I didn’t know I was going to end up being a management writer. I was minding my own business in the lower rungs of business journalism when it finally struck me – after an ordeal too far – that what was really bothering me was the way people (ok, me too) were being managed. Why did bosses behave like...this?! That was nearly 30 years ago. Ever since I've been fascinated by businesses, organisations, and the people in them, how and why they work the way they do. For me, management is personal as well as professional. Having been a boss twice, I know how hard it is to be in charge and why it matters.
I wrote...
Myths of Management: Dispel the Misconceptions and Become an Influential Manager
People can get a lot of things wrong when they step up to become a boss. They assume that being a manager involves certain ways of acting and behaving. But many of these assumptions are based on myths. In this book, Prof Cary Cooper and I attempt to debunk many of these myths to show what it means, in reality, to be a good boss. In the end it’s really all about being a decent, thoughtful, alert human being…how hard can that be?! (In practice, quite hard.)
This is a brilliant book, probably the business book I have enjoyed most and which has made the longest-lasting impression on me. Phil Rosenzweig brings a cooly sceptical approach to the mythology of business success and the stories bosses (and organisations) tell themselves about why they have succeeded, or failed. Winning doesn’t necessarily make you a genius, just better than what you were up against. Luck is a big and under-discussed factor, and so on. A book to keep on hand when the latest business “miracle worker” is being praised by everybody else.
Why do some companies prosper while others fail? Despite great amounts of research, many of the studies that claim to pin down the secret of success are based in pseudoscience. The Halo Effect is the outcome of that pseudoscience, a myth that Philip Rosenzweig masterfully debunks in THE HALO EFFECT. The Halo Effect describes the tendency of experts to point to the high financial performance of a successful company and then spread its golden glow to all of the company's attributes - clear strategy, strong values, and brilliant leadership. But in fact, as Rosenzweig clearly illustrates, the experts are not…
If you are going to read a personal development book, why not pick the original and best? Stephen Covey was serious, and not a fly-by-night phoney. His seven habits are a genuinely useful guide to life. His suggestion that we should consider what will be said about us at our funeral has inspired others to take their lives more seriously. Some of the habits – begin with the end in mind, seek first to understand, then to be understood – are wise and timeless. Time spent reading this book is time well spent.
New York Times bestseller - over 25 million copies sold The No. 1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century
"[Thirty] years after it first appeared, the wisdom of The 7 Habits is more relevant than ever. On an individual level people are burning out, and on a collective level we are burning up the planet. So Dr. Covey's emphasis on self-renewal and his understanding that leadership and creativity require us to tap into our own physical, mental, and spiritual resources are exactly what we need now." Arianna Huffington
One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written,…
Women are still held back at work, by prejudice, ignorance, and a lack of genuinely equal opportunities. There has been legislation in place in the UK since the 1970s, and yet still the equal pay gap exists and is closing only at an incredibly slow pace. Mary Ann Sieghart analyses why this is still happening and why women are still not getting an equal break. It is not a question of ability, clearly. It has to do with systemic unfairness and stupidity, which must be challenged and dismantled. Every manager, male and female, needs to read this book.
Every woman has a story of being underestimated, ignored, challenged, or patronized in the workplace. Maybe she tried to speak up in a meeting, only to be talked over by male colleagues. Or a client addressed her male subordinate instead of her. These stories remain true even for women at the top of their fields; in the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, female justices are interrupted four times more often than their male colleagues-and 96 percent of the time by men. Despite the progress we've made toward equality, we still fail, more often than we might realize, to take women…
Business psychology is a growing and important field in which Binna Kandola (and his firm Pearn Kandola) plays a leading part. If you are white and living in the UK, you may simply not be aware how racism can affect and damage your colleagues and fellow citizens. But this book is not some aggressive “woke” polemic. Kandola is measured, tactful and serious. He tries to show all of us can do better when it comes to recognizing and halting racism at work. Even if you reject the notion of “unconscious bias” – and that might be understandable given some of the failed interventions and flimsy training courses that have been offered by some – Kandola explains that racism is not imagined or exaggerated. It is real and has to be dealt with.
Racism has not been eradicated, despite the enormous strides taken over the past fifty years. It has mutated into new and subtler forms and has found new ways to survive. The racism in organisations today is not characterised by hostile abuse and threatening behaviour. it is not overt nor is it obvious. Today racism is subtle and nuanced, detected mostly by the people on the receiving end, but ignored and possibly not even seen by perpetrators and bystanders. Racism today may be more refined, but it harms people's careers and lives in hugely significant ways. Racism in organisations continues to…
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K, for without him having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” This is how Kafka’s stark novel The Trial begins. It is a thrilling, hilarious, and bleak tale, set in a strange bureaucratic world of bizarre rules and arbitrary justice. K never knows why he is on trial or what crime he is supposed to have committed. If you want to know where the adjective “Kafkaesque” comes from and what it means, read this book. And if you are a boss, remember that all organisations can show Kafkaesque tendencies from time to time: watch out for them!
"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested." From its gripping first sentence onward, this novel exemplifies the term ""Kafkaesque." Its darkly humorous narrative recounts a bank clerk's entrapment — based on an undisclosed charge — in a maze of nonsensical rules and bureaucratic roadblocks. Written in 1914 and published posthumously in 1925, Kafka's engrossing parable about the human condition plunges an isolated individual into an impersonal, illogical system. Josef K.'s ordeals raise provocative, ever-relevant issues related to the role of government and the nature of…
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
By doing so, he unwittingly exposes his muse to gossip. But when Dolça receives his deathbed note asking to see her, she races across Spain with the intention of unburdening herself of an old secret.
On the journey, she encounters bandits, the Inquisition, illness, and the choices she's made. At its heart, Dulcinea is about how we betray the people we love, what happens when we succumb to convention, and why we squander the few chances we get to change our lives.
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