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Posts Tagged ‘Business Book review’

Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty

The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times

By: Ram Charan

Published: December 2008
Format: Hardcover, 160 pages
ISBN-13: 9780071626163
ISBN-10: 0071626166)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional

“Management challenges don’t come any bigger than this. It’s not just your business or industry that is in a downturn; the entire global economic system has been wounded”, writes best selling author and renowned business thinker Ram Charan, in his important and action oriented management book Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times. The author describes the need for taking action to strengthen a company during the current economic recession, and provides a practical and powerful prescription for taking that bold action.

Ram Charan understands the need for swift and decisive action during an economic crisis. He recommends several key areas, at all levels and departments within an organization, where action can be taken to strengthen the company. The author believes it is critical, in times of uncertainty, for a leader to take decisive action, get all members of the organization on board with the vision, and put the plan into action. For Ram Charan, not taking action and behaving as if the crisis is not going to affect the company, is a recipe for disaster. The author shares the decisive actions of several leading CEOs, who did not succumb to paralysis, fear or inaction. Their bold initiatives not only prevented disaster, but established a new vision, that will carry the company forward when the crisis era ends.

Ram Charan (photo left) focuses on all levels and departments of a company. He zeroes in on the essential need to conserve cash flow. He provides several examples of how to save cash, and to build up cash reserves, through a combination of changing market emphasis on growth to profitability and on cost saving measures that don’t affect the ability of the company to carry out its core business. The author recommends that leaders get to understand the inner workings and day to day operations of their companies, to initiate necessary change in a timely manner. Ram Charan also considers a time of uncertainty the ideal time for front line employees to pay closer attention to the needs of their customers. This deeper understanding of customers will help with better pricing policies that benefit cash flow and long term stability.

For me, the power of the book is how Ram Charan combines the reasons why strong decisive action must be taken in a crisis, with how to carry those plans out in a positive way. The author considers a time of uncertainty to be a perfect time to take bold initiatives toward reducing unnecessary costs, conserving cash, and reassessing any major spending plans. The book also provides a wake up call to company leaders in the executive suite and boardroom that there is still a need for sound business practices. Those basics include a full understanding of how the company operates, how the supply chain works, where research and development have their focus, and how sales and marketing function within the company. At the same time, Ram Charan recognizes the need for understanding the customer as vital to the company’s survival and future profitability.

I highly recommend the essential guide to managing in difficult times Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times by Ram Charan, to anyone seeking a better understanding of the need for both vision and bold action in the time of crisis. The advice for not only surviving an economic downturn but thriving is both practical and easy for any leader to apply.

Read the valuable and inspirational book Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times by Ram Charan, and discover not only the importance of taking bold action, but how to put a vision in place and carrying it out successfully. In today’s difficult economic environment, this book is a must read for business leaders in companies of all sizes and in every industry.

Girl on Top

Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success

By: Nicole Williams>

Published: October 12, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 208 pages
ISBN: 9781599951928
Publisher: Center Street

“I’ve come to believe that just like in our relationships, loving your career has a lot to do with your expectations – ultimately you get the love (and the career) you think you deserve”, writes best selling author and WORKS founder Nicole Williams, in her witty and insightful book on career management
Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success. The author turns the famous dating book The Rules upside down, as she applies that famous dating advice for women, to finding and succeeding in a dream career.

Nicole Williams pulls no punches as she shares the secrets to navigating the often treacherous waters of finding the right career. Her advice for women is described in terms of dating terms. By using that clever analogy, she compares seeking the perfect career with finding the right life partner. She begins with the comparison to finding the right job with the dating scene. Her three overall steps for both romance and careers are courting, dating, and marriage. Her dating and employment parallels work well, as she expands on each stage with an even more detailed use of The Rules, in avoiding the many pitfalls that can befall the unwary woman.

Nicole Williams (photo left) provides career planning and management advice that is both timely and relevant. With wit, and her characteristic sense of flair, the author demonstrates that the same mistakes that can derail a romance or marriage, can also stop a woman’s career advancement in its tracks. Whether she writes about making sure that a woman conveys the proper image, gains respect of her peers and superiors, or gets the pay she deserves, the advice is presented with an edge that makes the concepts memorable. The romance comparison not only creates an easy to remember and understand set of rules for employment, but the author helps women step outside the rigid ideas of career management. In its place, she creates an alternative system for assessing a job, and whether its the right place for a woman to spend years of employment.

For me, the power of the book is how Nicole Williams took the well known concept of The Rules for women and romance, and turned them around to work in the world of work. The combining of the two concepts of romance and careers is a powerful one on many levels. Not only are both romance and employment about finding the right life partner, but they are also about the strength and depth of the commitment by both parties to making the arrangement work for everyone. The same mistakes that can end a romance or marriage can also destroy a career, leaving everyone devastated and often lost. Changing jobs is very often as stressful and as difficult as ending any other relationship. This book serves as a powerful guide for women to avoid mistakes and keeping their careers on course.

