Archive for the ‘Book Summaries’ Category
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Why are some of the greatest books also the toughest reads? My theory is that they are written by boffins, professors and eccentrics. People passionate about their subject who either don’t understand the poor reader or just lack a good editor.
Life is too short to plough through this stuff unless your job depends on it (mine does). Wouldn’t it be nice if someone did it for you? But who is selfless or possibly crazy enough to take on such a task?
Well, here is a collection of great books I have recently read focusing purely on their payload. You get the gist without the grind!
Enjoy!
Profiting from Evidence-based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert Sutton
This book is a timely reminder that management should be based on sound scientific principles yet in the real world it is anything but. Evidence Based Management (the authors’ updating of ‘scientific management’) is a loud wake-up call to senior executives and their consultants to apply scientific thinking whenever they launch a new business initiative. Read the rest of this entry »
This wonderful book provides a fascinating take on improvement – a key topic for clients and consultants alike. Here are the key insights.
The book starts with the simple but profound question: “What does it take to be good at something in which failure is easy?” (despite having serious consequences such as killing people).
The book explores this question through a series of life or death medical scenarios. During these, doctors struggle with what appear to be intractable problems in which the lives of millions are at stake. Here are some of the scenarios and lessons learnt. Read the rest of this entry »
First impressions (FI) can give powerful insights into the complex situations clients and consultants face every day. FI can fast-track our thinking on key issues affecting a consulting engagement. FI can also fool us into making major / expensive mistakes.
On the positive side this book is a readable anthology of research and anecdotes about FI. It gets one thinking about the nature of FI and the ‘adaptive unconscious’ - the part of our mental processes that learns how to react quickly to certain situations. Some of these mental processes are built-in (i.e. we duck to avoid a snowball). Others are learned through thousands of hours of study and practice (i.e. jazz musicianship). Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Penn is a certified guru on the subject of political polling. His famous clients include Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. He was also engaged by Hilary Clinton in the recent US presidential election where he was famously ‘fired’ over a conflict of interest.
This well written and researched book, probably largely penned by his co-author, provides a neat package of small-scale (<1% of the population) social trends that politicians and marketers should take note of.
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