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Hardcover
272 pages
ISBN 9781422133316 Published Feb. 2012
Harvard Business School Press
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Posted Dec. 31, 2012 5:41 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
We move a whole lot of business books around the world from our humble offices here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Each and every month, we compile our sales numbers and release a bestseller list to recognize the books that are heading out to businesspeople, business schools, and entrepreneurs to help spread ideas, solve problems, promote change, and inspire leadership in the business community. We’ve now compiled those numbers for the entire year, giving weight to both total sales numbers and how long each book stayed on the list (and at what number) and are happy to announce
the bestsellers of 2012.
- From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership by Harry M Jansen Kraemer, Jossey-Bass
- What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Revised) by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter, Hyperion Books
- New Power Base Selling: Master the Politics, Create Unexpected Value and Higher Margins, and Outsmart the Competition by Jim Holden & Ryan Kubacki, John Wiley & Sons
- Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press
- End of Business as Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution by Brian Solis, John Wiley & Sons
- The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick M Lencioni, Jossey-Bass
- Taking People with You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen by David Novak, Portfolio
- Stewardship: Lessons Learned from the Lost Culture of Wall Street by John Taft, John Wiley & Sons
- Relationship Economics: Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts Into Personal and Professional Success (Revised, Updated) by David Nour, John Wiley & Sons
- Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath, Gallup Press
- 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, & Jim Huling, Free Press
- Conversations That Win the Complex Sale: Using POWER MESSAGING to Create More Opportunities, Differentiate Your Solutions, and Close More Deals by Erik Peterson & Timothy Riesterer, McGraw-Hill
- Own Your Success: The Power to Choose Greatness and Make Every Day Victorious by Ben Newman, John Wiley & Sons
- Business of Being the Best: Inside the World of Go-Getters and Game Changers by Molly Fletcher with Justin Spizman, Jossey-Bass
- The $10 Trillion Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India by By Michael J Silverstein, Abheek Singhi, Carol Liao, & David Michael, Harvard Business Review Press
- The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy by Jon Gordon, John Wiley & Sons
- Engagement Marketing: How Small Business Wins in a Socially Connected World by Gail F. Goodman, John Wiley & Sons
- The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg, John David Mann, Portfolio
- Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins, Morten T. Hansen, HarperBusiness
- Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies by Jim Stengel, Crown Business
- The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, The Penguin Press
- The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money by Carl Richards, Portfolio
- How We Lead Matters: Reflections on a Life of Leadership by Marilyn Carlson Nelson with Deborah Cundy, McGraw-Hill
- Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--And Secretive--Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky, Business Plus
- How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything (Expanded) by Dov Seidman, John Wiley & Sons
To see what thought leaders and business people are digesting and suggesting every month, you can follow The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Bestseller List on our website.
2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Shortlist: Management
Posted Dec. 11, 2012 4:14 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we'll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we'll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.
The selections for the Management category are:
- The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass
- All In: How the Best Managers Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results by Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton, Free Press
- Judgment on the Front Line: How Smart Companies Win by Trusting Their People by Christopher DeRose & Noel Tichy, Portfolio
- The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change by Jason Jennings, Portfolio
- Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press
A common thread through this year's Management category shortlist involves 'the customer'—a focus on creating value, providing quality service (Uncommon Service), and helping employees be happy enough to follow through on those tasks. Instead of looking at a particular management style, the focus of how companies can better serve customers is comprehensive, filled with approaches to staff (The Advantage and All In), process (Judgment on the Front Line), adaption (The Reinventors), and more; all with one goal in mind: to serve. These are the books that seemed to best exemplify this approach.
The Best Books of 2012, A Season of Lists
Posted Nov. 26, 2012 5:24 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
The season of lists is upon us. The first ornament up on the tree was Steve Coll's Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, published by The Penguin Press, which took home the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year earlier this month. And there was another large nonfiction title related to economics—Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson and published by Crown Business—on a list of The 10 best books of 2012 from the Washington Post.
CNNMoney put up a list of The 5 must-read business books of the year two weeks ago that included:
- Turn the Ship Around!: How to Create Leadership at Every Level by David Marquet, Greenleaf Books Group
- Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press
- Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis, Free Press
- The Only Way to Win: How Building Character Helps You Achieve More and Find Greater Fulfillment in Business and Life by Jim Loehr, Hyperion Books
- Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired—And Secretive—Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky, Business Plus
Late last month (unnoticed by us until searching for the list we know they put out every year this morning), Hudson Booksellers announced their Best Books of 2012. Being an airport bookstore, they always stock and sell a lot of business titles, and always include a Business Interest section of their yearly list. This year's included:
- Leadership 2.0 by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves, Talentsmart
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, Crown
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, Random House
- End This Depression Now by Paul Krugman, W.W. Norton & Company
- Heart, Smart, Guts and Luck: What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business by Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington, & Tsun-Yan Hsieh, Harvard Business Review Press
And, finishing up this morning's round up, we have a list from Fast Company put out today, which includes the following 12 titles:
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, Crown
- How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, HarperBusiness
- Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours by Robert Pozen, HarperBusiness
- The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don't by Nate Silver, The Penguin Press
- Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown, Gotham Books
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, Random House
- Renegades Write the Rules: How the Digital Royalty Use Social Media to Innovate by Amy Jo Martin, Jossey-Bass
- Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business by Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington, & Tsun-Yan Hsieh, Harvard Business Review Press
- The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World by Frans Johansson, Portfolio
- Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs
- The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations (25th Anniversary) by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, Jossey-Bass
- 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era by Nilofer Merchant, Harvard Business Review Press (e-book)
We'll have two of the larger, more comprehensive lists—and two of our yearly favorites—up on the blog for you this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
We've also picked our own extensive shortlist here at 800-CEO-READ, and will begin announcing that on December 10th, so be sure to keep an eye out for that, as well.
Jack Covert Selects - Uncommon Service
Posted Feb. 9, 2012 11:52 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
As a service company, when we receive feedback about a negative situation, we immediately act to resolve the conflict and then try to put a process in place to avoid such a thing happening in the future. Most books on service describe ways to do this: how to react to or plan for customer service breakdowns.
Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business asserts that service is not about reacting, but building customer satisfaction into the business model itself, so that employees and the systems they work within provide excellent service as a matter of routine.
What is surprising about the case stories in Uncommon Service is that the authors focus on how the companies are really bad at something, and how that serviced the great things they did in ways that allowed them to be unapologetic about the bad things. Commerce Bank, for example, chose (proven) nice service people over smart financial service people. The cost of the employees was higher than the super smart ones, so unlike other banks who hired super smart people, Commerce Bank kept their fees high, didn't budge on them, and banked (no pun intended) that word-of-mouth of their great service would end up making them successful—and it did. The bad (higher fees) serviced the good (awesome service).
As the authors’ explain:
This point is crucial to understanding how to design uncommon service. In our experience, the number one obstacle to great service—number one by a long shot—is the emotional unwillingness to embrace weakness. But it couldn’t be clearer that to win in one area, you must lose in another. Progress requires sacrifice. Some part of your service offering must be thrown under the bus. […] Choosing bad is your only shot at achieving greatness. And resisting it is a recipe for mediocrity.
This is not how most of us think, yet the authors make some very interesting and data-backed observations to support their theory. In typical Harvard Business Review fashion, the book is packed with lengthy case studies, making it an interesting and convincing read that will help you find your opportunity to choose “the bad” while achieving your own uncommon service success.
