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Hardcover
205 pages
ISBN 9781422155165 Published Aug. 2010
Harvard Business School Press
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Posted Oct. 8, 2010 4:39 a.m. by the-roy
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
I know, I know - I promised there would not be a long gap for best selling books around the country - but it has been a pretty busy summer! So, I will not prolong the wait... Here are 8CR's top books for the months of June, July, August & September!
# 1 - India: Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work by Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson
# 2 - France: Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently by Gregory Berns
# 3 - Singapore: Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon and Lynn Carruthers
# 4 - Australia: Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel
# 5 - Brussels: Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky
# 6 - Mexico: End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer
# 7 - Canada: Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
# 8 - Spain: Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida
# 9 - The Netherlands: Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers and Transform Your Business by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler
# 10 - France: The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford
HAPPY READING, EVERYONE!
Progress or Paper Ceiling?
Posted Sept. 29, 2010 3:53 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
In the 2008 edition of our annual year-in-review, In the Books, I wrote an essay titled: "For Women Only? A Look at Trends in Business Books Written by Women." It's a topic that always intrigues me. Business has historically been a men's racket. Powerful women in business have been anomalies. This is not news to anyone. The tides are slowly changing, and while there are plenty of discrepancies that remain between the roles and the pay that women in business receive versus their male peers, high paid-high profile women in business are no longer so much of a surprise. This changing landscape is reflected in the number of business books published that are written by women.
In 2008, I was inspired by the male-centric best sellers lists to take a look at why female business authors were not having more success at the top of the charts. I asked the question: "Is there truly a paper ceiling that hinders if not blocks a woman from being a successful business writer? And if so, where does the fault lie for this discrepancy? Authors? Audience? Publishers? Society?" Since then, I have kept an eye out for new books written for and by and about women to see how they are presented and how they are selling. My co-workers, knowing my interest in the subject, drop new books on my desk periodically. As a result, I've developed quite a pile on my desk that demands some handling, and inspires me to do some recommending.
First, I checked out our Inc./8CR best seller list, and am happy to say that women authors (writing general business books) are enjoying some success! Our number one book for the month of August was The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work by Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson. Coming in at #5 is Different by Youngme Moon and Lynn Carruthers. At #13 is The Right Fight: How Great Leaders Use Healthy Conflict to Drive Performance, Innovation, and Value by Saj-Nicole Joni and Damon Beyer. #15 is The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today by Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd.
To me, the success of the authors above indicates that women authors are slowly breaking through the paper ceiling I suspect has long limited authors and their publishers from thinking ambitiously about the size (and yes, gender) of audience their ideas can attract. But full integration of women in business at all levels is the goal and a number of books that have come out on the topic over the past 6 months or so indicates that we still have a ways to go.
If you've followed our blog regularly or read The Keen Thinker newsletter, you've probably had a chance to read the review of The Female Vision our owner, Carol Grossmeyer, wrote, declaring the book, "important for women who, after reading, will not only feel less alone as I did, but will find a helpful guide to begin tapping into their “real power at work;” and important for men who want to help create an environment for their female colleagues and employees to create and contribute their best work." This book is an example of a subset of books that have recently come out championing the value women's unique abilities bring to the workplace. In The Female Vision, authors Helgesen and Johnson (as well as Marshall Goldsmith, who introduces the book), warn that by turning a blind eye toward the needs of female employees (e.g. alternative work schedules) or their skills (e.g. a more broad-minded and less tunnel-focused approach to problem-solving), businesses deny themselves access to talent and growth.
Another book that tackles the same topic is How Women Mean Business: A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business Author Avivah Wittenberg-Cox's book argues that "[a]ll the evidence shows that balance leads to more innovation and better business performance -- after all, women are most of the market and much of the talent." This book is geared directly toward leaders who want to transform their companies into more balanced organizations with Wittenberg-Cox's four steps to change: Audit, Awareness, Align and Sustain.
