Welcome to our Jewish Business Books webpage,
hosted by MyJewishBooks.com and edited by Chaim Hilton
Please browse my recommendations and selections, read a review, or add your own review by clicking an icon or bookcover. The orders are fulfilled by amazon.com; net proceeds are donated to tzedakah. If you want to recommend a charity, please send me an email at Admin@myjewishbooks.com
MyJewishBooks.com, Larry, and oFrah, are proud to welcome Chaim Hilton, a scion of a business oriented family who is a BT when it comes to Jewish business books.
Welcome Chaim!
We look forward to your brave counsel and wise advice. Take it away, Chaim.
Hi. Welcome to the business books section of MyJewishBooks.com. I am Chaim Hilton, or as jokesters like to say, Haim Chilton. Yes, I am a blond Jew and I am single, for all of your who are wondering. With that out of the way, I hope I can be a good guide each month, in the realm of business books.
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Sometimes business and Judaism don't mix well...
Chaim Hilton's JANUARY 2008 SELECTION
I was drawn into this book by its Acknowledgements. The author was so generous to others and gave so much credit to others, that I was amazed by his openness, and before I knew it, I was deep, into the book.
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The Opposable Mind
How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
by Roger L. Martin
December 2007, HBS Press
The author is the Dean of University of Toronto's business school and formerly with the Monitor Group. What I like about the book is that it is about thinking and not actually doing. When you read other books, you learn aboutwhat a leader did, how he or she executed a strategy. You don't learn about how they came to a decision. Think of JFK and Cuba/the Bay of Pigs decisions. You know his final decision, but what is more interesting is how he put together a team to help him to decide. Roger Martin writes that each business decision and environment and strategy situation is different. This book teaches you to emulate how leaders think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking, or allowing two opposing ideas to exist simultaneously in on the mind, and resolving the tension of the OPPOSING models by forming entirely new and superior ones (sounds Marxist dialectic, doesn't it?) Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers ASK PROBING QUESTIONS and understands the trade-offs. For example, should you outsource your customer service when you trade off costs for service levels? Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge-including conceptual and experiential knowledge.
Martin wirtes that Integrative Thinking involves four steps:
salience (allowing more complex features to be considered),
causality (many dimensions and interactions, and not all interactions are a straight line single cause and effect),
architecture (seeing the whole sum of the parts while developing the parts), and
resolution of the tensions.
But one item in Chapter 5 stands out and it is something most people will forget. You can read so many biz books, but unless you shut off the radio and tv and sit down in silence and write down the answers to these questions, nothing will help you. They are:
STANCE: Who are you in the world. What are you trying to accomplish?
TOOLS: With what tools or models do I organize my thoughts and perceive and understand the world?
EXPERIENCES: What are the expiernces you will use to build your repertoire of sensitivities and skills?
We shape are tools, and later our tools shape us.. and if your tools re not the right toolset, then acquire new ones.
Chaim Hilton's DECEMBER 2007 SELECTION
Oy. Poor Kevin Colvin. He emailed his boss at Allied Irish Bank and said he had to be in the Big Apple for a family urgent issue. He actually went to Worcester for a Halloween party and dressed as a guy with a wand or perhaps a radical fairy. Kevin Colvin posted a pic from the party on his facebook page which was then sent to his boss by a loving co-worker (isn't competition and snitching awful?). Kevin Colvin should have read the book below:
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The Sick Day Handbook
Strategies And Techniques for Faking It
by Ellie Bishop
Conari Press
The alarm goes off, and the thought of your morning commute, a buttoned-up shirt, and e-mail makes you want to cry. You don't want to go to work-YOU CAN'T. So what's a 9-to-5er to do? KISS: Keep it Simple, Sickie. "I'm (sniffle) not feeling well, got this scratchy feeling in my throat (cough), think it'd be best for me to sit this one out, boss." Click. Congratulations, you just called in sick and were lying through your down comforter about it. Ahh, the thrill of deceit!
Let's be honest-at least briefly. Sometimes you just need a day. The Sick Day Handbook is your guide to freedom. In Ellie's words, "This is a course in manipulation . . . This is about lying." Anyone who reads to "the end" and follows Bishop's creative instructions will have earned their DDD: Doctor of Downright Devious. Filled with symptoms and prescriptions for common illnesses and proper stage-setting techniques to pull off the previously unthinkable Tuesday-after-a-long-weekend call-in (your pregnant friend had the baby!), you'll have a pool of credible excuses just waiting to be used (scripts included). If you thought it couldn't get any better-well, read on. Your boss will think you are such a moral person (what a doll . . . taking care of your elderly neighbor and her 3-legged cat all the while suffering from Vertigo and an IBS flare-up) he'll practically beg you to take a day off! So what are you waiting for, nervous dialers? Get your slippers on-daytime television awaits you. Learn our tricks and no one will ever doubt your "flu" again!
Chaim Hilton's NOVEMBER 2007 SELECTION
My friend Akiva B. turned me on to this book. Thanks Akiva. I do not think I would want to hang out with the author, and he seems a tad too energetic and manic for me. Think of a young version of James Cramer but without the self-knowledge that it is an act. Cuz it isn't. But it is an interesting and informative read.
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An American Hedge Fund
How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund
by Timothy Sykes
September 2007, BullShip Press
Sykes tells the story of how he took $12,415 of gift money he received for his Bar Mitzvah and turned it into a $1.65 million fortune in a few years of frenetic stock trading. Giddy from his rapid ascent but still naive in many ways, Sykes went on to found a hedge fund and, after initial success, was stung by steep losses. Now just 26 years old and a budding media personality, Sykes is deluged by people looking to emulate his early success and says that's why he wrote the brutally honest tale of sudden wealth and hubris. "It's inspirational but also cautionary," he said. There's a bit of James Cramer in Sykes. He is manic and somewhat eccentric self-promoter. I most enjoyed his stories of trying to find investors and whether they needed to be entertained, and his stories of college at Tulane. He decided to take night classes so that he could trade during the day. Realizing that he had few friends, he decided to pledge a frat. But when a frat member called him and asked his to perform a mindless errand, Sykes refused. Sykes was in the middle of a stock position trade and could not leave. Wrong answer. He got dinged, but he made $1500. Click the book cover to read more.
Chaim Hilton's OCTOBER 2007 SELECTION
These two book are not necessarily Jewish, but the highlight the lives of some very interesting Jewish business investors and business leaders.
