The Globe and Mail

I enjoy complex books, when presented clearly, but like most readers of the column also thirst for simplicity. That attracted me to Marcus Buckingham’s The One Thing You Need To Know, and the panache and wisdom in the book led me to name it the best book of 2005.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on March 23, 2005. To read the full review, click here.)

In a world where executives are overwhelmed by the many things they are expected to know, many wish there was just one thing they needed to achieve success.

Marcus Buckingham, author of the bestseller First Break All The Rules: What The World's Best Managers Do Differently and a former Gallup researcher on leadership, not only shares that enthusiasm for simplicity but believes that, beneath all complex phenomena lies a core concept that can be discovered.

I was one of the first, if not the first, to review Jim Collins’s mammoth best-seller Good to Great, which many would cite as the best business book of the past decade or so – and certainly was the most influential. By now the ideas in the book are well known, but it’s still worth re-reading this brief summary of the highlights.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on November 21, 2001. To read the full review, click here.)

They may well be the greatest CEOs of the last half century, but you probably never heard of them: George Cain, Alan Wurtzel, David Maxwell, Colman Mockler, Darwin Smith, Jim Herring, Lyle Everingham, Joe Cullman, Fred Allen, Cork Walgreen, and Carl Reichart.

They headed the 11 companies that made the difficult transition from good performance to great performance in that era. And when management researcher Jim Collins unearthed them through statistical analysis, he found to his surprise that the 11 leaders producing those extraordinary results dramatically defied our stereotype of leadership.

There have been many excellent books over the years guiding managers on how to handle the challenge of taking on a new leadership position. This was the first I read, and still a favourite, even though some of Mr Watkins’s later books on transitions have also been excellent.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on August 11, 1999. To read the full review, click here.)

It's one of life's sweet moments: You're asked to assume a new leadership role by a company that covets your abilities. It's also one of life's slickest traps because your knowledge of the new company is probably quite limited and mostly inaccurate.

In Right From The Start, leadership counsellor Dan Ciampa and Harvard Business School professor Michael Watkins report on research into executives who faced the toughest version of that challenge: They were brought in to make changes in a new organization with the expectation of succeeding the chief executive officer in the near future.

I have seen how difficult hiring is from both sides of the interviewing table. This book, which I named the best book of 2009, offers some useful tips to help you be more successful when hiring.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on April 1, 2009. To read the full review, click here.)

"Your No. 1 problem in operating a business is not what. It's who.

“What” refers to the strategies you choose, the services you sell and the processes you use. Often, that's what we obsess about in running a businesses.

“Who,” on the other hand, are the people you put in place to make the what decisions. And they are critical to your success."

This book is a sleeper, which didn’t receive much attention when it was published (and only made it to number 2 of my list of best books for 2002). But it debunks a myth that hangs with us today about first mover advantage, and offers some useful ideas on how a business can succeed.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on January 16, 2002. To read the full review, click here.)

When Gerard Tellis and Peter Golder first presented their research findings in the mid-nineties debunking the notion that the first movers into markets sew up an unbeatable advantage, they were challenging a business truism. But after a decade of research into 66 different markets -- including many chosen specifically because they might defy their early findings -- they have shown conclusively that latecomers, not pioneers, grow to dominate markets.

The first-mover truism is actually myth, even in the high-tech and digital worlds.

It’s always exciting to read about an organization where things seem to be working well, with a formula for success that has ingredients you can borrow. I therefore enjoyed reading this book on a hospital I had never heard of before, and was intrigued that it also caught the fancy of then Report On Business Editor John Stackhouse, currently editor of The Globe, who cited it as an example of the practical ideas he wanted to see in a new column he proposed I write, Monday Morning Manager.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on February 16, 2005. To read the full review, click here.)

Baptist Health Care was once a mediocre operation, a non-profit venture falling behind competitors owned by national health-care conglomerates with the ability to build the best facilities and buy the latest high-tech equipment.

But as its chief executive officer, Al Stubblefield, describes in The Baptist Health Care Journey To Excellence, by committing to deliver the best possible customer service, the organization turned itself around in just a few years.

Today, its hospitals routinely rank in the top one percentile for patient satisfaction in the United States.

When they tackled the idea of how to make your messages stick when communicating, Chip Heath and Dan Heath also managed to present ideas that have stuck with me and many others since. It was the best book of 2007.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on March 7, 2007. To read the full review, click here.)

The Heath brothers are an unusual pair and have produced an unusually good book. Chip Heath is a professor of organizational behaviour at Stanford University, with a fascination in urban legends, enjoying compiling them and figuring out what makes them so compelling. Dan Heath is a consultant and founder of an innovative new media company, trying to figure out how to get people to assimilate new concepts. They realized their interests were actually similar: Why some ideas survive and other die.

In Made To Stick, they offer six principles for getting your message to stick, whether it’s communicating with staff or devising a marketing campaign.

Henry Mintzberg is the management professor who refuses to teach MBA students. He brought together his reasons and provided an important, withering critique of MBA programs in this 2004 book that is still highly relevant today.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on June 2, 2004. To read the full review, click here.)

Every decade, North American business schools churn out about one million new MBAs, ready to assume privileged positions in business.

But McGill University management professor Henry Mintzberg says they shouldn't be allowed out of conventional MBA programs without having a skull and crossbones stamped firmly on their foreheads, and the words, “Warning: NOT prepared to manage!”

This review doesn’t capture the book as well as I wish it did – I was reviewing two books in one column – but it is the book I have recommended most to friends over the years, invariably receiving profound thanks because it provided them with desperately needed relief as they struggled with a decision.

(Here is an excerpt from the original review, which appeared on March 28, 2001. To read the full review, click here.)

If you have trouble with decision-making – or even if you don’t – Charles Foster offers some help. For 12 years, the director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston monitored two groups of people from all walks of life – 53 individuals in all – to determine the ingredients for good decisions.

The result is a series of rules revealed in What Do I Do Now?: Dr. Foster’s 30 Laws of Great Decision-Making.