More than 15,000 business books are published every year—an overwhelming choice for busy professionals. Therefore, in partnership with getAbstract, Training brings you October’s top three business books recommended to our readers.
“The Decoded Company. Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers” by Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein, Jay Goldman, and Rahaf Harfoush (summarized by arrangement with Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, 2014, 326 pages, ISBN: 9781591847144; $27.95)
Contemporary shopping means giving up personal data. Some organizations gather similar data about their staff members. Every e-mail, phone call, e-calendar entry, and pass card swipe in the workplace forms a detailed profile of each employee. With this data, firms can tailor training, coaching, and assignments to individual workers. Leerom Segal and Aaron Goldstein—leaders of Canada’s Klick Health—and writers Jay Goldman and Rahaf Harfoush explain that knowing your workforce intimately is as important as knowing your customers. Klick uses artificial intelligence that analyzes data and gives advice on training, hiring, and firing for the benefit of companies and their workers. Whether you agree with this approach to talent management or think it could portend an invasion of privacy, getAbstract recommends the authors’ findings and fascinating stories to CEOs, CIOs, HR and IT managers, and anyone concerned about privacy issues.
Rating (out of 10): 9
Applicability: 9
Innovation: 9
Style: 8
“Widgets. The 12 New Rules for Managing Your Employees as If They’re Real People” by Rodd Wagner (McGraw-Hill, 2015, 256 pages, ISBN: 9780071847780; $32)
Employee engagement expert Rodd Wagner accurately diagnoses the troublesome state of the modern-day workplace and offers sensible, long-term solutions for employee engagement. After the turmoil of the recession, employees are wary. Employers must guarantee stability if they expect employees to be loyal. To re-establish connection, Wagner suggests organizations start by treating their workers like people instead of “things” or statistics. A healthy dose of humanity can do wonders to repair the damage some companies inflict on their workforces. Wagner anchors his material around 12 logical rules that getAbstract recommends to executives and managers.
Rating (out of 10): 8
Applicability: 8
Innovation: 7
Style: 8
“The Truth Doesn’t Have to Hurt. How to Use Criticism to Strengthen Relationships, Improve Performance, and Promote Change” by Deb Bright (Copyright © 2014, AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 244 pages, ISBN: 9780814434819; $17.95)
Performance consultant and former Olympic diving hopeful Deb Bright shows readers how to give and receive criticism. Drawing from her research on the effects of receiving criticism on workplace stress levels, and other studies about criticism, she explains how it works, how to create a workplace environment that’s conducive to feedback, how to give and take criticism, and how to avoid common mistakes as a “giver” and “receiver” of critiques. She teaches givers how to build their confidence and become more comfortable when criticizing. Receivers learn how to accept criticism as useful without becoming emotional. Bright also covers how to manage teams and cope with difficult situations. getAbstract recommends her practical, applicable advice to anyone seeking to create a workplace that embraces healthy, productive criticism.
Rating (out of 10): 8
Applicability: 9
Innovation: 7
Style: 7
For five-page summaries of these and more than 15,000 other titles, visit http://www.getabstract.com/affiliate/trainingmagazine
