2007's Business Books

I'm excited about the perspectives offered in several books that came out this year. In many ways, authors have been exploring the implications of the changing business environment -- new technologies, shifting workforce values, ever-growing globalization -- on various facets of corporate operations. In different ways, they all ask us to wrestle with a world in which the cost of communication is rapidly approaching zero, one where talent shortages will give capable workers increasing leverage to define when, where and how they want to work.

First, I have to cheat a bit. My favorite book today remains one that has been out since 2004, but is well worth a read if you haven't discovered it yet. The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life, by Thomas W. Malone, lays out an inspiring argument for re-thinking how corporations get work done. He explains how we are reaching an inflection point, as instant, ubiquitous, and essentially free communication allows us to conduct the most basic processes within our corporations in fundamentally different ways -- market-based, even democratic.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Portfolio) by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, explores what the changing world of Internet-based technologies mean for business. Based on extensive research, this well-written book gives business leaders a broad overview of the possibilities -- for redesigning production processes, re-thinking innovation, and creating new customer-facing experiences based on our growing ability to share information and ideas freely and quickly.

Hot Spots: Why Some Companies Buzz with Energy and Innovation - and Others Don't by Lynda Gratton digs deeply into the human side of organizations -- arguing through stories and rich examples for the innovative benefits -- and enormous gratification - that collaborative processes can provide.

In Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital, John Boudreau and Peter Ramstad tackle yet another angle of the change -- how do we measure success? Frankly, the title doesn't do the book justice -- this is not a book for HR specialists -- it poses provocative questions for all managers. The book is about metrics and analytics -- about what we measure and how we use the information we collect. Today's business world, as John and Peter explain, requires a sophisticated model of how, where and by whom value is created.

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, builds on our body of knowledge about the preferences of the changing workforce by focusing on one important group in detail -- professional women. Today 58% of all U.S. college graduates are women and 37% of those women choose to leave the workforce. Companies who want to retain this rich pool of talent will have to think outside the box to create work environments that provide compelling options for women.

Taken together, these and other books from 2007 explore how our workplace is changing -- driven by new technology and shifting employee values, reflected in new practices, processes and ways of measuring success.

Comments

[mamacat]

These books, and the general idea that good management styles benefit everyone involved, are fine and dandy. In the running of small businesses, or conscientiously run corporations, they can give real insight. However, there are other things going on in the world that affect the world of business greatly, that these books do not address.

In the larger picture of business/government related issues, one should include Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine." How giant corporations can and do adversely effect the world economic climate for their own gain, is a very important issue. Large companies can come to rely on controlling governments as opposed to running themselves efficiently. How to reconcile running an up-and-coming company, as opposed to an Exxon or a Chevron, with the reality of governments influenced and even controlled by corporations, is a tough problem.