Encouraging our clients to read
books has always been an integral part of our business. As a result, we’d like
to periodically share 10 books that we feel should be included in your business
and/or personal library. These books are not listed in order of sales,
popularity, or recommendation. The numbers are used only for reference purposes.
#1
Eat That Frog!
21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating
and Get More Done In Less Time
by Brian Tracy
It’s been said for many years
that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you
can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is
probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.
It’s also been said, "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest
one first." Your "frog" is your biggest, most important task,
the one you are most likely to put off. This analogy is just one of
many concepts targeted by best-selling author Brian Tracy in his latest
book, Eat That Frog.
You probably know him as one of America’s leading authorities on
the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. We’ve
previously reviewed his best-selling books
Maximum Achievement and
The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success. You
may be a proud owner of his best-selling audiocassette program
The Psychology of Achievement.
Now he shares the very best ideas and insights on time management
in this very fast read, rich in practical advice in the form of twenty-one
logical, immediately applicable steps. Each chapter provides specific
exercises you can use to implement Tracy’s advice immediately to see
the results for yourself.
#2
Keeping Good People
Strategies for Solving the #1 Problem Facing Business Today
by Roger E. Herman
Sounds like a pretty simple title, doesn’t
it? So’s the book. It’s a very easy read as it’s written in conversational
style by the recognized visionary author Roger Herman. He originally
published this book in 1990 and it was featured by two book clubs and
published in four languages. It has truly become a classic in the field.
With 100 pages added to the original, this volume is the first major
expansion and update of the popular guide.
Herman’s Table of Contents reads better than many books I’ve seen
on the subject of employee retention. You’ll have a hard time putting
this book down. Learn what good employees are looking for today and
why they decide to leave an organization.
Choose from 195 strategies divided into 5 key areas including: Environmental
Strategies, Relationship Strategies, Support Strategies, Growth Strategies,
and Compensation Strategies. Understand why employee turnover is high
today and will be higher in the future. Discover the five principal
reasons workers leave their jobs. Take a sneak peek at the Corporation
of the Future and learn the key aspects of behavior styles and leadership
styles. This masterpiece is a very valuable tool for individual learning
or group training.
#3
Workforce Stability
Your Competitive Edge (How to Attract, Optimize, and Hold Your Best
Employees)
by Roger E. Herman & Joyce L. Gioia
He’s back ... Roger E. Herman. This is
the third book we’ve reviewed by this highly respected Certified Management
Consultant. The reason, of course, is quite obvious. He writes great
books that we think deserve your attention. He has his thumb on the
pulse of what’s happening in the area of attracting and retaining the
best possible workforce available today.
In this book, Roger joins forces with another very highly respected
CMC, Joyce L. Gioia, and the Fellows of The Workforce Stability Institute
— a not-for-profit education and research organization. Here is your
opportunity to capitalize on the knowledge, experience, and research
of some of the most respected consultants and authors in the field of
human resources.
It would take far too much time and space to detail the useful content
of this offering. However, to provide you with a flavor of its diverse
information, let me share a few subject areas ... Our Changing Workforce,
the Strategic Staffing Process, Selection Tools and Their Applications,
Recruiting the Best, Performance-Based Interviews, Computer-Aided Job
Analysis and Selection, Orientation and Bonding, Career Development
as a Retention and Succession Planning Tool, Training for Retention,
Inspiring Front-Line Workers, Internal Marketing, and Recognition for
Performance and Retention. If you can say you don’t have a challenge
or a concern in one of these areas or you wouldn’t be interested in
some terrific guidelines and strategies in these areas, you should consider
penning your own best seller. Until then, add this one to your bookshelf.
#4
Lean and Meaningful
A New Culture for Corporate America
by Roger E. Herman & Joyce L. Gioia
The dynamic duo strikes again! Roger
and Joyce join forces here to describe the next generation of corporate
culture in America. Demographic and economic shifts are changing the
face of Corporate America and enlightened organizations are learning
that they must reduce the "fat" and provide meaningful employment
to their workers.
