Making your job work for you in 2005
REVIEWS BY SHARON SECOR
It isn't that you don't like your job. You love the work, but it should be more rewarding. Perhaps this job doesn't provide the contentment you thought it would. Or you want to make a difference but office politics gets in the way. Or maybe it's tough to show off your creativity or your talents because someone else takes credit for your best ideas. You ask yourself, "Am I making an impact?" because some days it just feels like you're shoveling papers around a desk. These are career problems encountered by almost everyone, but the good news is—they can be solved. Make a resolution this winter to tackle your career with an assortment of books designed to help you take your job and love it.
Think like a winner
If you could choose only one book from this list, Stephen R. Covey's
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness should be the one. The best-selling author of The
7 Habits of Highly Effective People strikes a resonant chord with this characteristically well-researched and incredibly insightful guide. In The 7 Habits, published in 1989, Covey said career success was an attainable goal. He showed millions of people how to achieve effectiveness at work by changing their way of thinking. Now, Covey says, effectiveness is no longer enough. In the 21st century that's merely the "price of entry to the playing field" of well-compensated work. More often, workers want to add value to the world, to add fulfillment, passionate execution and significant contributions to their workplace and to the world at large. Tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation requires a new leadership voice, Covey says, a new tool-set, a new habit. That's what this book is about: finding the passion to understand and develop an inner voice at work that gives meaning to work and life. The 8th Habit is a unique look at developing the lifelong talents of a leader.
Jack Canfield's The Success Principles is a wide-ranging self-help book. Although it was conceived with the average middle manager in mind, a stay-at-home mom or a retired 60-something could also glean some wise advice here. Canfield is best known for his Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and if you never picked up one of those, shall we say, more lightweight books, you will be pleasantly surprised by his intuitive effort to bring his successful life principles to business. A former teacher and foundation executive, Canfield's mission is to develop the leadership potential of every human being. The Success Principles develops core living skills that morph into core career leadership skills. There is nothing cutesy about this book. It is about choosing, defining and seeking your own brand of success without compromise and with integrity to get from "where you are to where you want to be."
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Practical tactics
How many times have you wondered, "If I died tomorrow, would anyone in this office even notice that I'm gone?"
Some of us seem like mild-mannered Clark Kent at the office when we'd rather be known as the man of steel,
Superman. Alan Axelrod's Office Superman: Make Yourself Indispensable
in the Workplace offers a whole lot of practical advice for career-minded Clark Kents whose core of steel is just waiting to be discovered. Like Superman, you want to be the ultimate go-to guy or gal in the office. This book tells you how to build superhuman characteristics and avoid being taken down by office kryptonite. Office Superman is filled with humor, entertaining analogies and an amazing amount of Superman trivia. Your inner Superman awaits—able to leap to office meetings in a single bound.
You've worked like dog for the last three months. You've put in late hours, skipped weekends and added extra
business trips to your schedule. You've taken a dying division and added snap, crackle and pop to its bottom
line. But when it came to bonus time, you were overlooked and your division under-rated. What's that all about?
Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman, co-authors of
Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career
and Company Success, say it's all about career politics—some people know how to play them and some people (maybe you?) don't. Ever had an idea stolen by someone brash enough to present it as his or her own idea at a VP meeting? If so, you really, really need this book. Brandon and Seldman offer serious research to substantiate this all-too-prevalent work problem and outline the many ways the politically inept can develop the savvy political instincts we all need to feel valued at our work.
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One a day
Now here's the perfect New Year's book for the office. Instead of those insipid "Deep Thought A Day"
calendars, place The Daily Drucker on your desk or in your car for quick access to core thinking on the philosophy of business. Peter Drucker, for the uninitiated, is one of the most widely followed economics and management thinkers of our time. Many business academics consider him the "founding father" of the study of management. He has published more than 25 books, was a longtime columnist for The Wall Street Journal and has written extensively about individuals, management, society and change in the marketplace. The Daily Drucker will allow you to read and integrate his keen business insights at work. The day-by-day format presents a quick but excellent primer on Drucker's philosophy as well as a work exercise (which could be completed in less than five minutes) that integrates the reading into the business day.
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