Or Fine-Tuning Your Precision Partnership. The Brown book is short and sweet and could be used by any partnership that knows the basics of bridge. The Rigal book is a bit more advanced, but it has better coverage of the system. Precision Today is targeted at near-experts, but the first several chapters mirror the Rigal book (the latter chapters do as well, but you should stay away from the "advanced" section of the Rigal book until you are a much better player.)
Good all around coverage.......2006-12-26
The book covers a variety of topics, and discusses changes to the game over the last 25 years (as of the publication date).
Its not going to teach you all that much. Instead it will make you aware of things you may not have known about, and you will then need to get some books to adress those subjects.
Its good, but not great. No way is it a 5 star book.
Fair Intermediate Level book.......2006-07-11
Its a good overview for Intermedaite level players that are somewhat isolated and haven't heard about Bridge innovations of the last 20-30 years.
Not a bad book. But if you are familiar with modern bridge, and have read other books, there will not be much new here.
All in all its OK, its not a great book by any means.
5 Stars? I'm curious what those reviewers would conside a 3 star book.
Pure Dynamite.......2006-03-16
This book outlines all the strategies required to succeed in tournament bridge play. The book focuses primarily on matchpoint events, but has an excellent chapter on team play. Each chapter includes a nice set of exercises that test the reader's understanding of the material presented.
One minor weakness is that the book describes the "5 Lines of Defense" (active, passive, forcing, defensive trump tricks, and cutting down ruffs), but overlooks a sixth strategy - killing the dummy (for an example of this type of play, see the Merrimac Coup).
All in all, I'm glad I bought this book, and I figure I have won a lot more bridge events because of it!
How to become an expert .........2003-03-13
Well not quite, but almost there. This book, more than most, really lays out the mindset and strategies of expert bridge players. The chapter on the "5 lines of Defense" is itself worth the price of the book, and can be used by anyone, even beginners. If you are an intermediate player, just go buy this book! If you're just starting out in bridge, read a few beginner books and then come back to this. This is an amazing book!!
Book Description
"Clients At The Core is an essential blueprint to helping us all take the next steps. The authors, battle scarred by the evolution of professional firm management and marketing from then to now, have captured the changing needs of the firms in this turbulent new economic era. This is a well-written book that uses plain language to convey practical, well thought-out ideas."
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Patrick J. McKenna, a leading international consultant to professional service firms
"The authors have captured the changing role of professional services marketing and firm management. There is valuable insight [in this] down-to-earth guide to competing successfully in the new environment."
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David Maister, author and consultant
"The book is a masterpiece! Aquila and Marcus have produced the essential guide for managing a professional services firm. They've marshaled their considerable real-life experiences and far-reaching vision into a veritable operating manual for the successful firm."
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Rick Telberg, Editor at Large, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
"At its heart, this book is the running shoe for legal and accounting professionals who want to put the client first. Following the evolution of the industry over the past twenty-five years, this must-have for every professional services firm is the key to leading in the turbulent and highly competitive waters ahead."
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Richard S. Levick, Esq., President, Levick Strategic Communications, LLC coauthor, Stop the Presses: The Litigation PR Desk Reference
"Client selection and retention is one of the critical success factors for a professional services firm, and Aquila and Marcus do a masterful job at educating us on the necessary ingredients of each. The chapters on firm governance and paying for performance are thought provoking and certainly challenging to the conventional wisdom. If you want a better understanding of marketing and leading a professional firm in these turbulent times, this book is essential."
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Ronald J. Baker, author, Professional's Guide to Value Pricing and The Firm of the Future
"Client at the Core is a commonsense approach to keeping your professional services firm relevant in the twenty-first century's client-driven economy. Aquila and Marcus have hit a home run with their insightful analysis and poignant prose."
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Jeffrey S. Pawlow, Managing Shareholder, The Growth Partnership, Inc.
Download Description
"August Aquila and Bruce Marcus reward readers of Client at the Core with an imaginative map for the perilous journey through the twists and turns of marketing and managing today's professional services firm. It is creative and thorough."
