At long last a money saving book from which we can all benefit!!

I have read a couple of other money saving books before, and not been very impressed. So much so that I nearly gave this one a miss! Glad I thought again!<br />This book does NOT tell you how to live you life, but sets about offering money saving tips, which retain your lifestyle.<br />This offers tips about banking, credit cards, your mortgage lender, your gas supplier, telephones, and general shopping (and more!). It's advice on how to pay the least interest on your debts, attract the most interest on your savings, and how to make your general purchases at a much lower cost. <br />Generally speaking the sort of person who would read this book would be someone who is pretty good with their money (myself included). However, for the first time, I feel a money saving book could save me a bit more money (though far be it from the £6000 it suggests on the cover!).<br />If you are going to read one money-saving book, I strongly recommend you read this one!!

SOLID, ENJOYABLE READ

An excellent book which offers a good insight into the LBO business and the workings of Wall Street during the 1980s. There are some serious amounts of money involved and some very amusing characters - It almost reads like a comedy when detailing the exploits and excess of the chairman of RJR Nabisco with his fleet of company jets and"superstar" cronies.<br /><br />Essentially, it reads like a thriller and although a little confusing (and perhaps too detailed on the history / background in parts), it is nevertheless a solid, enjoyable read and a 'keeper'. Recommended<br />

Great insightful read

I read this book as I heard Lynda Gratton speak at a conference where I went to hear Emmanuel Gobillot author of 'the connected leader' (which I recommend you read as the ideas are complimentatry to hot spots). I very much enjoyed her speech and I am really pleased I bought the book as it goes into more depth and has more insights. The ground covered in the book is based on research into networks which Gratton and her LBS team conducted. It draws on a number of fileds and applies in all sectors. Much like other books by Lynda Gratton she stays away from the reductive"here are the three things you need to do" school of business writers and offers insights and contextual ideas. This opens the mind a lot more than checklists and forces you to think about the ideas in your context. It also recognsies that the main tool of leadership is to create conditions for hot spots to emerge rather than creating hot spots themselves. With this book she has certainly taken the biggest step towards global gurudom since her last book and it is very much welcomed!

Management and Organisational Behaviour ...

This is an outstanding book to have in any executive library. It covers so much more than most other books, and I'd go so much as to say it is a must have / read for anyone studying management, or is on an MBA program, or is going into an executive post.<br /><br />Well writen, covers topics clear and succinctly.<br /><br />Money well spent.

Philosophical take on authentic leadership

Authors Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones provide a welcome balance to the many books advising that leadership is a matter of adopting this or that characteristic or technique. They emphasize the situational nature of leadership, the extent to which it depends on followers in a particular organizational context. They infer some basic principles for authenticity and leadership from what seems to be a solid body of empirical observation and interviews, including generally pointed, well-chosen anecdotes showing good leaders in action. We recommend this thoughtful book, which offers an insight that few books on leadership dare to voice. The authors unabashedly assert that even great leadership may not lead to good business results. They further state that an excessive emphasis on results is one of the great obstacles standing in the way of authentic, moral leadership.

JUST WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!

Having recently set up a small business and being useless with"tax things" I really had to get to grips with tax. This book's straight-talking, non-nonsense style told me exactly what I needed to do. I have only owned the book a few days but I am already more confident about tax.<br />What I liked about this book was the fact that I didn't have to read it all - but I read more than I thought I would. <br /><br />The first three chapters got me started. I then read chapter 5 to see if I was working out my business profits correctly, chapter 7 to see how much tax I would save by buying equipment and chapter 10 because I was wondering whether to register for VAT. Excellent - Thanks sooooo much!

Insightful!

Noted sales trainer - and the head genius of cold calling - Stephan Schiffman succinctly describes 25 effective sales techniques. Each tip gets a short chapter with a nugget of advice, an example or two and a pat on the back to send you out the door charged up and ready to go. It doesn't matter if you've heard some of these common sense ideas before because Schiffman's compilation is so on-target, lively and encouraging. This little volume reminds you of leading sales techniques - or habits, as Schiffman calls them - that will build your customer base and increase your sales. If you're in the business of one on one product or service sales, this will boost your communications, planning, knowledge, rainmaking, visibility and confidence. Schiffman tells you to ask people what they do and help them do it better by selling into their priorities. Seems clear enough to us, given that the author doesn't only write - he also sells.

We go one we go all

Surely a must have for those interested in crowd behaviour, flow of information and social networks.

Natural connection

Steven D'Souza has brought natural simplicity to an important topic, affecting all aspects of life. This is both a thoughtful and light hearted read - very useful whatever your current approach to networking.<br />

Good overview of implementing lean sigma in services

Lean Six Sigma for Service provides an overview of how to implement lean and six sigma projects in service organisations. The book is clearly written and includes loads of case studies and covers issues such as the challenges faced in implementation; setting up the project; how your project teams should work; the importance of leadership commitment; and so on. It gives a high level overview of the challenges and requirements for success. For a book with"six sigma" in the title there is very little statistical detail. This makes is suitable for the novice, though a weakness for me is the lack detail of the tools and how to use them. You will need other books for that. Interestingly, most of the case studies emphasise the importance of using lean tools when getting started. Most of the successes seem to stem from process mapping, establishing flow, cutting down on WIP etc. There are few sigma based case studies. I guess that shows the importance of using lean to understand your processes, get them under control and standardise them, before you can use sigma processes to cut variation. Overall a good book. A little over long perhaps but excellent on the project management of lean and sigma.

great read..

i almost read all the books in the One Minute Manager series.. this book is a very unique one.. just like the others, it is easy to read, but this one will take you in a journey filled with lots of emotions that will drive you crazy for helping people to be better and live better..

If only I had read this book 10 years Ago !

