Best of the Best

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Important Reads for Educated and Concerned People

Competencies: communication, self-development, ethics, leadership, managing others

Who benefits: individuals who are engaged in self-development, the workplace and in the world

Consultant Usage: consultants who are engaged in self-development, the workplace and in the world

What’s it about? This is my final Wednesday post of the year.  I thought perhaps a summary would be in order.  Many others will be doing a top ten list of something.  I am semi-retired and can’t afford a top ten.  So here is my Top Nine Reads of what I consider the most important recommendations of the year.  Not the best sellers, not the most interesting, not the best written, not even the most useful.  I want to review the Most Important. If you see yourself as an educated person and/or concerned citizen I urge you to put one or more of the five books on your self-development “to-do” list. 

The four articles are all very short, quick reads (or rereads if you are a dedicated reader of my posts).  They total maybe 15 minutes of reading and I recommend reading them before you make any New Year’s resolutions. 

5 Books:

Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload (2011)

Getting to the truth is more difficult than ever.  Beliefs are treated as facts.  Opinions are treated as truth. What is reliable?  How can the concerned citizen know what is true?  This unusual book was written with journalism students in mind, but in fact is a must read and guide for any concerned citizen seeking to separate the Blur between truth and fiction in the world we live in.  My book of the year.

The MBA Oath: Setting a Higher Standard for Business Leaders (2009)

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is The Protestor.  This book was written by some very positive young protestors who, to loosely borrow a line from an old movie, are Mad as Hell and won’t take it anymore.  They are fed up with corporate greed and political corruption and they intend to do something about it.  Not a practical book, but instills optimism. 

What To Ask The Person In The Mirror (2011)

Easily, I mean easily the best book on leadership in this century.  The kind of advice Peter Drucker would give if he were still with us.  Every wannabe, supervisor, manager and executive should consider this book required reading.  If I were a chief honcho, I would pay a bonus to my management team to read this book … with the proviso that this is how their performance will be measured.

Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader (2011)

Second best leadership book in a long time.  The three imperatives are (1) Manage yourself, (2) Manage a network and (3) Manage a team.  Well written and right on.

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (2009)

This is your personal work quality program.  It takes ideas from airplane pilots’ flight checklist and cooks’ recipes and applies the concepts first to doctors (the book was written by a surgeon) and then to the rest of us.  You will need to think through how these ideas apply to your work world and life, but if you are still in search of excellence – here it is.

4 Short Articles

The Betterness Manifesto (2010)

You want to build a better 21st Century?  Here is how.

Ten Principles to Live by in Fiercely Complex Times (2011)

You want to be a better you?

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently (2011)

You want to build a better you?

30 Things We Need — and 30 We Don’t (2011)

If your life expectancy is more than a month, this is a must read.

Happy New Year and Continued Growth!

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.