Nokia sends a wake-up call Many people mistakenly assume Nokia is a Japanese company. Its name sounds faintly Eastern and its field, mobile communications, could be part of a stereotypically Japanese electronics brand. But the 140-year-old Finnish company, named after a local mill and its river, made nearly a quarter of the 165 million cellular phones that were sold in 1998. From humble beginnings in the forestry industry, Nokia has transformed itself into the world’s leading supplier of telecommunications systems and equipment. Despite this recent growth, Nokia isn’t an overnight success, according to Dan Steinbock, author of The Nokia Revolution. In this fascinating evolutionary story, Steinbock chronicles the ups and downs, history and innovation Nokia has forged to build its strategic advantage. An intensely private company, Nokia has permitted few to enter its inner sanctum, but Steinbock, a professor at both Columbia Business School and the Helsinki School of Economics, has managed to do just that. He demonstrates how Nokia’s current strategic dominance was built from the company’s existing capabilities, documenting the creation and evolution of Nokia’s global strategy. Steinbock also explores the extraordinary care Nokia has given to its R&andD and innovative processes. Not to be missed, The Nokia Revolution is a story of competitive advantage and the strategy and vision required to achieve it.

Travel just isn’t what it used to be. Between airport delays, traffic snarls and the hotel that forgot your wake-up call, the Road Warrior’s life is one hassle after another. It doesn’t have to be that way. This month, some on-the-road advice for business travelers. At last, someone has written a quick, sensible book of lists, reminders and advice for the occasional traveler, seasoned pro or neophyte. Organize Your Business Travel: Simple Routines for Managing Your Work When You’re Out of the Office by Ronni Eisenberg with Kate Kelly is a compact solution to many of the dilemmas, questions and organizational conundrums the confused business traveler encounters every time he steps out of the office.

Travel is a major headache for many professionals these days, but in the global corporate environment, it’s a necessary part of doing business. And for a successful trip, being organized is the best preparation. From who’s watching the kids to what kind of luggage works best for toting that new business casual wardrobe, organizing travel takes mental preparation. Organize Your Business Travel addresses an amazing number of these issues with rapid ease. It even covers car travel and how to organize your business life in an automobile.

Eisenberg has thought of everything. I tucked this book under my arm on a recent trip, and from mail management to childcare, I conquered the major obstacles keeping me from getting to my plane on time. With her encouragement I took a long, hard look at my travel gear and bought a new briefcase. Even my luggage was repacked with some practical advice from Eisenberg. I reassessed my need and understanding of the Palm Pilot and learned how to use one. If I can change my ways, anyone can. Organize Your Business Travel makes a great travel companion for consultants, or anyone else who travels frequently, for business or pleasure.

Down time is a major impediment to business travel. Airport delays, layovers and unscheduled time between appointments eat up productive work time. A new audiobook, Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program by Mark Stevens provides an excellent alternative to wasted minutes. The audio outlines the key components of Harvard Business School’s elite Advanced Management Program (AMP), a nine-week course whose alums include CEOs and CFOs of many Fortune 500 companies. At its heart, Extreme Management is about excellence in leadership, uncovering financial and strategic tactics of the world’s best companies in amusing and informative anecdotal stories and interviews with AMP alums.

Stevens, president of a global marketing firm and author of several books on financial figures of the ’80s and ’90s, identifies the lessons and insights that faculty and students of the AMP found most compelling and sets out to condense what is ordinarily a nine-week, $44,000 regimen into a crash course that can be absorbed in the space of an airplane flight. The two-tape audio provides a simplified but not bare bones outline of the book and an easy way to pass travel time. While AMP raises mid-level managers to elite status, Extreme Management prompts the average business traveler to re-evaluate the office status quo. That’s hitting two birds downtime and leadership with one stone.

Speaking of travel-friendly business reading, The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How Six Sigma Is Transforming the Way We Work by Subir Chowdhury is a quick book, easily finished on one airplane flight, that explains in a fictional format the principles behind the business initiative, Six Sigma.

