Book Description
Praise for ADVENTURES of a CURRENCY TRADER
"A truly easy, unique, and enjoyable read! Rob has done it once again to teach us in the funniest way possible how not to make the most common trading mistakes. If you are tired of reading how-to books, this is perfect for you. I highly recommend this book to all traders. Everyone will learn something about themselves by reading this book."
—Kathy Lien, author, Day Trading the Currency Market, and Chief Strategist, www.dailyfx.com
"Adventures of a Currency Trader is a must read for anyone who has ever traded or is thinking about trading in the Forex markets. Rob Booker has a unique way of taking years of market knowledge and transforming it into an educational and entertaining experience. It has quickly become a cult classic in my trading library!"
—H. Jack Bouroudjian, Principal, Brewer Investment Group
"Brilliant! Rob's humor and humanity shine through in this parable about trading and life. Filled with wisdom and wit, it's an exhilarating rollercoaster ride through the peaks and valleys of the learning curve, with many valuable lessons learned along the way."
—Ed Ponsi, President, FXEducator.com
"Rob's fable of everyman 'Harry Banes' is destined to become a trading classic. This is both the missing piece and the foundation that comes before the strategies and methodologies. The search for the Holy Grail begins and ends in the heart and mind. The journey is authentic and real and if you're willing to take it with Rob, you will be rewarded in the end. Seldom has psychology and wisdom been so entertaining!"
—Raghee Horner, trader and author of Forex Trading for Maximum Profit and Days of Forex Trading
"In a series of insightful and entertaining vignettes, Rob Booker teaches both the novice and the experienced trader some hard won truths about the currency market. It's a must read book written by a guy who survived the trenches and went on to prosper in the biggest and most competitive financial market in the world."
—Boris Schlossberg, Senior Currency Strategist, Forex Capital Markets LLC, and author of Technical Analysis of the Currency Market
Customer Reviews:
Funny, Smart and Engaging.......2007-10-11
This was not my intentional purchase...it was one of those "purchase with purchase" pitches, I bit. So glad that I did. What a great insight into the minds of wannabe traders, novice traders and those of us that have managed to hang on by our fingernails for a period of time...all sharing a common thread. Rob Booker has nailed the mindset and the motivation that every forex trader experiences. This is a quick read that all traders, no matter how experienced, will relate to on some level.
Good Read, but only tells what can be wrong ..........2007-10-06
It is in a story form and lets you read quickly. Telling you about how a novice can get everything wrong, but then how to make it right was not cover in detail, probably making it too easy. The man in the book more or less lost his account in the first few trades, very typical, but then he can do it right and start making money soon afterward, not very typical .... my understanding.
Overall, fun to read, but I don't learn much from it.
Highly Recommend.......2007-09-26
This book is a welcome diversion from the vast array of trading instruction available. Light reading but still loaded with great info and insights every trader will appreciate. The author tells a good story too!
A Really Good Book........2007-09-23
What a really good book. I wish Rob could have written all my textbooks over the years, as I would have learnt a lot more. I usually learn everthing by reading textbooks or by the instructions on the can and it is hard to teach yourself. This book made me laugh at first, because nobody could be as foolish as Harry, but halfway through the book, I realiized, I am Harry, except that I had no one to take me under their arm and say, "This is what you must do, do this and you will succeed", life would be a lot easier. Rob gets the message across in this book by telling it through the life of Harry, his mistakes, coverups and bascially stumbling through life. It is a very good book.
B.S. Artist.......2007-09-23
This guy is an entertainer: the book, like his other work avaiable on the web, is genuinely entertaining. But he is at core a B.S. artist. This puts him at the level of most anyone on TV or in print who gives Trading Advice. According to his own Bio he has bounced from job to job and has finally found one that he can cash in on for a while. Read for fun and with a pound of salt.
Amazon.com
In their 2002 bestseller, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan identify why people don't get results: they don't execute. Bossidy and Charan are back with another stellar study on organizational behavior that shows how companies can succeed if they return to reality and examine every part of their business. Confronting Reality is based on a simple concept, but many companies approach strategy and execution in a surprisingly unreal manner and even the simplest of measurement methods, like the business model, are not applied correctly.
Cisco, 3M, KLM, Home Depot, and the Thomson Corporation are just a few of the companies that Bossidy and Charan examine. To demonstrate how to examine a business using the business model, Bossidy and Charan map out external variables, financial targets, internal activities, and an iteration stage (defined as a time to "make tradeoffs, apply and develop business savvy") to prove how a dynamically evolving business model will help improve performance.
