Books
Careers, markets, ideas and negotitation
Your next move
Michael Watkins
Harvard Business Press, £19.99/$26.95
Business leaders are only as successful as their next career move, warns Michael Watkins, co-founder of Massachusetts-based leadership development company Genesis Advisers, and the strategy they choose to follow will help to determine where they end up.
Getting promoted is a totally different challenge to securing a position at a new company, for example. Watkins, whose The First 90 Days helped leaders to get up to speed in new roles, outlines eight classic transitions they will face in their career and examines how to handle each situation from the perspective of getting the next position.
These include gaining promotion, leading former peers and handling corporate diplomacy, as well as less obvious scenarios such as international moves and taking over a struggling business. The result is a practical roadmap for executives for whom the result is more important than good times along the way.
Pros: Convincing and practical
Cons: Hardly encourages longevity
Discovery driven growth
Rita Gunter McGrath/Ian MacMillan
Harvard Business School Press, £15.99/$27.95
Common perceptions about sustaining growth are wrong, according to Rita Gunter McGrath, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, and Ian MacMillan, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
They argue that an ability to react to uncertain opportunities is far more valuable – and requires a fundamentally different mindset – to doggedly pursuing a strategy that assumes we know all the answers at the start. Intelligent failures, for example, teach organisations far more than predictable successes.
The book takes readers through a new model that prioritises what really matters to their business before developing, testing and executing strategies accordingly. The authors highlight means of overcoming obstacles using real business examples and reveal how to adapt models to accommodate opportunities that present themselves along the way.
Pros: Logical structure and convincing
Cons: Risky approach in a safety-first age
How the markets fail
John Cassidy
Penguin, £25/$28
A business journalist and author of Dot.con, John Cassidy provides an assessment of where global capitalism has gone wrong. Although his book is written predominantly at a macroeconomic level, its content and messages are hugely relevant to individual businesses and their leaders.
Cassidy’s argument is that economic policy has been determined by the notion that markets act like a super-computer that ultimately works to the benefit of all. The past few years, however, have revealed the reality is far less palatable: a model where people act in ways that may benefit themselves but can be disastrous collectively. Instead, he argues, individuals, companies and governments need to accept that market corrections are not only inevitable but at times even desirable.
Only by moving to this type of “reality-based politics”, Cassidy says, will we be able to avoid the kind of meltdown we have come so perilously close to over the past two years.
Pros: Timely and convincing
Cons: Can get bogged down in theory
It's an even better deal
Paul Steele
McGraw Hill, £12.99
Whether economic times are good or bad, the ability to negotiate is vital if companies are to operate at maximum efficiency, says Paul Steele, chairman of purchasing and supply chain consultancy PMMS and former head of purchasing at Esso, British Rail and Whitbread, as well as an ex-president of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply.
This is a revised and updated version of Steele’s original It’s A Deal, a top-selling negotiation handbook over the past two decades. Divided into two parts, it starts with a summary of the thinking and processes behind successful negotiation before homing in on how to achieve the best result given the personality of the negotiator and their organisation.
Aimed primarily at buyers in procurement departments rather than salespeople, the book has obvious relevance to anyone in a negotiating position, however senior or junior, and should serve as a welcome refresher for many as we enter an era where demand starts to rise again.
Pros: Thorough and very practical
Cons: Basic procurement for many