For the uninitiated, Six Sigma is the latest fad in management strategy. Embraced by Allied Signal, GE and other major corporations, Six Sigma is a top-down approach used to develop quality in products, empower employees and fatten the corporate bottom line. The focus, experts say, is to eliminate waste, mistakes and inevitable rework by following a scientific structure to achieve results. Following on the heels of ISO 9000 initiatives and Total Quality Management, many are skeptical of Six Sigma’s charms.

The Power of Six Sigma is an antidote to the skepticism. Chowdhury explains in simple, interesting fashion the basic principles behind the initiative. Anyone who wonders why businesses don’t seem to respond to what customers want should read this intriguing little book, and as always, anyone in business should understand the latest management initiatives. Improvement is the name of the game in any business, and Six Sigma is another way to approach the game of business and win at it.

Have time in the airport to sink your teeth into something a little meatier? e-Volve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow by Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, is a witty, intelligent look at the business culture created by emerging Internet companies and the resulting changes in the playing field for traditional businesses and other digital wannabes. Smart, clever and right on target, e-Volve is a valuable look at the coming age in the workplace.

When you open this book and see the song Kanter wrote to celebrate the e-volution, you may check the book jacket (as I did) to make sure this is a Harvard Business School title. But Evolve! The Song illustrates one main corollary of this tale.

Why are you so silent, has the cat got your tongue? Tech talk is what the older folks can learn from the young.

But the Net generation must absorb from the past, enduring values of service, how to build things that last. Yes, this is a big book to carry in your briefcase, but an excellent place to visit and revisit the trends of the New Economy and the cultural changes that economy has wrought. Often a flight is the only chance to catch up on reading and thinking about new ideas and business trends. The next time your airline announces Flight 207 has been delayed for an hour while we track down our flight crew, don’t get angry . . . look at it as an opportunity to expand your horizons.

Briefly noted The Thing in the Bushes: Turning Organizational Blind Spots into Competitive Advantage by Kevin Graham Ford and James P. Osterhaus. The thing in the bushes is a metaphor for core personnel problems that undermine the strategic advantage of great companies. Ford and Osterhaus, a consultant and a psychologist respectively, develop relational principles that help firms hunt down and destroy the thing. Even if your business doesn’t have a lurking bogeyman, The Thing is an interesting study in organizational behavior and its consequences for developing strategic plans.

Seven Power Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty by Paul R. Timm, Ph.D. A lot of companies flirt but never get married to customer service, says Timm. These days one of the main thrusts of Six Sigma initiatives is to provide customer-focused improvements in quality and service. Seven Power Strategies fills in the missing blanks with a seven-step employee empowerment process that helps build customer retention. Timm provides evaluation exercises and short, pointed stories to teach customer strategy step-by-step and gives the impetus for companies to walk down that wedding aisle.

Sharon Secor is a Nashville-based business writer.

n the road again Travel just isn’t what it used to be. Between airport delays, traffic snarls and the hotel that forgot your wake-up call, the Road Warrior’s life is one hassle after another. It doesn’t have to be that way. This month, some on-the-road advice for business travelers. At last, someone has written a quick, sensible book of lists, reminders and advice for the occasional traveler, seasoned pro or neophyte. Organize Your Business Travel: Simple Routines for Managing Your Work When You’re Out of the Office by Ronni Eisenberg with Kate Kelly is a compact solution to many of the dilemmas, questions and organizational conundrums the confused business traveler encounters every time he steps out of the office.

Travel is a major headache for many professionals these days, but in the global corporate environment, it’s a necessary part of doing business. And for a successful trip, being organized is the best preparation. From who’s watching the kids to what kind of luggage works best for toting that new business casual wardrobe, organizing travel takes mental preparation. Organize Your Business Travel addresses an amazing number of these issues with rapid ease. It even covers car travel and how to organize your business life in an automobile.