"The version of the business model we have developed is a robust, reality-based process for thinking about the specifics of your business in a holistic way. It shows you how to tie together the financial targets you must meet, the external realities of your business and internal activities such as strategy development, operating tactics, and selection and development of people."
Larry Bossidy, retired chairman and CEO of Honeywell International and Ram Charan, author of What the CEO Wants You to Know and Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business, have once again shed industrial-strength light on how to run a successful business. --E. Brooke Gilbert
Amazon.com Exclusive Content
Amazon.com Interview: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan are back with Confronting Reality to show how companies can succeed if they get back to reality and examine every part of their business. Amazon.com senior editor E. Brooke Gilbert interviewed Bossidy and Charan to discuss the current business climate, their new book, and future projections.
Read the interview.
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan Discuss the Airline Industry
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan discuss the airline industry's failure to confront reality based on a recent Wall Sreet Journal article and their new book as a backdrop.
Read their comments.
Book Description
Confronting Reality will change the way you think about and run your business. It is the first book that shows how to connect the big picture of the new era of business with the nitty-gritty of what to do about it. Through a completely new way to understand and use the business model as the primary tool for confronting reality—a breakthrough that will become the management innovation of this decade—you’ll know sooner rather than later whether your fundamental business premise is under assault, where your best opportunities lie, what you should change and what you should leave alone, and how to realistically plan the future of your business.
The fundamentals of how a business makes money are being rapidly and permanently altered by sweeping structural changes. With their extraordinary depth and breadth of experience, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan are the ideal guides for everyone—entrepreneur, mid-level manager, or CEO—about what is to be done so you can get things right in this challenging, radically changed world. They start by showing you how to understand the most fundamental element of any business: whether you can realistically make the money you hope to in the game you’re playing.
Bossidy and Charan show how to use the business model to develop a robust, reality-based process for thinking about the speci?cs of your business in a holistic way. They show how to tie together the financial targets you must meet, the external realities you face, and internal activities such as strategy development, operating tactics, and selection and development of people.
Through the lens of the business model, as well as the skillful use of initiatives and development of people with the right leadership characteristics, you’ll see how Robert Nardelli at Home Depot, Jim McNerney at 3M, Dick Harrington at the Thomson Corporation, Michael Wisbrun at KLM, Joseph Tucci at EMC, and John Chambers at Cisco confronted reality. Whether they faced crisis or opportunity, all made the right kinds of changes through a combination of business savvy (the art of understanding the fundamentals driving a business) and business model thinking.
Customer Reviews:
Play Where the Puck Is Going to Be.......2007-10-06
"Avoiding reality is a basic and ubiquitous human tendency," write Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Leaders often tilt that way also and lack the discipline to confront reality. They comment, "Exercising the power of realism requires an open and inquisitive mind, intense curiosity, the intellectual ability to sort out complexity, the ability to persuade others, and--undergirding it all--the courage of inner strength. People who lack these qualities can't be considered leaders. They should look for other work." Yikes!
This is no quick-read novelette with three points and a poem. It's a thinking person's serious book with an innovative business model as the reward for your reading diligence. When programs, products and services all start to look alike (cell phones, music, churches, hamburgers, conferences, airlines, eNewsletters, etc.) the authors quote IBM's CEO with this warning, "Either you innovate or you're in commodity hell."
Why do leaders fail to confront reality and change? There are six habits of highly unrealistic leaders, suggest Bossidy and Charan: 1) Filtered information, 2) Selective hearing, 3) Wishful thinking, 4) Fear, 5) Emotional overinvestment and 6) Unrealistic expectations of capital markets.
How can you anticipate change before it's too late? The authors reference hockey great Wayne Gretsky's famous answer, "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
Strategic solutions for a familiar problem.......2006-12-11
Authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan start with what you know: the business world has dramatically, irrevocably changed. Companies confront the new reality of globalization, free capital flows and powerhouse retailers. The book's strength lies in its relentless insistence on a basic fact that business leaders know but have apparently been trying to deny: you must see the economic world as it really is. This is not new. You know the ground has shifted, but have you figured out everything that you need to do now? Most of today's business models describe how companies made money in the past - but survival now requires more than a model based on the old economy. You need that elusive, intuitive attribute Bossidy and Charan call "business savvy." Even if they can't quite seem to nail down a precise definition, their case studies illustrate how this super sense works, and why you need it. We recommend their book to managers and executives who want to learn how to rethink their businesses in today's environment.
