On Purpose: Delivering a Branded Customer Experience People Love by Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan
This is a book about business things – branding, specifically. How to communicate your purpose to customers through an identifiable marketing strategy. How to ensure your company portrays the image you want and how to get your staff, and customers, to buy into it. Full review...
The Art of Possible by Kate Tojeiro
As I recently wrote on this website, I started reading management manuals and self-improvement books at a time when my life was not going so great. Since then, it seems that they have continued to drop into my life just as I need them. I'm sure there's something to the science of "serendipity", which basically means we notice stuff more when it's what we need. Full review...
The Commando Entrepreneur by Damian McKinney
It always helps to know the bias of anyone reviewing a book for you, so cards on the table: I am something of a "self-help" / "self-improvement" junkie. I use both expressions because it's often difficult to know where the boundary between management text books and teach-yourself-a-better-way-to-live books lies. Full review...
Food Bank Britain by Ray Barron Woolford
One morning Ray Barron Woolford watched as a smartly-dressed young man foraged in waste bins for food, less than a mile from the riches of the City of London. Intrigued as to what was going on he went to ask. The man explained to him that he'd just got a job after two years of being unemployed, but it would be five weeks before he was paid. He couldn't claim benefits as he was in work and had no savings, so the bins had to be his source of food and by the following week he would have to walk to work as he couldn't afford the fares. That was the inspiration for the We Care Food Bank. Full review...
The Independent Director: The Non-Executive Director's Guide to Effective Board Presence by Gerry Brown
In the United Kingdom independent directors are usually known as non-executive directors to distinguish them from the executive – those people charged with actually running the company on a day-to-day basis - but Gerry Brown usually refers to them as independent directors, a phrase which is common in other parts of the world. Initially, I found the phrase somewhat unusual but as I read The Independent Director I came to prefer that usage as it stresses what the director must be above all else – independent and able to stand back from the management of a business and view what is happening and what is planned with a dispassionate and critical eye. There's little in the way of training and it can be argued that no one is actually qualified to do the job, but Brown's book is as good as you're going to get in terms of spelling out the responsibilities and pitfalls. Full review...
Criminal Capital: How the Finance Industry Facilitates Crime by Stephen Platt
It used to be estate agents we reviled the most, but they've now achieved relative respectability. MPs briefly took the top spot, but for many years now the list has been topped by bankers following the 2008 financial crisis, when huge taxpayer-funded financial bailouts were required to keep the world's financial system afloat. Most people will think that we've heard the worst of what has been going on, but Stephen Platt believes that excessive risk taking and mis-selling might well be just a minor part of what is still happening in the industry and that government attempts to counter the problems are misguided and unlikely to be effective. Full review...
Brand Psychology: Consumer Perceptions, Corporate Reputations by Jonathan Gabay
Confession - I'm a bit of a brand geek. I do have some marketing work experience but that isn't the reason why I'm a bit of a brand geek. I think the attraction for me is that brands have, or in some cases, are, stories. I have always been fascinated by how and why people can relate to those stories, in the same way that I am fascinated by how anyone relates to any story! If you have any interest in the business of brands, this is a fascinating read and it delivers on far more fronts than just the business one. Full review...
How to Get Inside Someone's Mind and Stay There: The business owner's guide to content marketing and confident copywriting by Jacky Fitt
As a small business owner I know it's difficult - sometimes it feels impossible - to get your message out to your potential customers in a manner which is going to reward the effort which you put into it. Besides, how do you know who your potential customers are? How do you know how they would like to be approached? In fact, how are you going to get inside their head - and stay there? Jacky Fitt has written a comprehensive guide which takes you through what's needed and allows you to develop your own action plan for your business. Full review...
Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry by Gareth Murphy
It’s not difficult to find a history of popular or recorded music, written around the musical names who made it happen. Cowboys and Indies takes a different approach. While there is plenty in these pages about several of the most important stars, there is just as much again if not sometimes more about the movers and shakers, the inventors, managers, impresarios, and record label founders without whom there would not have been a record industry. Full review...
Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley
Ann Handley has compiled a one stop resource for writers of any kind of marketing and promotional material. Assuming you have command of basic vocabulary and know how to write a simple sentence, Handley takes you through everything you could ever need to know for a huge variety of platforms, purposes and problems, in order to better represent your business on the internet. Full review...
