Money Making Machine attempts to hurl an ‘off the wall’ training presentation into the pages of a lively and easily accessible book.
By using an alter-ego, Franck, and story style sections, the book is really quite readable in places, reminiscent of, for example, Ken Blanchard’s One Minute Manager. In general, the book is unlikely to take even the slowest of readers more than a couple of hours to finish.
Its main message revolves around reminding the reader that a company exists to make money, employees exist to ensure that happens as smoothly as possible and an employee’s time must, therefore, equate to money itself.
Throughout this book, however, I often wondered who this message is actually intended for. The ‘Janet and John’ big print layout is reflected in the writing style, presumably to maximise the book’s accessibility, yet it is illustrated by copies of busy PowerPoint slides that seem to come directly from a training course.
The value to the reader is entirely dependent on his expectation and preferred style. If you like your books to be buzzword-laden, yet easily read, then this is for you. If you like to have sources recognised and opinions backed by sound research, then this won’t be of interest. Either way for a two-hour read covering only a few key messages, £12.99 seems a lot for a paperback.
Overall, the book is little more than a half-hearted attempt to feed the author’s own Money Making Machine, and was probably ultimately intended as publicity material, rather than to make serious sales on its own.
Money Making Machine |
Julian Burch is an instructional design manager at Maritz Learning Systems. He is currently reading Culture’s Consequences by Gert Hofstede and Design for a Life by Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin.
