Book Reviews
Being Strategic: Plan for Success; Out-think Your Competitors; Stay Ahead of Change Erika Andersen St. Martins Press (2009) How to make decisions that drive success For organizations as well as for individuals, strategies resemble “hammers” and tactics resemble “nails” in…
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Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers Erika Andersen Portfolio/Penguin Group (2007) How green is your organization’s “thumb”? Note: The review that follows is of the paperback edition with a new preface. Erika Andersen makes brilliant use of…
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Practically Radical: Not So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself William C. Taylor William Morrow/An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers (2011) As Taylor explains in this book, organizations cannot be transformed unless and until those who…
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The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer, with William Bole Jossey-Bass/John A Wiley Imprint The best ideas are out there…or inside you…just waiting for you to find them. The…
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StrengthsFinder 2.0 Tom Rath Gallup Press (2007) Note: One of my passions in life is to help promote and (yes) celebrate business books that are “classics,” those deserving far more attention than they currently receive. That is certainly true of…
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Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary Joel Kurtzman Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons (2010) “Organizations themselves are mindless, so if people don’t repair them, no one will.” Regrettably, the old rules of employment have created in…
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Doing Both: Capturing Today’s Profit and Driving Tomorrow’s Growth Inder Sidhu FT Press/Pearson (2010) Organizational transformation is not — repeat not – a zero-sum game One of the most self-defeating mindsets is suggested by the admonition, “You can’t have your…
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Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant David A. Aaker Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons (2011) If your “brand” isn’t relevant, neither are you and your company Those who have read any of David Aaker’s previous books already know that he presents information,…
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The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels, and Snakes From Killing Your Organization Gary Namie and Ruth F. Namie John Wiley & Sons (2011) Tolerance of inappropriate behavior condones it. Over more years than I wish to specify, I have been…
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Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era Henry Chesbrough Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons (2011) How to grow, compete, and succeed in a services era In his previous articles and books (notably Open Innovation…
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