Confronting Reality : Doing What Matters to Get Things Right.......2006-03-13
Clearly a reality check around the problems we all face as our customers and shareholders expectations are changing. In reviewing three major telecom institutions, Larry reminds us of the fundementals of we are in business. It's a good model for use when we're looking in the mirror at our own situation.
Definately worth the investment to read.
Look! A FOREST!!!.......2006-01-11
Instead of peicemealing a business to death: strategy, marketing, finance, etc. Bossidy and Charan give us a view of a whole business, from the chair of the savvy Entrepreneur or that of the CEO. They show hot to fit all the peices of a business together.
Bossidy and Charan use well-known examples and analyze the pitfalls and successes of these examples (Home Depot, Walmart, Thompson) according to a three-part business model: external environment, internal operations and financial targets. They also show you how to integrate by juggling the three simultaneously!
This was a great introductory book to orient businesspersons of any trade, level and experience to the whole shebang of business.
But. . .
Truthfully, i have read this 'business model' stuff before, with more depth and more analysis. I read the book "The Escher Cycle" by F. Jackson a couple of years back. That book goes into much more detail about most of Bossidy and Charan's three-part business model. Couple that book with "Value Migration" and you'll have a much better handle on the hurly-burly world of business.
Excellent Business Book!.......2005-12-25
Confronting Reality" is a gold-mine of perspective on how to get an organization properly focused - starting by confronting reality. It belongs on the bookshelf of every manager with bottom-line responsibility.
Bossidy begins by stating that any plan for a business has to answer three questions: 1)What's the nature of the game we're in? 2)Where is it going? 3)How do we make money in it? Incredibly, says Bossidy, in many organizations they rarely get asked, much less adequately answered.
Strategic plans of most companies don't work. A key reason is that little time, if any, is spent harmonizing the facts of the external environment, the financial targets that are set, and the internal capabilities of the business. People with a well-developed sense of business savvy seldom have a strategy ahead of time - instead, they devise their strategies as a means of meeting financial targets, not the other way around.
Buyers have much greater power today than in past years. Globalization + overcapacity (in many business lines) have shifted power to large buyers and intermediaries (Wal-Mart).
Questions that help detail the answers to the first three include: 1)Is the how of making money in my business and industry changing? 2)Who is winning in my industry, who is not, and why? 3)How, specifically, are the winners making money? 4)If my business is a winner, what do I need to do to stay on top? Conversely, if I need to change my game, what specifically should I be doing? 5)Am I in a growth industry or not? If not, and I want to continue, how do I change it or play it better than the competition? 6)Is my organization moving quickly to spot and take advantage of growth opportunities generated by these changes? 7)How do major customers see my products? 8)Am I bound by legacy costs (eg. pensions, healthcare) that make competing difficult?
Bossidy then identifies behaviors as common causes of failure to confront reality. (President Bush needs to read this section VERY CAREFULLY.) 1)Filtered Information: Possibly due to getting information only from those with the same point of view - typically in organizations looking at the world from the inside out rather than outside in. 2)Selective Hearing: The most common reasons are preconceived notions or the arrogance of past success. 3)Wishful Thinking: The merger will succeed because we need it to work (or have the best people on it). 4)Fear: Some tyrants fire people for disagreeing with them; more common is a situation where companies force-rank executives and use "attitude" as one of the criteria.
Summarizing - a well thought-out framework for realistic planning is provided by a highly credible former top executive.
Amazon.com
Contending that our increasingly complicated corporate universe has made it more difficult for companies to grow and prosper, noted business strategist Jack Trout and communications consultant Steve Rivkin have proposed a radical new tack: simplicity. By boiling everything down to its essential elements, they maintain, managers can ignore new fads and hot consultants and instead focus on the true business at hand. Fascinating in its own unpretentious, logical manner, The Power of Simplicity is their stripped-down guide to a future without chaos and disorder. Addressing the basics involved as well as specific management, leadership, and people issues, they hit a variety of applicable themes--including information, competitors, mission statements, goals, and motivation--using short individual chapters that quickly get to the heart of the matter with a few germane anecdotes and expert quotes followed by suggestions that are both coherent and feasible. Each begins with an inspirational epigram by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Malcolm Forbes, and even Mother Goose, and concludes with a Simple Summation, such as this one on strategy: "If you're not different, you'd better have a lower price." --Howard Rothman
Book Description
Renowned marketing expert and best-selling author Jack Trout has a message for managers who are struggling to keep up with today’s ever-changing business climate: “Keep It Simple.” In this paperback edition of The Power of Simplicity, Trout advocates the importance of paying attention to the basics and simplifying processes in order to stay focused on the core business at hand. Through case studies and interviews with successful executives, he shows managers how to cut through jargon, articulate their vision, and regain control of the vital elements of their business in order to make it thrive. According to Trout, the things that propose to streamline companies, like the ubiquitous “mission statements,” often end up bogging down operations by introducing unnecessary complexity where a straightforward approach may be more effective. Trout cites Southwest Airlines, Intel, and Kohl’s department stores among others as successful companies that have rejected showy trappings in favor of simplification.
