Work Less, Make More and Have Fun in Your Business: How to Create the Business of Your Dreams in 12 Easy Steps

This lackluster manual by Horrigan (Creating a Thriving Business), founder of the Fountainhead business consultancy, offers guidance on how business owners can increase profits while streamlining their operation. He details his five-part “Structure of Success”—which involves outlining a vision for one’s company, identifying metrics by which to judge success, developing a strategy to implement the vision, and fostering a “spirit of innovation”—but confusingly further divides these into 12 “steps,” several of which are corporate divisions rather than actionable measures (human resources, “information technology”). Vague anecdotes from the author’s consulting career do little to illuminate the advice, as when Horrigan asserts that the owner of a fitness equipment repair company “began to see what things he needed to do” after being encouraged to determine his business’s “Critical Success Factors” (“the unique make-or-break, must-do activities for your business”), but the factors selected and how the business was improved go undisclosed. Elsewhere, the guidance hews to the conventional (“employees need to know what is expected of them,” and leaders should take “responsibility for both positive and negative outcomes”). This misses the mark. (Sept.)