And by popular demand - here is Angrys Top Ten Reads for those of us wanting to get ahead in business...10- Mao, by Chang and Halliday
9- Wahnsinnskarriere (Dream careers) by Schur and Weick
8- Anything, perhaps, by Harvey McKay and/or MarkMcCormac
7- 'Hard Drive' by Wallace
6 -Anything by Michael Lewis
5- The Geography of Thought, by Richard Nisbett.
4- "Ugly Americans" by Ben Mezrich
3- Cell of cells, by Cynthia Fox
2- Financial Independence, by Eddy Solomon
1- Anything by Donald Trump
Read reviews click here
1 comment:
A far from exhaustive list:
Career advice
10- Mao, by Chang and Halliday
Mao Zhe Dong was a psychopathic thug - and he built an incredible career. Apart from its historical import and aside from any other considerations, this book describes how total ruthlessness, psychopathic traits, and unflinching dedication to one's own career can work brilliantly. A must read.
9- Wahnsinnskarriere (Dream careers) by Schur and Weick.
A very funny book, which somewhat convincingly argues that one never should be too competent lest one become stuck in one's career nook - kind of an expanded take on the Peter's Principle. The difference here being that Peter's Principle says that once one has reached one's level of incompetence, one stays there - stops being promoted. Wahsinnskarriere argues that if you are mildly incompetent and severely remotely hands-off at every rung along the way, you'll keep being promoted.
In one of its highlights, the book famously gives the example of Jürgen Schremp, Daimler Benz's former CEO, who apparently lost something like one billion of his employer's gelt - just before being promoted, yet again.
8- Anything, perhaps, by Harvey McKay and/or MarkMcCormac
Harvey McKay runs a low tech business in the US - he makes stationery - with a flair for writing very readable pop career advice books on the side. Author Mark McCormac covers much of the same ground.
McCormack once wrote a book titled 'What They Don't Yeach You at Harvard Business School' - prompting a husband a wife team who actually went to the HBS to in turn write a book entitled 'What they Really Don't Teach you at Harvard Business School', covering some business subjects which HBS, they thought, did not teach adequately.
For the sake of keeping to the format of 10 titles, I'll pick McKay's 'Beware the Naked Man who Offers You his Shirt', partly because it does explore a bit an otherwise largely overlooked phenomenon - the oft-unshunnable fellow travellers of the businessman's: the piffle artists out there.
7- 'Hard Drive' by Wallace, the unauthorized biography of Bill Gates's early years. How to build a career based on dedication, intelligence, business ruthlessness sometimes bordering on worse, and naked ambition.
Observers of the business scene - general.
6 -Anything by Michael Lewis: Liar's Poker, Pacific Rift, The New New Thing, The Money Culture, The Future Just Happened - all of Lewis's books are witty, enlightening, and well-written.
The advice here, despite its general and enduring themes, may however be aging a bit in terms of the canvas it plays out in. The Money Culture would be my pick amongst a sterling, intelligent collection.
Observers of the business scene - focused.
5- The Geography of Thought, by Richard Nisbett. An analysis of how East and West evolved different ways of thinking - broadly contextual, holistic and Confucius-tinged thinking in the East, as against reductionist, breakdown into components analysis in the West. The book points up the complementarity of both approaches, and goes a long way towards explaining different business takes and approaches, such as otherwise set forth in e.g. 'Mr. China', by Tim Clissold
4- "Ugly Americans" by Ben Mezrich, an American who sought fame and fortune in the free-wheeling money markets of Japan, and whose book, after its lengthy description of sundry cultural rifts, gaps, and eddies, describes how a stock exchange coup in Tokyo reaped the Americans cool billions in instant profits. Priceless.
Narrowly specialized
3- Cell of cells, by Cynthia Fox. An extremely well researched observation and analysis of the bio tech scene, as it relates to the race for establishing a viable and ethical stem cell industry. A tour de force, especially since it was written by a journalist, not an industry insider. Other books routinely written by outside industry observers ('Biotech Nation', etc.) only serve to highlight the exceptional quality of Cynthia Fox's engagement, comprehensive reporting and writing.
Useful economics
2- Financial Independence, by Eddy Solomon. An obscure little book written in 1982 by a largely uneducated Australian, who once applied for a $200 loan at his bank and was turned down.
A few years later, he bought that bank.
Whereas the nuts and bolts in the book have aged, its message of hard work, of never giving up, of imagination and thinking differently is timeless. A gem.
Getting Ahead
1- Anything by Donald Trump. The Donald is someone everybody loves to hate - and perhaps his intermittent histrionics, pathetic comb-over and more than occasional flashes of unpatrician vulgarity are justification enough. Yet, Donald is fiercely intelligent, fiercely no-nonsense, and keeps a 100% grasp on external, objective reality in a world where wishful thinking wreaks havoc with many an entrepreneur's, and many an Australian entrepreneur's, dreams of ample future meed and swevens of global relevance. For the sake of picking the original material - the subsequent books being but applied variations on the main themes broached in the original tome, I'll say that the 'Art of the Deal' has it.
Post a Comment