The corporation of the future will look dramatically different than
today’s concept — structurally and conceptually. We’ve known for quite
some time now that "If you always do what you always did, you’ll
always get what you always got." Obviously, that simply won’t cut
it today. Have you developed a strategy to prepare your organization
for the "new look"? If not, start bench-marking today within these pages.
A wide range of trends is explored, explained, and illustrated with
examples of what over 200 companies, both large and small, and governmental
agencies, city and state, are already doing.
If you’re ready to prepare your organization for future success,
this book will give you insights, ideas, resources, and action plans
to help you make a meaningful difference.
#5
Topgrading
How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best
People
by Bradford D. Smart, Ph.D.
THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED.
Those predisposed to protect "dead wood" will take issue with the basic
underlying philosophy of this book. Those who, way down deep, would
sooner see an organization die than nudge a hopelessly incompetent person
out of a job, should not read this book. This person is probably not
an A player, will not become an A player, will not want to hire A players,
will not want to coach people to become A players, has difficulty retaining
A players, and does not belong in a premier, topgraded organization.
Topgrading is for A players and all those aspiring to be A players.
The author defines Topgrading as the practice of filling every position
in the organization with an A player, at the appropriate compensation
level. A player is defined as the top 10% of talent available
at all salary levels— best of class. He believes that great companies
are made, not born. The secret is hiring the right people—the "A"
players. This is, of course, easier said than done. Statistically, 1/2
of all employment situations result in a mis-hire: the wrong person
for the wrong job. And with the cost of a mis-hire at 24 times salary,
the financial drain can be staggering.
This 400+ page book is a compilation of insights and advice based
on more than 4,000 career case studies ... first-hand, exhaustive interviews
of successful managers’ entire careers. The tools and strategies offered
here come from 27 years of working with dozens of organizations, many
premier in their industries.
Discover a silver-bullet assessment technique, the Chronological
In-Depth Structured (CIDS) interview. CIDS can boost your hiring success
rate from 50% to 90% or better. It’s not perfect, but close enough that
it permitted entire companies to topgrade in one year, replacing players
with almost all A players and a few Bs. If you attempt to topgrade and
your batting average in replacing C players is only .500, you will fail.
CIDS is not just desirable, but necessary in assuring that you replace
Cs with As.
I could go on and on describing the useful contents of Topgrading
but I fear you’d break a leg racing to the bookstore. Walk slow. Read
fast. You need this one.
#6
The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success
by Brian Tracy
I’ll be short with this one. For over
30 years, Brian Tracy has been teaching the world about business success
via his best-selling books and audio tapes. This book is the bottom-line,
cut-to-the-chase, keep-it-simple success guide. Here is a set of principles
or "universal laws" that lie behind the success of business people in
every kind of enterprise, large and small. These are natural laws and
they work everywhere and for everyone, virtually without exception.
Every year, thousands of companies underperform or even fail, and millions
of individuals underachieve, frustrated by thwarted ambition and dreams
— all because they either attempted to violate or did not know these
universal laws. However, ignorance of the law is no excuse!
Tracy breaks the 100 laws into eight major categories: Life, Success,
Business, Leadership, Money, Selling, Negotiating, and Time Management.
He not only identifies and defines each, he also:
-
Reveals its foundation, whether in science, nature, philosophy,
or common sense;
-
Provides real-life examples that show how it functions in the world;
and
-
Shows how to apply it to your life and work through specific questions
and practical steps and exercises that anyone can use—sometimes
in just minutes—to begin the journey toward greater success.
Brian Tracy has done it again and you’ll want to take advantage of
it a.s.a.p.
#7
The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders
by Warren Blank
The myth of "born leaders" has been with
us for decades. However, that myth misses an important fact: the qualities
great leaders display are waiting in all of us to be discovered, developed,
and magnified. No one is actually born a leader. Anyone can become one.
All you need is to master the specific set of skills people commonly
associate with so-called "natural born" leaders.
Included in this book is a Self-Assessment Inventory which you can
you to ascertain which skills are most in need of improvement. You must
know where you are before you can determine where you need to go.