Why You? 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again by James Reed
No-one likes doing job interviews. This includes most recruiting managers, but for candidates it is one of life's most stressful situations. No matter whether it's the next step in our carefully planned career or just a job, no matter whether it's our first job or our fifteenth, that 45 minutes to an hour of conversation has the potential to fundamentally affect our happiness for the foreseeable future. Full review...
Encyclopedia Paranoiaca by Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf
We're screwed. Wherever we look, whatever we think of doing, there is a reason why we shouldn't be doing it, and people to back that reason up with scientific data. Take any aspect of your daily life – what you eat, how you work, how you rest even, what you touch – all have problems that could provoke a serious illness or worse. And outside that daily sphere there are economic disasters, nuclear meltdowns, errant AI scientists and passing comets that could turn our world upside down at the blink of an eye. Perhaps then you better read this book first – for it may well turn out to be your last… Full review...
The Price of Fish A New Approach to Wicked Economics and Better Decisions by Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris
Don't be put off by the title. The Price of Fish isn't just a treatise on how the local fishmonger chooses to mark up his prize catch. Full review...
The small BIG: small changes that spark big influence by Steve J Martin, Noah J Goldstein and Robert B Cialdini
It's a commonly-held belief that if you want to advance your business - bring in the extra money, get more customers and generally move up a step - then you're going to have to spend big money and bring in the experts. Martin, Goldstein and Cialdini tackle the problem from the other end: sometimes it's the smallest, least expensive and quick changes which can bring about the improvement that you need. In The small BIG they offer over fifty tips, hints, ideas which can make the difference. Sometimes they cost nothing, but bring in millions. Occasionally they require a small investment of your time, but it can be as little as five minutes. Full review...
How to Predict the Unpredictable: The Art of Outsmarting Almost Everyone by William Poundstone
William Poundstone believes that we are all in the business of predicting, whether it be something as minor as playing rock, paper, scissors to pay a bar bill though to anticipating how the housing or stock markets are going to move. Now, I'm not particularly competitive - if whatever it is means that much to someone else then I'd rather let them have it - so this book didn't appeal to me on the basis of doing better than someone else, but I was interested in how it might be possible to predict what is going to happen. So, care to predict how it stacked up? Full review...
Pocket World in Figures 2015 by The Economist
There are people who don't understand the joy of raw data: no accompanying analysis (or spin) - just a collection of figures relevant to a particular circumstance. If you're one of those people then this book will mean little to you, but if you want a pocket (well, certainly handbag or briefcase) work of reference then this book will be a treasure. I once gave a copy to a diplomat and he kept his wife awake until the early hours as he came across another gem which she had to know without delay. The 2015 edition is the twenty fourth in the series - and diplomatic (and similar) spouses everywhere should prepare themselves for the onslaught. Full review...
Create Your Own Online Store (using WordPress) in a Weekend by Alannah Moore
I've run a website for over eight years now but I've always shied away from any inclusion of e-commerce on the site. It seemed like too large a subject, too much complexity and choice and the possibility of problems which could go disastrously wrong. I first encountered Alannah Moore when I read The Creative Person's Website Builder and was impressed by the way that she approached her subject, so when I had the opportunity to see how to create an online store in a weekend, I jumped at the chance. Full review...
Money: The Unauthorised Biography by Felix Martin
Occasionally books are not exactly what they seem. When I picked this up, read the blurb and began the contents inside, I was expecting a kind of biography or history of money through the ages. The opening chapter, a brief sketch of the economy of the Pacific island of Yap and how it worked, seemed to confirm this. It tells us how in the late nineteenth century Yap, east of the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft in diameter, called fei. The population did not carry these around, let alone own them like we possess pounds and pence, as they were part of a sophisticated system of credit management. Full review...
Consiglieri: Leading from the Shadows by Richard Hytner
I've always been fascinated by the existence of that shadowy figure, the consigliere, in stories about the Mafia. He - and it was always a man - appeared to be full of wisdom, with the interests of the family at heart and without an ambitious bone in his body, or so it would seem. It was the title of Richard Hytner's book which drew me in - along with the idea that coming top is sometimes second best. That seemed to go against everything that I'd ever been brought up to believe. So - does he make a good case for being the second in command? Full review...
