Business Books - Page 6

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

John Medina

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know--such as the brain's need for physical activity to work at its best.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains?

In Brain Rules, molecular biologist Dr. John Medina shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule--what scientists know for sure about how our brains work--and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.

Medina's fascinating stories and sense of humor breathe life into brain science. You'll learn why Michael Jordan was no good at baseball. You'll peer over a surgeon's shoulder as he finds, to his surprise, that we have a Jennifer Aniston neuron. You'll meet a boy who has an amazing memory for music but can't tie his own shoes.

You will discover how:

- Every brain is wired differently
- Exercise improves cognition
- We are designed to never stop learning and exploring
- Memories are volatile
- Sleep is powerfully linked with the ability to learn
- Vision trumps all of the other senses
- Stress changes the way we learn

In the end, you'll understand how your brain really works--and how to get the most out of it.

About the DVD The Brain Rules DVD, included with this book, is a lively tour of the 12 brain rules. You will experience firsthand Medina's rare gift for making science fun, accessible, and relevant. The DVD will take your understanding of the book to the next level.

The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke

Suze Orman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 246 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A financial guide aimed squarely at "Generation Debt'-and their anxious parents-from the country's most trusted and dynamic source on money matters

The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke is financial expert Suze Orman's answer to a generation's cry for help. They're called "Generation Debt" and "Generation Broke" by the media-people in their twenties and thirties who graduate from college with a mountain of student loan debt and are stuck with one of the weakest job markets in recent history. The goals of their parents' generation-buy a house, support a family, send kids to college, retire in style-seem absurdly, depressingly out of reach. They live off their credit cards, may or may not have health insurance, and come up so far short at the end of the month that the idea of saving money is a joke. This generation has it tough, without a doubt, but they're also painfully aware of the urgent need to take matters into their own hands.

The Money Book was written to address the specific financial reality that young people face today, and it offers a set of real, not impossible, solutions to the problems at hand and the problems ahead. Concisely, pragmatically, and without a whiff of condescension,

Suze Orman tells her young, fabulous & broke readers precisely what actions to take and why. Throughout these pages, icons direct readers to a special YF&B domain on Suze's website that offers more specialized information, forms, and interactive tools that further customize the information in the book. Her advice at times bucks conventional wisdom (Did she just say use your credit card?) and may even seem counterintuitive (Pay into a retirement fund even though your credit card debt is killing you?), but it's her honesty, understanding, and uncanny ability to anticipate the needs of her readers that have made her the most trusted financial expert of the day.

Over the course of ten chapters that can be consulted methodically, step by step, or on a strictly need-to-know basis, Suze takes readers past broke to a secure place where they'll never have to worry about revisiting broke again. And she begins the journey with a bit of overwhelmingly good news (yes, there really is good news): Young people have the greatest asset of all on their side-time.

Read by the author
5 CDs
Abridged

First, Break All The Rules: What The Worlds Greatest Managers Do Differently

Curt Coffman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 263 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

For tech geeks managers, a good addition to "The Mythical Man Month." 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Geeks have said for a long, long time that there is easily a 10-to-1 ratio of productivity between the best developers and an average developer. There is tons of evidence to this fact... however it is still a difficult reality to swallow for some folks. In many cases, you're better off with a team of 3 good developers, than a team of 20 average developers. This book not only validates this claim, but also provides proof that this productivity ratio exists in every job role!

This was based on data from a 25-year survey by Gallup... they interviewed over 100,000 people, trying to find out who were great managers, and what they knew. Almost uniformly, they knew that the standard rules about managing people were completely bogus. They break down what attributes your employees have into 3 buckets:

* Knowledge: Basic information; "book learning." People with knowledge interview well, and test well, but that doesn't always translate into productivity. Training people "knowledge" is fast and easy.
* Skills: This is applied knowledge. A great deal of accounting and data entry is applied high-school math, but that doesn't mean any high schooler can do it. They need the skills to know when to apply what knowledge and when. Training people a "skill" takes time, and not all people are cut out for every skill.
* Talent: The most important of the bunch... somebody not only with skills and knowledge, but their brain is wired to be exceptional at this task! You can have a talent for sales, accounting, data entry, development, bartending, housekeeping, management, anything! Training people a "talent" is extraordinarily difficult, but you can find it during an interview.

This book validates what I have said for a long time: manager is a role, not a rank! Only people with the "talent" for being managers should be managers. It should not be an expected career path for all.

One talented employee is easily more valuable than 10 of her peers, across the board. This book provides sufficient examples that should make any decent manager rethink their methods of using their employees like cogs in a giant "process machine." A good manager should look for "talent," and not "skills" or "knowledge" during an interview... and then figure out a way to help their employees harness their latent talent. If so, then you will see 10 times more productivity out of a talented employee, compared to an average one.