Download Description
In sports, when things go wrong, the best coaches say. "go back to the basics". Renowned marketing expert Jack Trout has a similar message for managers who are struggling to keep up with today's everchanging business climate: "Keep it Simple". Trout advocates the importance of paying attention to the basics and simplifying the processes in order to stay focused on the core business issues at hand. Through case studies and interviews with successful executives, he shows managers how to cut through the jargon, articulate their vision, and regain control of the vital elements of their business in order to make it thrive.
Customer Reviews:
A counter-cultural voice of reason.......2006-06-12
Jack Trout's books on marketing and brand positioning (with Al Reis) have a deep resonance with many readers. A big reason is that they are clearly written with a simple message that is readily understood. Trout expands this concept of the importance of simplicity in this book beyond marketing and applies it to business in general. In it, he gives a refreshing, counter-cultural voice opposed to all the laborious guru-hype, endless buzzwords and MBA-babble - that too often only adds complexity without adding value. Trout quotes Jack Welch on this idea: "Insecure managers create complexity. Real leaders have the self-confidence to be clear, precise and to be sure every person in their organization understands what the business is trying to achieve."
In an entertaining and often-sarcastic tone, Trout goes after many deeply-ingrained business practices to expose their unhelpful complexity: LONG-TERM PLANNING (mere wishful thinking), GOALS (sound nice but can hinder emerging opportunities), GROWTH (those mandated 15% projections can lead to terrible long-term consequences) and those cumbersome MISSION STATEMENTS (add needless confusion). What may be most comforting for those who value a common-sense approach is how Trout stands up for the simple, obvious idea. But, in our high-tech, over-analyzed age, such simplicity can sound ... well, too simple. As such people in business often fear speaking up and being viewed as "an unsophisticated simpleton" lacking the latest analytical models. But, Trout encourages businesses not to fear that which is simple, but to embrace its wisdom and guiding light. His many relevant examples of success and failure help paint an effective picture. In all, Jack Trout is a refreshing voice of reason in a world beset by budensome complexity. Practitioners of gut instincts and old-fashioned common-sense should love this book. 4.5 stars.
I TEACH PEOPLE spiritually HOW TO LIVE YOUNG AND FLOURISH, not COMPLICATE their lives with guru worship! .......2006-05-07
Give it to them plain and simple as Trout says. They will feel comfortable with following a leader who gets on their level, but will be intimidated a speaker who speaks in tongues...
I lead people to live young and flourish through simple strategies, not kill them with complicated terms and alien metaphors like a wizard guru.
Dr. Garner
Should a part of management and engineering training.......2005-09-18
Most young Engineers and MBAs are more into hype and complexity than into solving engineering/business problems in a simplistic manner.
How many of us in our universities have been influenced, inspired by complexities of business and engineering ? Many of them even took the path of making their job seem complex and continued on their career - totally deviating from the basic objectives of why their jobs existed in the first place.
After 10 years in Software and consulting, when I read this book, it feels very much like reaffirming the basics of any work and business objectives.
Positives of this book:
* Reaffirms that most problems are to be simplistically analyzed and addressed
* Simplify your communication and reduce the clutter and hype
Negatives:
* Being simple does not always take you a long way - maybe in engineering, but definitely not in management. Ever heard of a manager who speaks up simplistically and been very successful ?
* The auther talks about being simplistic in communication, but has totally ignored the fact that communication is always good when it well wrapped and well packaged.
* Is simplicity always good when you are selling stuff ? People like the mystery behind complexity. While complexity itself does not sell, the mystery behind complex words does sell. Would you buy a Washine machine which has 'Fuzzy Logic' or would you buy the one that has 'Automatic Load Detection' ? Obviously the one with Fuzzy Logic - it kind of sounds cool and complex, even though you do not know whats in it.
some new useful material.......2004-12-29
Several ideas and examples are drawn from the authors' earlier work on positioning, 22 immutable laws of marketing, and bottom-up marketing. There were a few ideas that are worth chewing on. For example, per Trout, success is often riding the right horse. Both hard work and intelligence are long shots, finding fast-growing successful companies is a long-shot; finding a successful product is a medium shot; finding a person with successful career trajectory and hitching your career to theirs is a more reliable way of duplicating success. Others such as avoiding all recent advances in technology may be a little simple-minded and perhaps, unnecessary in the end.
