Is the book How To Think Like A Manager worth it?

The book is worth it for one specific profile — very hands-on candidates who struggle to decode what a stem is asking — mid-way through preparation, and never as a substitute for studying the domains. A note of transparency: Cybridia sells CISSP practice — a course, a glossary and a bank of explained questions — hence a product that overlaps the market for practice materials; the assessment below — around 24 mentions across 120 success stories analysed — reports the English-language candidate reviews without adding our own offering to them. The full survey of study materials is covered separately in our review of the best CISSP resources.

What does the book promise and what do its readers actually find?

Readers' descriptions agree and fit in a sentence: the book takes stems apart to show what they are really asking behind an ambiguous wording. One satisfied reader sums up the use he made of it — digging into the why of an answer rather than the answer itself. Another speaks of an excellent resource for stepping back from the questions.

Two warnings accompany these descriptions, and they come from favourable readers too. The first concerns the book's questions, judged more intense and more devious than those of the exam: several comments warn that you should not expect that level of trickiness on the day. The second concerns the status of the work: it teaches a way of reading, not domain content, and it replaces no textbook.

Why do the ratings run from 3 to 10 out of 10?

Because the book does not have the same effect depending on what the reader is missing. It is the most polarised resource in all of these candidate reports, and the spread of ratings given is unusual: you find a 10 out of 10 with the note "essential reading to get into the right frame of mind", a utilitarian 7 out of 10, a 5 out of 10 "almost useless" from a candidate whose exam was very technical, a 4 out of 10 faulting questions harder than the real exam, and a 3 out of 10 with a blunt warning: it will get you into trouble if you lean on it too heavily.

That dispersion rules out any single recommendation, and that is information in itself. A resource whose ratings spread across the whole scale is not an average resource: it is a resource that suits one profile very well and another not at all. The rest of this article therefore looks less for a verdict than for a set of instructions on how to use it.

A subtler criticism also circulates, and it targets the method itself: the book would teach you not to think like a manager, but to think like its author. It lines up with the fundamental charge levelled at the mantra in our article on what it is really worth — a single decision framework applied to questions that do not all belong to the same register.

Is the charge of overthinking justified?

It is the most documented grievance, and it is stated first-hand:

It made me overthink every answer and doubt myself — ultimately contributing to my first failure.

The mechanism described is always the same. From searching so hard for a stem's hidden intent, the candidate ends up reading into the text what it does not contain, changes his answer at the last moment and burns time on questions that were not ambiguous at all. The charge therefore does not concern an error in the book, but its systematic application: applied to a pure knowledge question, the framework produces noise.

One candidate went so far as never to open the book, having judged the concept itself misleading. That is a minority position, but it does show the nature of the disagreement: it is about the object being taught, not the quality of the teaching.

Which failures are associated with this approach?

Two, and they have to be told apart carefully, because only one names the book.

The first is the failure by overthinking cited above. Its author makes clear that he is targeting the approach as a whole, not only this resource, and he passed on his second attempt after abandoning that dogmatic reading.

The second is a failure by substitution, and it implicates no specific title: the candidate deliberately put the mindset first and left technical knowledge second, and describes having been blindsided by questions about concepts he had never come across — a problem he could not, he writes, manage his way out of.

These two accounts are individual and prove no general causation. They are enough, however, to dispose of the idea that a reasoning resource would be, at worst, neutral: used badly, it shifts the effort of preparation. The same mechanisms recur in the retake paths after a failure, where rebalancing towards content is the correction most frequently described.

At what point in your preparation should you use it?

The candidate reports converge on a narrow window: mid-way through.

Too early, it has nothing to attach to. One reader considers in hindsight that he read it too early and judges that the free reasoning resources do better at that stage. Too late, it becomes counterproductive: the eve of the exam is not the moment to install a new reading framework, and the reviews that describe it as a last-minute refresher find it distinctly unremarkable.

Between the two, the uses that give satisfaction resemble one another. A read one to two weeks before the exam, once the domains have been covered. A slot in a two-month roadmap, between the content phase and the practice phase. A reread before a second attempt, mentioned by a candidate who passed. One last, more prosaic signal comes up several times: the book bought and never finished. A resource you do not finish produces no effect, and its cost adds to an already heavy certification budget, of which the price of the exam itself is the main item.

Who is it useful for, and who is it not?

The split is clear in the candidate reports.

It is useful to very hands-on profiles who stumble on interpreting stems — those who know the technical answer but do not understand what the question is asking them to weigh up. That is the use for which the high ratings are given, and it is also what justifies treating it as a reading exercise rather than as a course.

It is of little use to governance, risk and compliance profiles, for whom this mode of reasoning is already routine: they have no need of the slogan and the candidate reports note this explicitly. It is flatly rejected by candidates whose exam was experienced as very technical, and who judge it almost useless.

And it is inadvisable for anyone who would use it in place of studying the domains, whatever their profile: that is the one point on which supporters and detractors agree without reservation.

What are the free alternatives worth?

They occupy a larger place than the book in the success stories, and it is the most striking imbalance in the candidate reports: the most discussed resource is paid, but the most recommended ones are free.

Three names recur. A video of explained questions, the most consensual resource in the candidate reports with 68 mentions across 120 accounts, whose strength lies in the format: it verbalises the reasoning that rules out each option instead of stating principles. A methodical video summary, rated around 9 out of 10 and described as the best distillation of the advice on the subject. And a motivational talk that has become a ritual on the morning of the exam, about which the community is clear-eyed: a confidence booster, not a learning tool. The detailed comparison of these materials, alongside the other categories of resources, is in our review of the best CISSP resources.

The verdict therefore fits in one sentence. The book is not a compulsory step; it is a paid exercise in reading stems, to be reserved for mid-preparation and for profiles who struggle to decode the questions. What you take from it gets checked question by question in any case, following the answering method: being able to say why the other three options are wrong remains the only indicator of progress the candidate reports endorse.