I highly recommend the perceptive and insightful book
Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success by Nicole Williams, to any woman seeking to discover a practical and easy to follow guide to finding and developing a successful career. Just as their are right and wrong dating partners, there are also places of employment that are not suitable to every woman.

Read the step by step guide to a successful career
Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success by Nicole Williams, and put the time proven dating advice to work in finding and building the career of your dreams. This lighthearted, but hard hitting book can turn a boring and mediocre career into am exciting and fulfilling love affair for life.

Just Good Business

The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand

By: Kellie McElhaney

Published: November 2008
Format: Hardcover, 216pp
ISBN-13: 9781576754412
ISBN-10: 1576754413
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

“I believe that corporate responsibility, along with being just good business, can also help to provide and repair something that’s desperately lacking in our world today: hope”, writes Faculty Director of the Center for Responsible Business at the University of California, Berkeley, Kellie McElhaney, in her highly practical and visionary book Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand. The author builds a powerful case for creating and implementing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, and for communicating that plan to all of the company’s stakeholders.

Kellie McElhaney recognizes that many companies are already using a CSR strategy, but at the same time they are failing to communicate that plan both within their organization to their employees, to their shareholders, vendors, and customers. The author stresses the critical importance of companies understanding the growing gap in the general public’s perception of corporate social responsibility, and the reality of increased corporate activity. The public expects companies to behave as good corporate citiens, but at the same time, has diminishing trust in corporations to act in a socially responsible manner. Many companies adopting a CSR strategy do so defensibly, out of fear of public outcry and backlash. While the author has no concerns about why a company establishes a CSR strategy, the key is to develop a plan that includes positive benefits for branding, differentiation, and for stakeholders.

Kellie McElhaney (photo left) describes a process for developing a CSR strategy that includes all stakeholders in the organization that also gets top management commitment. Once senior management makes a public declaration of support for corporate social responsibility, the strategy can be devised that accommodates the company’s core competencies and overall business goals, and aligns their CSR goals with those of their brand. A completed CSR strategy, integrated with their corporate governance, can then have performance metrics and measurements of effectiveness built into the program. A strong, well defined CSR strategy can become part of the corporate culture, and provide a benchmark for all corporate planning.

For me, the power of the book is how Kellie McElhaney combines the theoretical reasons for developing a CSR strategy, with a practical approach to creating and implementing that overall plan. The connection between the CSR strategy and the goals of brand enhancement and differentiation, have a solid bottom line value for the company. At the same time, the author’s emphasis on the importance of communicating the corporate CSR strategy to all company stakeholders, is critical to its success. The book provides an easy to follow road map to developing, implementing, and communicating a CSR strategy. The author also shares ideas for creating performance metrics and benchmarks for assessing the overall success of the CSR initiative.

I highly recommend the important and company transformational book Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand by Kellie McElhaney, to anyone seeking a workable approach to developing a CSR strategy that is aligned with a company’s brand and core competencies. Discover how to create a CSR plan that works for everyone both inside and outside of the company.

Read the essential guide book Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand by Kellie McElhaney, and develop and apply a workable CSR strategy that gains commitment from top management and all company stakeholders, that can be communicated effectively to customers and the general public. The result will be an enhanced corporate reputation and greater profitability.

Getting to Resolution, Second Edition

Turning Conflict Into Collaboration

By: Stewart Levine

Published: November 2009
Format: Paperback, 288 pages
ISBN: 9781576757710
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

“Resolution is much better than settling! Resolution provides relief and completeness”, writes the Founder of Resolution Works Stewart Levine, in his definitive second edition to his classic visinary book Getting to Resolution, Second Edition: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration. The author presents a powerful alternative system, for achieving a collaborative win-win solution for resolving conflict, that replaces the costly and unproductive adversarial model.

Stewart Levine understands the true costs of an adversarial paradigm for conflict resolution. He describes how not seeking resolution, and resorting to compromise or giving in to the other party, leads to resentment. The unsatisfactory solution doesn’t result in closure or healing for either party, but induce suffering instead. In place of the win-lose concept, the author offers a powerful collaborative system, where all parties work together to ensure that everyone is satisfied and benefits from the solution. The costs of failure to resolve an issue can be monetary, loss of time, lost productivity, and damaged personal relationships. As Stewart Levine points out, these very real costs represent a loss and suffering for the parties involved, for the business, and for society as a whole.