Good Title...poor book.......2004-12-17
I really wish this book did not have so many grammatical errors because I believe people need to simplify their life, but this book insults the reader's intelligence. If a well-respected author like Jack Trout is going to attach his name to a piece of writing he should make sure it is readable. In addition, this book seems to be choppy in its central theme. I do not remember the authors addressing the idea of simplicity throughout the whole book. The central concept was lost somewhere among Jack Trout's tirades to the business professional.
Book Description
Now in paperback, one of the first books to help navigate the profound emotional challenges of caring for elderly parents in a strained parent-child relationship.
Customer Reviews:
A MUST READ BOOK FOR EVERY HUMAN BEING.......2006-05-07
This is it folks! Probably one of the most important books I have ever read. It took me, as the reader, full circle from my childhood all the way through to my current relationship with my aging parents, in a matter of hours. I could not and would not put this book down. It wouldn't let me. Never have I read anything on the issue of children dealing with their aging parents that has so thoroughly covered every human emotion. It is gut-wrenching and inspiring at the same time. Kudos to Roberta Satow for having the desire and the ability to write about a topic that is so controversial and so very necessary. This book pushed all of my buttons and made me rethink every aspect of my relationship with my parents and my own children. This subject cannot be talked about or written about enough. I took on every role while engrossed in this book. I was child, sibling, parent and aging parent all at the same time. I was hit emotionally from every angle. When the book was finished I was literally angry that there weren't more pages. I can't stop thinking about or talking about this book. Now that is the sign of a great book! Please tell me there will be more where this came from!
Alot of empathy, no concrete solutions .......2006-01-31
The interviews in this book were very enlightening, giving me some new insights into the situations that I, and apparently many others, are going through with aging parents. I did sympathise with many of the adults, and I guess the only shortcoming of the book was that I expected it to provide me with solutions. I realize that may be impossible to receive from a book, but I do think I gained a lot by the empathy I felt to others who deal with the same insolvable and sometimes intolerable situations. I would recommmend this book to those just beginning to feel the pull to help their parents so that some strategies may be of help in the earliest stages before patterns are set.
Right On........2005-10-05
The introduction to this book left me breathless - the author could have been looking over my shoulder at my own interaction with my mother, and dealing with the welter of emotions that come out of that relationship. I very much appreciate the author's disclosure of her own situation - I think this gives an immediacy that the reader can relate with. Anyone in a care-giving situation with their parents' should read this book, no matter what their relationship with their parents was like. I plan to recommend it to everyone I know, because they will need this kind of information sooner or later.
Deserves a lot more attention.......2005-09-17
After picking up this book in a library, I was surprised to learn how low it is ranked on this list. Although I do not have personal need of the book (my parents are dead), many of my contemporaries are or were caregivers. This book helped me understand them. Among my aquaintances, nearly every primary caregiver is on antidepressants. With little time for exercise or self-care they have health and weight problems. And the primary caregiver often is not the favorite child. As Pipher says, he or she may be an estranged child seeking a last chance to work out "unresolved issues," in the language of therapy.
The book's title can be misleading. Satow does not limit her topic to children who resent their parents. She provides several examples of selfless caregivers who love their parents and care for them willingly. Often they're repaying an emotional debt or following a culture they embrace.
Given the heavy subject matter, author Satow couldn't take on the usual upbeat, cheery tone of most self-help books. In fact, reading the book can be exhausting. I am reminded of Mary Pipher's book, Another Country: relentless examples of frustration with no end in sight.
Compared to Pipher, Satow comes across more as a hands-on therapist and teacher. And she's the kind of therapist who holds firm to mainstream beliefs (e.g., we never lose ties to our parents) and offers, by way of encouragement, a simple, "That's difficult."
Like Pipher, Satow's message is one of acceptance. At some point in life, there's little to anticipate. And contemporary American society lacks an infrastructure to provide support.
The book would be stronger if the author had stepped back for a broader perspective. Many caregivers sacrificed their own lives, so who will care for them as they age? How will the single or childless elderly fend for themselves?
