Good for you! While everyone else is running around the mall searching for the perfect gift, you are taking an easier route choosing informative and timely books to please everyone on your list. Here are six books to supply any business curmudgeon with an "I’m glad I opened this" holiday smile.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t by Jim Collins is a thought-provoking challenge to American business. The author of the best-selling Built to Last, Collins now explores the most difficult test any company faces how to take a "good" business, with average profits and satisfied stock holders, and make that company "great." Based on a study of 11 companies who made the leap and sustained greatness for more than 15 years, Good to Great is THE gift for a manager or boss who wrestles with strategy issues and wants to know how to make a change.

Another sure pick is The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF by Paul Blustein. Technically, this is a public policy book that unabashedly spills the beans on how and why the Asian financial crisis caught the International Monetary Fund with its pants down.

Compelling and immediately spell-binding, The Chastening reveals inherent weaknesses in the global financial system. A perfect gift for policy wonks and market analysts as well as anyone in international trade.

Pick up The Natural Laws of Business by Richard Koch for anyone on your list who loves to think about theoretical issues in business. Does your boss pour over The Economist each month? Have a friend who delights in reading The Harvard Business Review? This intriguing book by the author of The 80/20 Principle applies scientific insight in physics, natural sciences and economics toward business success. Its result? A thought-provoking book that exercises the brain and limbers the innovation muscle.

I know, not everyone on your holiday list thinks the future looks bright for American business. For the pragmatist in every company (and you’ll usually find them behind the door marked "Finance") buy The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Next Decade by Michael Hammer. It’s a thought-provoking, get-real-about-your-business kind of book with a "tough times are coming" approach to the next 10 years. "It’s time for business to get serious again," says Hammer. Recent weeks prove he’s right. Just for fun, grab Dictionary of the Future by Faith Popcorn and Adam Hanft for that funky someone on your shopping list. This intriguing "dictionary" is full of terms that trend guru Faith Popcorn believes will have an impact on business in the near future. The book is divided into subjects like biology and technology, demographics and new behaviors, with words and meanings listed in each subject. Do you know what a Circle of Poison is? Or where your Content Room is? Get with it! A totally fascinating sourcebook for anyone with futurist tendencies, its main drawback is that once you start browsing the pages, you won’t want to stop.

Tried and true, books on how to make a portfolio achieve better results are always popular. The 100 Best Stocks to Own in America, Seventh Edition by Gene Walden is one of those good presents to unwrap. This updated edition features easy to understand analysis of 100 time-tested stocks with a simple and clear economic presentation of each. Walden annually selects stocks with earnings and stock growth potential, consistency and a good dividend yield. His advice will guide first-time investors as well as portfolio-savvy traders in the search for a strong portfolio return.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minneapolis.

Renowned business speaker and best-selling author Brian Tracy says everyone can double their income and double their time off. Sound too good to be true? His latest book, Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals, spells out the secret that successful, fulfilled people already know focusing on key areas gives the greatest return. Tracy asks probing questions to help readers develop goals, and BookPage recently turned the tables on the author to learn more about his intriguing strategy.

Explain what you mean by focal point. How do you find it? Your focal point is the most important point of attention or measure to determine success or failure in a particular area. For example, if health and fitness was your goal, your focal point could be your waist size. If financial independence was your goal, the number of months you could live on your accumulated savings could be your focal point. Your concentration on your focal point almost always improves your performance in that area.

You stress the importance of taking responsibility for every area of your life. How did you learn this lesson? When I was a young man, I looked around me and noticed that most people blamed their circumstances on everything and everyone except themselves. I later learned that when you accept complete responsibility for your life, it gives you a sense of personal power and energy that enables you to take charge of the things that happen to you. Accepting responsibility makes you a creator of circumstances rather than simply a creature of circumstances.

You claim your system will enable people to double their income and double their time off. Is that really possible? Many thousands of my students and graduates have already doubled their income and doubled their time off. Since 20% of what you do accounts for 80% of the value of your work, if you simply concentrate more and more time on the top 20% of your tasks, you will double your productivity and have far more time available for your personal life.

Your book is based on a study of the habits of people who are both successful and fulfilled. What are these people doing differently? The most happy and fulfilled people in our society are doing what they love to do. They are continually getting better and better in that area. They know what is important to them. They throw their whole hearts into their life and work. As a result, they get far more living out of life than the average person.

What’s holding the rest of us back from achieving our dreams? The reason people do not fulfill their potential is because they are confused about what it is they really want in life. We encourage people to ask themselves a series of questions on a regular basis: What do I really want to do with my life? How would I spend my life if I were financially independent today? What would I do if I learned today I only had six months left to live? And especially, What do I really love to do? When you ask and answer these questions on a regular basis, you become clearer about your dreams and goals than ever before.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

With the death of Katharine Graham in July, the nation’s attention was once again focused on a strong, successful woman in business. The powerful woman who ran the Washington Post taught many up-and-comers an important lesson on rising through the ranks: it’s possible to go far without losing your femininity.

