Book Summaries

The Alchemist By Paulo Coelho   Most of my reading is non-fiction, but I do enjoy picking up a piece of fiction from time to time just to enjoy a good story.  In Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, you get a non-fiction piece wrapped in a great story.  That’s a great recipe for teaching as stories…

The 29% Solution Ivan R. Misner and Michelle R. Donovan Ivan Misner is well known as the founder of Business Networking International so it should come as no surprise to find that together with Michelle Donovan he has pulled together a solid book on how to improve your networking skills. The authors take issue with…

The balanced scorecard is like the dials in an airplane cockpit: it gives managers complex information at a glance

Eric Ries describes a process that entrepreneurs can leverage to accelerate the development of and increase the probability of success of their businesses

While we would all like to believe that we are immune to the influence of others, nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that we are hard-wired to be susceptible to various techniques of influence.

Harvard Business Review first published Robert Katz’s “Skills of an Effective Administrator” in 1955.  It is still as applicable today as it was when first published – which is why it is an HBR classic.  Katz’s basic premise is that an administrator (manager) must possess three different skill sets: Technical Skills – These skills are…

One of the most widely read and most widely referenced books on personal development is Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The habits are

Jason Fried and David Heinemeir Hansson are the cofounders of 37 Signals.  The company is renowned for their incredible products AND for being incredibly lean.  In Rework they share what they have learned about building and running a business. In this summary I’ve distilled down each of their points to a single sentence or two. …

In Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan outline the necessary steps for an organization to get things done.  They highlight three key building blocks (essential leader behaviors,  culture, people) and three key processes (people, strategy and operations).  While the framework is quite simple, it is extremely powerful. The details…

The key idea of The e-Myth Revisiting is that you need to focus on working “on” your business versus “in” your business.