Good Boss, Bad Boss


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Hardcover
308 pages
ISBN 9780446556088 Published Sept. 2010
Business Plus
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Good Boss, Bad Boss
How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst
By Robert I Sutton 

Related Blog Posts
Ten Picks from The Globe & Mail
Posted Dec. 20, 2010 10:53 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Harvey Schachter of The Globe and Mail has listed what he believes are The top 10 Business Reads of 2010. With a bias toward practical and immediately applicable books over "big idea" titles, this is an especially great list for managers. He chose:

  1. The Executive and the Elephant: A Leader's Guide for Building Inner Excellence by Richard Daft, Jossey-Bass

  2. The Management Mythbuster by David Axson, John Wiley & Sons

  3. Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to Give It Their All, and They'll Give You Even More by Mark Murphy, Jossey-Bass

  4. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Broadway

  5. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, Riverhead

  6. How To Hire A-Players: Finding the Top People for Your Team- Even If You Don't Have a Recruiting Department by Eric Herrenkohl, John Wiley & Sons

  7. Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It by Marshall Goldsmith, Hyperion

  8. Get Rid of the Performance Review: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing—And Focus on What Really Matters by Samuel Culbert with Lawrence Rout, Business Plus

  9. Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth by Edward Hess, Columbia Business School

  10. Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst by Robert Sutton, Business Plus

To read why he chose the books he did, and to get a quick synopsis of each one, head over to his original post.



The Best Business Books of 2010 from strategy + business
Posted Nov. 24, 2010 10:28 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

strategy + business's "best of" list is always a special treat—in large part because it's never just a list, but a series of essays. The magazine gathers together a different team of experts each year, and each takes the task of writing on their chosen category and the books in it. I've listed their picks below, linking to the essays at the head of each category.

On the Economy, The Fog of Panic by David Warsh

On Leadership, Highlights in a Low Year by Walter Kiechel III

On Innovation, Innovation as a Social Act by Krisztina “Z” Holly

On China, Probing China’s Infrastructure by Sheridan Prasso

On Human Capital, Talent Redefined by Sally Helgesen

On the Human Mind, You Are What You Think by Judith E. Glaser

On Management, The Chorus Takes a Bow by David K. Hurst

On Biography & History, True Tales of Fortune by James O’Toole

The covers below represent s + b's Top Shelf—the best books of each category.

As Theodore Kinni writes in his introduction to the essays:

Two years after the financial collapse, the idea of hunkering down and waiting for a return to business as usual—as people did in previous recessions—seems a less and less viable strategy. But what should you do instead?

In this edition of our annual review of the year’s best business books, you will find a reading list that offers intriguing and compelling answers to this question.

We've been following this list since 2003, and you can peruse past year's lists with the links below.

2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009



Friday Links
Posted Sept. 24, 2010 11:04 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ The new edition of the Penguin Business Beat has been released. This month's episode focuses on performing under pressure and includes Paul Sullivan, author of Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don't, and CNBC host Maria Bartiromo, who recently released of The Weekend That Changed Wall Street. As always, Jack took a look inside one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, going with Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches for this occasion.

The Business Beat also shares views from inside the publishing house, with Portfolio publisher Adrian Zackheim giving some book suggestions on performing (or not) under pressure, including Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. And this episode introduces a new segment, "Books at Work." This month, Viking publicist Gabrielle Gantz discusses Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark.

➻ Being a fan of Writing Tools, Gabrielle may be busy celebrating National Punctuation Day today, something she would have in common with Meredith Blake at The New Yorker's book blog—The Book Bench.

➻ Todd Sattersten, our former president and co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time has published "a 150-page custom book entitled Everything I Know About Business Books" in preparation for this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Todd was kind enough to share a free sample of the book with Ed Nawotka and Publishing Perspectives.

➻ Callie Oettinger recently interviewed Michael Bungay Stanier at Steven Pressfiled Online. He discussed his book, Do More Great Work, published earlier this year, and the big ideas contained therein.

➻ Bob Sutton's Good Boss, Bad Boss is now available, but he has accepted the fact that no matter what else he writes, he is and will forever be "The Asshole Guy." He tells us why in On Being The Asshole Guy: [The] New Chapter in The No Asshole Rule:

Regardless of anything I ever wrote or said about management, or ever will, I am condemned to be that guy for the rest of my life. This book was first published in North America in February 2007. The No Asshole Rule has sold over 125,000 copies in the English language, plus over 350,000 copies translated into other languages (especially Italian, German, and French). I have given hundreds of media interviews and received thousands of emails filled with stories, studies, questions, compliments, and insults from readers—or from people who haven’t read a page but instantly love or despise the book based on the title alone.

The No Asshole Rule was just released in paperback for all you out there yet to read it.

➻ Oronte Churm (a.k.a John Griswold, author of The Democracy of Ghosts) wrote recently about how the greatest service we can provide a writer we're critiquing is Squinting at the Stories, and then he digressed into something altogether different and wonderful concerning poverty.

➻ And speaking of poverty, Julien Smith—co-author with Chris Brogan of Trust Agents—blew my mind last week when he pondered a big question, Where the Poor Go. It's a post about gentrification, condos, Facebook getting into location based social software, European immigration to America, angel investors, and the "force exerts its influence wherever you are on the chain." All in 401 words.

➻ Banned Books Week begins tomorrow, which leads us to the obvious question: Which book would you like to see banned? I'm going with The Boz by Brian Bozworth and the menu of the International House of Pancakes.

➻ "It's taken years to make a beautiful shroud." —Nathaniel Rateliff

Nathaniel Rateliff - Shroud from Ryan Adams on Vimeo.