Today, women make up nearly half of the working population, and they continue to make strides with their innovative thinking and inclusive management styles. The Census Bureau’s 1997 Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises showed that women-owned businesses are growing at a record pace. The number of women-owned firms grew two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses and now comprise one-quarter of the nation’s businesses. They continue to diversify into industries like construction and transportation, both long considered the male domain.

It’s impossible to ignore the role of women in business, and publishers are taking note. This month we highlight six career-building books that will help women of every age and rank find fulfillment in their work.

A page-turning splash of a book is Mary Foley’s Bodacious: An AOL Insider Cracks the Code to Outrageous Success for Women with Martha Finney. Funny and smart, Foley says the business Good Girl image has got to go. In short, women, be bodacious! What’s bodacious? It’s a way of being courageous, creative, larger than life, and self-respecting. Working her way up at AOL from an $8-an-hour customer service job to one of the top female executives, Foley lives the philosophy of bodaciousness. Self-confidence and self-esteem are priority one for Foley, and she wants to help other women recognize self-worth through career. When women carry bodacious power, Foley argues, everyone at work benefits from their creativity and perspective. If Foley can go to work one day without her pants and still impress clients, I think we all have a trick or two to learn from her.

Research on women’s workplace issues shows that women have failed to support and improve each other’s workplace performance. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, corporate consultants on gender issues, address this failure in their new book, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict Into Powerful Alliances with Susan K. Golant. Eye-opening statistics as well as personal stories illuminate the destructive tendencies of women faced with the success or failure of another woman’s career. With a great deal of tact and concern, the authors seek to outline a new role for women and their relationships within the business setting. Especially effective are chapters on promotion, handling conflicts with style and effective female leadership. Today, one-third of all business school graduates are women. Learning more about the unique perspective and potential of women at work is men’s work as well. This book is a good place for all managers to start. Sometimes women aren’t just destructive of other women’s careers, they destroy their own. Same Game, Different Rules: How to Get Ahead Without Being a Bully Broad, Ice Queen or Ms. Understood by Jean Hollands explores the changes any woman can make in her own management and interaction style to forge ahead in her career. Hollands has made a career of showing high-powered executives how bad behavior at the office costs companies a lot of money. She follows up her work by showing women how bad office behavior can stop their earning potential dead in its tracks. Hollands notes that many women misunderstand the notion of aggressiveness in the workplace, aiming its power at co-workers rather than at its logical source, the work! She also notes how the timid among us can effectively put an end to the Bully Broad management style many women utilize. Powerful and punchy, Same Game, Different Rules gives women the go-ahead to change an unproductive management style and reap the rewards of great relationships at work.

Not every book on women in business focuses on relationships. A handy little book for women in the workplace is the aptly named PowerTools for Women in Business by Aliza Sherman. Sherman is a founder of several Web sites for women and Webgrrls International, a networking group for Internet-career women. Based on her experience with co-workers, Sherman created a list she calls PowerTools, life tools she thinks every woman should pack in her career toolbox. From lists of books to read to short checklists and exercises, Sherman makes sure women’s tools are tuned and honed. An example: She says Tackle Technology is a premium tool, like a saw or hammer. She offers the names of good books on Web building and makes technology sound like a standard item in any girl’s toolbox. This practical book would be a great gift for any young woman getting ready to face the working world.

While PowerTools helps women with the basic tools, The Innovative Woman: Creative Ways to Reach Your Potential in Business and Beyond by Norma Carr-Ruffino is the kind of book that adds a few exotic tools. Carr-Ruffino is a management professor who knows that the next level of achievement for women will be developing their innate creativity and learning how to communicate this creativity to co-workers and management. She maps a game plan for women to follow that includes making connections to creativity and leadership development through well-developed and explained exercises. Carr-Ruffino says these exercises help women develop skills for their current careers, but you never know where a little artistic creativity and innovation will take you. Just as women have always worked, they have always struggled with the delicate balance of work, family and personal goals. Successful Woman’s Guide to Working Smart: 10 Strengths That Matter Most by Caitlin Williams helps women take stock of the strengths they have developed both in and out of the workplace, putting those skills in the most effective work-life form. Beginning with a self-assessment survey, Williams guides women through Ten Strengths, the principles she believes are most important to developing a healthy work-life balance. Then she creates guidelines for integrating the strengths into everyday work and home life. Williams says she wrote Working Smart to support a woman’s quest for meaningful work and a healthy life balance. She achieves her goal beautifully.

Sharon Secor is a business writer based in Minnesota.

Several years ago at a conference on creativity for nonprofit managers, we were asked to design the "perfect" bathtub. Nonprofit managers tend to think creativity is their middle name, so we attacked our task in determined fashion, ready to bring perfect bathing to the world. Sad to say, we came up with few great ideas: "self-cleaning," "built-in head rest" and "soft-sided" didn’t have anyone rushing to buy bubble bath.

If, as people say, we are all "born creative" then maybe our latent artistic side was resting. But resting for too long as the business world speeds on with new products and new ways to reach customers can spell disaster. A new research report shows that failure to innovate is a common trap that will hamper growth for 70 percent of large firms and even destroy entire companies.

