andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

People Tools For Business

people-tools-for-business


People Tools For Business: 50 Strategies for Building Success, Creating Wealth, and Finding Happiness
by Alan C. Fox

Alan C. Fox writes with the tone of a grandfather sharing lessons learned “in business and in life,” drawing from more than forty-five years of experience as a lawyer and commercial real estate investor. There are 50 brief chapters.

Fox shares a great metaphor explaining the difference between a short-term transactional attitude and a long-term relationship building approach. “Not every sales call, or every contact, results in a sale. And each sale does not always produce a profit. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that compared the American style of business to the Asian model. Americans were described as hunters, with the goal of making as much profit as possible from a single kill. The Asian model was more like farming—cultivating the fields of their business relationships.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The B Corp Handbook

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The B Corp Handbook: How to Use Business as a Force for Good
by Ryan Honeyman

What is a B Corp? B Corporations are for-profit organizations which serve a variety of stakeholders rather than to enrich shareholders exclusively. Stakeholders include employees, the community, the environment, as well as the firm’s owners. B stands for benefit.

The term applies in two contexts: Certified B Corps and a form of incorporation offered by several U.S. states. The majority of this book is about the former. The latter is addressed at the end of this summary.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference

the-power-of-small


The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference
by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

You may not be familiar with their names, but you are probably familiar with the authors’ work. They are the founding partners of the Kaplan Thaler Group, the advertising agency responsible for the Aflac duck campaign. One of them wrote the “I want to be a Toys R Us Kid” jingle earlier in her career. Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval previously wrote The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness.

This book is about paying attention to little things which have a big impact.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Good Business

good-business-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi


Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934-2021)

Good Business is about enjoyment of work and productivity. It is based on the author’s research on flow, the psychology of optimal experience.

Flow is “a deep sense of enjoyment.” To be fully engaged in a state of flow, one must be skilled and challenged. “Basically, the more a person feels skilled, the more her moods will improve; while the more challenges that are present, the more her attention will become focused and concentrated.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Power Questions

power-questions


Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others
by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas

“You’ve heard about people who talk too much. You never heard about a person who listens too much.”

Power Questions is about the productive use of questions in a variety of contexts. Co-authors Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas are experts on client loyalty and fundraising, respectively.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The Power of Nice

the-power-of-nice


The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness
by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

You may not be familiar with the authors’ names, but you are probably familiar with their work. They are the founding partners of the advertising agency responsible for the Aflac duck campaign.  One of them wrote the “I want to be a Toys R Us Kid” jingle earlier in her career.

Their message is that being nice (but not phony) in personal and professional encounters builds goodwill, which can lead to big and small rewards.  Many examples are included in the book.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The Balance Myth

the-balance-myth


The Balance Myth: Rethinking Work-Life Success
by Teresa A. Taylor

Teresa Taylor is a former COO of a Qwest Communications. She writes about how she navigated her career while also juggling the demands of her personal life as a wife and mother of two boys.  As the title implies, she found that “trying to achieve this mythical ‘balance’ simply causes us endless frustration.” She uses layers of clothing as an analogy. You can add or remove layers to adapt to changing circumstances. “Thinking in layers allows you to integrate your work and your personal time to create one life and one family.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Confessions of an Accidental Businessman

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Confessions of an Accidental Businessman: It Takes a Lifetime to Find Wisdom
by James A. Autry

James Autry worked his way up from copy editor of Better Homes and Gardens to president of the magazine division. This memoir gets off to a slow start talking about his childhood and military service, but it gets more interesting when he starts to focus on his publishing career.

There are some memorable lines in this book:

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management, Psychology & Neuroscience

What Keeps Leaders Up at Night

what-keeps-leaders-up-at-night


What Keeps Leaders Up at Night: Recognizing and Resolving Your Most Troubling Management Issues
by Nicole Lipkin

In this excellent book, clinical psychologist Nicole Lipkin explains the psychology behind many of the human behaviors that affect productivity and sound decision making in the workplace. “Good leadership requires dealing effectively with messy, quirky, unpredictable, confusing, irrational, and clumsy people. That is what makes the business of leadership so insanely difficult and complex.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The One Thing

the-one-thing


The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan

This book is about finding your focus and making it your top priority in order to achieve extraordinary results.  Identifying your focus comes from asking The Focusing Question: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”

“The Focusing Question is a double-duty question. It comes in two forms: big picture and small focus. One is about finding the right direction in life and the other is about finding the right action.”

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