When I read Daniel Pink’s Drive last January I admired it and wondered whether any book this year would be better – it was so stimulating, and well written, on the essential topic of motivation. A few weeks later, I delved into Switch, the latest offering from brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath, whose 1997 book Made To Stick was my choice of best book that year, and I wondered if they would repeat in 2010.
When The Management Mythbuster by David Axson came along a few months later, I was positive I had now read the best book of the year. It told us that a lot of the conventional wisdom on management is wrong, and was fascinating reading. However, Hundred Percenters by Mark Murphy, two months later, gave me pause to reconsider; and then when I feasted in the summer on The Executive and the Elephant, a terrific book by Vanderbilt University Professor Richard Daft, I realized it was also contender for best book of the year.
It has been an unusually strong year for management and business books, and any one of these five books is deserving of top spot. In the end, I struggled between two: The Management Mythbuster, whose strength is that it offers contrarian ideas, and The Executive and the Elephant, which excels in giving practical advice for self-management.
Depending on your needs and interests, you can choose your own best book of 2010. Here’s my selection, and the rest of the year’s top 10:
1. The Executive and the Elephant (Jossey-Bass) by Richard Daft: The “executive” is our higher consciousness, the CEO of our brain, intent on controlling what we do. The “elephant” is the unconscious systems and habits that seem to run wild with our thoughts and impulses, defying the orders of our intentional mind. Effectiveness depends on our inner executive gaining more control over our inner elephant, and this book will help you if you apply its wisdom. Prof. Daft combines an academic approach with research and carefully constructed frameworks, along with a blizzard of practical tips to win this internal struggle.
2. The Management Mythbuster (John Wiley) by David Axson: The consultant argues we are managing 21st-century businesses with 20th-century processes – worse, 20th-century processes that don’t work all that well now. Mission statements, strategy, budgeting, total quality, performance measurement, financial reports – it’s all, to his mind, wrong-headed. His argument is so powerful that you will agree at least in part, perhaps subscribing to some of his alternatives. It’s also funny: He promises, and delivers, an irreverently thoughtful book on essential issues.
3. Hundred Percenters (McGraw-Hill) by Mark Murphy: A researcher and trainer, Mr. Murphy has developed some intriguing approaches for getting employees to give 100 per cent. It’s easy to nod off when people talk about employee engagement, because it’s often mushy or abstract, but he has some terrific ideas for setting goals, gaining accountability through better feedback, and providing better motivation by understanding the shoves and tugs that push and pull your staff.
4. Switch (Broadway) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath: Chip Heath is a professor of business at Stanford University and brother Dan Heath is a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. They open with three surprising facts about change, based on research, and then present a new model for implementing change through directing the rider, motivating the elephant (yep, there it is again), and shaping the path. It’s immensely readable, and will change how you handle change.
