The Leading Edge - Spring 2012 - 14

on the bookshelf
SPRING READING: INNOVATION, FAIR PRAISE, RIGHT MANAGEMENT

his edition’s installment of “On the Bookshelf ” includes volumes that advise on generating innovative ideas for your organization; being fair when doling out praise and criticism; and selecting the right management tools to get maximum value. Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation Phil McKinney Hyperion 272 pages McKinney, who most recently served as vice president and chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, writes that companies’ fortunes rise and fall on their ability to generate ideas that produce the types of innovations customers will buy. To help companies generate groundbreaking ideas, McKinney presents a series of “Killer Questions” designed to spur reevaluation of old organizational beliefs to determine whether they still have value for the company. The author also provides a guide that explains in practical terms how to apply the ideas he sets forth in the book, as well as a timeline and a set of rules to keep companies on schedule and on track. The Blame Game: How the Hidden Rules of Credit and Blame Determine Our Success or Failure Ben Dattner with Darren Dahl Free Press 266 pages In The Blame Game, Dattner and Dahl explore how credit and blame are apportioned in the workplace. The act of unfairly impugning an employee or a group of employees when

something goes wrong can create anger and frustration, and cause workers to disengage and perform tasks with less enthusiasm. Further, it can cause people to shut down and not speak their minds because they fear reprisals. The authors offer compelling evidence that mismanaging the allocation of credit and blame can destroy workplace morale, and they provide advice on avoiding the blame-game trap and dealing successfully with company finger pointers and credit grabbers. New Perspectives on Asset Price Bubbles Douglas Evanoff, George Kaufman and A. G. Malliaris Oxford University Press 480 pages New Perspectives on Asset Price Bubbles examines our understanding of asset bubbles in light of the global financial crisis of 2007-09, a crisis caused in part by a sequence of repeated bubbles in the Nasdaq market, the housing market, the credit market and commodity markets. With the most recent bubble effects in mind, the editors review earlier conventional-thinking research that accepted that asset bubbles could be managed with little or no real effect on economy. They also examine research that challenged that thinking long before the 2007-09 economic crisis. In the end, they summarize the lessons learned to create a better understanding of the potential impact of asset bubbles. Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century: The Legacy of E. F. Schumacher Diana Schumacher Green Books 128 pages The subject of this book, British economist E.F. Schumacher (1911-

1977), is best known for his 1973 Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, a critique of Western economies that proposes human-scale, decentralized technologies as a path toward environmentally sustainable economic growth. In Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century, Diana Schumacher, who is married to E.F.’s eldest son Christian, traces the economist’s legacy through the activities of a number of likeminded organizations that have been established since his death. Schumacher has worked for the British Council, the University of Chicago School of Business Studies, and the New Economics Foundation. Beyond Performance Management: Why, When, and How to Use 40 Tools and Best Practices for Superior Business Performance Jeremy Hope and Steve Player Harvard Business Review Press 416 pages Countless management tools are available to help executives lead their companies, but they often fall short of their potential. Beyond Performance Management explains why. The authors review several popular management tools—e.g., mission statements, balanced scorecards, rolling forecasts, key performance indicators, Six Sigma, and performance appraisals—and explain how to select the right ones, how to implement them correctly, and how to extract maximum value from each. Hope is co-founder of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table (BBRT) and has authored numerous books and articles on performance management, including Reinventing the CFO (2006). Player is the director of BBRT North America and co-author of Future Ready (2010). LE

SPRING 2012

The Leading Edge - Spring 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Leading Edge - Spring 2012