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100 Minds That Made the Market
(The Fisher Investment Series)
by Kenneth L. Fisher
August 2007, Wiley
When you walk by the New York Stock Exchange and other markets, you take it for granted, and forget all the people who built the markets into what they are today. Ken Fischer, a Forbes columnist and the founder of the firm that bears his name, manages over $40 Billion in assets and OPM (Other People's Money). He is ranked among the 300 richest Americans, and he has an interest in financial history and the lives of the (MOSTLY) men who created the modern market. It is fascinating to read of early day Jim Kramer's, the serious leaders, the flamboyent investors, the sexcapades of Joe Kennedy, the buyers, the sellers, the rogues and the saints. The book is split into 11 sections covering: The Dinosaurs (Astor, J. S. Morgan, Vanderbilt, Girard, the Rothschilds); Journalists and Authors (Dow, Jones, Forbes, Barron, Engel, Graham, Bernhard); Investment Bankers and Brokers (August Belmont, Emanuel Lehman and his son Philip, J. P. Morgan, Jacob Schiff, Charles Merrill, Gerald Loeb, Sidney Weinberg); The Innovators ("Lucky" Baldwin, Russell Sage, Babson, Cabot, T. Rowe Price); Bankers and Central Bankers (Law, Hamilton, Biddle, Paul Warburg, Benjamin Strong, Natalie Schenk Laimbeer); New Deal Reformers (Joseph Kennedy, William O. Douglas); Crooks (Ponzi, Whitney, Meehan, jerry and Gerald Re, Tellier); Technicians (Evangeline Adams, Robert Rhea, Irving Fisher, Keynes, Gann, Gould); Speculators (Jay Gould, Diamond Jim Brady, Fisher Brothers, bernard Baruch); Wheeler Dealers (James Fisk, William Durant, Charles Morse); and Miscellaneous (Hetty Green, Patrick Bologna, Cyrus Eaton). Click to read more
Chaim Hilton's SEPTEMBER 2007 SELECTION
I was at the beach in August, and my favorite activity is sitting and reading the wedding announcements in The Sunday New York Times. And lately I was feeling envious of all the grooms who are financial analysts and hedge fund associates. Which drw me closer to picking up the following book:
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How I Became a Quant
Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite
Edited by Barry Schachter and Richard R. Lindsey (President of Bear, Stearns Securities Corporation)
July 2007, Wiley
Quants are the backbone of today's investment industry, or so they think. Their mathematical models are the basis for most financial market innovations, such as derivatives, structured investment products, trading strategies, and portfolio selections. But what they actually do, and how they do it? I really do not have the time to enroll in the MS program at Columbia in Financial Mathematics. So I read this instead. In How I Became a Quant, more than 24 quants tell their war stories and detail the unexpected paths. Peter Carr, head of Quantitative Financial Research at Bloomberg, tells of his progression from cornering the local paper delivery market as a boy in Toronto to teaching at Cornell to ultimately helping Bloomberg start up its quant group. Leslie Rahl, President of Capital Market Risk Advisors, describes how she excelled in math and science as a girl, went on to MIT--so as not to be seen as "weird," as she thought might happen at other schools--and joined Citibank at a time when they had only two women VPs in the entire worldwide organization. Andrew Weisman, Managing Director of Merrill Lynch, reveals an academic background that began with study of the classics--Plato to Popper, Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, and oddly enough, swimming lessons.
Other contributors are David Leinweber, Ronald N. Kahn (Barclays), Gregg Berman, Evan Schulman, Mark Anson, Thomas Wilson (ING), Neil Chriss, Bjorn Flesaker, Peter Jackel, Andrew Davidson, Clifford Asness, Stephen Kealhofer, Julian Shaw, Mark Kritzman, Bruce I. Jacobs and Kenneth N. Levy, Tanya Beder, Allan Malz, Peter Muller, Andrew Sterge, and Jack Marshall. I especially liked Andrew Davidson of his own firm. He was a Mathlete in high school and went to Harvard, and studied with Myron Scholes at the University of Chicago in grad school, but not before he worked in physics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. He is not into equations, some of which in adds to essay (none of which I understood), but he likes to guess at answers. His theorem: If it May Be True in Theory but it won't work in practice, Get Another Theory; and Lemma 1: If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. These are the stories behind their careers. Click to read more
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The Goal
by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
North River
In a business text disguised as a novel, a remarkable cast of actors dramatizes a fascinating tale of discovery and redemption. In the story, the manager of a troubled plant, Alex Rogo, learns from a mathematician turned consultant, Jonah, that many of his management practices and economic assumptions are faulty. Also, his marriage is on shaky ground due to his long work hours. . When his district manager tells him that profits must increase or the plant will be closed, he retools his thinking, and he convinces everyone else at the factory to get with the new program. The story's flow is slowed by extraneous dialogue and subplots, but it's still a good story and a captivating format for serving up the author's message--that businesses weighed down by archaic habits can be wildly profitable when fresh mathematical methods are implemented with courageous persistence. Click to read more
Chaim Hilton's AUGUST 2007 SELECTION
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The New Rules of Marketing and PR
How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting,
Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly
by David Meerman Scott
June 2007, Wiley
Whether you run a business or a Jewish organization, if you want to reach members or customers, you have to be online or have podcasts. The Internet has changed the way people communicate and interact with each other. The New Rules of Marketing and PR shows you how to leverage the potential that Web-based communication. Finally, you can speak directly to customers and buyers, establishing a personal link with those who make your business work. You can reach niche buyers with targeted messages that cost a fraction of your big-budget ad campaign. Rather than bombard them with advertising they'll likely ignore, you can focus on getting the right message to the right people at the right time.
Forget about press releases. David makes the distinction between a press release vs. a "news release." The name of the game is to focus on two objectives before you issue a "news release." Number one, think about the buyers we want to reach, second think about the problems that they have or the problems they are trying to solve. This changes everything in the public relations world as we used to know it. In the case of the old rules, you have to write about your own product and the news surrounding it and in the new rules if you focus on the problems that your buyers have you will have much stronger results and David goes into details on how to make that happen. We even go into a MySuccessGateway.com case study. David also gives the example of Cruisecompete.com an online travel agent with different cruises. They did a series of news releases using keywords that their buyers were looking for. For example: Their customers were searching on the following 3 keyword phrases; Thanksgiving cruise, Christmas cruise, and New Years Cruise, this is how their customers were looking for cruise information. They understood what their buyers were looking for by asking their customers. They interviewed their buyers and did their own research. They used Marketwire for their distribution. They inserted anchor text links for the phrases. (The phrases are in blue, and link to their landing pages.) Christmas Cruise for example was one particular landing page. Now they have moved people off of the news release on to their landing page. They went into search engine and they inserted "new years cruise," that is why they created an anchor text link for the phrase to drive the user back to the new years cruise landing page. Click to read more
Chaim Hilton's JULY 2007 SELECTION
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A Perfect Mess
The Hidden Benefits of Disorder
How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman
2007, Little Brown
Like Freakonomics, here is a book that combines counterintuitive thinking with stories from everyday life to provide a striking new view of how our world works. Ever since Einstein's study of Brownian Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder actually makes systems more effective. But most people still shun disorder--or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid. No longer! With a spectacular array of anecdotes and case studies of the useful role mess can play, here is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones. A Perfect Mess will help readers assess what the right amount of disorder is for a given system, and how to apply these ideas onto a large scale--government, society-- and on a small scale--in your attic, kitchen, or office. A Perfect Mess will forever change the way we think about those unruly heaps of paper on our desks.
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Pink Ribbons, Inc.
Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy
by Samantha King
2006
The Jewish community is heavily involved in the pink ribbon and breast cancer cure movements. The pink ribbon is the symbol for the fight for a cure and the fight for early detection. Each year, corporations promote pink shaded products and their core products, from bags to yogurt to cars, to support breast cancer research. Pink Ribbons Inc. explores the Susan G. Komen Foundation's Race for the Cure 5 Kilometer runs and other events with large corporate sponsorships. But does this actually overshadow the efforts for prevention and education? King examines the history of philanthropy and how breast cancer became such a prominent cause, garnering far more support and publicity than other diseases, demonstrating the ability of American women to flex their political and economic muscle on behalf of an important cause
Chaim Hilton's JUNE 2007 SELECTION
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Confessions of a Municipal Bond Salesman
by Jim Lebenthal, with Bernice Kanner
and a foreword by Paul A. Volcker
2006
He's Jim Lebenthal, and muni bonds are his babies
He is a showman who went to Andover and Princeton, and worked for Disney, Henry Luce and David Ogilvy before landing on Wall Street.
