NEW BOOK
“What I Learned From Sam Walton,” by Michael Bergdahl, John Wiley & Sons, $24.95
What you’ll learn: Bergdahl worked directly with Sam Walton at Wal-Mart. He provides numerous insights on how to make a retailing operation successful, and his methods can be readily adapted to business-to-business and service industries. Bergdahl’s success strategy is called P.O.C.K.E.T.S., drawn from Walton’s approaches to pricing, operations, culture, key item, expenses, talent and service.
–Jim Pawlak, BizBooks
NEW BOOK
“The Fiefdom Syndrome,” by Robert Herbold, Currency Doubleday, $26.95
What you’ll learn: Herbold tackles turf battles, their disastrous effects on organizations and ways to build a collaborative team. While a we-versus-them mindset can stroke managerial egos and obtain resources, there’s a vast difference between healthy competition for resources and deliberately filtering information that could be used for benefit of the firm.
–Jim Pawlak, BizBooks
NEW BOOK
“Organized for Success: Top Executives and CEOs Reveal the Organizing Principles That Helped Them Reach the Top,” by Stephanie Winston, Crown Business Books, $21.95
What’ll you’ll learn: Winston interviewed dozens of senior executives in an effort to better understand work habits of the super-successful, to quantify their skills and translate them into applicable.
Among the strategies that Winston uncovered are two that may surprise readers. First: Instead of viewing the day-to-day interruptions that cause most of us to lose focus as a menacing obstruction to workflow, top executives instead use them as a means to connect with fellow workers and enable more work to be completed. Second: Super-successful businesspeople do not multitask; they focus their complete attention on each task at hand until it is done.
–Book synopsis
