More than 11,000 business books are published every year—an overwhelming choice for busy professionals. Therefore, in partnership with getAbstract, Training brings you November’s top three business books recommended to our readers.
“Born for This. How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do” By Chris Guillebeau (Crown Publishing Group, 2016, 320 pages, ISBN: 9781101903988; $26)
If you don’t like your job, how can you get a better one? You can update your résumé and send it out to potential employers. You can attend every available job fair. You can go online, look for job postings and respond to all the ones that interest you. After you do all that, you can cross your fingers and hope for the best. The problem is that every other job seeker is doing the same, and many share or exceed your qualifications. Side Hustle podcast host Chris Guillebeau, author of “The $100 Startup,” offers a compendium of ingenious ideas for getting and keeping the job of your dreams. He suggests viable ideas for earning money on the side while you embrace your unique entrepreneurial pursuits. getAbstract recommends his idea-packed manual to those seeking jobs or entrepreneurial opportunities and to those seeking to improve their careers or boost their incomes.
Rating (out of 10): 8
Applicability: 9
Innovation: 8
Style: 8
“Focus” by Daniel Goleman (Bloomsbury, 2013, 311 pages, ISBN: 9781408850565; $16.99)
Daniel Goleman, author of the groundbreaking, mid-1990s classic, “Emotional Intelligence,” turns his attention to the subject of attention—and explains why focus is essential for navigating life, performing at your best, leading others, and, ultimately, improving the world for future generations. His illuminating explanations of brain functions will be useful to businesspeople and educators. Ironically, Goleman digresses often, and his efforts to incorporate issues that matter to him—such as climate change and economic inequality—prove confusing. Still, he’s superb at thoughtfully explaining how people think and feel. getAbstract finds that his simple explanations of the workings of the human brain, and his depiction of focus as a triad of attention paid to “inner, other, and outer” targets, make reading his work more than worthwhile. Goleman compares attention to a muscle you can flex and strengthen. For a buff psyche and enhanced mental tone, try this attention workout.
Rating (out of 10): 8
Importance: 7
Innovation: 8
Style: 8
“The Expertise Economy. How the Smartest Companies Use Learning to Engage, Compete and Succeed” by Kelly Palmer and David Blake (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2018, 256 pages, ISBN: 9781473677005; $29.95)
Kelly Palmer and David Blake explain that today’s leaders should focus on skills as part of their business strategies. They must support self-directed and peer learning by investing in practices and technologies that empower employees to manage their own learning and career goals. Workplace learning has changed in leading organizations and among top employees. With near unlimited, often free, and frequently high-quality learning available—everywhere and anytime—active learners no longer need to wait for corporate training. Education has to change; Palmer and Blake, executives at education technology company Degreed, show you how. With the caveat that the book also promotes their firm, getAbstract recommends this indispensable leaders’ guide to modern workforce development to executives, managers, teachers, learners, and even parents.
Rating (out of 10): 9
Applicability: 9
Innovation: 8
Style: 9
For five-page summaries of these and more than 15,000 other titles, visit http://www.getabstract.com/affiliate/trainingmagazine