-Gerry Riskin, Partner, Edge International
"The authors have captured the changing role of professional services marketing and firm management. There is valuable insight [in this] down-to-earth guide to competing successfully in the new environment."
-David Maister, author and consultant
"The book is a masterpiece! Aquila and Marcus have produced the essential guide for managing a professional services firm. They've marshaled their considerable real-life experiences and far-reaching vision into a veritable operating manual for the successful firm."
-Rick Telberg, Editor at Large, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
"At its heart, this book is the running shoe for legal and accounting professionals who want to put the client first. Following the evolution of the industry over the past twenty-five years, this must-have for every professional services firm is the key to leading in the turbulent and highly competitive waters ahead."
-Richard S. Levick, Esq., President, Levick Strategic Communications, LLC
coauthor, Stop the Presses: The Litigation PR Desk Reference
"Client selection and retention is one of the critical success factors for a professional services firm, and Aquila and Marcus do a masterful job at educating us on the necessary ingredients of each. The chapters on firm governance and paying for performance are thought provoking and certainly challenging to the conventional wisdom. If you want a better understanding of marketing and leading a professional firm in these turbulent times, this book is essential."
-Ronald J. Baker, author, Professional's Guide to Value Pricing and The Firm of the Future
"Client at the Core is a commonsense approach to keeping your professional services firm relevant in the twenty-first century's client-driven economy. Aquila and Marcus have hit a home run with their insightful analysis and poignant prose."
-Jeffrey S. Pawlow, Managing Shareholder, The Growth Partnership, Inc.
Customer Reviews:
Marketing 101, 201, & 301 for Professional Services.......2005-08-31
This book should burnish the authors' already high reputations for having cogent, jargon-free, and street-smart things to say about what it's really like to try to market professional services. An unusual blend of (clear and lucidly stated) theory about marketing, and real-world insights into obstacles clients can throw up--not to mention the high barrier of internal resistance that "professionals" instinctively erect when asked to be marketers--this should be your starting point if you're facing the complexities of marketing in this environment.
Think that "marketing is just common sense?" Think again; it's both a discipline and an art. Aquila and Marcus will guide your hand at both.
Gerry Riskin (co-author Herding Cats and Beyond Knowing.......2005-06-12
August Aquila and Bruce Marcus reward readers of Client at the Core with an imaginative map for the perilous journey through the twists and turns of marketing and managing today's professional services firm. It is creative and thorough.
Required reading for my marketing leaders.......2004-09-25
August Aquila and Bruce Marcus have written a clear and comprehensive view of what every accounting or law marketer needs to know about this new, unprecedented professional services environment. Their book not only explains the new environment, but it's also a rich primer of practical "how-to" advice on all the marketing tools available to the professional services marketer. Strategy is fine, but I find that few books get down to the step-by-step implementation tactics involved in winning new business like this book does - that's one of its best points of differentiation. After reading it, I bought copies for every one of my regional, industry, service line and national marketing leaders.
Aquila and Marcus Deliver Practice Advice for Success.......2004-09-07
In "Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firm," (Wiley, 2004) August J. Aquila, based in Minnetonka, Minn., and Bruce W. Marcus, in Easton, Conn., a pair of veteran consultants, combine their considerable experience, skill and insight into a veritable strategic planning operator's manual for today's consulting firm.
From the outset, they acknowledge "the professional world doesn't need another book on how to write a press release or write a brochure or run a seminar."
Instead, they provide a new perspective on the crucial subject of how to keep firms relevant to the needs of the marketplace -- mainly, creating clients and building a marketing culture.
They don't get tied up in ideas like "vision," or "mission."
Instead they talk about the new realities of the 21st Century and professions in turmoil: dot-coms gone bust, a stock market meltdown, and a rash of frauds, defalcations, misuse of corporate funds; and then a reformist reaction, still unfolding, that the authors term "a helter-skelter regulatory rush that was at least as punitive as it was appropriate. It would seem that the regulatory garment was cut to fit all, when all don't wear the same size."