The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life by Uri Gneezy and John List
Wow! This is a most surprising economics book.
Behavioral economists (if you’ll excuse the American spelling) investigate people’s buying behaviour and consuming patterns. I guess we know about that already because supermarkets here lull us into buying three for the price of two, to come back next week for £10 off a £100, or to garner extra points on a loyalty card (Oh why can’t they just go for a cheaper price at the point of sale? Why do profits have to be in double percentage point increases year on year?). A fair bit of manipulation to ensure that a company survives is already part and parcel of our lives. If you’d asked me before I read this book, I would have lined up that sort of consumer marketing psychology alongside banking as profiteering. However … these guys are different: they really do seem to care about the plight of the underprivileged, and they come from an academic setting, rather than a commercial one. Full review...
Get Things Done: What Stops Smart People Achieving More and How You Can Change by Robert Kelsey
We're all so busy these days it's easy to veer between headless chicken and cherry picking modes, or at least it is for me. (I really hope my boss isn’t reading this!) In fact procrastination is my super power which was why I grabbed Robert Kelsey's book from the shelf with excited anticipation: in a self-help book with one of the longest titles known to man, he promises to help us become more efficient time managers and to stop putting things off. Full review...
The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort
As if we didn't have enough excuses to appreciate the 'Masters of the Universe' of the financial sector. After the tax dodging, the bonus scamming, price fixing and the valiant attempt to bring down the entire world economy comes Jordan Belfort aka the Wolf of Wall Street. To be fair to Belfort, he plied his trade long before the most recent financial meltdown. Still, he's managed to piggy back the latest crash via a best selling book which has been re-released to coincide with a film adaptation starring Leonardo Dicaprio. Full review...
Live At the Brixton Academy: A riotous life in the music business by Simon Parkes and J S Rafaeli
Who on earth would want to buy and run a live music venue in deepest Brixton, and manage to keep it running for fifteen years, transforming it against all the odds into what becomes one of Britain’s most iconic establishments of its kind? Such an undertaking calls for somebody with special managerial skills who can keep one step ahead of the game, walking a precarious tightrope, keeping gangsters, punters, promoters and the local authorities onside. It also requires a good deal of luck. Full review...
Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
I don't have a problem with making decisions, probably because I've always tended to the view that it's better to make a decision and get on with life than haver and waste time in limbo. With a few notable exceptions it's served me well, but when Decisive appeared on my desk it struck me that there could be advantages to improving the quality of the decisions too. The Heath brothers have a good history of collaborating on such subjects and delivering books which open the mind. Full review...
How to Make a Million Slowly: My Guiding Principles from a Lifetime of Investing by John Lee
You should, of course, remember the old adage. 'If something seems too good to be true, it probably is'. If you find a slim book with the title 'How to Make a Million - Slowly' you shouldn't assume that you're about to have an entirely different relationship with your Bank Manager. On the other hand John Lee - Lord Lee of Trafford - was the UK's first PEP/ISA millionaire, from an investment of £125,000, so there's no need to suspect that you'll open the book to find that you're told to 'do as I do'. This is a man who has done it and has a lot of good advice - after all, he wrote the My Portfolio Column in the Financial Times for fourteen years. Full review...
What if Money Grew on Trees?: Asking the big questions about economics by David Boyle
In a climate of increasing economic uncertainty, we may often find ourselves exploring the big questions about money, finance and the global market. For example, during the recent downturn, experts were faced with such questions as What if we just kept printing more banknotes? and What would happen if the banks crashed again? These, and other thought-provoking speculative questions have been put to a team of experts and their answers have been recorded in a fascinating and absorbing little book called What if Money Grew on Trees? Full review...
Talk Lean: Shorter Meetings. Quicker Results. Better Relations by Alan H Palmer
When I think back to my days as an employee the memory of the meetings makes me shudder. They were usually badly prepared and managed with little aim other than to tick a box so that someone could prove to his manager that he held meetings. The waste of time was on a monumental scale and I doubt that I'm alone in thinking this. Include other meetings which you have on personal matters and you'll probably agree that it's rare to emerge feeling that you've achieved what you wanted to achieve - or that you haven't been manipulated. Alan H Palmer has a plan for making meetings shorter and getting better results, but most importantly (for me) he wants you to be able to do it all openly, with no tricks, no gimmicks and complete honesty. Full review...