I was introduced to this book by a friend and immediately felt like I had been missing out all of these years. In fact the book and the accompanying website are so good that everyone should have access to them, it's too good not to know. Why don't they teach this kind of thing at schools and Universities !?

Fantastic Step-By-Step Guide

I have a new job where I am required to take minutes of meetings. I've never taken minutes before in my life. I bought this book in my hour of need. It is fantastic! It takes you through the process step-by-step offering advice in plain English.

I have taken a few meetings now and everyone is shocked at my ability - they all think I've been minuting for years!

Highly recommended!

Wholly recommended!

Richard Branson should need no further introduction to you if you are reading this page. Many of you would have already read"Losing My Virginity", and possibly the unauthorised biography"Branson" by Tom Bower.<br /><br />If you have read one of these before, you will find that a good part of this new book is repetition (despite the polar differences between the two aforementioned titles). A large proportion of this book is autobiographical, and as such I will focus on the new areas that Branson has discussed, and the differences between this and his previous autobiography.<br /><br />Firstly, I will touch on the general"feel" of this book. It seems to me to be far more inspirational than the first (which had the possibility of becoming grating at times). The autobiographical content is far more succint (being a much smaller book) and really gives you all that you need to do. Branson also does not feel the need to brag about sexual conquests within this book, as there is an altogether more mature tone, with the book broken down into various chapters each with a motivational quote and action points.<br /><br />I might appear to be harping on about this book being autobiographical; however it is important to note that this book has been released as a motivational tool rather than an autobiography - I believe that this makes the book far more useful than Losing My Virginity.<br /><br />Another key difference within this book is that Branson focuses on social responsibility, particularly in relation to the carbon dioxide emissions of his Virgin Airline fleet. I feel that this adds a whole new dimension to this book, and will open the typical readers eyes as to everybodies responsibilities (whether an individual, small business or plc) and to the work being performed in this area.<br /><br />I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anybody who enjoyed Losing My Virginity, and also to those who were irritated by the first book and wished that it would be more about Virgin and business than Richard Branson himself.

A Godsend....

I am new to investing in property and found the that book answered many of the questions that I had in relation to investing in the property market. <br />It is written in a clear and intelligent way with many helpful tips.

An invaluable"guide to inventing tomorrow's best practices today"

<br />As he clearly indicates in his earlier books, notably in Competing for the Future (with C.K. Prahalad) and then in Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel's mission in life is to exorcise"the poltergeists who inhabit the musty machinery of management" so that decision-makers can free themselves from what James O'Toole aptly characterizes as"the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." In his Preface to this volume, written with Bill Breen, Hamel asserts that"today's best practices aren't good enough" and later suggests that he wrote this book for"dreamers and doers" who want to invent"tomorrow's best practices today." In this brilliant book, he explains how to do that.<br /><br />In the city where I live, we have a number of outdoor markets at which slices of fresh fruit are offered as samples of the produce available. In that same spirit, I frequently include brief excerpts from a book to help those who read my review to get a"taste." Here is a representative selection of Hamel's insights:<br /><br />"To thrive in an increasingly disruptive world, companies must become as strategically adaptable as they are operationally efficient. To safeguard their margins, they must become gushers of rule-breaking innovation. And if they're going to out-invent and outthink as growing mob of upstarts, they must learn how to inspire their employees to give the very best of themselves every day. These are the challenges that must be addressed by 21st-century management innovators." (Page 11)<br /><br />"Many factors contribute to strategic inertia, but three pose a particularly grave threat to timely renewal. The first is the tendency of management teams to deny or ignore the need for a strategy reboot. The second is a dearth of compelling alternatives to the status quo, which often leads to strategic paralysis. And the third: allocational rigidities that make it difficult to deploy talent and capital behind new initiatives. Each of these barriers stands in the way of zero-trauma change; hence each deserves to be a focal point for management innovation." (Page 44)<br /><br />"Skepticism and humility are important attributes for a management innovator - yet they're not enough. To create space for management innovation you will need to systematically deconstruct the management orthodoxies that bind you and your colleagues to new possibilities. Here's how to get started. Pick a big management issue like change, innovation, or employee engagement, and then assemble 10 or 20 of your colleagues. Ask each of them to write down ten things they believe about the nominated problem. Have them inscribe each belief on a Post-it note. Then plaster the stickies on a wall and group similar beliefs together." Then sustain a rigorous discussion during which all premises and assumptions are challenged."To escape the straitjacket of conventional thinking, you have to be able to distinguish between beliefs that describe the world as it is, and describe the world as it is and must forever remain." Focus on what can be changed...and should be changed. (Pages 130-131)<br /><br />I especially appreciate Hamel's analysis of three exemplary companies: Whole Foods Market (a"community of purpose"), W.L. Gore (an"innovation democracy"), and Google ("brink-of-chaos management"). Hamel focuses his attention to how these companies invent tomorrow's best practices today. He cleverly juxtaposes a"management innovation challenge" with each company's"distinctive management practices." Having established and then sustained a one-on-one rapport with his reader throughout the narrative, Hamel makes it crystal clear that that he is not urging his reader to address the same challenges and develop the same best practices for any one of the three exemplary companies, much less emulate all three. That would be insane.<br /><br />"There isn't any law that prevents large organizations from being engaging, innovative, and adaptive - and mostly bureaucracy free. Even better, it really is possible to set the human spirit free at work. So no more excuses. It's time for you to buckle down and start inventing the future of management...My goal in writing this book was not to predict the future of management but to help you invent it...From the first time since the dawning of the industrial age, the only way to build a company that's fit for the future is to build one that is fit for human beings as well." <br /><br />So, there's Gary Hamel's challenge: Start your own"revolution" and lead it. If you don't, who will?