Warren Blank’s work identifies the 108 specific traits that typically
cause others to see people as natural born leaders. The Self-Assessment
Inventory allows you to match up to that common portrait. The book then
provides strategies and methods for developing your strengths and improving
on your weaknesses.
With examples ranging from Franklin D. Roosevelt to G.E.’s Jack Welch,
this book illustrates that leadership qualities fall into three basic
categories: Foundational Skills (such as self-awareness), Direction
Skills (including the ability to set a course and develop others as
leaders), and Willing Follower Skills (such as the ability to influence
others and create a motivating environment). The ongoing theme is the
simple fact that everything you need to become a leader is right inside
of you. This book will help you let your own "natural" skills blossom.
#8
The Customer Revolution
How to Thrive when Customers are in Control
by Patricia B. Seybold
For most companies, the issue of customers in charge is just coming
onto the radar screen. For many, it was over before they had an inkling.
Patricia Seybold, author of the influential, best-selling
Customers.com, makes it plain in her most recent offering, that
this can be either your biggest problem or your greatest opportunity.
Thanks to the Internet and mobile wireless devices, both business
and consumer customers are demanding that you change your pricing structure,
distribution channels, and the way you design and deliver products and
services. Your business must be transformed so that it is completely
customer-centric, or you will be out of business.
You can fight it if you want but you’re better off, says the author,
to practice "sweet surrender," just as the music industry has started
to come to terms with Napster. Many try to characterize the changes
taking place as the New Economy, the Internet Economy, or the information,
knowledge, or bio-economy. However, simply put, what we now have is
a customer economy and it’s going to result in changes that you would
not have thought possible even a few short years ago.
Seybold has been on a worldwide quest to find companies in North
America, Europe, and Asia that are developing the state-of-the-art practices
that will help them win in the new area of the customer economy. They’re
profiled and analyzed in case studies ranging from small businesses
to multinational giants and range from manufacturers to retailers, and
service firms. What she provides is not only a brilliant analysis but
also a practical program for how you can make the customer revolution
a profitable one. The companies that thrive in the customer revolution
will be those that measure and monitor what matters to customers, in
near real time!
#9
Contented Cows Give Better Milk
The Plain Truth about Employee Relations and Your Bottom Line
by Bill Catlette & Richard Hadden
Here we have another cute title designed
to grab our attention in order to deliver a "simple as dirt" concept:
A person’s degree of satisfaction with their work situation is entirely
and directly related to their output. If this concept is so simple,
why aren’t more leaders taking advantage of it? Business bookshelves
and boardrooms are cluttered with the all too predictable and easy prescriptions
for empowerment, restructuring, and the like. Consultants are readily
available to assist you in this all important undertaking. It really
comes down to a personal decision. You either act or you don’t.
This book provides you with inspiring examples of companies that
have made the decision to act ... and a few who haven’t.
Learn just what it is that permits one organization to achieve unprecedented
levels of success over a substantial period of time while a nearly identical
competitor is going down the tube. How for example, could Southwest
Airlines achieve 23 consecutive years of record revenues and profits
while TWA, Continental, Pam Am, Eastern, Braniff and others all around
them were hemorrhaging red ink?
It’s no accident that the organizations consistently identified as
winners also happen to be some of the best places on earth to work.
This occurs not as an afterthought, but as a vital, premeditated element
of business strategy.
It’s a message that would doubtless be echoed by generations of dairy
farmers. Contented cows give better milk!
#10
Get Weird!
101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work
by John Putzier
Here we go again! Cute title, large number
of suggestions, but same bottom line message ... you’d better start concentrating
on how to make your company a great place to work. If you don’t, your
employees will find such a place elsewhere. Workplace performance expert,
John Putzier, offers a goldmine of ideas for attracting and retaining
the best talent available.
He has managed to compile an incredible array of unusual yet theoretically
sounds tips, tools, and techniques for today’s managers. The majority
of his ideas are fast, easy to implement, inexpensive, and very unique.
By changing the very tone and culture of your company, you can enhance
employee morale, creative thinking and productivity — thus creating
that magnetic environment that will attract and retain today’s most
productive talent.
