The Management Moment of Truth, Bodeken and Fritz

It's a practical response to a universal problem of too little, too much, too little. You do too little to correct the performance of people you manage until the day you can't ignore it any longer and then you overreact to shock him into managerial enlightenment and then you regress into resigning yourself to the suboptimal performance. Actually dealing with sub-optimal performance is a critical manager skill because if done correctly its benefits to the organization are tangible and enormous, and done poorly, the results are debilitating. Numerous other books deal with managing the crisis, this book deals with the skill to prevent It escalating into a crisis. Their approach is practical and has been tested in a variety of organizations. The methodology is capable of being built into the culture of an organization so that performance issues are dealt with candidly and sensitively. This is a practical how-to book that is long overdue.

Competition Demystified, Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn

The subtitle is 'A radically simplified approach to business strategy' and it really is! Many confuse strategy with planning and think that any plan to attract customers is a strategy and that error leads to fighting for what you can't win, and losing advantages that are the basis for real success. Formulating effective strategy is central to your business success and when demystified, it boils down to finding out where you fit into the competitive environment and then to guide the strategic choices that follow. That only matters, of course, if you have a competitive advantage and, no, not every industry let alone business, has one and it is not the sine qua non for profitability. I read everything I can lay my hands on concerning strategy and this is one of the best I have read because is it clarifying and refreshingly original - a pleasing change from the glut of the same-old-same-old.