This book is a year old, but still an enjoyable read. I remember watching Mr. James Avram Lebenthal's unusual commercials promoting triple tax free municipal bonds, and then the ads by his daughter, Alexandra, who took over the business from her father, Jim, and her grandmother. (A friend of mine once sat next to Alexandra on a jet flight. He missed his opportunity to ask her out. Maybe she was his bashert?) In this memoir, Jim Lebenthal journeys from Hollywood reporter to Academy Award winning short filmmaker (for Disney in 1959), to copywriter for Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam (and Restless), to a famous, media savvy bond salesman. His father suffered several strokes when Jim was a teen, and his mother, Sayra, had to take over Lebenthal and Company, an odd lot bond house, fully. Lebenthal tells us about his successes and setbacks. He explains how to recognize opportunity and how to persevere to overcome obstacles. An excellent salesperson, he imparts a few secrets on how to sell and how to avoid procrastination and roadblocks to success (although effort is no guarantee of success, it's just a license to keep at it).
In the words of Jim:
A good ad makes you say the following: I didn't know that, I'll Bite. Tell me more.
Happy at Work? Would you do that job as a hobby without pay?
Never leave a job without at least one success under you rbelt
Advertising is an investment in your brand
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Never Say Never
The Insider's Guide to Risk Management (
by Len Biegel
Brick Tower Books (October 25, 2007)
One-fourth to one-third of all American companies say they are not prepared for a crisis. This concise book on crisis management is by a well-known expert in crisis management whose clients have included Tylenol, American Airlines, and Homeland Security. For example, what if you are the CLAIMS CONFERENCE, and it is discovered that $$ have been misspent...
Issues are best addressed early and head-on - thus avoiding a crisis. That is the essence of effective public affairs.
The best crisis is the one that is prevented. And this can be the result of management commitment to listening to and spotting early warnings; effective management of issues before they become crises; and a culture that fosters a commitment to crisis readiness as part of the corporate structure.
As the Tylenol tamperings of the 1980s set a new paradigm for crisis management, the events of September 11, 2001 and the ongoing war on terrorism have set yet another paradigm, which includes a call for companies to:
Make a full-time commitment to crisis management; Employ communications techniques to maximize crisis prevention; Address crisis preparation as a global commitment; Be sensitive to the communication of risk; and Recognize the Web as both an asset and a threat.
Reputation is crucial. It can be severely damaged if it is not handled with candor and concern.
Preparation pays countless dividends when a crisis has hit. Bad things do happen to good companies and organizations. Those who overcome the bad times most easily are those who have prepared to face the difficulties. Decisions in a crisis must be based on the facts, not instinct alone. And delivering bad news can be painful. The faster and more directly you get it out, the sooner you can move beyond initial confusion and impressions - and the more credible you will be in the long run.
* Above all - companies that show they care about the customers, their communities and the public at large fare better than those who don't.
Kinky Sex, professionalism, the saving of NYC, Jewish business history, France, Jewish refugees, Wall Street all mix together in the fascinating tale of a unique investment bank, and how egos clashed as the fight ensued for control of the secretive firm.
Chaim Hilton's APRIL 2007 SELECTION
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The Last Tycoons
The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.
by William D. Cohan
2007, Doubleday
grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street's most storied investment bank
Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were its weapons of choice. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built. William D. Cohan, himself a former high-level Wall Street banker, takes the reader into the mysterious and secretive world of Lazard and presents a compelling portrait of Wall Street through the tumultuous history of this exalted and fascinating company. Cohan deconstructs the explosive feuds between Felix Rohatyn and Steve Rattner, superstar investment bankers and pillars of New York society, and between the man who controlled Lazard, the inscrutable French billionaire Michel David-Weill, and his chosen successor, Bruce Wasserstein. Cohan follows Felix, the consummate adviser, as he reshapes corporate America in the 1970s and 1980s, saves New York City from bankruptcy, and positions himself in New York society and in Washington. Felix's dreams are dashed after the arrival of Steve, a formidable and ambitious former newspaper reporter. By the mid-1990s, as Lazard neared its 150th anniversary, Steve and Felix were feuding openly. The internal strife caused by their arguments could not be solved by the imperious Michel, whose manipulative tendencies served only to exacerbate the trouble within the firm. Increasingly desperate, Michel took the unprecedented step of relinquishing operational control of Lazard to one of the few Great Men still around, Bruce Wasserstein, then fresh from selling his own M&A boutique, for $1.4 billion. Bruce's take: more than $600 million. But it turned out Great Man Bruce had snookered Great Man Michel when the Frenchman was at his most vulnerable.
THREE FUN BOOKS
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HOW TO CUT A CAKE
AND OTHER MATHEMATICAL CONUNDRUMS
BY IAN STEWART
2006
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Why Do Buses Come in Threes?
by Robert Eastaway, and Jeremy Wyndham
and a Foreword by Tim Rice
2005
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Chaim Hilton's MARCH 2007 SELECTION
It's not just a Jewish thing. You run into assholes, bullies, creeps, jerks, tormentors and egomaniacs at work, in life, even at the synagogue or Jewish communal organizations. The suppress dissent. They think that in order to convince people of their opinion that they may not allow open dialogue. There are those among us who make co-workers or other members feel bad about themselves, they act like poison, make good people quit, and act-out to the detriment of the group.
Professor Sutton was told by his father at age 8, that he should avoid jerks. He has tried to follow this rule. And has now created a book on the topic. In opposition to Jim Collins book about being passionate about (on the bus or off the bus), Sutton says that sometimes you need to just not care about certain aspects of work and be dispassionate in order to ignore the bullies.
Take the exam: Are u an Arse hole
http://electricpulp.com/guykawasaki/arse/
Now don't get me wrong. Sutton does not want a company of wimps. He knows the confrontation is useful and necessary. But he writes, "Every organization needs the no asshole rule because mean-spirited people do massive damage to victims, bystanders who suffer the ripple effects, organizational performance, and themselves... The effects of assholes are so devastating because they sap people of their energy and esteem mostly through the accumulated effects of small, demeaning acts, not so much through one or two dramatic episodes." (pages 27-29)
Sutton lists "the dirty dozen" tactics that assholes use: 1. Personal insults; 2. Invading one's "personal territory"; 3. Uninvited physical contact; 4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and nonverbal; 5. "Sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" used as insult delivery systems; 6. Withering email flames; 7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims;
8. Public shaming or "status degradation" rituals; 9. Rude interruptions; 10. Two-faced attacks; 11. Dirty looks; and
12. Treating people as if they are invisible.
Sutton conitnues that a "ONE asshole rule" can complement the NO asshole rule, writing that "Decades of research on how human groups react to 'deviant' members implies that having one or two assholes around may be better than having none at all." A single highly exposed rule-breaker can spur others to do the right thing." For instance, while people are less likely to litter on a clean surface than a messy one, they are even less likely to litter on a surface with a single piece of garbage than on one with no garbage at all. The norm violation sticks out like a sore thumb and reinforces good behavior. "A token asshole reminds everyone how not to behave."
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The No Asshole Rule
Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
by Robert I. Sutton
2007, Warner Business
Robert I. Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he is the former Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, an active researcher and cofounder in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and a cofounder and active member of the new "d.school," a multi-disciplinary program that teaches and spreads "design thinking." Dr. Sutton received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of MichiganHe was named by Business 2.0 as a leading "management guru" in 2002.
Sutton studies the links between managerial knowledge and organizational action, innovation, and organizational performance.
There have been many reactions to Sutton's book. A distraught San Francisco police captain who was given the book as a gift was insulted by the book, thinking that it was about his management style. An attorney reported that she was going to display a copy of the book on her office because she thought it might cause clients and colleagues to be nicer to her. HR people held workshops where they used the book. An office assistant had the book on her desk; her boss told her to take it off her desk and bring it home, because it was making people uncomfortable. She suggested that the real reason that her boss wanted her to get rid of it was that he is an asshole -- and didn't want to face the fact....An HR executive told me yesterday that her boss -- a total asshole -- had three copies of the book on his desk. She couldn't figure out if it indicated a complete lack of self-awareness about his effects on others, an admission of his problem, or even the start of a change effort. Perhaps he just bought them for the chapter on "The Virtues of Assholes.".... "If we are nice to each other, we will be nice to customers."