And some relationships seem so broken or distant that one or more children could move to the opposite end of the world, guilt-free. Remember the Sopranos episode where Tony's mother dies? Carmela, Tony's wife, says, "Who are we kidding? She was awful." A funeral director told me he's experienced this reaction first-hand - more than once.
The biggest omission in Satow's book relates to money. In her last chapter, Satow makes some recommendations for caregivers. She includes a list of questions, encouraging caregivers to assess whether they're experiencing illness, taking out their frustrations on their own children or giving up a social life altogether.
But Satow totally ignores the financial effects of caregiving. When the parent dies, the child who gave up career options now has to move forward, battling age discrimination and a resume gap. Sometimes parents never get around to updating a will. Some die intestate. The inheritance gets divided evenly among three, four or five children, who rarely are motivated to reward the primary caregiver. And the primary caregiver's career can suffer or even disappear.
Still, I'd recommend this book to anyone who's caring for an elderly parent. But I suspect caregivers have little time to read. Ultimately, this book will help the rest of us try to understand a little more.
Excellent writing and meaningful insights.......2005-08-18
I recommend this book to anyone caring for aging parents and finding it much more difficult to navigate than they had anticipated. I expected to deal with physical and logistical problems when I moved my parents from their home of 50 plus years to live near my home in another city. But I didn't imagine the emotional havoc that I would experience. I only hope that the subtitle does not dissuade potential readers who had no particular issues with their upbringing; anyone in the parent care situation will benefit greatly from this book.
Book Description
According to bestselling marketing expert Sergio Zyman, many companies rely too heavily on innovation to solve their problems. Whenever a brand or business gets old and tired, the impulse is to scrap it and start over with something fresh. It sounds great, but more often than not, innovation simply doesn't work. Zyman knows this firsthand— he was the chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola during the disastrous launch of New Coke.
So what's the alternative? Zyman now preaches the power of renovation, not innovation. Recapture the essence of your existing brands, products, and core competencies, and do more of the things that made you great in the first place. For instance, Coca- Cola's essence was about authenticity, continuity, and stability, and New Coke undermined all three qualities. It seems obvious in retrospect, yet too many managers are so impressed by innovation that they approve ideas no one will buy, such as premoistened toilet paper or smokeless cigarettes.
With Renovate Before You Innovate, Zyman explains the tools managers need to revitalize their marketing strategies and improve their growth rates. This book will challenge the conventional business wisdom and help companies make smarter decisions.
Customer Reviews:
Growing a Business the Right Way.......2004-10-22
Fascinating approach that skewers the notion that innovation is the savior of business growth. Sergio Zyman provides examples galore showing how innovation has derailed many a company from its true course.
His notion of leveraging the essence of a business to do more of the things that made it great in the first place is very powerful, and it really leaves you scratching your head at how some companies can still focus on continually seeking out the new thing rather than the RIGHT thing for their business.
Excellent anecdotes and many solid approaches to relooking at a business in order to uncover growth opportunities that make sense.
Book Description
This timely book is the result of a Stanford University study of "good work" in business, under William Damon's direction. During the course of the study, researchers interviewed 48 men and women who have achieved success in business. The interviews revealed the surprisingly strong role that morality can play in successful business careers. Based on this information, Damon has developed a set of principles for using the Moral Advantage in business. These principles include "moral imagination" - creating a business concept that serves a larger purpose without losing profits; forthright communication that inspires trust; cooperative strategies that build teamwork and community; uses of the Golden Rule for managing complex relationships; philanthropic efforts that express compassion; and a public commitment to ethical standards. The book shows how and when business people can most effectively draw on these principles and explains how to develop the personal capacity to do so throughout a career.
Customer Reviews:
YOU CAN UNITE BUSINESS SUCCESS WITH PERSONAL VALUES!.......2005-04-19
The subject of this book is how to develop a unity of purpose that melds "the desire to excel, to accomplish something important, and to act in a decent and responsible way." The author calls this "the moral advantage." Based on 48 interviews with successful executives, Damon identifies the key strategies of a moral approach to business and shows how these can lead to both personal and financial success. Damon's focus is on the morality shared by people of goodwill who act decently, live honorably, care for others, and are fair, honest, and responsible. The moral advantage is further defined as "a positive way of thinking about morality that transforms both the worker and the work, a powerful force that can propel people toward their own goals while at the same time generating great benefits for society." The author builds a four-dimensional concept of morality in business and presents a discussion of people whose careers in business exemplify the moral advantage. Damon concludes the book with ten principles distilled from his research. The book presents a refreshing and inspiring value-based framework for understanding business and personal success.