Eisenberg has thought of everything. I tucked this book under my arm on a recent trip, and from mail management to childcare, I conquered the major obstacles keeping me from getting to my plane on time. With her encouragement I took a long, hard look at my travel gear and bought a new briefcase. Even my luggage was repacked with some practical advice from Eisenberg. I reassessed my need and understanding of the Palm Pilot and learned how to use one. If I can change my ways, anyone can. Organize Your Business Travel makes a great travel companion for consultants, or anyone else who travels frequently, for business or pleasure.

Down time is a major impediment to business travel. Airport delays, layovers and unscheduled time between appointments eat up productive work time. A new audiobook, Extreme Management: What They Teach at Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program by Mark Stevens provides an excellent alternative to wasted minutes. The audio outlines the key components of Harvard Business School’s elite Advanced Management Program (AMP), a nine-week course whose alums include CEOs and CFOs of many Fortune 500 companies. At its heart, Extreme Management is about excellence in leadership, uncovering financial and strategic tactics of the world’s best companies in amusing and informative anecdotal stories and interviews with AMP alums.

Stevens, president of a global marketing firm and author of several books on financial figures of the ’80s and ’90s, identifies the lessons and insights that faculty and students of the AMP found most compelling and sets out to condense what is ordinarily a nine-week, $44,000 regimen into a crash course that can be absorbed in the space of an airplane flight. The two-tape audio provides a simplified but not bare bones outline of the book and an easy way to pass travel time. While AMP raises mid-level managers to elite status, Extreme Management prompts the average business traveler to re-evaluate the office status quo. That’s hitting two birds downtime and leadership with one stone.

Speaking of travel-friendly business reading, The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How Six Sigma Is Transforming the Way We Work by Subir Chowdhury is a quick book, easily finished on one airplane flight, that explains in a fictional format the principles behind the business initiative, Six Sigma.

For the uninitiated, Six Sigma is the latest fad in management strategy. Embraced by Allied Signal, GE and other major corporations, Six Sigma is a top-down approach used to develop quality in products, empower employees and fatten the corporate bottom line. The focus, experts say, is to eliminate waste, mistakes and inevitable rework by following a scientific structure to achieve results. Following on the heels of ISO 9000 initiatives and Total Quality Management, many are skeptical of Six Sigma’s charms.

The Power of Six Sigma is an antidote to the skepticism. Chowdhury explains in simple, interesting fashion the basic principles behind the initiative. Anyone who wonders why businesses don’t seem to respond to what customers want should read this intriguing little book, and as always, anyone in business should understand the latest management initiatives. Improvement is the name of the game in any business, and Six Sigma is another way to approach the game of business and win at it.

Have time in the airport to sink your teeth into something a little meatier? e-Volve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow by Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, is a witty, intelligent look at the business culture created by emerging Internet companies and the resulting changes in the playing field for traditional businesses and other digital wannabes. Smart, clever and right on target, e-Volve is a valuable look at the coming age in the workplace.

When you open this book and see the song Kanter wrote to celebrate the e-volution, you may check the book jacket (as I did) to make sure this is a Harvard Business School title. But Evolve! The Song illustrates one main corollary of this tale.

Why are you so silent, has the cat got your tongue? Tech talk is what the older folks can learn from the young.

But the Net generation must absorb from the past, enduring values of service, how to build things that last. Yes, this is a big book to carry in your briefcase, but an excellent place to visit and revisit the trends of the New Economy and the cultural changes that economy has wrought. Often a flight is the only chance to catch up on reading and thinking about new ideas and business trends. The next time your airline announces Flight 207 has been delayed for an hour while we track down our flight crew, don’t get angry . . . look at it as an opportunity to expand your horizons.

Briefly noted The Thing in the Bushes: Turning Organizational Blind Spots into Competitive Advantage by Kevin Graham Ford and James P. Osterhaus. The thing in the bushes is a metaphor for core personnel problems that undermine the strategic advantage of great companies. Ford and Osterhaus, a consultant and a psychologist respectively, develop relational principles that help firms hunt down and destroy the thing. Even if your business doesn’t have a lurking bogeyman, The Thing is an interesting study in organizational behavior and its consequences for developing strategic plans.

