Operations Management: The Art & Science of Making Things Happen

Good read

I really thought this would teach me some new techniques to assist in my career, however it seemed simply a recollection of the author's days working in Scotland Yard. Mildly interesting anecdotes at best, but nothing I expected.

Enjoyable Read.I working as a Regional Operations Manager, and found this to be an enjoyable and light read

James Cooke`s book provides a wealth of timeless, practical advice on how operations managers can effectively and efficiently translate strategy into action by using specific managerial skills and leadership capabilities. James emphasizes the need for managers to know themselves first and foremost, to deeply understand the individuals and dynamics that make up their teams, to be keenly aware of the internal and external environments in which they are working and to always keep the end-users in focus. His book is filled with many engaging personal and professional experiences from which he has distilled a compendium of wisdom. Read this book to learn how to artfully balance the needs of individual, team and task.Steven HartleySBS Swiss Business School

Leadership and management start with the 'self' and Cooke has rightly brought this into context within the needs of the individual, the team and the task. He is more than an ex-police officer. He is a leader, a manager, a coach and a businessman. He uses his experiences from his public and private life providing a well-balanced, informative and insightful book that captures the essence of operations management. This is a must have book for any aspiring or current leader.

I found this book a bit disappointing. The author has experience as a junior and mid level manager in the police force, but no managerial experience outside the police. The content is quite basic and won't give experienced managers much new insights into managing people or operations. Inexperienced managers in the public sector, particularly the police might get something out of it, but it isn't readily applicable to most private sector situations because they won't (usually) encounter the same HR practices that can take years to resolve problems. I was also disappointed that there were not more interesting anecdotes relating to the challenges of frontline policing, rather than the internal bureaucracy.

Poorly structured. Lacking clarity. One mans story dotted about randomly ordered themes rather than a useful manual with applicability. Just adding numbering to the chapters, sections etc would have helped. Was there no editor? Might be more value in there but I’m not prepared to dig through poor structures and unappealing stories.

This is an interesting book, but not what I had expected or hoped for.The book concentrates a lot on the authors own career and achievements and feels more like a biography in places. There is a lot of over use of various learning models and theories, which whilst interesting is not anything new to anyone in a senior management role.On the whole the book is well written, but not entirely relevant, unless of course you are in the police force, in which case it will be of much greater use.

This book writes about an author and his experience of Operations Management. He suggested some good points from his way of development, skills and knowledge. A very interesting book and enjoyed learning new ventures. Very powerfully written!

The author is a fairly junior ex-policeman and this is basically his tips for running small teams. As far as that goes, it's OK. However, if you want to know about a wider range of ops management techniques, particularly in production or process industries, this isn't the book for you.