Coming at the issue from a slightly different direction is Lynn Cronin and Howard Fine's Damned If She Does, Damned If She Doesn't Rethinking the Rules of the Game That Keep Women from Succeeding in Business. "The corporate system--the way the business world operates--generates rules of behavior that create common guidelines for what is acceptable and what is not. These basic, respected rules of business work well for men but can inadvertently create paradoxes that put women in no-win situations and limit their opportunity to succeed in a manner comparable to men."
For Cronin and Fine (as well as Helgesen and Johnson, and Wittenburg-Cox), progress for women in business has stalled, and they are determined to reengineer the corporation to allow women to break through. Really, these books are for a gender-neutral audience, for all people who are interested in bringing in--and keeping--the best talent. In this next grouping of books, the authors lean toward guiding women executives and strivers themselves toward becoming more effective instead of concentrating on organizational change.
In December of 2009, Selena Rezvani brought us The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won't Learn in Business School which "encourages younger women to be their own advocates when it comes to professional growth and advancement, and it provides tangible how-tos on negotiating the workplace as a woman." This is a good primer for maneuvering through the first few years of employment and promotion.
High Octane Women: How Superachievers Can Avoid Burnout by Dr. Sherrie Bourg Carter comes out in November. Basing her approach on the greater number of women in leadership roles, Bourg Carter, a psychologist, echoes some of the concerns in The Female Vision, that many women in executive positions turn their backs on their careers, deciding a corner office simply isn't worth it. She strives to answer the question: "What causes them to give up, melt down, or just walk away when they seem to have it all? And more important, what can be done to prevent it?"
In a similar vein, Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction by Marcia Reynolds, looks at the root causes for why women leave jobs and become "wander women," looking for greater satisfaction, trying to solve their restlessness by moving on, even when success has been or can be achieved. "Reynolds helps wander women understand the roots of their restlessness and make their wandering a conscious strategy, not a reaction."
Most people think of Sun Tzu's The Art of War to be aggressive and Machiavellian, but conflict was not the message The Art of War was meant to encourage. So Chin-ning Chu wrote The Art of War for Women: It's About the Art, Not the War. Chu clarifies, "It is a set of strategic thinking skills designed to help you achieve your objective in the most efficient way possible." This is particularly helpful for women, Chu asserts, because "[a]s intelligent and accomplished as we may be, there are very few of us who are comfortable with either direct confrontation or situations where our triumph means someone else's defeat. We are natural negotiators and problem solvers; most of us prefer win-win situations to winner-takes-all."
And for a picture of how a woman who has, one supposes, mastered all of the above situations, Meg Whitman, former president and CEO of eBay, has written The Power of Many: Values for Success in Business and in Life. And really, Whitman's book brings us full circle back to the points brought up in The Female Vision. Whitman based much of her decision-making on trust, not a strategy usually promoted in business schools. In her book, she encourages listening, teamwork and flexibility: strengths that women often bring to the table and should always be encouraged to use to their advantage.
***
I'm sure the above list of books is an imperfect one, with many other great new books by women authors available for both the innovative organization and the women who continue to swim upstream against a tide of conventionality--and I'd love to hear about them if you've got any recommendations. But the reality is, despite the stack of books that has gathered on my desk, the progress women authors have made into the upper echelon of best selling business books doesn't put them in the majority: a glance at this month's New York Times best seller list for business hardcovers shows no women authors (or even coauthors) at all. Perhaps the paper ceiling is still well in place.
A Defense of Business Books
Posted Aug. 27, 2010 10:47 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
It's a common reaction. When I explain to people that I work for a bookstore that specializes in business books, most people either furrow their brows or wrinkle their noses. Sometimes this reaction is caused by confusion as bookstores, to most people, are brick and mortar locations that display New York Times best selling fiction, spin racks of greeting cards, and children's pictures books. When that happens, I try to explain, in a nutshell, the origin of our company: we are what is left of the Harry W. Schwartz bookshops, an independent chain of bookstores in Milwaukee that regretfully closed their doors last year. Then I briefly tackle the evolution of our branch of the company: we began selling books mainly to corporate libraries, but that service grew to include speaking events and corporate training programs, then blossomed further into all the work we do online connecting with lovers of business books and connoisseurs of great ideas.