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Book cover: Today's deluge of business books exhaustively addresses problems with leadership, corporate strategy, sales, budgeting, incentives, innovation, execution, and on and on. But scant attention is devoted to a problem that plagues every workplace: Assholes. In a landmark Harvard Business Review essay, Stanford Professor Robert Sutton showed how assholes weren't just an office nuisance, but a serious and costly threat to corporate success and employee health. In his new book, Sutton reveals the huge TCA (Total Cost of Assholes) in today's corporations. He shows how to spot an asshole (hint: they are addicted to rude interruptions and subtle putdowns, and enjoy using "sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" as "insult delivery systems"), and provides a "self-test" to determine whether you deserve to be branded as a "certified asshole." And he offers tips that you can use to keep your "inner jerk" from rearing its ugly head. Sutton then uses in-depth research and analysis to show how managers can eliminate mean-spirited and unproductive behavior (while positively channeling some of the virtues of assholes) to generate an asshole free--and newly productive--workplace. Enlightening case studies include an analysis of how Google's "don't be evil" maxim helped launch the company to unprecedented early growth, how JetBlue and Southwest Airlines "fire" passengers who demean their employees, and how a "belligerent" e-mail from Cerner CEO Neal Patterson made his company's stock plunge 22% in three days (and how his graceful apology helped the stock bounce back.
Chaim Hilton's JANUARY 2007 SELECTION
Happy New Year. When Gert Boyle was thirteen, she fled Germany with her family.
Her father had a shirt factory in Augsburg, Germany. When Hitler came to power, her father traveled from Germany to Portland Oregon to scope out the environment. That is how Ms. Boyle escaped Nazism and ended up in Oregon. In 1938, her father bought a hat company from the Rosenfeld brothers and chnaged the name to the Columbia Hat Company (named for the Columbia River). Gert loved to sew and made the company's first fishing vest. At the University of Arizona, she met her husband at a drunken frat party, and after graduation, they married and moved back to Portland.
By the 1970's, the firm was generating $800,000 a year. But three months after her husband, Neal, 47, took an SBA loan for $150K, and put up his life insurance and houses as collateral, he died. Gert had to take over the busy, and a year later, sales had dropped 25%.
She was tough. She hired, she fired, she told off creditors and bankers. She faced three union strikes, so she moved production overseas. In the mid 19070's they decided to focus on their core competencies: typical outdoor leisure clothes. In 1986, the developed the Quad parka for hunters, but decided to market it to skiers and call it the Bugaboo coat. Over 5 million have been sold. This helped them to go public in 1988.
This is the story of how she succeeded as a tough Jewish woman in the apparel business.
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One Tough Mother
Taking Charge in Life, Business, and Apple Pies
By Gert Boyle, Chairman of Columbia Sportswear
with Kerry Tymchuk
January 2007, Carroll and Graf
How the mother of three, the daughter of a Jewish man who fled Nazi Germany, turned a struggling ski-wear company into a billion dollar industry leader, Columbia Sportswear.
When a heart attack claimed Gert Boyle's husband in 1970, the forty-six-year-old housewife and mother of three found herself at the helm of Columbia Sportswear, a small outerwear manufacturer in Portland, Oregon, that was struggling financially. With no business experience whatsoever, Boyle was faced with the challenge of running Columbia, which had been founded in 1937 by her father - a Jewish immigrant who had fled Hitler's Germany. Boyle and her son Tim persevered, turning a company that in 1970 had forty employees and less than $800,000 in annual sales into the leading seller of skiwear in the United States, with more than 2000 employees and over a billion in annual sales. Along the way, thanks in part to a creative marketing campaign that billed her as "one tough mother," Boyle established herself as an industry icon, and the first woman ever inducted into the International Sporting Goods Hall of Fame. One Tough Mother presents an honest and often irreverent account of Boyle's journey from a childhood in Nazi Germany to incredible success in America. She offers insights into succeeding in business and in life, and shares many of the advertisements and strategies that have made her so recognizable. Click the book cover to read more.
Chaim Hilton's DECEMBER 2006 SELECTION
I was invited to the book party for "The Mystery of the Kaddish: Its Profound Influence on Judaism" by bond-trader, real estate investor, cantor, celebrity-advisor, and lawyer, Leon Charney. He even belted out a prayer at the end of his reading, in a posh dining room of a prestigious international bank. In addition to hob-nobbing with a couple famous rabbis, and a few investors, I stood next to a cashew chomping, Joe Franklin. I felt like asking him whether it was true that he raped comedian Sarah Silverman (as she states in her film, Jesus is Magic), but that would have been silly and inappropriate, I also chatted with author, Dan Kurzman (Fatal Voyage), who told me about his forthcoming book on Hitler's Plot Against Pope Pius.
But the real highlight was when I was standing far in the back of the room, away from the action, and I spied a very fit, older gentleman, also sitting far in the back and looking slightly bored. It looked like "Ace" Greenberg, of Bear Stearns, UJA Card Calling, and bridge fame. After he got up and left the reading, I saw that he had left his nametag on the floor... "Alan C. Greenberg, Esq., it read. ... so, yes, it was the famous investor and author (Memos from the Chairman ).
Which brings me to my book recommendation for December.
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The Real Deal
My Life in Business and Philanthropy
by Sandy Weill, with Judah S. Kraushaar
October 2006. Warner
The Sandy Weill story is truly one for the ages. Starting with $30,000 in borrowed cash in 1960, and relying on uncanny entrepreneurial instincts in the corporate world, he made himself a billionaire and became one of the most powerful bankers in the world. After rising to become the president of American Express, Weill saw his empire crash and burn. Undaunted, he started over with a second-tier consumer loan company called Commercial Credit, which eventually led to his position as CEO and then chairman of Citigroup. While at Citigroup, Weill delivered an astounding 2,600% return to investors--better than legendary CEO Jack Welch or investor Warren Buffett during that same period. But success is never an easy path, and Weill shares all the high and low points along the way--warts and all. His ascent to power has been documented by the business media over the years, but never before has Weill gone on the record, revealing his brutally honest and unvarnished side of his astounding life and career trajectory.
Weill started humbly. The fact that he is Jewish put him at a marked disadvantage in starting out on Wall Street in the 1950s. Weill turned his outsider status to advantage by mastering the unglamorous ledger sheet and back-office fundamentals of business and in developing an exquisite feel for the unconventional business opportunity.
According to Biz Week, "Weill built the upstart Shearson Loeb Rhoades from the broken pieces of haughty old-line brokerages unable to adapt to the Computer Age. In 1981, Weill sold Shearson to American Express, and many Wall Streeters assumed he soon would dislodge the seemingly soft, patrician Robinson as CEO. Instead, it was Weill who resigned in frustration after belatedly realizing that he would never run AmEx. In 1986, at age 53, he again started from scratch, acquiring a rundown consumer finance company in Baltimore. Over the next decade, Weill transformed Commercial Credit through a series of bold acquisitions into Citigroup, the world's largest and most profitable financial institution."
Weill writes about the time he started his own firm with three partners: Shortly after we set up shop, the four of us and our wives convened at Arthur's home on Long Island to celebrate. It was a festive occasion, and we all openly shared our aspirations. To this day, I remember the others stressing over and over their desire to become wealthy. Given that Joanie and I were raising two toddlers and lived nearly hand to mouth, the talk was certainly seductive. Still, what I remember most from that dinner was my declaration that the money should be secondary-what mattered more to me was to build a great firm: one that would lead the industry, employ lots of people, endure over many years, and importantly, command respect. Over the next forty-three years, I never altered my priorities.
