Shark Alert
By MICHAEL SCHRAGE

(FORTUNE Magazine) – The most revealing part of Harvey Mackay's new pop management (just add cliches and stir) instabook, Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, has got to be the endorsements: -- ''. . . zest, color, and incisiveness.'' -- Howard R. Swearer, president of Brown University -- ''. . . must reading.'' -- Peter V. Ueberroth -- ''. . . great insight.'' -- Abigail (Dear Abby) Van Buren -- ''. . . delightful, intriguing.'' -- Gerald R. Ford -- ''. . . warmth, wisdom, and wittiness.'' -- Billy Graham Oh yes: Mario Cuomo, Gloria Steinem, and Walter Mondale like it too. No fewer than 43 celebrities, which must be a record, have lent their good names to hyping Sharks onto the best-seller lists. (Mackay also takes an endorsement from FORTUNE, which called him Mr. Make-Things-Happen in an article on the revival of Minneapolis-St. Paul.) Clearly, Mackay can sell himself -- and, just as clearly, he doesn't know when to stop. He would no doubt be a charming dinner companion, but as an aspiring management guru he's too clever by half. ( He's the kind of guy Dale Carnegie would punch in the nose just before filing suit for conceptual plagiarism. Think of Sharks as How to Win Friends and Influence People edited by the folks at USA Today: It's not written, it's compiled. Sharks is slick, short, colorful, and doesn't leave you with a lot to think about. Mackay tells it all in 69 lessons and 19 ''Quickies.'' Really.

There's ''Harvey Mackay's Short Course in Salesmanship'' -- 19 lessons with titles like ''Short Notes Yield Long Results'' (write thank-you notes to customers), ''Fantasize,'' and ''The Easiest, Least Expensive and Most Neglected Form of Advertising'' (put your company logo on your trucks). There's ''Harvey Mackay's Short Course in Management'' -- 36 lessons, including ''The Single Greatest Mistake a Manager Can Make'' (not delegating), ''How to Spot a Winner'' (hire good people), and ''Know Thine Enemy.'' Quickies include ''How to Get to Know a Celebrity'' (try Who's Who) and ''The Best R&D Firm in the World Is Never More Than a Phone Call Away'' (it's called the library). But I don't want to spoil it for you. Look, Sharks is a bunch of platitudes dressed up in see-through anecdotes. It's management deja vu all over again -- you've seen this before and you've seen it done better. The only things new here are the packaging and the format. No question, some of the anecdotes are delightful and the writing is easy on the brain. The problem is, the book has a theme -- no, an odor -- running through it that's reminiscent of the old George Burns joke about sincerity being the secret to successful acting: because if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made. This book is real sincere about how to fake it. Harvey Mackay runs a successful envelope manufacturing company in Minnesota. I don't doubt that it's a well-run company. I also believe that his envelopes must be made better and deliver better value than this book, or he'd be out of business. Mackay and his publisher (William Morrow & Co.) should be ashamed of pricing Sharks at $15.95. There will always be a place for books like Sharks -- it's just that the place shouldn't be a grown-up manager's desk.