"The time is past when just the presence of the professional was its own comfort factor. It's long been believed that the concept of the professional was so exalted, and so trusting, that people accepted advice unquestioningly. No more. The scandals of 2002 and 2003 seem to have bred a diminished - if unwarranted -- respect for professionals," they say.
"Traditionally, professional services have been a seller's market," according to Aquila and Marcus. But now the tables are turned. "It is now a buyer's market."
For today's professionals, here are six lessons you can take to the bank according to the authors:
1. Clients are more sophisticated. They no longer accept advice without questioning, challenging, demanding more reasoning and detail.
2. Because of the complexity of business today, clients demand that their professionals know more about the client's business and industry than ever before.
3. Professional services always function best when trust is at the heart of the relationship, but the corporate scandals of recent years have eroded that trust. That trust must now be regenerated. And the workings of trust are more important in the new economy than in the old.
4. Once the narrow structures of a profession were sufficient to serve clients. But clients now demand a broader spectrum of capabilities. The more broadly educated and well-rounded professional is the one with the greater advantage in meeting the needs of today's client. Clients demand that accountants know more than the basic skills of accounting.
5. Competition is now a fact of life. Clients know they have a choice.
Clients know the difference between marketing promises and professional services delivery. Today's client demands more real service and solutions -- not just a warm personal relationship.
To Aquila and Marcus, the new paradigm of professional services requires a new demand for partnership with the client and new participatory skills.
As they say: It's a buyers' market. Get used to it.
(...)
Focus on Application.......2004-08-22
"Meaty and rich with texture. The authors understand the application of marketing concepts to the CPA profession at a very deep level, and communicate clearly and concisely."
"Every page was another 'Yes!' when reading about the application of marketing principles to the CPA world. The authors nailed it."
Book Description
For the first time in paperback, international expert and consultant David Maister offers a brilliant and accessible guide to every management issue at play in professional firms.
Professional firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first, they provide highly customized services and thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalized, involving the skills of individuals. Such firms must therefore compete not only for clients but also for talented professionals.
Drawing on more than ten years of research and consulting to these unique and creative companies, David Maister explores issues ranging from marketing and business development to multinational strategies, human resources policies to profit improvement, strategic planning to effective leadership. While these issues can be complex. Maister simplifies them by recognizing that "every professional service firm in the world, regardless of size, specific profession, or country of operation, has the same mission statement: outstanding service to clients, satisfying careers for its people, and financial success for its owners."
Customer Reviews:
Excellent - must read for consultants of all levels.......2007-05-15
Excellent, easy-to-read and highly practical guide to successfully managing professional service firms...
Buy This One -- You Won't Regret It.......2007-01-19
This book is an excellent resource for new and experienced managers and leaders in a professional services firm. It is research-based but very practical and common-sense in its delivery. You will find checklists and templates regarding talent management, client growth and product mix that you will want to begin using immediately. Although the book is written in the context of a legal firm, the content is rich and applicable to any professional services firm. The "asset management" philosophy of this book (managing your two key assets: your client relationships and your knowledge/talent pool) is most powerful. After reading the book and sharing portions of it with our leadership team of ten, I learned they were individually purchasing the book. I have now ordered it for the entire team and am delighted to know they have embraced the suggestions (I don't have to sell his ideas) and have incorporated references to "David" and "the book" into their everyday conversations. Excellent read at the beginning of the year to assure you are on the right strategic track for the growth and management of your firm.
Must read.......2006-10-30
This book is a must read for partners and managers in professional service firms. Although this book is already several years old, the issues covered are still up to date and usefull.
Where the insights started ..........2006-07-18
Every time I pick up this book I get a new insight. This is the first book you have to read if you want to understand the PSF "arena". A professor at LPSF in Harvard expressed that he considered this book to be the first "Academic" source on PSF.
If you can, read all of Maister's books.
THANK YOU, David !!
