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The 10
Best Books You Should have Read by Now
The best books are not necessarily the best sellers
by John Connolly—Melbourne Age December
23, 2000
When Spencer Johnson's best seller Who Moved My Cheese
has topped the best-seller list all year you know it's been a bad year for books.
Who Moved My Cheese follows in the grand tradition of the motivation industry
genre by suggesting that work and life are simpler than you think and if you stopped
worrying so much when you lost your job and your family died in a car accident you
could be the boss of BHP.
Basically, Spencer suggests we should be more like mice. (That is, of course, unless
you work for any company with more than 5000 people, in which case you are already
like mice.)
So instead of rating this years best business books by sales, here are some of the
year's best business books, together with some of the best business books of the
last decade.
BUILT
TO LAST: Successful Habits of Visionary
Companies
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras did real research (as opposed to 98 per cent of business
book research) to identify why 18 public companies performed extraordinarily well
over 50 or more years. They compare these top performers with their also-ran major
competitors. Built to Last offers no prescriptions, only common themes.
NEW
NEW THING
Michael (Liars Poker) Lewis' devastating account of Silicon Valley, the
Internet boom, and weirdness. This is the book that sums up the 1990s in the story
of Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon founder Jim Clark. As importantly, it
gives extraordinary insight into the beginning of the case of the century, the United
States Government v Microsoft.
Buy the audio version rather than the book.
TELECOSM: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World
George Gilder publishes the Gilder Technology Report, which you feel you need
LSD to be in tune with. Telecosm is an easier read. Basically, Gilder has
consistently got it right in the past on new technology. In this book, he says bandwidth
is more important than chip speed. After reading Telecosm you, too, will be
able to say petabits per second of backbone bandwidth, million of lamdas of new cheap
connectivity, exabyte tides of new Web traffic and you'll know what is really going
to move your cheese.
ONLY
THE PARANOID SURVIVE
Andy Grove helped start and build Intel into one of the world's most successful companies.
So this book is rare in that it's written by someone who has successfully run a large
company (market cap about US$410 billion) and tells the truth.
"A lot of these activities (mergers and acquisitions) are motivated by the need
for management to occupy themselves with something that clearly and legitimately
requires their attention day in and day out, something they can justify spending
their time on and make progress in, instead of figuring out how to cope with an impending
strategically destructive force."
CONTROL YOUR DESTINY OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL: Lessons in Mastering Change from the
Principles Jack Welch is Using to Revolutionize General Electric
If you are a serious manager you have probably read this book in hardcover as well
as its do-it-yourself follow-ups. Now in paperback it remains a classic, although
two critical elements of Welch's style are missing.
Welch focused on developing one occasional big idea rather than throwing hundreds
at his company, and GE is the master of takeovers and integration. This book answers
the question, "What should CEOs do all day?"
(Unfortunately, Control
Your Destiny is now out-of-print so you would need to go to a library or a second-hand
bookshop to get a copy)
E-MYTH
REVISITED: Why Small Businesses Don't
Work and What to Do About It
Michael Gerber is not writing about the Internet. What he has done is write the most
accessible guide to running a small business you'll ever read.
QUEST
FOR VALUE: The EVA Management Guide
and
EVA:
The Real Key to Creating Wealth
The Quest for Value is the original, EVA: The Real Key is
newer. Both come from Stern Stewart, the company that created the concept of economic
value. Stern Stewart answered the question to which many Australian managers still
don't know the answer: how do you really create shareholder value?
SYNERGY
TRAP: How Companies Lose the Acquisition
Game
Since it was published in 1997, this little book would have saved shareholders around
the world billions if only it had been compulsory reading at any company even thinking
about a takeover. About 60 per cent of mergers fail. One plus one usually never makes
three and if you hear a chief executive use the word synergy to justify a takeover,
sell the shares now!
Just about anything by Peter
Drucker. At 90, the world's top executives
still pay him a lot of money and attention. From the CONCEPT OF THE CORPORATION
to MANAGING IN A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE, Drucker offers real insights into the
real problems of management.
DECLINE
AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
If you think that the folk's at McKinsey or Bain came up with the concepts of globalisation
and post-merger integration, Eddie Gibbon has news for you. Ed wrote this in the
late 1700s, but it's chilling to read now.
If you don't want to read even the abridged version, just buy the A$18.65 Wordsworth
edition and read Chapter 71. Then you'll understand how big companies and countries
fall.
The author, John Connolly is a consultant to some of the largest companies in
Australia and the United States.
Website
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Self Improvement, Management,
and Training Resource Specialists
(books, audio cassettes,
CDs, videos)
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