Seven Power Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty by Paul R. Timm, Ph.

D. A lot of companies flirt but never get married to customer service, says Timm. These days one of the main thrusts of Six Sigma initiatives is to provide customer-focused improvements in quality and service. Seven Power Strategies fills in the missing blanks with a seven-step employee empowerment process that helps build customer retention. Timm provides evaluation exercises and short, pointed stories to teach customer strategy step-by-step and gives the impetus for companies to walk down that wedding aisle.

Sharon Secor is a Nashville-based business writer.

A recent article by Cullen Murphy in The Atlantic Monthly lamented the fate of common knowledge. In a technologically advanced society, he muses that we trade a broad understanding of arts, history and civics for a detailed understanding of the minutiae of obscure languages used to program Web sites. Instead of memorizing Rudyard Kipling’s "If," students now commit to memory the URLs of encyclopedia Web sites where they can pull up poetry at a moment’s notice. Murphy isn’t sure the search-engine future is a great place to be; it’s a world where everyone is a specialist and no generalists can be found.

Knowing a little bit about a lot is prime territory for most of those in business. That’s why Murphy’s lament hits home to those who rely on a small amount of knowledge in lots of areas to help solve business problems. Don’t know how to build a Web site? You can always find someone who does. Need help hiring? Here’s a book on human resource trends. Despite Murphy’s fears, liberal arts majors and generalists as businesspeople are still relevant. Someone has to put together the specialists to solve problems.

So what’s your problem? This month we look at books by specialists who can help generalists solve their problems. Despite Murphy’s fears, the collective wisdom of the ages has always been found in books. The generalists just know how to put all that knowledge to work.

Site savvy Prime examples of specialization are books on Web pages and e-commerce. Web sites seem like territory for all those nerds from high school who now drive Ferraris and Porsches. Web Pages the Smart Way: A Painless Guide to Creating and Posting Your Own Website by Joseph T. Sinclair is a simple step-by-step guide to building a Web page for personal or business use. This textbook offers clear and concise explanations on how to make a Web page and post it, how to make it look better than you thought it could, and how to add pictures and links to other Web sites. (Yes, a reason to use that expensive digital camera at home and work.) Large chapter headings, an easy to use contents section and easy-on-the-eye text make this a user-friendly guide to the kind of computer use many of us never dreamed we could master.

I followed Sinclair’s chapter by chapter approach over the course of several weeks, reading and experimenting whenever I had a few moments. Et voila! I am (almost) a Web expert. It was simple. Even if my Web site isn’t as pretty or useful as it could be, at the very least I can now converse cogently with a Web designer or other co-worker about specific company needs when it comes time to develop a site. And that’s key, understanding a specialist’s language.

Workin’ on the chain Supply chain management is similar territory. Developing a sense of supply chain issues is a necessary part of a business education whether you are a product manager, an engineer or a corporate attorney. When a vast array of businesses outsource components of manufacturing, specific language and models develop to describe the best practices for supply chain management. Which of these models is best? How do they compare? Unfortunately, even daily reading of The Wall Street Journal won’t impart a full education on the subject, but a new book can and will bring you up to speed. The Purchasing Machine: How the Top Ten Companies Use Best Practices to Manage Their Supply Chains by Dave Nelson, Patricia E. Moody and Jonathan Stegner is written by three experts in the field of supply chain management. Interwoven with stories of supply chain successes, the vocabulary and important advances in the field are expertly described. Starting with an overview of supply chain development, The Purchasing Machine underlines the traits "best practice" companies share.

While The Purchasing Machine was written for supply chain professionals, its modular structure and clear explanations make it a convincing choice as an educational tool for managers in other business areas. The non-supply chain professional will gain an overview but will also find that this book helps generate ideas for instituting supply practices in non-supply environments.

