Podcast

Alfred Sloan’s My Years with General Motors was an immediate success and is considered one of the best management books written by CEOs of his era. Before his book, we’d probably have to go back to Henry Ford’s autobiography to find a management book of this popularity. I now believe Harvey Firestone’s book from 1926 is as good, if not better than Ford’s and Sloan’s. The title is Men and Rubber, a republished book by Latticework Publishing.

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Gary Stevenson grew up in an impoverished area of East London where he could hold his life’s belongings in both arms. About three years after graduating from the London School of Economics, Citibank made him a millionaire at a very young age. While Gary defied the odds of becoming a successful trader at Citibank, he explains why wealth did not bring him happiness and why he was eager to leave the firm that made him rich.

[Read more…] about The Trading Game

Agile, DevOps, TPS, TOC, Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, and Lean. Is there a mental construct or latticework that connects these robust systems? I believe the answer can be found in Wiring the Winning Organization. The authors Gene Kim and Steve Spear introduce the concepts of the three layers of work and social circuitry. The book also explains its three biggest learning pillars: simplification, slowification, and amplification.

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Corporate Counsel by Peter Carayiannis is a Lencioni-like business fable geared toward lawyers contemplating a career move to become in-house attorneys in private business. However, the book is not just for those who have passed the bar exam. As a finance professional, I found this fast-paced book packed with actionable insights that business owners can apply immediately in their organizations. Finally, business readers have a book to build their legal and corporate risk literacy and acumen.

[Read more…] about A Novel Approach to In-house Lawyers

Of all the books written about Warren Buffett, I am unaware of any authors who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and went to school with his children. Todd Finkle is the author of Warren Buffett: Investor and Entrepreneur, a book that was fourteen years in the making. Even if you have read numerous books on investing, this one is full of gems from a unique perspective, including a chapter on Buffett’s investing missteps.

[Read more…] about The Buffett Acolyte Who Attended School with His Kids

Making his second appearance on the show is John Rossman. John hit my radar two years ago after he wrote The Amazon Way, which reached my Top 10 list of 2022 books. His newest book is Big Bet Leadership that he co-wrote with Kevin McCaffrey. This strategy and management book reads fast with practical and big ideas not just for high-tech organizations, but those that are low tech large or small. Nonprofits can gain value, too.

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Gary Harpst co-founded the ERP solution Solomon Software, which was ultimately sold to Great Plains. CFO Bookshelf enjoys Gary’s past books, including Six Disciplines for Excellence and Six Disciplines Revolution. Gary’s newest book has been 40 years in the making. The title is Built to Beat Chaos: Biblical Wisdom for Leading Yourself and Others. While this is Gary’s message and stories, this provocative leadership book is part of Drucker, C.S. Lewis, Maxwell, and Christensen.

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I started my career reading Goldratt and his Theory of Constraints, which includes exploiting and elevating a constrating. Instead, A Beautiful Constraint’s authors want to leverage these limitations toward progress positively. Barden and Morgan view constraints as an opportunity and use them as a stimulus to see a new or better way of achieving an ambition. Willy Donaldson and I unpack five of their seven process steps of making constraints beautiful through mindset, method, and motivation.

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Many pricing books are heavy in ideas, abstractions, and behavioral science mind-shifting. Others are focused on simple pricing tactics. Jean-Manual Izaret’s (JMI) book, Game Changer, fills a void by showing readers and pricing practitioners how to approach pricing strategically through cleverly designed frameworks and thought-provoking questions. The heart of this conversation is The Strategic Pricing Hexagon and how to play the right pricing game.

[Read more…] about Pricing Strategy vs. Pricing Tactics