Weill is honest about some flaws. For example, during the negotiations to sell Shearson, Weill told Cohen that he would push hard for his appointment to AmEx's board of directors. When Robinson pushed back, Weill promptly caved but did not inform Cohen until days later at the end of a shared Friday afternoon cab ride home. As Weill got out, he blurted out the bad news and slammed the door in Cohen's face. Yet when Cohen on his own successfully lobbied Robinson for the board appointment, Weill was furious at his protégé's disloyalty. "Now I looked completely foolish," Weill writes. And Weill's quasi-paternal relationship with Dimon, now CEO of JPMorgan Chase, took a decisive turn for the worse, after Citigroup hired Weill's daughter, Jessica Bibliowicz, in 1994. Bibliowicz, a mutual fund marketer several levels down from Dimon, disagreed with him about a marketing initiative. "At some point, I decided to sit in on some of the discussions," Weill writes. "Coincidentally, I adopted a point of view that turned out to resemble Jessica's." Fancy that. When Dimon declined to vault Bibliowicz ahead of others into senior posts, Weill bristled at "a hurtful treatment of my daughter." Weill comes across as a man whose ego is as towering as his ambition. Click the book cover to read more.
Chaim Hilton's NOVEMBER 2006 SELECTION
Why is Andy Grove seen as the business example for this decade? Born to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1936, Andras Istvan Grof survived the Holocaust and survived Soviet occupation. He escaped, studied, and helped build Intel into a top corporation, spreading paranoia through the Silicon Valley (hehe). According to Andy, a company, such as Intel, is always one wrong answer away from disaster, and a closed mind is a trap door to the abyss. You must accept all opinions and weigh and judge them. Andy believes that STRATEGY IS DESTINY. As the author of the book below write, "In business you often don't see the cliff until you've already walked over it. Visibility on the ground is bad, and the roadmap--well, that can't be trusted either. To spot the next cliff, Andy Grove was willing to let go of his instincts--since they could be wrong--and view himself as a student might: from outside, peering down with the wide-angle, disinterested perspective of the observer. Did the man below seem aware of his surroundings? Was he choosing the correct path? Was there a 1,000-foot drop ahead?"
The author asks: What can others learn from Grove's odyssey? As we face a future where change is not only constant but accelerating, reality will transform itself more swiftly than most humans--or most companies--are hard-wired to handle. Even startups that overturn one reality are easily overturned by the next big change. Grove has escaped natural selection by doing the evolving himself. Forcibly adapting himself to a succession of new realities, he has left a trail of discarded assumptions in his wake. When reality has changed, he has found the will to let go and embrace the new. He never lost his Hungarian refugee's apprehension of the risk of imminent failure.
Grove had never been one to rely on others' interpretations of reality. In Hungary, "reality" was shaped by one's position in the government system. At Intel, Grove fostered a culture in which "knowledge power" would trump "position power." Anyone could challenge anyone else's idea, so long as it was about the idea and not the person--and so long as you were ready for the demand "Prove it."
I think the most exciting part of the story is how Grove and Moore brought Intel back from it's losses in the eighties, moved away from memory chips, and overcame the after effects of laying off 8000 employees in 1986 after losing $180 million.
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ANDY GROVE
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN AMERICAN
By RICHARD S. TEDLOW, HBS
November 2006. Portfolio
The definitive biography of an enigmatic business legend. Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel during its years of explosive growth, is on the shortlist of America's most admired businesspeople, along with Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. Brilliant, brave, and willing to defy conventional wisdom, Grove is, according to Harvard Business School professor Richard S. Tedlow, "the best model we have for leading a business in the twenty-first century." Grove gave Tedlow unprecedented access to his private papers, along with wide-ranging interviews and access to his closest friends and key business associates. Nothing was off limits, and Tedlow was free to draw his own conclusions. The result is not just a gripping life story but a fascinating analysis of how Grove attacks problems. Born a Hungarian Jew in 1936, Andras Istvan Grof survived the Nazis only to face the Soviet invasion of his country. He fled to America at age twenty, studied engineering, and arrived in Silicon Valley just in time for a historic opportunity. He became the third employee of Intel, working for the legendary Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. As talented as he was as an engineer, Grove became an even better manager, as we learn from exclusive excerpts from his secret management diaries. Tedlow shows us exactly how that penniless immigrant taught himself to lead a major corporation through some of the toughest challenges in the history of business. This is an inspiring biography that will enthrall anyone who cares about technology or leadership. Click the book cover to read more.
Chaim Hilton's OCTOBER 2006 SELECTION
Mazel tov to Yeshiva University. They are the recipient of a $300 million gift from Ronald P. Stanton, 78, who chose business over the rabbinate, and ended up becoming a billionaire. In honor of YU, I recommend the following book:
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Moral Issues of the Marketplace in Jewish Law
by Aaron Levine, YU and Young Israel of Avenue J
January 2005, Yashar Books
PODCAST AT : http://www.yasharbooks.com/2005/12/moral-issues-of-marketplace-in-jewish.html
Rabbi Bleich, Rosh Yeshiva and Rosh Kollel of YU wrote, "Both student and scholar will glean new insights from the erudite analyses presented in this volume." By use of the case study method, this book presents and analyzes moral dilemmas of the marketplace from the perspective of American law, secular business ethics, and Jewish law. The types of moral dilemmas with which are dealt are those that one encounters in everyday life in the roles of market participant and citizen. Economic analysis and public policy considerations are a feature of this work. Through Dr. Levines interdisciplinary approach, this book shows that secular scholarship and economic analysis open up vistas, nuances, and subtleties for cases discussed in ancient and modern Jewish law sources. The moral dilemmas in this work are organized topically. The topics include: professional ethics; fair competition; marketing ethics; labor relations; privacy issues; public policy; and ethical issues in the protection of property.
The first chapter deals with professional ethics. In Section 1, the issue of False Goodwill is explored. When must the the opportunity to capture legitimately-earned goodwill be passed up? The cases explore these issues in the setting of a number of moral dilemmas a rabbi faced in the course of going about his professional duties. In Section 2, the issue of truth telling in the context of labor and crisis negotiations is discussed. Can false demands, false promises, false threats, diversionary tactics and insincerity, all common tactics in negotiations, be used? Is the standard of truth telling during negotiations different from the standard of truth telling in other settings? The second chapter deals with the ethics of various competitive tactics in the marketplace.
To what extent does Jewish Law protect an established firm from competitive pressures of new entrants ( I remember when a newstand opened across from an existing newsstand at Columbia University. Should I boycott the new entrant? ) Jewish Law espouses rules of "fair competition" for competitors. Is the maximization of consumer welfare the only criterion? How does American Law differ from Jewish Law on this issue of protecting an established firm from the competitive pressures of new entrants? Also discussed is non compete clauses. Can a "post-employment restrictive covenant" be used on employees who are terminated or leave? How are trade secrets handled? Can I "steal" customers from my old employer if I plan to give them better service? How do you handle commercial relationships when one party has leverage or power over the other? How much leverage can you exert (or exploit) and still be moral? Can the weaker party escape an obligation, claiming insignificance and weakness? Is it okay to ripoff AT&T and ConEd since they are so huge? If it costs $5000 to sue me for non-payment of $50, and I know that the company will just ignore my transgression, may I exploit my weakness to save money and avoid my obligation? If leverage is exercised, does this violate oshek (extortion) and the prohibition of lo tahmod (coveting)? What about the rabbinical extensions of the biblical prohibition of ribbit (the charging and the payment of interest on loans)?
