I was excited to read this book as it was finalised during the pandemic and the tag line “The playbook for service operations in the agile age” had me intrigued. We have all had to adapt our ways of working quickly and often at short notice as we have worked through the pandemic. This book and its easy style offered me some insight and solutions with the active operations model and offered me a practical toolkit to support how I manage my teams.
How often do we reach for a management book only to be put off by the huge amounts of theory and lack of practical tips and advice. I am someone who likes to use management books practically, and this book really helps you do that. If this is you, this book is a must.
Written in a very easy style, you feel the Authors are talking directly to you. If you work within a service industry it talks our language. The book can be read from start to finish, but you can also dip in and out of the relevant chapters. It has already become a well-thumbed addition to my working life. The book also gives you access to an online toolkit which has some great practical downloads and an online course.
The book talks about the importance of management within the service industries and managing your teams to help them understand the goals and how you can achieve them. We have all had team members who work hard but do not seem to get anywhere. The AOM model supports you to bring your workload under control and give you guidance and advice on how to support your teams to perform more consistently to support this.
The book is simple and easy to follow with a real focus on practicality. There are lots of examples and lots of diagrams to make things easy to understand. I would recommend this book, particularly now as we must be more agile than ever. And if you need another reason to read the book, have a quick look at Chapter 1 and read Anhera’s story, it explains the benefits of AOM better than I can.
Published by Practical Inspiration
Kirstie Jones, Group People Director of Salutem Shared Services Limited