An inspiration read packed full of practical advice.......2004-12-12
The Moral Advantage: How To Succeed In Business by Doing the Right Thing is based on interviews with 48 executives who have learned how to combine moral convictions, enlightened self-interest, and business acumen to achieve success. Emphasizing that the cutthroat business world does not require one to violate moral principles to succeed - just the opposite, adhering to moral principles lays the foundations for success - The Moral Advantage is an inspiration read packed full of practical advice. From the right way to go about philanthropy, to forging a solid moral idenity, the importance of the Golden Rule, and much more, The Moral Advantage is recommended supplementary reading material for every business owner and manager.
Customer Reviews:
Five-Point Program Based on Real Life Situations.......2006-02-25
Nolan is the founder of the Woodstock Business Conference, whose mission is to establish and lead a national network of business leaders in exploring their respective religious traditions. Through monthly meetings, these leaders seek to integrate faith, family and professional life; develop a corporate culture reflecting their religious faith and values; and exercise a beneficial influence on society at large.
In his six years as executive director of the conference, Nolan helped hone the organizations' five-point program for "doing the right thing" in business. It is this program, illustrated by excerpts and examples from business conference dialogues, that forms the core his latest book. The points are self-awareness, expanding our horizons, engagement, community, and prayer. Each chapter ends with an exercise that includes self-examination and prayer. Nolan also provides footnotes and appendixes containing information on the Woodstock Business Conference, a daily "examen for busy business people" based on the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, and the 10 points of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' "Catholic Framework for Economic Life."
This work seems especially appropriate for small groups with concerns about business ethics and the proper balance between work and personal life.
Average customer rating:
- A Practical Guide for Confronting Hard Choices
- relevant, insightful and compassionate!
- Untrustworthy guide to morals
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Doing the Right Thing: Cultivating Your Moral Intelligence
Dr. Aaron Hass
Manufacturer: Pocket
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0743465156 |
Amazon.com
Aaron Hass is a professor of psychology, but it's his experience as a clinical psychologist--heading off suicide and gluing marriages back together--that informs Doing the Right Thing. Resolutely unconcerned with abstract questions, and deliberately setting aside such tough moral chestnuts as abortion and capital punishment, he offers instead a straightforward guide to two intermingled issues. First, why it is, despite the attractions of selfishness, that we are generally better off when we do what we believe to be right? And second, how, on the most practical level, can we do ourselves and everyone around us the favor of becoming better people?
This is refreshing stuff, especially from someone in a profession that has done its best to treat notions like self-restraint, self-sacrifice, and moral character as distasteful jokes. For Hass, they are nothing less than keys to a cure. The book's treatment of philosophical issues is light; occasional references to Kant or Aristotle are strictly pro forma and essential subjects such as psychological egoism--the popular view that all human action is "really" self-interested--are dismissed with almost flippant ease. But it's worth reading just for the anecdote about what happened when researchers put seminarians under tight deadlines to finish a sermon on the Good Samaritan--and then ensured that, in order to present their work, they would have to pass by a shabbily dressed man who was coughing and groaning as if in pain. Doing the Right Thing also contains other well handled discussions of such matters as whether God is a necessary foundation for workable value and the way that generosity and courage, just like dishonesty and cruelty, are subject to a powerful snowball effect. --Richard Farr
Book Description
Life is filled with moral dilemmas. And in this ever changing world, doing the right thing can be an increasingly complex endeavor. Now psychologist Aaron Hass leads you on a voyage of discovery that enables you to better deal with the dilemmas of everyday life.
At one time or another we have all thought, "I know what I should do, but I can't do it." By strengthening your moral self, you can. Dr. Hass' simple yet profound message is that inside, you know what's right. Freeing yourself from the fears, insecurities, and excuses that lie at the heart of your indiscretions will start you on your path to inner peace, dignity, and a renewed excitement for living. You will discover new ways of looking at:
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Guilt -- when it can be good
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Emotions -- how they can get in the way of doing what's right
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Fairness -- life may not be fair, but you can be
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Giving -- why keeping a scorecard makes you a moral loser
Dr. Hass brings these concepts and others into focus -- and ties them together with compassion and love. Warmly human, full of wisdom and depth of spirit, this is a book about approaching your relationships with greater empathy and kindness, and teaching your children to do likewise. With Doing The Right Thing, you will release your inherent goodness and heroic potential -- in times of crisis as well as in the smaller moments that make up the moral sum of your days.
