andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The No Asshole Rule


The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t
by Robert I. Sutton

Assholes create a toxic work environment, destroying productivity. Sutton introduces the Total Cost of Assholes (TCA) metric. In the case of a salesman named Ethan, the cost was estimated at $160,000, including time spent by Ethan’s manager, HR professionals, senior executives, outside counsel, as well as the costs related to high turnover of support staff.

Sutton warns not to hire wimps and polite clones. “A series of controlled experiments and field studies in organizations show that when teams engage in conflict over ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect, they develop better ideas and perform better. For this reason, Intel requires all new employees to take “constructive confrontation class.”

Sutton, Robert I. The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. New York: Business Plus, 2010. Buy from Amazon.com

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

andreweverett360 Book Review, Health

The Innovator’s Prescription


The Innovator’s Prescription
by Clayton Christensen, Jerome H Grossman M.D., and Jason Hwang M.D

Building on the framework of disruptive innovation presented in his prior book The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen and two medical doctors present a vision for how to make the American health care system “higher in quality, lower in cost, and more conveniently accessible to all.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Creativity

The Innovator’s Dilemma

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The Innovator’s Dilemma
by Clayton Christensen

Why have many once market-leading companies failed to stay relevant?  It would be easy to assume that they had stagnant engineers or complacent management, but Clayton Christensen concludes otherwise: “Because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.”

How is that possible? The key is to understand the distinction between sustaining and disruptive innovation.  Large companies are good are sustaining innovation—product improvements demanded by existing customers.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Crime & Law Enforcement

Turnaround


Turnaround: How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic
by William J. Bratton

I think of Turnaround as a management book by a highly-accomplished chief executive (police) officer. The book reads like an autobiography, from Bill Bratton’s childhood in Boston, until after his falling out with Rudy Guiliani. Through his experiences, I learned a lot about police work and his management style

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Writing

Words That Work


Words That Work: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear
By Dr. Frank Luntz

Frank Luntz is a communication strategist for corporate and political clients. Although he’s done a lot of work for Republicans (including the Contract with America) this is not a book about political ideology. It’s about persuasive communication in political campaigns, product marketing, and labor disputes.

Words that work do not happen by chance. Luntz uses market research techniques (polls, focus groups, dial sessions) to test how audiences respond.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Marketing

The Thank You Economy


The Thank You Economy
by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Thank You Economy is about connecting with customers through social media, but it is not a book about Facebook, Twitter, or any other specific technology.  It’s about creating a culture of caring relationships, like when your great-grandmother shopped with local merchants. Those relationships disappeared as the economy evolved from mom-and-pop shopkeepers to big box stores, but social media offers a means of restoring that human touch in a scalable way.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

18 Minutes


18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done
by Peter Bregman

Peter Bregman writes, “The world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity.”  18 Minutes is a book about choosing your priorities and getting things done.

The author suggests finding your focus based on your strengths, weaknesses, differences, and passions. “Assert your differences… Don’t waste your year trying to blend in… Understand your obsessions and you will understand your natural motivation.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Writing

Lapsing Into a Comma


Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print—and How to Avoid Them
by Bill Walsh

The Internet and print-on-demand technology have enabled almost everyone to become a publisher. In traditional media, professional journalists and authors have their writing cleaned up by copy editors before it is published. The average blogger does not have this luxury.  In Lapsing Into a Comma, Bill Walsh shares his advice on how to handle many common problems that he has encountered as copy editor of the business section at the Washington Post.

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