P.S.: In only 3 months he has built the best web presence I have seen so far.
Standard work on managing professional firms holds up fine.......2006-07-04
If you manage or work in a professional service firm, this book can put your operation into perspective by explaining what drives the firm's profitability. Author David Maister uses his personal experiences to enliven some of the dryer parts of the text with a few case studies, first-hand observations and advice. He covers the whole range of essential practices encountered by any service firm, including governance, hiring, motivation, coaching, marketing and compensation. However, there is one important caveat: This classic book was first published in 1993, including the chapter on professional compensation, which particularly needs updating. Some chapters were published even earlier in various trade magazines and journals, some dating back to 1982. Is this information still fresh and accurate in today's business environment? Even if the personnel advice is, the compensation counsel and pre-Internet marketing advice probably is not. With this caveat, we consider this foundational work important for anyone working in or with a professional service firm.
Book Description
*An incisive look at the special skills needed to lead and manage a team of knowledge workers
Customer Reviews:
Insightful!.......2005-05-19
Any professional whose job involves inspiring and motivating other professionals to work as a team probably has a pretty good idea of what it's like to conduct a symphony with an orchestra of soloists. Author Geoff Smith has written a very useful book that will help you harmonize your band of hotshots. While some professionals relish team interaction, many appear allergic to harnessing their brilliance on behalf of the group. Law firms, CPA practices, ad agencies, architecture offices, research labs and other service firms all rely on professionals. But to move the firm ahead, those professionals should check their egos at the door. Not very likely, you may think, and you'd be right. At least, not likely without this book's coaching on how to manage professionals with a light touch and still get the job done. We strongly recommend this book to those leading professionals in small and medium-sized firms, more so than in corporations, though it will help anyone who wants to make the members of a professional team march to the beat of a not-so-different drummer.
A practical guide to getting the job done.......2004-06-04
Written by a specialist in designing, managing, and implementing programs for leaders, Leading The Professionals: How To Inspire & Motivate Professional Service Teams a solid guide to the sometimes tricky task of directing a firm's top talents. Many professionals prefer to do things their own way, and resist being directed or working as part of a team - whether they are highly qualified, creatives, knowledge workers, or conceptualists, it is often the human tendency to rely on one's own expertise first that can hinder as much as it helps. Leading The Professionals emphasizes that the key to dealing with talent is the "light touch" - encouraging and supporting rather than being overbearing and controlling. A practical guide to getting the job done, featuring sensible advice and numerous anecdotes to illustrate its practical human resource management principles.
Leading the Professionals-Review.......2004-04-07
As a professional accountant, leading a business unit in a major public practice, I was attracted to what Geoff Smith had to say about the complex area of leadership in the professions. I was not disappointed. Whether you are an accountant, lawyer or architect or you work in advertising, education or the public sector, this book will help you if you are already a leader or if you are about to take on that role. I thought the book was well written with an easy style and a focus on practical advice. Management theory is kept to a minimum. Instead, Smith shares his own experiences, interviews leaders in successful professional organisations, sets out useful checklists and presents real life scenarios with suggestions as to how to deal effectively with issues. I particularly liked the use of quotes from the great and the good at the start of each chapter. My favourite was Sir John Harvey-Jones on the importance of planning to those leading projects: "Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.". The book recognises early on that many professionals are wary of being led and becoming leaders themselves. However, by the end, I think even the most sceptical will at least want to reconsider their position. For those who already embrace the benefits of effective leadership in professional organisations, I think this book provides valuable support and an opportunity to look at a fresh approach.
Average customer rating:
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Managing People and Knowledge in Professional Service Firms
Manufacturer: Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Human Resources & Personnel Management
| Industries & Professions
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1843981777 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Catalyst (Dublin, Ohio), published by Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants on May 1, 2003. The length of the article is 715 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Tools for managing and marketing your firm in the digital age. (Members Only).
Publication:
Catalyst (Dublin, Ohio) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2003
Publisher: Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants
Page: 48(1)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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