Customer Reviews:
A Practical Guide for Confronting Hard Choices.......2000-12-29
Imagine a real-life dilemma: your spouse gets diagnosed with a serious mental illness. Soon afterward your only parent develops incurable cancer. No one else is available to share caregiver duties. You can't hire assistance. What do you do?
I was reading Aaron Hass's Doing the Right Thing when that happened to me. Three lives were helped.
A gem like this often goes underappreciated because it defies categorization. It has no pretensions to academic debate and it doesn't promote the author's particular moral views. Hass begins from the assumption that no ethicist can anticipate all the problems ordinary people face. So he offers a practical framework for the reader to make ethical choices in difficult and unexpected situations.
Hass accomplishes this goal with admirable deftness. Although himself a rabbi, he writes for people of all beliefs. An entire chapter develops his argument that ethics require no religious basis. Careful readers find Aristotle's ethics behind Jane Austen's comedies. A similarly disarming accessibility here cloaks Spinoza, Kant, and Russell.
Later sections move beyond theory to conditions where real human beings make ethical choices. Hass notes what circumstances are most likely to lead people into actions that go against their stated beliefs. Sidestepping technical discussions of cognitive dissonance, he accepts these phenomena as human nature and offers useful guidelines for minimizing them. The most original discussion handles circumstances where conflicting ethical obligations compete.
This is the rare book about morality that respects the reader and acknowledges the complexity of real life. Doing the Right Thing: Cultivating Your Moral Intelligence won't tell you what your values should be. It won't assume that all moral systems are equally valid either. If that sounds intriguing and almost contradictory then give it a closer look. You'll be well rewarded.
relevant, insightful and compassionate!.......1999-07-23
i have read many books about ethics and morality. Donig The Right Thing is simply the best and most useful of them all. Although it is very intelligently written, the book does not address abstract philosophical issues. Instead, it deals with everyday relationships and quandaries. I found it absolutely relevant to my own life. The book is filled with warmth and compassion. (The author is not reluctant to describe his own shortcomings along the way.) Despite trying to lead the reader onto a more just path Dr. Hass never preaches. Nor is he judgmental. He simply wants us to do a little better, and be a little better. Doing The Right Thing is filled with extraordinary insights, interesting real life stories and examples, as well as very practical suggestions. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to all!
Untrustworthy guide to morals.......1999-07-21
As a practicing therapist, and a writer whose claim to fame is a book arguing that psychotherapy is fundamentally a moral endeavour that needs more moral self-scrutiny, I had hoped Hass's book would be something I could give to patients, who often need guidance on how to think and act ethically. I will not recommend this book to anyone, however. I would consider that an unethical insult to their moral intelligence.
One can scarcely doubt the author's sincerity, perhaps not even his good character. However, no one with any reasoning ability could take this book seriously. It preaches, dogmatically; it does not argue or present evidence. Hass shows no great ability as scholar, scientist, historian, or ethical theorist. He seems not even to understand the questions an advocate of moral behavior (morally) must address if he wishes to (morally) deserve to be taken seriously. A few aspersions toward "liberalism," dogmatic references to "scientific findings" that are neither footnoted nor admitted to be controversial at best, and some flat false historical claims constitute his argument, which is itself full of logical holes. E.g., that "Millenia ago, moral prescriptions were not seen as deriving from external authorities such as religion or social coercion." This is simply false, unless Hass knows something no one else knows that he isn't telling, and his only evidence is a quote from two psychologists (not historians) who claim, altogether wrongly, that Plato and Aristotle held such a view.
Hass does not even meet the first criterion of ethical writing: He never cites his sources. You are expected to take his--often misleading, even wrong--word for everything. Every sophomore in colege knows this is unacceptable behavior.
The sort of ethics Hass would have us practice did not fall into disrepute because of moral turpitude, but for serious intellectual, economic, cultural, and social reasons. Anyone wanting to resurrect them must, if he is to deserve a hearing, address those serious issues. E.g., we now hold it the duty of a CEO to maximize profits; that is his ethical duty to his shareholders. Hass doesn't seem to have a clue as to the serious considerations that lead to this kind of view of ethical behavior, which is altogether at odds with traditional notions of ethics, and which is the same sort of view that lead to many of the things he simply pronounces morally wrong.
In short: dogmatic, often false premises and logically flawed reasoning. A very bad book by a (probably) good man.
Average customer rating:
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How to Be a Really Nice Person: Doing the Right Thing-Your Way
Pat Collins
Manufacturer: M Evans & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0871314061 |
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