Stewart Levine (photo left) recognizes that modern society, from the polarized world of partisan politics to the litigation that overwhelms the legal system, are based on letting others handle conflicts. The author also understands that this impersonal approach to solving issues fails as the professionals don’t have to live with the outcomes of their settlements. They also do little to rebuild personal relationships. In their place, Stewart Levine proposes taking personal responsibility for searching for cooperative and mutually beneficial resolutions. He calls this creative and collaborative paradigm as thinking in a “resolutionary” way. When the parties take this forward thinking approach, common ground is discovered, and very often an unexpected and satisfactory resolution is achieved. By removing the adversarial mindset, and replacing it with a spirit of trust and resolution, then the relationship can be rebuilt and strengthened.

For me, the power of the book is how Stewart Levine combines the theory of why resolution is important, with a powerful and practical system that can be used in any situation. The hands on approach to resolution, presented in the book, includes ten principles of resolutionary thinking, resulting in a sea change in a person’s way of thinking and approaching conflict. Once those ten concepts are internalized, the person no longer sees the issues in a adversarial, win-lose way. In their place is a collaborative and creative system, based on personal responsibility and change in cultural outlook. As a companion to the ten theoretical principles, the author outlines seven workable steps as the crafting of a resolutionary agreement. By understanding the steps, and their application, the approach can be applied to any conflict situation, regardless of its complexity.

I highly recommend the visionary guide Getting to Resolution, Second Edition: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration by Stewart Levine, to anyone in business, government, the professions, or in personal mediation, who is seeking a more productive and conversational method of resolving conflict. Anyone who desires a move beyond the traditional and often damaging adversarial technique of problem solving will be rewarded many times over by this important book. The new way of thinking about conflict resolution is well suited to the times, and is on the leading edge of modern paradigm shifts in finding satisfactory outcomes.

Read the indispensable conflict resolution book Getting to Resolution, Second Edition: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration by Stewart Levine, and change your entire way of thinking about conflict. In place of the outdated, and costly current system, discover how a resolutionary approach will lead to happier results, more functional business cultures, and stronger personal relationships.

The Ethical Executive

Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To

By: Robert Hoyk, Paul Hersey

Published: October 2008
Format: Hardcover, 152 pp
ISBN-10: 0804759650
ISBN-13: 9780804759656
Publisher: Stanford University Press

“The vast majority of people care about ethics, but are vulnerable to the traps described in this book. Good intentions are not enough to combat these forty-five traps”, write ethics and leadership experts Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, in their practical and eye opening book The Ethical Executive: Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To. The authors describe how ordinary people are capable of important errors in judgment that lead to serious breeches of ethical behavior.

Robert Hoyk (photo left) and Paul Hersey recognize that even people with a strong moral and ethical sense can fall victim to some very unethical activities in the course of doing their jobs. With the wrong situational dilemma placed before an ethical employee, there are very often powerful reasons for failing to do the right thing. The authors describe in detail how these ethical traps are created and how otherwise upright people can start down a very very wrong path. Unlike many books on business ethics, this fine book doesn’t focus on ethical failure as being based on profit maximization, market pressure, or failure to comply with various laws and statutes. Instead, the authors believe the are the result of social and psychological influences.

Paul Hersey (photo left) and Robert Hoyk describe these forty-five ethical traps as falling into three major groups:

Primary Traps: The ethical failures are externally driven and involve the employee in taking action that would normally be outside of that person’s ethical range. The employee often feels like there is little option but to follow the unethical path in these situations

Defensive Traps: These failures of ethics are usually attempts to reverse a previous ethical transgression. The action may have been the result of guilt or shame resulting from a personal issue or weakness.

Personality Traps: The ethical breeches result from deep seated personality issues that lead the employee to commit unethical actions. These ethical failures are all the result of internal issues.

For me, the power of the book is how Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey take a practical approach to understanding the various causes of the forty-five ethical traps. The authors also provide experimental results to verify how and why each ethical problem takes place. The three major categories of ethical dilemmas, help the reader to identify the cause and course of each ethical issue, before it happens. Through the identification of the potential problem a company and its employees are able to avoid being ensnared by one or more of the ethical traps. The authors also point out the critical insight that executives who commit unethical actions are not evil people, but are average everyday people who succumbed to the temptation of the ethical traps.

I highly recommend the timeless and thought provoking book The Ethical Executive: Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, to anyone seeking to understand why ethical failures occur, how to predict when and how they may arise, and how to prevent ethical dilemmas from happening in an organization. This understanding of the forces that create ethical issues will build mutual trust between employees and all of the stakeholders of the organization.

Read the essential book The Ethical Executive: Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, and discover the underlying social and psychological reasons why executives fall into ethical traps. Armed with that knowledge, you can foresee dangerous ethical situations in advance, and prevent them ever taking place. This book will help your company build a solid ethical foundation.