Chapter 3 deals with ethical issues (virtuous dealings, acceptable behavior) in marketing, TELEMARKETING, thwarting telemarketers, pressure tactics (reminds me of the time my friend's car broke, and the Jewish mechanic, whose office was plastered with various Rebbe posters, said it would cost $800 to fix the battery, but then came down to $500 to replace the $85 battery), pricing policies, and salesmanship. Can I obtain information from a salesman, and then purchase the product elsewhere without compensating the original salesperson?
Section 3 asks whether an employer can amend the work rules on an employee when these rules were not agreed to by the employee before he signed the contract. Chapter 4 focuses on workplace privacy. Does Jewish Law validate pre-hiring screening for drug, tobacco and alcohol abuse? Can handwriting analysis be used?
Can re-testing occur? Can employee e-mail be opened? Chapter 5 takes up ethical issues of the marketplace and public policy. If the government's law regarding "deception" in advertising is less stringent than Jewish Law, what rule may you use. Must we answer to a higher authority? If the government allows whistleblowing and Jewish Law does not... what is a potential whistleblower to do? When is disclosure allowed and may you respect a whistleblower? In Chapter 6, property rights are explored. May a to protect his property against theft? May a student protect herself against cheaters? How safe must you maintain your property? What is liability? The following case is used as an example when comparing American and Jewish law: Lee v. Chicago Transit Authority, in which a drunk man, in a stupor, was electrocuted in 1977, by the third rail of a Chicago elevated train while urinating on the tracks. Was the Chicago T.A. liable?
Click the book cover above to read more.
Chaim Hilton's SEPTEMBER 2006 SELECTION
September, and my thoughts are with what may become America's Tisha-b'Av for the next decade: namely 9/11 and Katrina. Speaking of Katrina, did you know that Tom Oreck of those vacuum cleaner television commercials is not only from New Orleans (Harahan), but Jewish? Tom Oreck is on the board of his local synagogue and has been to Israel several times. His great-grandfather's surname was Oreckovsky, but he thought that didn't sound American enough, so he shortened it to Oreck.
What can Tom teach us? Just before Hurricane Katrina made landfall last Aug. 29, Tom Oreck, president and CEO of cleaning products manufacturer and retailer Oreck Corp., took off from New Orleans on a plane bound for Houston. With him were his wife, his kids, his dog and his company's backup tapes. When he touched down, he FedExed the tapes to the company's backup data center in Boulder, Colorado, and began piecing his company back together. His lesson... First of all, in today's networked environment, when one IT system breaks down, they're all down, for all intents and purposes. Second, the public telecommunications system cannot be counted on. And lastly, although a good business continuity plan is essential, recovery from a disaster depends on what Oreck calls "aggressive improvisation" by employees. "Our business is about three things. It is about marketing. It is about controlled, aligned distribution. And it is about quality, both in the product and in customer service," says Oreck. In the end, everything is - like it or not - linked. And so a breakdown anywhere in the system is a breakdown everywhere in the system.
So it is with the Jewish people.. no?
Speaking of making connections, our book suggestion of the month is below. Jeffrey Gitomer's family also changed their name.. from Zhitomersky. His rule is "(good) advice is useless unless you follow it."
![[book]](http://www.sefersafari.com/1885167660.jpg)
Little Black Book of Connections
6.5 Assets for Networking Your Way to Rich Relationships
by Jeffrey Gitomer
2006, Bard
People in all kinds of jobs, in big and small companies career builders, sales people, and aspiring executives will love this edgy, practical, and fun book. In the spirit, style, and format of the bestselling Little Red Book of Selling, the country's number 1 sales trainer, Jeffrey Gitomer, offers a fresh take on networking and connecting your way to success. The Little Black Book of Connections is based on the power of give value first. It's about how you can climb the ladder without stepping on people's backs. It's about how to earn the respect of a powerful mentor without begging. It's about how to build stronger relationships with customers, bosses, co-workers, vendors, friends, and family. It's about being in the same room with powerful people. It's about how to connect and how to not connect. It's about how to say the right things to the right people in the right circumstances to make the right impression. The book is small. The cover is classic black cloth. The four-color text graphics makes it attractive and easy to read the compelling content is easy to understand and implement
Click the book cover above to read more.
Chaim Hilton's SUMMER 2006 SELECTION
I am still struck by a speech I once heard at a UJA dinner in NYC I which Lawrence Zicklin, the former ceo of Neuberger and Berman received an award. The speech by his son was so great that I put my IRA into a NB.com fund. (which reminds me, we need to edit a book on raising financially responsible Jewish children... for example, should 25% of their allowance be set aside for tzedaka; should you match dollar for dollar the money they earn at part-time jobs, etc.) ... I haven't found a book by Larry Zicklin to highlight on this site, or a syllabus from his Wharton Legal Studies classes, so instead, I will recommend an oldie but goody. Howard Schultz's autobiography of growing up Jewish in NYC and begging for a job at Starbucks, winning the job, quitting, competing, then, with the help of investors and basketball teammates from Seattle's Jewish community, buying Starbuck's from the men who founded it in 1971, and changing its business model into an international coffee bar chain.
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Pour Your Heart into It
How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
by Howard Schultz
1999, Hyperion
Kirkus Reviews wrote: "A chatty history of Starbucks by its CEO, who announces that he considers the company to be only in its third chapter (which is nowhere near the eleventh). Schultz first heard of Starbucks in 1981 when he sold to the fledgling business a number of expensive coffeemakers, and he fell in love with the company immediately. He calls the meeting bashert (Yiddish for destiny), and while the Seattle-based group may have had another word for it, Brooklyn-bred Schultz does seem particularly suited to Starbucks. He repeatedly swoons over the coffee and details at length the process that turns a small green bean into a dark brown drink in a green cup. His enthusiasm for his product is palpable when he writes of ``the romance of the coffee experience'' at Starbucks, though his tips about how to run a company are less valuable. Schultz does offer some useful war stories--especially his dinner with the Seattle partners, who found him ``too New York''--and his idea of putting even part-time workers on the company's health-care plan is both admirable and cost-effective, saving money on employee turnover. Schultz, who bought the company for under $4 million, should have more specific points to convey about how he made Starbucks worth over $270 million in a half a decade. And much of the Starbucks story is overly familiar, while elsewhere, the narrative would be better served if the events were discussed chronologically: It's jarring to jump from the 1996 success of Frappuccinos and ice cream to the devastating Brazilian frost of 1994. Though this is unsatisfying as a skim-milk latte in places, Schultz is less a braggart and more a true believer than many CEOs, and (with Business Week staffer Yang) he provides a pleasing read." Click the book cover above to read more.
Chaim Hilton's JUNE 2006 SELECTION
I once met Attorney Ross at a QEFSG party for a former Apprentice. Ross was personable and available. So... of course George Ross is Jewish.. you need that right hand man, Jewish kopf to run a large business, don't you? Such a mensch. He even took off for Yom Kippur during the taping of the Apprentice one season.
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Trump Strategies for Real Estate
Billionaire Lessons for the Small Investor
by George Ross
And
Trump-Style Negotiation
Powerful Strategies and Tactics for Mastering Every Deal
by George H. Ross
Attorney Ross, a real estate attorney and former teacher at NYU, has been featured on "The Apprentice" as a boardroom judge, and his observations play a vital role in influencing Mr. Donald Trump's decisions. His books describe how Mr. Trump identifies potential properties and how he finances, negotiates, and markets his big deals. And how he negotiates deals. Ross advises that prepared investors start small, build slowly, and finance projects with other people's money. "Based on my experience, more fortunes are lost than made [in real estate]. You can and will lose if you don't know what you are doing."
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Sometimes you feel like a robot at work. Hopefully these books will help you to focus and work for a higher purpose.