That is the other cause of the consternation. Most people I talk with outside of work aren't business book lovers. In fact, for many people, the only business book they remember hearing about is Who Moved My Cheese, and regardless of how you feel about that particular book, most people don't have any clue just how broad and deep the business book genre is. I've had a plain-speaking tennis league teammate of mine ask, after an explanation of what I do for a living: "So...who reads that stuff?" And just last night, another attempt to explain my job was interrupted with: "Well...I don't think there really are any business books out there worth reading."
Now, I don't like to turn a night at the bar into a lecture on the value of business books, but when confronted with a face that is scrunched up in skepticism or confusion or simple disbelief that there can be anything interesting or even enchanting about the business book category, I try to quickly explain that while you may sit next to someone on an airplane or exercise bike who is reading something practical (though possible unappealing to you) like Getting Things Done, there really is something for everyone in a genre of books that stretches from investigative non-fiction, to novel, to screenplay, to practical advice, inspiring biography.
I find myself recommending books like Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success to my tennis teammates; The Female Vision: Women's Real Power at Work to my graduate school friends; Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die to my husband, a high school teacher.
This defense of the business book genre and all the sub-genres within echoes the current--and continual--debate about the true value of literary fiction, the undervaluing of genre fiction like fantasy and sci-fi, the misnomer that all fiction by women read by women qualifies as "chick-lit." The fervor over the unrestrained praise of Jonathon Franzen's new novel, Freedom (read more here, here, here, here, and here) is just the most recent example.
For whatever reason, elitism is alive and well when it comes to one's reading preferences. (I'm going to ignore here the current, very elitist, discussions about how reading or publishing a paper book is or is not superior to using an e-reader. I think we've all had a lot of that this week.) Some of this is stubbornness. We put blinders on when it comes to crossing genres. I know that I am loathe to listen to someone expound on the high-quality of science-fiction as I'm not one to be drawn into fictional and fantastical worlds, but at the same time, despite my literature degree, I'm a fan of English police procedurals and a variety of other crime and detective novels. I think I'm an able enough critic to know whether I like a book strictly based on entertainment value versus some truly good writing, but regardless, I'll defend my preferred genre. Some of it is ignorance. Because the business book genre was indeed limited to technical titles or fables about moved cheese for quite a long time, it is hard to spread the word and have people take you seriously that the genre has simply exploded over the course of the past decade.
And so it is that I find myself often defending the business book genre. Whether you have an interest in game theory, a fascination with the sharks on Wall Street and Washington, a desire to create a more balanced work environment for your employees, a need for a retirement plan, a fear of change, or you want to read a great story reminiscent of Mad Men, you can find (with our help if you don't know where to start) a quality book with depth and nuance that strives to be something more than a series of action steps. People in the United States spend a predominant portion of their lives working, and I am a passionate believer that the business book genre contributes to better work environments, improved personal happiness, and increasingly keener intellects.
The Corporate Lattice
Posted Aug. 4, 2010 3:59 a.m. by jon
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
As a follow up to her book Mass Career Customization, Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson have teamed up to present The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work.
As outlined in MCC, the world of work is changing, not only for companies, but also for individuals: personal values, diversity, and skills are being viewed differently than they once were, and it's changing the structure of people's lives. Because of these factors, more people aren't necessarily "climbing the ladder" like they once were. They're working from home and available 24/7 (as opposed to 9 to 5), they're looking for challenges, and they want to learn new things. Thus, the old corporate model also needs to adjust, and The Corporate Lattice provides the framework to make changes.
As Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather, states on the back cover: "Anyone responsible for driving results should read this book." It's true. Whether you're an employee, looking for ways to advance your skill set and achieve more, read this book. Or, if you're a manager and want more from your team, read this book. For both, it's a clear guide on how to find, or provide, an environment that builds engagement - and that engagement provides both sides a wealth of value.
