When The Feiner Points of Leadership was released this spring, I was alternately attracted to and repelled by its cover.
The author, Michael Feiner, is a professor at Columbia University's graduate school of business, and the book promised the clarity of 50 basic laws for managing others.
But the title's egotistically tinged play on words, the author's previous position at Pepsi-Cola Co. as the wretchedly titled "chief people officer," and the implication that management in all its complexity could be simply expressed in 50 laws suggested this was, if you forgive the pun, pop management.
However, when I finally gave the book a try, I was happy I did, since The Feiner Points of Leadership (Warner Business Books) ranks as the No. 1 pick of my Top 10 list of the best business books of the year.
It begins with the notion that "leadership is the aggregation of hundreds upon hundreds of small interactions -- most of which take place out of our sight -- projected across layer upon layer of relationships, day in and day out."
The book guides you through those relationships, setting out rules for leading subordinates, bosses, teams as first among equals, and peers. It also offers guidelines for leading in conflict, a diverse workplace and change.
The rules are clear cut, level headed and laced with examples, often from Mr. Feiner's own experiences, including when he screwed up.
Since 50 rules are too many to remember, he also offers a table that points to which rule to call up in certain common tricky situations. Mr. Feiner covers all the bases, in an easy-to-read manner -- more chief people officer than professor.
The other choices
2. Strategy Maps by Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Harvard Business School Press), the creators of the balanced scorecard for performance measurement, offers a rigorous but intuitively natural method for creating strategy in your organization. It links the financial picture, customer needs and internal processes required to make organizational strategy work, and the learning and growth foundation that everything must be built upon. The book presents the material in a step-by-step manner, with examples from companies, non-profits and governments, and can be adapted by organizations of all sizes. With many organizations today floundering over how to create strategy, this provides a comprehensive process that ensures all of the important dimensions are considered.
3. Beyond The Core by Chris Zook of Bain & Co. (Harvard Business School Press) tackles the riskiest strategy for a company: Moving beyond its core business to an adjacent market. He coolly and deliberately explores the dangers, offering rules of thumb and philosophical guidance, with ample examples of successes and goofs.
4. The Power of the 2x2 Matrix by Toronto consultant Alex Lowy and his Silicon Valley-based partner Phil Hood (Jossey-Bass) shows how to solve common business problems and make better decisions by picking from 55 classic strategic matrixes. The book has to be read in small doses, a few matrixes at a time, but you'll undoubtedly find a few gems you can use and, just as important, it will help you to apply 2x2 thinking to your life.
5. Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business by chief executive officer counsellor Ram Charan (Crown) is a fast-paced offering of 10 practical tools for involving everyone in your organization in expanding growth opportunities -- going, as he puts it, for singles and doubles, rather than home runs.
6. The Wright Way by Mark Eppler (Amacom) is a delightful discourse on problem-solving, geared to seven principles used by the Wright brothers. The ideas are memorable because of the names he gives them -- such as Tackle the Tyrant, Forging, Mindwarping -- and because of the colourful stories he tells of how those practices led two unheralded bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio, to succeed in giving us flight where some of the world's greatest minds had failed.
7. A Bias For Action, by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal (Harvard Business School Press), looks at how managers can escape the pervasive rut of "active non-action" -- spending time making the inevitable happen -- and instead put their energy into those exceptional activities that create a company's future. At times ponderous reading, it is still rewarding as it explains how to develop the personal and organizational willpower to achieve significant results.
8. Managers Not MBAs by McGill University management professor Henry Mintzberg (Berrett-Koehler) is a powerful and often hilarious indictment of modern MBA education, with an outline of principles for an alternative approach that would turn out managers grounded in the reality of their organizations and human needs.
9. Back to the Drawing Board by Colin Carter and Jay Lorsch (Harvard Business School Press) debunks most of the ideas being advanced today for improving board governance -- notably that directors must be independent and aligned with shareholders through stock options -- and instead provides a more nuanced, insiders' approach for reform.
10. Management Powertools by Harry Onsman, an Australian management consultant (McGraw-Hill), isn't fancy but it deserves a spot on your bookshelf because it presents a handy guide to 20 common management tools, some of which will undoubtedly be new to you, or murky until this book clarifies them.
Honourable mentions
Organized For Success by Stephanie Winston (Crown) provides lots of ideas for improving your time management.
Death By Meeting, the latest fable from Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass), applies the principles of movies spicing up your meetings.
The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation by journalist Ronald Alsop (Wall Street Journal Books) is an excellent and sobering chronicle of how to create, protect and repair your organization's reputation.
Does IT Matter by Nicholas Carr (Harvard Business School Press) is an essay that challenges the belief information technology differentiates companies these days and outlines a more appropriate strategy for managing the IT budget.
The Naked Truth by Margaret Heffernan (Jossey-Bass) speaks to women who find themselves struggling after early success in a workplace culture that seems unwelcoming.
The Corporation by University of British Columbia professor Joel Bakan (Viking Canada) is the companion to the popular documentary arguing that corporations are pathologically committed to pursuing profit and power at the expense of others.
For pure reading pleasure, and a sense of how the mighty can fall, try the thriller-like chronicles of Time Warner Inc. in Canadian-born journalist Nina Munk's Fools Rush In (Harper Business) and of Conrad Black in Wrong Way (Viking Canada) by The Globe and Mail's Jacquie McNish and Sinclair Stewart.
Harvey Schachter