Amazon.com updates its list of the bestselling business books every hour. Here is a snapshot of what is hot right now, this Monday morning, November 17, in the “Management and Leadership” category.
1. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
You probably don’t realize it, but life is a series of highly improbable yet earthshaking events. That’s the argument of The Black Swan, which in many ways is a re-do of the author’s 2001 best-seller, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
. The highly entertaining new book, though, is longer, better-grounded, and with more advice about how to live in the presence of deep unpredictability. The core of The Black Swan argues that economists, journalists, and corporate planners behave as if they’re living in predictable “Mediocristan” when they’re really in “Extremistan.” It’s a richly enjoyable read with an important message.
2. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths
by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.
3. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
by Jim Collins. The author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
, Collins concludes that it is possible for a good company to become a great company, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11–including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo–and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success.
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey. A groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, this book continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges. This isn’t a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you’ll want to study this book, not skim it.
5. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
by Geoff Colvin. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness. The skills of business—negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest—obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort.
6. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.
7. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
by Daniel H. Pink. Just as information workers surpassed physical laborers in economic importance, Pink claims, the workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right brain qualities. His advocacy of “R-directed thinking” begins with a bit of neuroscience tourism to a brain lab that will be extremely familiar to those who read Steven Johnson’s Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
last year, but while Johnson was fascinated by the brain’s internal processes, Pink is more concerned with how certain skill sets can be harnessed effectively in the dawning “Conceptual Age.” The second half of the book details the six “senses” Pink identifies as crucial to success in the new economy-design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning-while “portfolio” sections offer practical (and sometimes whimsical) advice on how to cultivate these skills within oneself.
8. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
by Timothy Ferriss. Ferriss isn’t shy about tooting his own horn: He says he “speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in kickboxing, and an actor in a hit television series in Hong Kong.” Is this the sort of person you really want to be taking advice from? Anyway, Ferris offers recommendations and resources for everything from eliminating wasted time to oursourcing your job and getting cheap airfare. Discover your dreams and live them!
9. Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books)
by Peter D. Schiff and John Downes. The country has gone from the world’s largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down – and these trends don’t seem to be slowing. This book is a warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even – as happened recently in Argentina – the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.
10. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
by Seth Godin. This newest book by the author of Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
argues that lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea. Smart innovators find or assemble a movement of similarly minded individuals and get the tribe excited by a new product, service or message, often via the Internet (consider, for example, the popularity of the Obama campaign, Facebook or Twitter). Tribes, Godin says, can be within or outside a corporation, and almost everyone can be a leader; most are kept from realizing their potential by fear of criticism and fear of being wrong. The book’s helpful nuggets are buried beneath esoteric case studies and multiple reiterations: we can be leaders if we want, tribes are the way of the future and change is good.
11. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.
12. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter. Robert Kiyosaki reveals how he developed his unique economic perspective from his two fathers: his real father, who was highly educated but fiscally poor; and the father of his best friend – an eighth-grade drop-out who became a self-made multi-millionaire. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his “poor dad” pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his “rich dad”. Taking that message to heart, Kiyosaki was able to retire at the age of 47. This book lays out his philosophy and aims to open readers eyes by: exploding the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich; challenging the belief that your house is an asset; showing parents why they can’t rely on schools to teach their children about money; defining once and for all an asset versus a liability; and explaining what to teach your children about money for their future financial success.
13. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell. “The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life,” writes Gladwell, “is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, the book has quite a few interesting twists on the subject. For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a “Connector”: he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere “wasn’t just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston,” he was also a “Maven” who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day–think of how often you’ve received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you. Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the “stickiness” of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes.
14. Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life
by Jack Bogle. The author advocates moderation, balance, and integrity in the business world. Bogle, the folk-hero creator of the first index mutual fund and founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group, deplores ‘our worship of wealth and the growing corruption of our professional ethics but ultimately the subversion of our character and values.’ Directly in his sights: CEOs and hedge-fund managers who draw ‘obscene’ compensation. At this time of plunging portfolios, it is a relief to be told that ‘enough’ is within reach.
15. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. Are there things you do that have helped you succeed so far, but that how have your career idling in neutral? Executive coach Goldsmith identifies 20 such ways of behaving, from an obsessive need to show how smart you are to a habit of withholding information. The authors also provide a program to help you change your irritating ways. But will this stuff really help you get ahead? Let’s put it this way: Don’t pass up any chances to marry the boss’s daughter.
