A Holiday Reading List
Author: Shaddy Abboud
As business owners and managers we know that life long learning is very important, but we dont give ourselves the time for any formal courses or education. To remedy this I have become an avid reader of business books. I have shelves full of books on all sorts of topics. Some are good, some bad and some excellent. Some are trendy some are timeless. For me a good book is one that allows me to see an issue or topic from a different direction or provides me with an approach or technique I havent used before. As a management consultant I strive to bring a broader perspective, deeper context and wider range of tools for my clients. Reading helps me to do that. I probably read about 2 business books a month.How many do you read? Four books I have read recently, and which I highly recommend to business owners are: Made To Stick Shop Class as Soulcraft 4 Hour Workweek IP For Dummies The holiday season is coming buy yourself some books! And they are tax deductible
Share: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The Heath brothers have done a great job of examining and then codifying why some concepts get remembered and others dont. They look at stories we all remember such as Aesops fables and urban myths such as the famous girl in the bar stealing your kidneys story. They apply the code to marketing messages and even to presentations (Dans passion is improving how educators teach). Since I read this book I have changed the way I make presentations and how I advise on marketing messages. It is a great read. The code is broken into 6 simple steps. They arewell youll have to buy the book. Chapters will mail it to you. Shop Class as Soulcraft by Mathew Crawford. This book is a bit more difficult but if you are curious about why you work as hard as you do and how sometimes, the work seems to strike a chord within you that is bold and harmonious; this book may be for you. Crawford explores the nature of work and he is well positioned to do so. As a kid he worked in speed shops out in California super tuning performance engines. After earning a PhD he went on to work in Washington DC in a think tank dealing with Sitting in a cubicle, shortly after starting, he tried to understand how his work mattered and not finding a satisfactory answer he quit and opened a motor cycle repair shop. (For those of you who have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance this book is not quite as spacey and a whole lot easier to read.) At one point he explained that a client wheeled in an old bike and asked him just to get it running. In examining the bike he could see that he could do a quick job and get it going but he realized that (and this is the key pint) that just getting it going would not be the right thing to do for the bike. His thesis is that work has its own intrinsic value. Crawfords book explores this and helps us to understand and perhaps explain to others why we do what we do. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. So a 4-hour work week is a bit extreme but not a bad idea. Ferriss book helps us to explore how we manage our work day and has excellent suggestions for streamlining and outsourcing activities. I for one happen to enjoy a collaborative busy workplace so Im not sure if I would really enjoy running my business from a mobile phone in Bali. And besides, as service business, it may be tough to have prospects visit me there. However I do strongly recommend it. When we make recommendations to clients, it usually means that they need to stop doing other things so that they can execute against the new strategy. This book may help. I gladly credit my friend Carlos Fox for suggesting this book. IP For Dummies, Neil Milton et al. This great book was written by our friends at Miltons LLP experts in Intellectual Property of all kinds. Working closely with Neil I have a much greater appreciation of how IP can not only protect but also build a business. Proper protection allows for creative licensing agreements, often overlooked copyrights and trademarks can facilitate or cripple international expansion plans and patent mining can even discover free IP not yet registered in Canada. Every manager should have a basic understanding of IP. This book provides it. And the best part is we have some free copies of this book available for you. Click here to request yours. Kingsford Consulting teams with Miltons IP to help clients develop comprehensive IP strategies. http://kingsfordconsulting.ca/?page_id=58 About the Author:
Kingsford Consulting Ltd. is a Strategy and Business Development firm that provides business planning, market research and strategy development services.
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