![[The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable]](http://www.sefersafari.com/0375414576.jpg)
![[know yourself]](http://www.sefersafari.com/0743201140.jpg)
![[ben mezrich]](http://www.sefersafari.com/006057500X.jpg)
![[us navy]](http://www.sefersafari.com/0446529117.jpg)
![[House of Hiltron from conrad to paris]](http://www.sefersafari.com/0307337227.jpg)
![[power of nice]](http://www.sefersafari.com/0385518927.jpg)
![[l l bean]](http://www.sefersafari.com/1578511836.jpg)
![[john kotter]](http://www.sefersafari.com/031236198X.jpg)
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Jewish Business Ethics
The Firm and Its Stakeholder
by Moses L. Pava (Editor), Aaron Levine (Editor)
Jason Aronson; (December 1999)
Derived from the eighth Orthodox Forum Conference sponsored by Yeshiva University which dealt with business ethics and Jewish tradition. Click the book cover above to read more.
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What Queen Esther Knew
Business Strategies from a Biblical Sage
By Connie Glaser and Barbara Steinberg Smalley
Rodale 2003
The ancient story of Queen Esther, the impoverished orphan girl who rose to become the Queen of Persia, has inspired and captivated millions over the years. Connie Glaser and Barbara Smalley, authors of Swim with the Dolphins, recognized something remarkable in this biblical tale-it contained a recipe for contemporary women in the business world to achieve their every dream of success, recognition, and financial abundance. Whether readers are familiar with Queen Esther's story or not, her example as a strategist, persuasive speaker, risk-taker, and whistle-blower will inspire and empower women to become the champions of their own careers. Glaser and Smalley take the reader through the life of Queen Esther using her experiences and triumphs as allegories for women's success in business. With their combined knowledge of the business world, the authors open up a world of possibilities with headings such as: -Ascending to Power: Making a Positive First Impression -Find a Mentor to Open Your Eyes and Doors -It Pays to Know the Palace Gossip -Take Calculated Risks -Mapping Out Your Plan of Attack -Free Yourself from Approval Addiction. From Esther's start as a contestant in the ancient world's largest beauty pageant to her triumph over the evil Haman, the authors use her example as a strategist, a risk-taker, and a persuasive speaker to provide a new archetype for contemporary women's success in business. Along the way, they answer questions such as: Do I really need a mentor, and if so, how do I find one? What can I do to be taken more seriously? How can I get the credit and recognition I deserve--without seeming pushy or aggressive? How important is risk-taking to my career success? Smart, savvy, and strategic, Queen Esther provides an impressive role model for women today. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Business Ethics
A Jewish Perspective
by Moses L. Pava
KTAV
In the twenty-first volume of the Yeshiva University/ KTAV Library of Jewish Law and Ethics, a Yeshiva University professor explains the relevance and applicability of Judaism's religious law and moral vision to the realities of the businessperson's practical life. Pava divides the book into three parts. Part 1 discusses why people often fail at business ethics and how they might succeed. Part 2 discusses the goals, substance, and method of Jewish business ethics. Part 3 examines corporate social responsibility and the use of inside information. Pava interprets classical Jewish writings in light of our contemporary business world. In a society where ethics seems to be a concept of the past, businessmen and businesswomen, Jews and non-Jews alike, could benefit from Pava's keen insights and practical approach
Click the book cover above to read more.
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Managers Not MBAs
A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development
by Henry Mintzberg
Berrett-Koehler Pub; (May 15, 2004)
The trouble with "management" education, says author Henry Mintzberg, is that it is business education, and leaves a distorted impression of management. In Managers Not MBAs, he offers a new definition of management as a blend of craft (experience), art (insight), and science (analysis). An education that overemphasizes science encourages a style of managing the author calls "calculating," or if the graduates believe themselves to be artists, the related style "heroic." According to the book, neither heroes nor technocrats in positions of influence are useful - what's really needed are balanced, dedicated people who practice a style that can be called "engaging." Such people believe their purpose is to leave behind stronger organizations, not just higher share prices. Managers Not MBAs explains in detail how to cultivate such managers, and how they can transform the business world and, ultimately, society. Click the book cover above to read more.
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The Long Tail
Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
by Chris Anderson
July 2006, HyperionBooks.com TheLongTail.com
From Publishers Weekly: Wired editor Anderson declares the death of "common culture"-and insists that it's for the best. Why don't we all watch the same TV shows, like we used to? Because not long ago, "we had fewer alternatives to compete for our screen attention," he writes. Smash hits have existed largely because of scarcity: with a finite number of bookstore shelves and theaters and Wal-Mart CD racks, "it's only sensible to fill them with the titles that will sell best." Today, Web sites and online retailers offer seemingly infinite inventory, and the result is the "shattering of the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards." These "countless niches" are market opportunities for those who cast a wide net and de-emphasize the search for blockbusters. It's a provocative analysis and almost certainly on target-though Anderson's assurances that these principles are equally applicable outside the media and entertainment industries are not entirely convincing. The book overuses its examples from Google, Rhapsody, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and eBay, and it doesn't help that most of the charts of "Long Tail" curves look the same. But Anderson manages to explain a murky trend in clear language, giving entrepreneurs and the rest of us plenty to think about. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Taking Stock
A Spiritual Guide to Rising Above Life's Financial Ups and Downs
by Benjamin Blech
2003, Amacom
What is it about money that not only makes us feel secure but also drives us to measure our true worth by our financial standing? Whether we've experienced unmet monetary goals, job loss, or outright financial crisis, too many of us have let the stress of financial issues obscure our higher priorities. Taking Stock is a revelatory book filled with the wisdom and practical tools to move toward a lifeview in which success is defined by spiritual clarity, not by the promises money seldom delivers. The author has been through his own rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags saga, through which he learned money's true place and value. Examples from his own experience and from community and business life are sprinkled with teachings from the world's religions -- not to mention a healthy dose of common sense. To the religious and nonobservant alike, Taking Stock reveals: the role money plays in our lives; why we envy others for things we don't need; the difference between failure and failing; and how to "start over" using new definitions of success and happiness. The book closes with Prescriptions for Each Day of the Week, each one an inspiring and beautiful story with a gentle, clear moral. With compassion, humor, and profound wisdom, Taking Stock gives readers not only a way to cope, but also a deep appreciation for what they have -- not what they're missing. Click the book cover above to read more.
The Power of Nice
How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness
by Linda Kaplan Thaler, and Robin Koval
September 2006, Doubleday Currency
Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval have moved to the top of the advertising industry by following a simple but powerful philosophy: it pays to be nice. Where so many companies encourage a dog eat dog mentality, the Kaplan Thaler Group has succeeded through chocolate and flowers. In THE POWER OF NICE, through their own experiences and the stories of other people and businesses, they demonstrate why, contrary to conventional wisdom, nice people finish first. Turning the well-known adage of "Nice Guys Finish Last" on its ear, THE POWER OF NICE shows that "nice" companies have lower employee turnover, lower recruitment costs, and higher productivity. Nice people live longer, are healthier, and make more money. In today's interconnected world, companies and people with a reputation for cooperation and fair play forge the kind of relationships that lead to bigger and better opportunities, both in business and in life. But being nice doesn't mean acting wimpy. In fact, nice may be the toughest four-letter word you'll ever encounter. Kaplan Thaler and Koval illustrate the surprising power of nice with an array of real-life examples from the business arena as well as from their personal lives. Most important, they present a plan of action covering everything from creating a positive impression to sweetening the pot to turning enemies into allies. Filled with inspiration and suggestions on how to supercharge your career and expand your reach in the workplace, THE POWER OF NICE will transform how you live and work. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Mind Set!