This has nothing to do with knowledge, skills, or process... the talented ones just "get it." They see the problem, they know inherently how to solve it, and it brings them tremendous joy to solve it. Don't promote these stars to management; that's not their talent. Instead, let the exceptional employees -- like exceptional baseball players -- make more than an average manager. They call this "broad band" pay scales, and in practice they work pretty well to make sure everybody is exceptional at their role.

What about developers? They had a few things to say about them... somewhat oversimplified, but they said a common career path is from developer to systems analyst. In other words, go from designing one system, to designing integrated systems that work together.

This is a HUGE mistake.

Why? Because both roles require different talents! Developers are problem solvers, but in general they need ALL the pieces of the puzzle before they want to try to solve it. There is no feeling more frustrating to them than not being able to solve a problem because you weren't given sufficient data... or a complete specification.

To illustrate... Imagine you work at a software company. If you ask a talented developer a technical question, but you don't give sufficient information, you might have just cost your company a full day's worth of developer productivity. Why? Because the developer will seethe, and stew, and gather his buddies for a hallway bitch-session about you... which will cause others to likewise seethe and stew, and grumble about how "nobody ever gives them enough information." It all adds up to a full day lost.

It happens. I've seen it.

In contrast, a systems analysts (or architect) thrives on incomplete information. They know they are designing a system with a lot of people, a lot of requirements, a lot of needs, and thus a ton of moving parts. People don't know what they want, because nobody really knows what is possible. An architect can't wait around forever to create a specification: he needs to experiment a little. This means iteration, agility, extreme programming, and all that garbage.

It is certainly possible for one person to have both skills... but usually the best developers have a mild weakness at integrated systems, and vice versa.

Getting your manager to read this book might be tricky... "you suck! read this so you suck less!" Nevertheless, its a good book that will help you make the case that there is talent in every role... you're not asking for special treatment when you ask to play to your strengths. You're asking that your manager let you do what all great managers do.

Simple as that...

Editorial Review:

In First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive indepth study of great managers.

In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But no matter how generous its pay, or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer.

Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations', how they motivate people by building on each person's unique strengths; and, finally, how great managers find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder.

First, Break All The Rules provides vital performance and career lessons for managers at every level. This audiobook shows you how to apply them to your own situation.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Lee Iacocca

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Total reviews: 226 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The most widely recognized business executive of all time asks the tough questions that America's leaders must address:

What is each of us giving back to our country?

Do we truly love democracy?

Are we too fat and satisfied for our own good?

Why is America addicted to oil?

Do we really care about our children's futures?

Who will save the middle class?

Lee Iacocca believes that leaders are made in times of crisis -- such as today. He has known more leaders than almost anybody else -- including nine U.S. presidents, many heads of state, CEOs of the nation's top corporations, celebrities, and even a pope -- and is uniquely suited to share his wisdom, knowledge, and wit about the leadership of America. Lee Iacocca does not mince words, and in Where Have All the Leaders Gone? he offers his no-nonsense, straight-up assessments of the American politicians most likely to run for president in 2008. He also shares his lessons learned, and issues a call to action to summon Americans back to their roots of hard work, common sense, integrity, generosity, and optimism.

Where have all the leaders gone? Lee Iacocca has the answer.

The Art of Seduction

Robert Greene, Joost Elffers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 235 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

I am a victim. This is a dangerous book. Everybody should read it. 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

I am a self-confident, self-motivated, self-directed individual who pretty much knows exactly what to do and when to do things to get the preferred results. I am a smiling, friendly and mostly a charismatic person. At least that's how I used to be before I met this girl in my Freshman composition class.

She was very attractive and I fell in love with her. She exercised the seduction techniques mentioned in this book (such as stirring interest indirectly, creting triangles, getting close to me and giving the impression of like-mindedness etc) to make that happen and it came to a point where I was fantasizing her with me in her life. She was all that I was thinking of. I was losing grip over my life. I somehow became dependent of her. She then started coquetting and withdrawing herself. I gradually started losing my self-esteem and I was no more that charismatic person with self-confidence and self-esteem. I was doing things that she thought would ultimately would lead to our mutual pleasure...but it only made both of us empty.

Finally, one day she drove me to a isolated forest...and I thought she was going to have us do something pleasurable (finally). She just asked me to step out of the car and handed some papers and got in her car and left me there stranded. I was devastated. I started reading the papers. It was titled "The Seduction of ". It started with a character map of me...everything that she had observed about me, my weaknesses, what gave me my self-confidence etc. Then there were list of steps, almost like a manual, that described how she seduced me step-by-step. Then there were extracts from personal journal entries that described how, initially when we'd first met, she admired my quality of self-confidence and how much she wanted to have control over someone like me...primarily because of her own lack of it...and how over time she got bored of playing me like an instrument and how predictable I became etc. She didn't enjoy me anymore. So, she decided to dump me in the middle of the forest with this fact sheet. I was lying on the ground there crying my lungs out to death with limbs too weak to move. I completely lost my self-esteem and was at a point where I wanted her to accept me as her slave and was honoured by that thought. I couldn't even look up at people's faces anymore. This is the worst form of exploitation there exists. It almost feels like being eaten alive by insects from the inside and not being able to do anything about it.