We returned to our bathtub assignment, and this time the underpaid, overworked managers worked with perfect escapism in mind. Ideas like "Built-in television and stereo," "automatic aromatherapy sensors" and "massage action tub lining" began to emerge. We were on a roll; our creative juices were flowing.

It turns out we were on to something. These days, manufacturers report stereo and aromatherapy tubs are flying out of bath showrooms. Luck? No, it was creativity and innovation. This month, we examine seven books that promise to help business managers crawl out of the resting rut and get inspired.

If your company needs revving, go find Get Weird!: 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work by John Putzier. This is exactly the kind of refreshing challenge any group of managers can sink into after a long day at the office. Heck, buy one for every manager on your floor and get together over lunch to get weird.

With humor and ingenuity, Putzier challenges today’s mega-companies to reassess some of their personnel, education and marketing practices to make every work environment a fun and productive place for employees. Weirdness, his name for constant innovative and creative challenge for employees, can revitalize morale, sales and workplace cohesiveness. He makes a cogent argument that in today’s tight labor market companies must reinvent the way they retain employees and create new products. Admittedly, just reading some of his ideas gave me new vigor. Putzier is right: creativity has a purpose, and that purpose can revitalize every aspect of your workplace.

While Get Weird is a "let’s get the juices flowing" idea book, Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane by Thomas McGehee Jr. is a primer for the creative innovation company. McGehee compares old-line corporate practices of the past to innovative companies he says have stayed ahead of the economic curve. McGehee deftly convinces corporate executives that innovation is not a "new" practice, but rather the lifeblood of business.

McGehee, the vice president of a major consulting firm with Fortune 500 clients, drew on his military past as the starting point for a belief in employee innovation. "Whenever I told a Marine what to do, he or she did it. Nothing remarkable there. But when I told a Marine what needed to be accomplished, he or she always did more. When people are free to choose how to get things done they almost always do more." He says current practice tells employees there is only one way to get a job done. That kills innovation in the workplace.

What McGehee calls Whoosh is not about employee perks or warm fuzzies. He says it’s about employee performance. I liked his no-nonsense, straightforward approach to convincing organizations that innovation is the best practice. He says, "no matter how the economy goes, one thing will remain competition. The organizations that are the strongest competitors win. Creation companies are the strongest competitors because they have strength in their people, in their structure and in their ability to use technology to enable both." If that argument doesn’t convince CEOs to open doors for a Whoosh of fresh air, nothing will.

Breakthrough Teams for Breakneck Times: Unlocking the Genius of Creative Collaboration adds another twist to the innovation and creativity puzzle. Authors Lisa Gundry, Ph.D., and Laurie LaMantia want everyone to have a good time at work, and this book is dedicated to the principle that enjoyable teamwork can be one of the most innovative and creative processes going. Sometimes one person’s good idea leads to another’s great idea and someone else’s brilliant idea. Once challenged, and once comfortable with being creative in front of each other, a group can feed off each other’s innovations. The duo cites examples from successful businesses and provides a framework for developing team principles to enhance creativity. The concept of "fit," how well a personality meshes with a corporation’s values, is used to help teams find places for every personality in the creative process. Combining organizational theory and creativity practices, Gundry and LaMantia offer invaluable tools for enhancing business and personal potential, developing creativity and making it all worthwhile. Refreshingly honest, Breakthrough Teams tells managers not to get bogged down on building the team, but to spend time developing creativity. This guide is a great place for managers to start the creative process.

A dreary commute can also be a good time to get your creative juices flowing. One innovative new entry is an audiobook, How To Think Like Einstein by Scott Thorpe and read by Kerin McCue which provides stimulating and thought-provoking listening on one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century. Thorpe outlines the rule-breaking journey Albert Einstein traveled as he sought to uncover physics’ great mysteries. A master of creative thinking, Einstein wrote in 1949, "It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail." With common sense techniques, Thorpe makes genius sound like a simple process. Rearranging your way of thinking about concepts or problems defines the Einsteinian approach. Break the Rules, Think like a Spider and other exercises get mental juices ready to attack old dilemmas in new ways. Fresh and invigorating, Thorpe’s audio says we can all be Einstein in our own unique ways.

Briefly noted The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life by Robert K. Cooper, Ph.D., is an exercise in unlocking your innovative potential. Cooper’s message is simple; you have more to offer the world than you know. You’ll be surprised at the extraordinary array of physical exercises (even relaxation techniques) and common sense advice Cooper offers to help you unlock the 90 percent of your brainpower you never knew you had.

Thriving in 24/7: Six Strategies for Taming the New World of Work by Sally Helgesen. A series of interviews led Hegelsen, author of The Female Advantage, to develop six strategies for coping with the ever lengthening, more-demanding-than-ever work world. This book offers a little piece of sanity in a confusing 24/7 world. Hegelsen says learn to love your job, make the work world the best place it can be and turn work relationships into something more than corporate connections.

Sharon Secor is a Minneapolis-based writer now experiencing the joys of corporate relocation.