Reset Your Thinking and See the Future
by John Naisbitt
October 2006, Harpercollins
In recent years, as John Naisbitt gave speeches across all continents and advised political and business leaders across the world, he would be asked with greater and greater frequency: "How do you know what you know? How do go about making these insights? How can we learn the process?" In Mind Set!, John Naisbitt reveals how to develop and experience the power of 11 cognitive tools that will allow readers to understand the trends transforming their daily life and the world around them, so they can anticipate and act on the future. In a narrative that is captivating in its scope and reach - ranging from Yao Ming and the NBA to Goethe and Global Domains - Naisbitt liberates readers from the limitations of our routine ways of thinking with a step-by-step program to incorporate these new attitudes of mind and apply them in making decisions. Part One reveals the 11 mindsets that will help readers achieve clarity in today's extremely confusing world, and provides step-by-step instructions on how best to liberate themselves from their rigid perspective. Part Two examines a broader perspective and identifies the five global shifts that will inform every reader's ideas about the future. Click the book cover above to read more.
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The Bible on Leadership
From Moses to Matthew-Management Lessons for Contemporary Leaders
by Mr. Lorin Woolfe
AMACOM
Woolfe, a bible student, management consultant and therapist, uses examples from the various bibles to teach management lessons. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Case Studies in Jewish Business Ethics
(Library of Jewish Law and Ethics, V. 22)
by Aaron Levine
Ktav
A rabbi and an economist, Levine draws on his extensive scholarship in both fields to apply American and Jewish law to ethical issues in business. As the title implies, Levine, who teaches courses at Yeshiva University, presents case illustrations and then explores which Jewish laws apply and which principles can be induced. The cases fall into the following categories: advertising and marketing, salesmanship, pricing policies, labor relations, and consumer and social ethics in the marketplace. Levine sets the tone for his book in an early chapter on moral education in which he offers contradictory opinions on telling the truth. He asserts that it is "a sin to lie," but then introduces the concept of "permissible lies." Throughout the book, Levine follows this pattern of presenting contrary views, often taken from the Talmud, but, in each instance, he provides a definitive judgment. He also presents a number of problems for students to solve by applying the principles he has set forth, though the lack of any discussion of these problems reduces their usefulness. Chapter summaries would have been helpful, and the book ends abruptly without a conclusion. Frequent repetition is a further weakness. Careful editing could have improved this impressive contribution to a complex subject. Click the book cover above to read more.
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The Kabbalah of Money
Jewish Insights on Giving, Owning, and Receiving
by Rabbi Nilton Bonder
SHambhala
The Courage to Be Happy Sylvia Boorstein Where does happiness come from? How is it possible, in the face of suffering and loss, to remain responsive and compassionate toward all people? On The Courage to Be Happy, bestselling author and meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein looks into core teachings of Buddhism and Judaism, and emerges with complementary truths about the happiness that is always available to us, despite external circumstances. Boorstein uses her "two vocabularies" - one Buddhist, the other Jewish - to tell how, after years of meditation and prayer, she came to know why the Buddha was called in his time "The Happy One." Fearless and challenging, The Courage to Be Happy is most of all, about the real meaning of this moment. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Yiddishe Kop
Creative Problem Solving in Jewish Learning, Lore and Humor
by Rabbi Nilton Bonder
SHambhala
A rabbi and graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Bonder offers an intriguing glimpse into what he views as the Jewish tradition of life: negotiating information, understanding, wisdom, and reverence in order to use both faith in God and daily experience to live life with insight and closeness to God. Bonder's revisitation of the mystical awareness of the Talmud and the teachings of the rabbis should prove popular with spiritual seekers and devout Jews alike. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Thou Shall Prosper
Ten Commandments for Making Money
by Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Wiley, 2005
Combining pop psychology, snippets of Jewish lore, homespun homilies and quotations from a daunting variety of sources, Lapin offers a manual on how to make money by succeeding in business. Lapin, a super-conservative Orthodox rabbi and talk show host, insists that everyone is in business "unless you are a Supreme Court judge [sic] or a tenured university professor." (Excluding professors fits with Lapin's devaluation of them, since he believes that higher education doesn't prepare for "real life.") The material is organized into 10 chapters of advice, beginning with the notion that "business is moral, noble and worthy," and ending with the admonition not to retire. Throughout, Lapin urges behavior that will produce more business and, thus, more money. For example, he unabashedly recommends attending synagogue or church services in order to make business contacts. Similarly, he encourages giving charity to an organization that has members who "are in the best position to advance your business objectives." Lapin justifies these dubious actions by interpreting the fifth commandment ("Honor thy father and thy mother") as a mandate to form relationships for business purposes. His struggle to ground his financial advice in Jewish tradition is abandoned as he expounds an anti-environmentalist stance. He digresses still further from both Judaism and wealth-building when he gives tips for public speaking based on what his father taught him (talking without a manuscript or notes and not grasping the rostrum). Lapin's book may appeal to patient readers who share his conservative political and economic views.
. Click the book cover above to read more.
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Does Measurement Measure Up?
How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth
by John M. Henshaw
Johns Hopkins Press, 2006
There was once a time when we could not measure sound, color, blood pressure, or even time. We now find ourselves in the throes of a measurement revolution, from the laboratory to the sports arena, from the classroom to the courtroom, from a strand of DNA to the far reaches of outer space. Measurement controls our lives at work, at school, at home, and even at play. But does all this measurement really measure up? Here, John Henshaw examines the ways in which measurement makes sense or creates nonsense. Henshaw tells the controversial story of intelligence measurement from Plato to Binet to the early days of the SAT to today's super-quantified world of No Child Left Behind. He clears away the fog on issues of measurement in the environment, such as global warming, hurricanes, and tsunamis, and in the world of computers, from digital photos to MRI to the ballot systems used in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. From cycling and car racing to baseball, tennis, and track-and-field, he chronicles the ever-growing role of measurement in sports, raising important questions about performance and the folly of comparing today's athletes to yesterday's records. We can't quite measure everything, at least not yet. What could be more difficult to quantify than reasonable doubt? However, even our justice system is yielding to the measurement revolution with new forensic technologies such as DNA fingerprinting. As we evolve from unquantified ignorance to an imperfect but everpresent state of measured awareness, Henshaw gives us a critical perspective from which we can "measure up" the measurements that have come to affect our lives so greatly. Click the book cover above to read more.
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The Running of the Bulls
Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street
by Nicole Ridgway
Gotham Books, 2005
Those profiled in this book make for good copy, but they are not your average Wharton student.
From Publishers Weekly: Wharton, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, has a glamorous reputation that is fueled in part by illustrious alumni, like Donald Trump and Ronald Perelman, and Forbes reporter Ridgway makes a big deal of its prominence. The institution's distinction, however, does not rub off onto Ridgway's undistinguished account of the 2003-2004 academic year. She follows six seniors as they make their way through the corporate recruitment process while completing their degrees. Though she tries to make everything sound special (it happened at Wharton!), what she lays out is a series of generic experiences-from internships to interviews to job offers-that could have taken place at any business school. The students themselves present a limited range of high-achieving personalities, and since there's never any doubt that they'll be able to find jobs, Ridgway is unable to infuse their stories with any real dramatic tension. What might have made an interesting magazine article proves too thin when stretched to book length. Wharton officials are bound to love it, though-there's barely any acknowledgment that other business schools exist, or any substantial challenge to the school's prestige. Click the book cover above to read more.
Jessica is a former cheerleader from Texas; she is a member of a sorority (but she doesn't put that on her resume). She is highly driven, intense, and doesn't make too many friends. Shrrevar ponders whether to return to India or stay in the USA. Jon comes from a Penn mother and Penn father. Will Jon beomce an entrepreneur? Grace from Cali weighs a marketing offer from NYC or a consulting offer. Shimika is profiled, the first member of the family to attend college. Anthony speaks five langauges, but that does not help him land a job offer. Regi wants to be a banker, but an illness makes him re-evaluate his plans.
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