Few days after this devastation, I googled and found this book. I read it and it revealed to me how someone as intellectually incompetent as herself could do something as vicious as this. It made me feel a lot better to know how exactly the worst thing ever to happen in my life happened. Now I feel that everybody should read this book...just to avoid being exploited in this way, if not for anything else.

Cautionary notes:-

As for those of you who were inspired by the cinematic quality of what happened to me and are motivated to use the techniques mentioned in the book to drain admirable qualities off someone for self-gratification, I have to warn you by letting you know why she even had to dump me like that. She, after reading the book, had to condition herself against expressing any genuine emotions and had to perfect the impression of genuineness of her made up emotions. She conceded in one of her later personal journal entries that she was in a sort of psychological trap. She started having trouble doing even simple things such as expressing genuine awe or even anger. She always felt the need to go by the rules. It made her less of a real human being and more of an imitation of an admirable human being. When I recently contacted her, she said she needs professional help because she is very confused in discerning emotions that come from within and those that are just made up. Shes messed up.

As for the testimonials of these admirable people (who practice the art of seduction) thrown around in Greenes book, I have to inform you that those people are genuine human beings with natural seductive mannerisms. The most dangerous aspect of this book is Greenes portrayal of them as people who calculated their behavior and that ability to calculate behavior as being admirable. It inspires people to look at themselves and their naturally arising feelings with belittling eyes and to try to become these admirable people with admirable statistics. It also inspires them to lower the value for their genuine emotions. In my erudite opinion, focusing on your behavior and trying to adjust it using the feedback it receives from outside rather than using ones judgment from within leads to termination of personal growth. If youre so desperate to have a reputable history of conquests when youre older as to compromise on investment in your personal growth and true exploration of human relations, then go ahead and seduce people into falling in love with you for all the wrong reasonsand become an imitation. Remember that unforeseen pleasures are often the most gratifying.

Editorial Review:

Robert Greene's previous bestseller, The 48 Laws of Power, distilled 3,000 years of scheming into a guide People praised as "beguiling... literate... fascinating" and Kirkus denounced as "an anti-Book of Virtues."

In Art of Seduction, Greene returns with a new instruction book on the most subtle, elusive, and effective form of power—because seduction isn't really about sex. It's about manipulating other people's greatest weakness: their desire for pleasure.

Synthesizing the work of thinkers including Freud, Diderot, Nietzsche, and Einstein, reporting the enticing strategies of characters throughout history, The Art of Seduction is a comprehensive guide to getting what we want—any way we can.

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets Of Americas Wealthy

Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko

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Total reviews: 796 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great Intro to Wealth Building 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the best books on wealth bulding I have even read and I've read hundreds of them.

It does a superb job of profiling key characteristic and behaviors that American typically fall into putting themselves deep into debt and then gives simple and easy to connect with ways to counter these behaviors to put yourself on the right track to financial independence.

Really, really great! Do yourself and your family a favor and read it.

Editorial Review:

The incredible national bestseller that is changing people's lives -- and increasing their net worth!

Can you spot the millionaire next door?

Who are the rich in this country?

What do they do?

Where do they shop?

What do they drive?

How do they invest?

How did they get rich?

Can I even become one of them?

Get the answers in The Millionaire Next Door, the never-before-told story about weath in America. You'll be surprised at what you find out....

A Sense of Urgency

John P. Kotter

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

True urgency is a gut-level determination to move and win, now.
It’s practitioners are unusually alert. They come to work each day determined to achieve something important, and they shed irrelevant activities to move faster and smarter. Those with a sense of urgency are the opposite of complacent—but they are not stressed-out and anxious, generating great activity without much productivity. Instead, they move boldly toward the future—sharply on the lookout for the hazards and the opportunities that change brings.

Bestselling author and business guru John Kotter knows about urgency. “Raising urgency” is the first step in his enormously successful eight-step framework, first articulated in Leading Change. But as Kotter illustrates, increasing urgency is the toughest of the eight steps, and the one without which even the most brilliant, high-powered initiatives will sputter and die. More importantly, as we transition to a world where change is continuous—not just episodic—he shows how urgency must become a core, sustained capability.
With vivid and powerful stories, Kotter reveals a distinctive view of the kind of urgency needed in every organization. He also highlights the insidious nature of its nemesis, complacency, in all its guises. He explains the crucial difference between constructive true urgency, and the frantic wheelspinning that is so often mistaken for urgency. He provides key tactics for increasing urgency, as well as exposing and rooting out complacency, with chapters on:
•Bringing the outside in
•Behaving with urgency every day
•Finding opportunity in crises
•Dealing with “NoNos” or naysayers

A Sense of Urgency is a powerful tool for anyone wanting to win in a turbulent world that will only continue to move faster.

