ALL YOU CAN EAT BUSINESS WISDOM

Rotbart offers a compendium of useful information from his popular business podcast.

Fun, well organized, and brimming with useful information, this is a book that some will want to read cover-to-cover and others will treat as a reference book to look up subjects as needed; either way, it’s a delight. The author is a co-host of the Monday Morning Radio business podcast, and much of the information here is taken from episodes of that show. Each chapter focuses on a guest of the podcast, including Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager (1982); Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Charles Duhigg; Joanne Lipman, former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief of USA Today; and Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar, Inc. These luminaries (and many more) tackle pertinent topics including “How to Influence People and Win Friends,” “Unlocking the Steps That Lead to a Successful Life,” “Closing the Gender Gap at Work,” “Entrepreneurial Success,” and “Simple Truths But Profound Leadership Tools.” These are hardly revolutionary subjects for self-help or business books, but they are presented here in a fresh way, including insights from the contributors, actionable suggestions pertinent to each chapter’s content, illustrative case studies, QR codes to access the original podcasts, and a useful bibliography. Actionable tips include looking outside your own field for innovation, as detailed in Norhart, Inc. CEO Mike Kaeding’s chapter on adapting technologies and techniques from other business sectors, which also emphasizes making incremental improvements instead of looking for a “silver bullet,” and having the confidence to fire good people in favor of the best. These are boldly presented, useful insights, and a list of social media links allows readers to interact with Kaeding (this is true of all the book’s subjects). And this is just one example; the entire book is a winner, a rare mix of ultra-useful information and an engaging presentation.

A well-mounted business self-help book that’s actually helpful—and a good read, too.