Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58916
Bookshelf "Whoever said there is no poignancy or subtlety in finance?" ask Karen Ber- man and Joe Knight in Financial Intelligence, a book designed to help nonfinance types through the com- plexities of account- ing statements. Their main premise is that any manager needs to understand how accountants arrive at key numbers—how they make assump- tions about revenue, how they estimate depreciation, where they assign certain costs. Using easy- to-understand language and provid- ing clear definitions, the authors walk the reader through the income statement, the balance sheet, ratios, return on investment, and all the attendant calculations. The book is not intended for the MBA with a finance major, but for the top-level manager who really wants to under- stand the business. "You don't need to be a rocket scientist," Berman and Knight insist. "The math is easy. And calculators are cheap." And the book makes sense. (Harvard Busi- ness School Press, $24.95) Few books about leadership would con- tain this sentence: "Leadership is the closest thing we have in our economy to applied philosophy." Yet that's one of the insights offered by playwright and Zen master Jonathon A. Flaum, who co-wrote The 100-Mile Walk with his father, Sander Flaum—an old-school mar- keting expert and founder of the Leadership Forum at the Fordham Graduate School of Business. The Flaums realized that today's busi- ness leaders don't always hear the advice offered by "old guys"—and 58 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2006 that younger managers have different perspec- tives, priorities, and problems. So they pooled their wisdom and approached the topic from opposite viewpoints, hammering out their main points during long walks through 100 miles of varied terrain. The result is both thoughtful and charming as they deconstruct what a leader must know about people, purpose, passion, performance, and other leadership practices. In the chapter about people, Sander says that a leader must be "the best motivator, the best listener, the best facilitator, and the best identifier of best ideas." Jonathon adds that lead- ers must be aware "that employees value their lives as family members, parents, and friends." As business adapts its paradigm to accommodate a changing workforce, books like this will help managers find their way. (AMACOM, $24.95) If you could start from scratch, how would you design your doctoral program? That's the question at the heart of Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education, produced by the Carne- gie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and edited by Chris M. Golde and George E. Walker. They gather 16 essays by senior faculty members working in a range of arts and sciences fields. While the authors inevitably offer critiques of their own fields, what emerges is a clear-eyed look at the problems that plague doctoral education as a whole—including in business schools. Common themes include the fact that many Ph.D. recipients are ill- prepared either to teach or take jobs in industry settings; women and minorities are underrepresented; and attrition by doctoral candidates is alarmingly high. Yet through it all, the high purpose of doctoral education shines through: "to educate and prepare those to whom we can entrust the vigor, quality, and integrity of the field ... 'stewards of the discipline.'" In a powerful way, the book is both troubling and hopeful. (Jossey-Bass, $50) Companies that succeed particularly well have distinct characteristics in com- mon, and David G. Thomson has done some sleuthing to uncover them. In Blueprint to a Billion, he answers his own question: "What is the quantifiable suc- cess pattern for America's highest- growth companies?" Analyzing Google, Microsoft, Harley- Davidson, and doz- ens of other compa- nies, Thomson isolates the essential steps to exponential growth. Surprisingly, he finds that billionaire corporations can exist in either emerging or mature markets. Some are "shapers of a new world," such as eBay; some are niche shapers, such as Starbucks; others are category killers, such as Home Depot. How these companies enact their value propositions and how they capitalize on their lead- ership skills and customer relations contribute to their phenomenal growth. As Thomson notes, "The odds