Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways To Make The Most Of Your Day.

This book offers plenty of information, examples, and exercises for understanding time and using time more effectively in sixty short chapters. For example, delegate more effectively by giving tasks to others when the tasks are routine for you, when you don’t have time to do the tasks, and when the tasks would help others build skills. Create to-do lists, including a daily list, a monthly list, and a someday list. Prioritize your goals into three categories: urgent but not related to your goals, urgent and related to your goals, and goal-related but not urgent. If you keep putting off work, then do it, dump it, delegate it, or defer it till later.

Source: Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways To Make The Most Of Your Day.By Karen Leland and Keith Bailey, 2008, Career Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ, ISBN: 978-1-60163-014-8.

The Seven Minute Difference: Small Steps To Big Changes.

This book explores seven major ways to improve your life. For example, take the time to discover the purpose and passion for your life. Set six types of goals for your life: personal, financial, small, far-reaching, career, health, and leaving your legacy after you die. Believe in yourself and take time to practice dreaming. Expand the possibilities for your growth in small, seven-minute increments. Choose to be successful each day. Remember that life-changing actions require you to make life-changing decisions. If you don’t replenish your energy, then it will soon die out.

Source: The Seven Minute Difference: Small Steps To Big Changes.By Allyson Lewis, 2008, Kaplan Publishing, NY, ISBN: 978-1-4277-9794-0.

Simple Principles: To Think Big And Achieve Success.

Success is different for everyone. What you define as success should be what you aspire to have and to become for your life. The book stresses that individuals should become people of increasing value. The book offers 200 simple principles for achieving success, and is written around three main areas: increased productivity, importance of networking, and taking the initiative and making things happen. Simple principles include: identify the skills that you have, then put them to use, never eat alone, write your own blog, be sure not to burn bridges, don’t wait to be told, make your voice heard, and don’t be afraid to break the mold.

Source: Simple Principles: To Think Big And Achieve Success. By Alex A. Lluch and Helen Eckman, 2008, WS Publishing Group, San Diego, CA, ISBN: 978-1-934386-07-1.

Having Tacit Knowledge Can Be The Difference Between Success and Failure

Knowledge is important for managerial success. There are two kinds of knowledge: tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge is learned from experience and helps managers succeed with real-world problems. Tacit knowledge is believed to be more important for managerial results than is explicit knowledge. Even if managers have similar skills and abilities, they can have different levels of tacit knowledge. Today’s best managers can help employees build tacit knowledge by exposing employees to a wide range of learning situations that may be out of their regular norm for employees.

Source: Armstrong, S. J., & Mahmud, A. 2008. Experiential learning and the acquisition of managerial tacit knowledge. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7, 189-208.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else.

This book thoroughly examines why some people are world-class performers and the rest are not. The book refutes the idea that natural talent and hard work are required for people to be the best. The book offers the idea of deliberate practice as the way to become a world-class performer for any performance area. Deliberate performance requires a tremendous amount of repetitive practice to develop one’s skills and improve one’s technique. The best performers practice much, much more than lesser performers. The book continuously stresses how much hard work and lack of fun are involved in deliberate practice.

Source: Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else.By Geoff Colvin, 2008, Penguin Books, London, ISBN: 978-1-59184-224-8.

Employees Who Help Others and Are Internally Motivated Tend To Have High Performance Levels

Managers want employees to be motivated to perform on the job. Today’s best managers know that some employees go above and beyond their typical job description and help others at work. Employees have higher levels of persistence, performance, and productivity when they desire to help others and when they have an internal drive to succeed. An internal desire to be successful can result in employees helping others more, and that enables higher performance in the organization. Today’s best managers can influence internal motivation levels by selecting applicants who have a passion for their line of work and a passion to work hard on the job.Grant,

Source: A. M. 2008. Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 48-58.

The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask Your Organization.

This book explores five important questions to ask yourself if you want to transform your organization. A transformation means to move from where you are now to where you want to be. The five questions ask you to define your mission, customers, customer values, your results, and your plan. Your mission should be short enough to fit on a t-shirt. The mission should reflect your opportunities, competences, and commitment. Everyone in your organization should know your mission. The mission drives your goals, then your objectives, then your action steps, then your budget, then your appraisal process, which then drives your mission.

Source: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask Your Organization. By Peter F. Drucker, Jim Collins, Philip Kotler, James Kouzes, Judith Rodin, V. Kasturi Rangan, and Frances Hesselbein, 2008, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, ISBN: 978-0-470-22756-5.

Only You Can Make Yourself A Success

Managers used to believe that their company or their managers would make them happy and successful. Today’s best managers know that they alone are responsible for their own career success. You start managing your own career by careful introspection that uncovers your passions, strengths, and weaknesses. Forget conventional wisdom and forget the path that everyone else is taking. Don’t worry about jumping hurdles that others have set. Instead, set up your own, unique hurdles for you to jump. Have faith in yourself, and have faith that your hard work will pay off.

Source: Kaplan, R. S. 2008, July-August. Reaching your potential. Harvard Business Review, 45-49.

Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters.

This book explains how to create relevant brands and make your product matter. Relevance and success will come to those who listen more than talk, and who deliver more than just advertise their product. The author states that profit should not be your primary goal. Instead, make a relevant product and profit happens when you do everything else right. The book explains about relevant solutions, which are: insights, innovations, investment, design, experience, and value. The book describes how to control the conversation with customers, and provides an incredible amount of company examples.

Source: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters. By Tim Manners, 2008, Portfolio, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59184-220-0.

Simple Principles: To Think Big And Achieve Success.

Success is different for everyone. What you define as success should be what you aspire to have and to become for your life. The book stresses that individuals should become people of increasing value. The book offers 200 simple principles for achieving success, and is written around three main areas: increased productivity, importance of networking, and taking the initiative and making things happen. Simple principles include: identify the skills that you have, then put them to use, never eat alone, write your own blog, be sure not to burn bridges, don’t wait to be told, make your voice heard, and don’t be afraid to break the mold.

Simple Principles: To Think Big And Achieve Success. By Alex A. Lluch and Helen Eckman, 2008, WS Publishing Group, San Diego, CA, ISBN: 978-1-934386-07-1.

The Power of Story: Change Your Story, Change Your Destiny In Business And In Life.

This book examines the power that stories have to change your destiny and change your life. Everything that a manager says is a story. Find the right stories that reflect your ultimate mission and your purpose in life. Get rid of false purposes for your life. Are you really living your story or are you living someone else’s story for you? The three main rules of storytelling are: purpose or what you are living for, truth or your honest and authentic self, and action or what you should start and stop doing in your life. Tap into your four sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, and you’ll tell great stories.

Source: The Power of Story: Change Your Story, Change Your Destiny In Business And In Life. By Jim Loehr, 2008, Free Press, NY, ISBN: 978-0-7432-9468-3.