Month: June 2014

By changing what decisions are made in the business model, when they are made, who makes them, and why they are made, you will be able to come up with business models that better manage information and incentive risks and, as a result, outperform existing business models, disrupt established ways of doing business, and lead to a sustainable competitive advantage, according to Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine in their book The Risk-Driven Business Model: Four Questions That Will Define Your Company.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

When you are facing a future that cannot be predicted with any accuracy, traditional approaches for problem solving (e.g., forecasting, planning, in-depth research) don’t help you much. You need to acknowledge that and find alternatives, according to Charles Kiefer, Leonard Schlesinger and Paul Brown in their book Own Your Future: How to Think Like an Entrepreneur and Thrive in an Unpredictable Economy.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

Leadership requires crafting an agenda, working in a deeply political world and working closely with other people. Schools do not teach this. Business school fails dismally to teach this, and most corporate training swings wildly between technical training (accounting and systems) and tree hugging, raft building and team building on the other side, according to Jo Owen in her book The Leadership Skills Handbook: 50 Essential Skills You Need to Be a Leader.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

Leadership might not be the first thing you think of when you hear Billy Graham’s name, but his role as a leader of leaders has been central to his ministry. Billy Graham’s lifetime of vigorous leadership invites every leader to engage with the same spirit, to consider his example, and to dig, as he did, into the rich resources of leadership literature that resonate with biblical examples, according to Matt Woodley in his book Billy Graham: Leading With Love: 5 Timeless Principles for Effective Leaders.

So what sorts of leadership lessons can we learn from Billy Graham? The author looks at five different aspects of leadership:

• The character of a leader: Early in his ministry, Billy and his team created a written covenant, the Modesto Manifesto, detailing how they were going to deal with temptations.
• The mission of an organization: Billy’s clear focus on his calling has led him to reject good opportunities which were not directly aligned with his mission.
• The importance of teamwork: By finding the right chemistry, Billy led a team which stayed together for decades.
• Common challenges faced by leaders: By offering his critics kindness rather than vengeance, Billy won some powerful allies.
• How faith in God has shaped Billy’s life as a leader: Humble openness made Billy a lifelong learner on the Christian journey.

There is something awkward about books which lionize individual Christians, and I was also slightly uncomfortable about the way the book speaks of Billy Graham in the past tense rather than the present. Nonetheless, the book is filled with many interesting stories from Billy’s life, and there is a great deal of wisdom to be learnt from his experiences.

Living within and loving God’s church requires an experience with God and his amazing grace, but it also requires an intentional decision to forgive and love people who are less than loveable, according to Rob Bentz in his book The Unfinished Church: God’s Broken and Redeemed Work-in-Progress. It demands faithfulness and commitment to God, but it also demands faithfulness and commitment to his people.

Some of the wisdom contained in the book:

• The fact that God would call out a special group of people to love, draw to himself, call his own, shower with unspeakable grace, and then entrust with special roles and responsibilities in his kingdom work is quite astonishing.
• Without a clear recognition of God’s payment on behalf of his people, you and I will not see each other accurately. I won’t see you as God’s sees you—redeemed by the blood of his Son, Jesus.
• The church that Jesus is building is an eclectic, intriguing, quirky, diverse mess of humanity. That’s God’s way.
• Love is the one primary thing that God gave us to represent him. That’s why it’s nothing short of a tragedy when we do it so poorly.
• Genuine biblical encouragement is among the most frequently undervalued and over-assumed experiences of the Christ followers’ journey.
• Service is simply not about me, my happiness, my joy, my status, or my ability to cultivate a heartwarming story that I might one day tell others. At its core, service is about whom I am serving.
• Unity is the result of a great deal of heart-wrenching, God-seeking, others-forgiving effort. Jesus calls us to this immense personal and corporate challenge.

The church has become increasingly marginalized and seen as an irrelevant and outdated institution, even by followers of Jesus. The author makes a passionate defence of the church not as an idealized abstract idea but as the imperfect, complicated, difficult collection of people that it currently is. The book is reasonably short and interesting, but I am not sure how many readers will be willing to step up to the challenge of difficult unity when disposable relationships are so much easier.

Whether you are starting out in professional life or have been part of it for some time, you have a boss and a responsibility to manage him of her like the other resources for which you’re responsible, according to William Smullen in his book Ways and Means of Managing Up: 50 Strategies for Helping You and Your Boss Succeed. The author has had 50 years of experience in managing others, most notably as chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

Why do you go to work every day, and why travel somewhere at all? Is it necessarily the best place to perform the tasks your organization requires of you? What is the best way to design a workplace? How can flexible and work-from-home arrangements be effective for an organization? These and many similar questions are addressed by Guy Clapperton and Philip Vanhoutte in their book The Smarter Working Manifesto: When, Where and How Do You Work Best?

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

It turns out that becoming a leader and doing something amazing with your life hinge on what makes you different, not what makes you the same as everyone else, according to Sylvia Hewlett in her book Executive Presence: The Missing-Link Between Merit and Success. Executive presence is a measure of image rather than performance; it is the manner in which you signal to others that you “have what it takes” to be star material.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

The idea that the more power one individual leader wields, the more we should be impressed by that leader is an illusion. Where corners are cut because one leader is sure he knows best, problems follow, and they can be on a disastrous scale, according to Archie Brown in his book The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age. The book examines the leadership styles of a large range of political leaders including dictators and democratic leaders.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

For most people the Epicurean view, that God is a long way away and stays out of touch, is reality, according to Tom Wright in his book Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues. The Epicurean worldview, which sees the divine as being entirely separate from the practicalities of everyday life, such that God and the world don’t mix, has been enshrined in the American Constitution with the separation of church and state. Unsurprisingly Christians sound unconvincing when they submit to the presupposition that God does not intervene in everyday life.

Even more insidiously, Christians are often firm believers in the American dream that if you get up and go you will succeed, and the fittest will survive the economic jungle. There is a gut-level reaction against any kind of health-care proposal: after all, if these folks were fit to survive, they’d be out there earning a living! The unexamined presupposition behind this is simply social Darwinism. The great irony is that often those who are most opposed to Darwin when it comes to reading Genesis 1 are in fact most deeply in thrall to him, or to the wider application of his theories, when it comes to social and international policy.

The book contains a number of interesting and challenging essays, each providing extensive scriptural support for a position that many will find controversial. People who are of a more conservative bent are unlikely to appreciate the book, and many readers will find some of the arguments a bit heavy going. However, people who like to have their preconceptions challenged – or who like to challenge the views of others – will thoroughly enjoy the book.