Yeah "You should have seen the other guy."



Friday Links
Posted Sept. 3, 2010 11:10 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ Chris Guillabeau's The Art of Non-Conformity will be released on Tuesday—a book I hope everyone reading this blog will pick up. On his blog yesterday, he briefly discussed Seth Godin's departure from traditional publishing before laying out the Strategy, Tactics, and the Plan for the Next 97 Days he has devised for entering the publishing arena that Seth is leaving. And his plan is the only plan that has ever succeeded: think big; work hard. Responding to the notion that “The only authors who sell books anymore are those who have popular blogs,” he writes:

Where does a popular blog come from—does the blog fairy descend from the sky with a passionate group of readers, all eager to support a new writer?

It's a valid question, and we are glad this dedicated, unconventional (indeed, dedicatedly unconventional) individual has taken a step into traditional publishing, and we wish him the best on his Unconventional Book Tour.

If you'd like to learn more before picking up a copy of his book for yourself, you can read the interview Callie Oettinger did with him over at Steven Pressfield Online, or dig into some of his online offerings.

➻ Scott Stratten's UnMarketing also comes out next week, and in true social-media guru fashion, he did a 140-character interview on Twitter with new PR pros. Some advice:

@ssiewert: How can young pros/Gen Y apply their years of personal experience online to achieve business objectives?

@unmarketing: You have the advantage, since you’re already online. Be yourself, have an opinion but also be humble. You don’t know everything yet.

➻ The Bullish on Books blog had a great guest post from our dear friend Erika Andersen today, entitled You’ve Been Laid Off – Now What? She used the space to discuss how, once you declare an intention, or "put up your sail to catch the wind you’re looking for—it makes you available to other winds, as well." And Erika knows. She is one of the best advisers in country and the author of two outstanding books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, the latter of which was recently made into a PBS special (Check your local PBS listings for the airtime, or purchase the DVD at shopPBS.org).

➻ The Economist recently took a look inside The innovation machine, reviewing Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble's book recently released on the topic, The Other Side of Innovation. From the article:

Many would-be innovators deal with the trade-off between efficiency and innovation by rejecting traditional management entirely. They repeat mantras about “breaking all the rules” and “asking for forgiveness rather than permission”. They set up skunk works (small, autonomous units with a remit to innovate) and mock the boring corporate types who write their pay-cheques. But again this is counter-productive. Mocking the corporate establishment only encourages it to starve you of resources.

They also touch on Warren Bennis's Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership briefly, and thought it looks like a great book, I think they did so only to have an excuse to introduce the topic of innovation by writing "Today there is no hotter topic in management theory than 'sperm in the air.'"

➻ Bob Sutton, author of the soon-to-be-released Good Boss, Bad-Boss, wants to know... Is Your Boss A Certified Brasshole? And he has devised a test for you to find out.

➻ Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, writes a twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun. His most recent post discussed the 10 Best Books For Back To School Business Reading, and his list is very solid:

I personally think that if you have read all of these books, just go ahead and forgo going back to school and get on out there and start conquering the world.

➻ The 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style went on sale this week, but you can get the original edition (1906) for free. Head on over to Papercuts to figure out how.

➻ "In addition to being a bullfighter and magician, he's a lazy river, a slow moving train, a future hall-of-famer playing through the pain, he's a grizzly bear." And his son is a book reviewer.



Friday Links
Posted May 14, 2010 11:23 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ If you'd like to get a taste of Bob Sutton's upcoming book, Good Boss, Bad Boss (due out with Business Plus in September), he posted a small gem that didn't make it in the book, the leadership philosophy of John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla:

Life is a lot better when I think about my job as one of helping everyone ...

He expands upon this some more in the post, and I think I can safely say that if that's what's been culled, then what made it in the book is going to be very worth picking up and absorbing.

➻ "Would you go to a dinner party and just repeat what the person to the right of you is saying all night long? Would that be interesting to anybody?" The obvious answer is... well, yes. It would by annoying, but hilarious. But, Rework author Jason Fried wasn't really thinking in absurdist hypotheticals in that sentence, he was answering the question "Why Is Business Writing So Awful?" and providing some positive examples as remedies, to boot.

➻ Also on the Rework front, we hosted our seventh PechaKucha night here in Milwaukee on Tuesday, which included a presentation from the book's illustrator, Mike Rohde, about sketchnotes. We also had local artists dwellephant and Kristopher Pollard on hand to document the event with portraits—both of the attendees and the presentations themselves. (We'll have more on that next week.)

➻ Devin Stewart, Program Director and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, wrote a very good review of The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War between States and Corporations? over at The Huffington Post. The book isn't about the tired arguments between New-Deal Democracy and Reagan Republicanism in America, but about how the tools of state-run capitalism (in places like China and Russia) threaten free-markets around the world. In the book, Bremmer poses hypotheticals, including:

[G]iven the mutually assured economic destruction (or interdependence) between the United States and China, what happens if China closes the door?

The book describes a competition between two separate visions of capitalism that increasingly looks like a economic Cold War.

➻ The folks over at strategy+business know their business books, as is evidenced by them having Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos and author of the forthcoming Delivering Happiness (we're very excited about), introduce an excerpt from Switch by Chip and Dan Heath.

➻ If you are a human being with a beating heart, you might want to check out War of Art author Steven Pressfield's interview with Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade.

➻ You guys can keep you fancy Kindles and iPads, I'm sticking with my Electronic Book from Radio Shack, circa 1986. It's affordable.

➻ Turnover can be a good thing.




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