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

Charles R Morris

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Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Useful study of the great crash of 2008 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Charles Morris, an American writer, lawyer and former banker, has written a useful account of the long-building credit crash.

The last three decades saw the most reckless speculation ever, and the greatest global real estate bubble. By 2005, global financial assets - stocks, bonds, loans and mortgages - were worth four times global GDP. Financial derivatives - a form of claim on these financial assets - had a notional value of ten times global GDP, about $500 trillion.

Morris warns that the write-downs and defaults will take a trillion dollars, but due to capitalism's chaotic nature could cost two or three times more. The crash is in every kind of financial asset: there are no firebreaks. Thatcherism's free-market mania for asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy has ended in ruin.

The USA's accumulated deficit between 2000 and 2006 was $4 trillion, funded by foreign countries, companies and banks. So now all the surplus nations - Russia, China, Japan, the Middle East countries - are moving away from the dollar and, like the pound, it is now in freefall, causing what the Economist called 'the biggest default in history'.

The US and British governments are turning a debacle into a decades-long disaster, backing their financial capitalists and covering up their problems (hedge funds, like tax havens, do not disclose their balance sheets). Likewise, when Japan's credit and property bubbles burst in the early 1990s, its ruling class defended Japan's financial capitalists, producing a slump that has not yet ended.

Morris urges a bigger public health care sector and a re-regulation of finance, which would be a start. He concludes, "market dogmatism ... has become the problem, rather than the solution." And he urges us to end what Adam Smith called "the disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful - the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."

Editorial Review:

The sub-prime mortgage crisis is only the beginning; a more profound economic and political restructuring is on its way. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks with their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it. The Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to happen.

The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy

David M. Smick

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Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers and advised top Wall Street executives and investors.
The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat left off, taking listeners on an insider’s tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. Smick reveals how today’s risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone’s mind: How bad could things really get in today’s volatile economy? And what can we do about it?

The World Is Curved is the rare work that speaks simultaneously to the Wall Street, Washington, and London elite, yet its apt storytelling shows Main Street readers how to survive in these turbulent times.

“The World Is Curved is...essential...for those who wish to understand the workings, politics, and distresses of the global financial system...insightful and entertaining...” — Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; author of The Age of Turbulence

“David Smick’s probing insights in The World Is Curved stem from an extraordinary vantage point
few observers can match.”—George Soros, Soros Fund Management

The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future

T. Boone Pickens

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Editorial Review:

With a Plan for Reducing U.S. Oil Dependency

It’s never too late to top your personal best.

Now eighty years old, T. Boone Pickens is a legendary figure in the business world. Known as the “Oracle of Oil” because of his uncanny ability to predict the direction of fuel prices, he built Mesa Petroleum, one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States, from a $2,500 investment. In the 1980s, Pickens became a household name when he executed a series of unsolicited buyout bids for undervalued oil companies, in the process reinventing the notion of shareholders’ rights. Even his failures were successful in that they forced risk-averse managers to reconsider the way they did business.

When Pickens left Mesa at age sixty-eight after a spectacular downward spiral in the company’s profits, many counted him out. Indeed, what followed for him was a painful divorce, clinical depression, a temporary inability to predict the movement of energy prices, and the loss of 90 percent of his investing capital. But Pickens was far from out.

From that personal and professional nadir, Pickens staged one of the most impressive comebacks in the industry, turning his investment fund’s remaining $3 million into $8 billion in profit in just a few years. That made him, at age seventy-seven, the world’s second-highest-paid hedge fund manager. But he wasn’t done yet. Today, Pickens is making some of the world’s most colossal energy bets. If he has his way, most of America’s cars will eventually run on natural gas, and vast swaths of the nation’s prairie land will become places where wind can be harnessed for power generation. Currently no less bold than he was decades ago when he single-handedly transformed America’s oil industry, Pickens is staking billions on the conviction that he knows what’s coming. In this book, he spells out that future in detail, not only presenting a comprehensive plan for American energy independence but also providing a fascinating glimpse into key resources such as water—yet another area where he is putting billions on the line.

From a businessman who is extraordinarily humble yet is considered one of the world’s most visionary, The First Billion Is the Hardest is both a riveting account of a life spent pulling off improbable triumphs and a report back from the front of the global energy and natural-resource wars—of vital interest to anyone who has a stake in America’s future.


From the Hardcover edition.