better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

3 Useful Books

14 December 2014

Let’s wind forward to the day after that well known present giving day, which rolls up once a year complete with it’s own panoply of irksome songs, snow-bombed robins and indigestible cake covered with what can only be described as white tarmac.

On the day after it is likely we will be left with one hand clutching a bulging stomach (preferably our own) and the other holding a voucher of some kind – redeemable at all good book shops, sock stops and perfume parlours. Assuming we have a full compliment of splendid socks and violently aggressive bottles of Agent Orange we can choose to spend our Aged Aunt’s gift on a useful book for business. If so, you might care to consider one of the following tomes to brighten your outlook…

1) Working It Out At Work (Julie Hay). This is a great primer for Transactional Analysis, which is a set of tools and models to help us understand ourselves and communicate more effectively. TA enables people to choose new paths and is a useful addition to organisational change work (where people can be left behind).

Why buy? It’s easy to read and informative and contains lots of self-check exercises at the back, to help us find out how we respond under pressure. It’s my standard text now for TA lectures and well worth taking a look at.

2) Priceless (William Poundstone). This book has earned me back its purchase price many times over. How often can you say that about a book? Find out how to price products, how to anchor value and the importance of using the numbers 4 and 7.

Why buy? If we’re in business and don’t know how to set a price then we are probably costing ourselves margin points, just through ignorance. The book is an easy read too and one that I regularly dip into. A must!

3) Illusions (Richard Bach). Sometimes it’s good to switch off our business brain and let our inner self out. We can stop the noise for a while a remember that time spent Being is just as important as time spent Thinking or Doing.

Why buy? We owe it to ourselves to reflect on who we are and where we are going. This is a little book with a big message and still a bestseller after 17 years in print. Buy two copies and give one to a friend!

Reading is fun. Books are great …and you know that you can dip into them don’t you, we don’t have to read them cover to cover! Dip and learn!

Next week: How to Suffer Fools Gladly