BizEd

MarchApril2009

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Bookshelf John Rubino's Most people face three great fears: dying, speaking in public, and failing to live a meaningful life. It's that third one that concerns Mark Albion in More Than Money. Albion, a former Har- vard Business School professor, is co-founder of Net Impact and a man concerned with reconciling the needs of the body and the soul. He knows many MBAs face the same primal dilemma, and he's written this book to help them avoid the intense pressure to follow certain career paths when their hearts lie elsewhere. He asks, "What are the 'riskiest' choices? Those that don't allow you to become the person you want to be, to live your life full measure." As might be expected, More Than Money is chock full of emotional epiphanies and inspiring anecdotes, but at the same time it doubles as a practical workbook that can help readers decode their own desires. Albion challenges readers to determine who they are and what they want, while point- ing a klieg light at the traps that lie along the way. For instance, he warns, "don't get really good at what you don't want to do." It's a slim book, but it has a lot to offer newly minted MBAs—as well as those who might have wondered why they don't feel satisfied by their successful careers. (BK Busi- ness, $19.95) There are more people in the world who don't work for Apple or Google than do, but every story written about innovation seems to focus on YouTube and the iPod. Is there a playbook for regular folks who need to drive growth at their own staid 64 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2009 doesn't just make a passionate case for the benefits of wind or solar or geothermal power. It weighs up the likelihood of these new technologies succeeding and handicaps the potential for investors. The result is a lively, fascinating book that will make readers not only want to install those solar panels, but also buy shares in one or two of the companies that manu- facture them. Rubino isn't offering stock tips, and he isn't letting hope and enthusiasm blind him to the risks. "Hot markets are dangerous markets," he writes. "When the reasons for investing in a given sector are this compel- ling, con artists and delusionals come out of the woodwork. In the coming decade, we'll be inundated with breathless accounts of new clean technolo- gies that are sure to save the planet and make early investors rich beyond imagining." But he presents the current state of green technology in such lucid terms that readers will already possess some of the information they need before they invest in this promising market. (Wiley, $26.95) companies? Now there is— The Catalyst, written by Uni- versity of Vir- ginia professor Jeanne Liedtka, Willamette University pro- fessor Robert Wiltbank, and psychologist Robert Rosen. They profile a series of "great growth leaders who were ordinary manag- ers doing extraordinary things." They find that these "catalysts" tend to share certain behaviors— for instance, they have spent their careers in wildly different industries because they love learning new things. They like to move fast, but they're also willing to try small changes, fix mistakes, and try again. While some readers will realize with dismay that these characteristics don't describe them, the authors say anyone can change his mindset: "Try to be more committed to the journey than the end result, to live in the present, to have the cour- age to try new things… ." It's a book that will have readers looking around their offices with fresh eyes. (Crown Publishing, $27.50) , part of the Harvard Business Press's "Memo to the CEO" series of concise books, is a quick and terrific read about how companies can use compensation practices to get the kind of employee performance they want. Author Steve Kerr—former chief learning officer at GE and past member of the facul- ties at Michigan, Ohio State, and Southern California—presents his arguments in a forthright, uncom- promising, and witty fashion. There are three basic steps to using rewards to influence behavior, he says: Define what you mean by performance; devise comprehensive metrics to track behavior; and cre- ate the rewards. "If there are things you'd like your people to do that you think can't be rewarded, you're wrong, because any- thing that can be mea- sured can be reward- ed," he writes. "If you'd like some things done that you think are impossible to measure you're wrong again…because anything that can be described in actionable terms can be measured." It's the perfect book to take along to a management Clean Money Reward Systems

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