Read More Than Just Business Books

In order to stand out from your competition, you’ll need to find new and unique ways to challenge your thinking about traditional business practices, whether it’s your marketing, operations, HR, or finance strategies for example. As you can tell from this article's title, the purpose here is not to recommend an oversimplified book on business with a catchy title and a ‘top-seller’ or ‘recommended’ designation in the bookstores. After all, if everyone read those types of books, how would their thinking and their strategies be differentiated from one another? When reading books such as these, it’s more important to understand how to actually use what you’ve learned in these types of general business books.

Instead, a more unique (and likely more enjoyable) strategy is to focus on the other sources of material from which valuable lessons in business can be gleaned? Rather than following the latest top-selling business books, why not also read works of fiction or classic literature from Shakespeare, Dickens or Twain? I have heard many CEOs speak on the benefits of reading a wide range of books, magazines and newspapers. As a result of expanding their reading selection, they were able to build upon their existing “idea pools” and get new inspiration from these different sources.

Sure, some popular business best-sellers may provide inspiration on how to take your organization to the next level, but so too can classic works or short-stories which open your mind to new ways of thinking – ways which can just as easily provide you with that all too gratifying “a-ha” moment as you look to apply what you’ve just read into practice. Expanding your reading selection has all sorts of benefits that may not be all that obvious at first, but remember that inspiration in business has many sources and need not only come from simplistic – and all too often, generic – books on business.

What are your sources for creative inspiration in business?

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The Decision Maker Spreadsheet

If you've read Seymour Schulich's recent book, Get Smarter, you will have surely read the section in which Schulich, a self-made billionaire and philanthropist, outlines how he deals with making difficult choices in life. He calls this approach the "Decision-maker."

Schulich's Decision-maker is essentially a weighted list of the pros and cons of a specific decision. However, don't let its bare bones nature deceive you -- its very simplicity goes to show how the most complex decisions we face don't need to be over-analyzed.

The approach involves giving each listed pro and con a score from zero to ten, depending on how important the pro or con is to you. For the pros, the higher the score given, the more important the factor in the decision; however, for the cons the reverse is true. Here, the higher the score, the bigger the drawback of this particular con factor. If the total of the pros is at least double the total of the cons, then you should proceed with the decision in question; if not, the decision is likely a bad one.

Schulich himself states that the decision maker is "designed not to allow one or two factors to sway a major life decision" disproportionately. Additionally, Schulich has stated that he's used this decision-making method for over fifty years and it has served him very well thus far.

I've put together a spreadsheet which you can use to try out this decision-making method. Does this look like something that you too can benefit from?

Download the Decision-Maker spreadsheet.

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The best business books of the year

If the holidays have given you a chance to catch up on some reading, and you have no idea where to start, the 800-CEO-Read-Blog website has put together a list of the top business books of 2006. In addition to being able to vote for your favourite title at the website, you might also find a great title among the list that you hadn't previously heard of.

Selections include popular titles such as "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More," and "The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works" in addition to nearly twenty other titles from which to choose and vote on.

If you're looking for a great business book to read during the holidays, be sure to visit the site and vote.

Happy holidays and a joyous and successful new year to all! I will be back in early January.

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Now reading: 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell

I'm currently reading the latest from Malcolm Gladwell, entitled Blink. I've had this book for a few months and am finally getting the chance to actually read it.

The book talks about the power of "thin slicing," or of our natural ability to eliminate any extraneous information in order to make a decision or reach a conclusion quickly. Gladwell writes about how this ability that we have to quickly process information can be as harmful just as it can be helpful.

It's a pretty insightful book written by an excellent writer. I'm about half way through it and I can safely say that once I've finished it, I will definitely be checking out Gladwell's previous book, The Tipping Point.

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