Amazon.com updates its list of the bestselling books every hour. Here is a snapshot of what is hot right now, this Monday morning, May 17, in the “Organizational Behavior” section of the “Business and Investing” category.
1.Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
contend that our minds are ruled by two different systems — the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort — but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people — employees and managers, parents and nurses — have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results.
2. Liar’s Poker
by Michael Lewis. A behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, this is an insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.
3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey. A new edition of the author’s principles for solving problems.
4. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box
by The Arbinger Institute. Uses a parable about an executive facing challenges at work and at home to expose the precise psychological processes that conceal our true motivations and intentions from us and trap us in a “box” of endless self-justification. The book’s central insight is that the key to leadership lays not in what we do, but in who we are.
5. The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
by by Michael Watkins. Whether challenged with taking on a startup, turning a business around, or inheriting a high-performing unit, a new leader’s success or failure is determined within the first 90 days on the job. This hands-on guide offers proven strategies for moving successfully into a new role at any point in one’s career.
6. Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements
by Tom Rath. The author of StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths
, gives ideas for boosting your wellbeing in each of these five areas: career wellbeing, social wellbeing, financial wellbeing, physical wellbeing, and community wellbeing.
7. The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition
by James M. Kouzes. In the 1980s and again in the ’90s, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner published The Leadership Challenge to address issues they uncovered in research on ordinary people achieving “individual leadership standards of excellence.” The keys they identified–model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, encourage the heart–have now been reexamined in the context of the post-millennium world and updated.
8. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox. Alex Rogo manages a failing manufacturing plant. When his district manager tells him that profits must increase or the plant will be closed, Alex turns to Jonah, a former professor. With the help of the enigmatic Jonah and the plant staff, Alex turns the plant around while at the same time abandoning many management principles he previously thought were ironclad.
9. Leading Change
by John P. Kotter. The methods managers have used in the attempt to transform their companies into stronger competitors — total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds — routinely fall short, says Kotter, because they fail to alter behavior. This book identifies an eight-step process that every company must go through to acheive its goal, and shows where and how people — good people — often derail.
10. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck . The authors describe the building blocks–leaders with the right behaviors, a culture that rewards execution, and a reliable system for having the right people in the right jobs–that need to be in place to manage the three core business processes of people, strategy, and operations. Both Bossidy, CEO of Honeywell International, Inc., and Charan, advisor to corporate executives and author of such books as What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works
and Boards That Deliver: Advancing Corporate Governance From Compliance to Competitive Advantage
, present experience-tested insight into how the smooth linking of these three processes can differentiate one company from the rest.