Web mastering Along with supply chain and Web development, e-policy is a highly specialized area of business management these days. While many of us don’t develop e-mail, Internet and software policies, we will, at some time or another, encounter a problem or disaster that relates to the use of these modern business tools. In The ePolicy Handbook: Designing and Implementing Effective eMail, Internet, and Software Policies Nancy Flynn, managing director of the e-Policy Institute, discusses risk management aspects of e-use. This is an eye-opening book that reminds everyone about the slippery slope of illegal software use, Internet harassment issues and even outside invasion in the form of costly computer viruses. The only way to effectively communicate these issues to colleagues or employees is to understand the issues yourself. The ePolicy Handbook is a primary tool in the effort to make your work environment virus-free as well as a legal place to enjoy Internet and computer use. The risks and rewards of developing good e-policy are many; having a basic understanding of complex e-issues is a businessperson’s best friend.

The E-Commerce Book: Building the E-Empire, Second Edition by Steffano Korper and Juanita Ellis is another new book that brings the complexity of e-commerce to the generalist. The authors tie together all the reasons even the seemingly best and brightest ideas in e-commerce have failed. Korper and Ellis evaluate and compare components of e-business models from major American Internet companies. From infrastructure to marketing to customer service to payment options and fulfillment channels, The E-Commerce Book is an overview of the many options available to developing Internet retailers. From a generalist’s point of view, this is an excellent book for understanding the differences between mainline retailing and Internet selling or marketing. Why does a corporate attorney or a supply-chain guy need to know a little about these Internet issues? Because traditional retailing and e-commerce have different shipping, payment and even legal consequences for your business. Generalists will be called on to solve these integration problems.

Spreading the word As a generalist, you are often asked to be the communicator for your division. Mary E. Boone’s Managing Interactively: Executing Business Strategy, Improving Communication, and Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Culture includes a section especially for you: "Engage People Who Don’t Report to You Crossing Organizational Boundaries." How do marketing pros communicate their needs and desires effectively to the communication department’s Web designers? How does a company like Cisco Systems connect customers, suppliers and employees in a vast web of information and do it effectively? This chapter gives you suggestions, culled from successful practices at multinational organizations, to effectively team-build across divisional lines.

Boone argues that the act of communication is as important as the technologies we use to connect with each other. And that’s the generalist’s job forging effective communication by understanding the bigger picture, the overall strategy and knowing a little about a lot.

Sharon Secor is a Nashville-based business writer.

es for job seekers and employers It’s that time of year again. The days are short and dreary; your job seems tedious and boring. Staggering mountains of holiday bills convince you that career advancement should be a springtime priority.

We’ve all seen the TV commercial in which a prospective employee receives flowers and fruit baskets from CEOs trying to lure him to work for their companies. All he did was post his resume on the Internet. If he can do it, you think, so can I. A mountain of fruit baskets waits in your future! Who’s not thrilled about the prospect of your potential advancement? The human resources department at your present employer. As the clever commercial suggests, the HR game is getting tougher and tougher these days. It is not too strong a statement to say that successful hiring can directly affect a company’s bottom line.

In fact, Frederich W. Ball and Barbara B. Ball say the most critical battle waged in business today is the war for talent. They address this hot topic head-on in Impact Hiring: The Secrets of Hiring a Superstar. Today, these recruiting and interviewing experts say, job candidates aren’t interviewing to try to get a job; they interview to see if they even want a new job. Superstar candidates know that for every offer they receive, there are two or three more corporations queuing up to court them. This happened to a friend recently. Following an MBA program at a top school, he was offered seven jobs with different corporations; all considered him a superstar candidate. Each post offered significant pay and an array of wonderful benefits. All offered to help his spouse relocate, find childcare, even pay for closing costs on a new house. Ultimately his choice hinged on what the Balls call "knowing the candidate’s agenda." The financial strength of the company, the entrŽe to an interesting and challenging position and the strength of the senior management team led him to choose a job with a company whose culture reflected his own beliefs and whose corporate vision was filled with future possibilities. CEOs and human resource directors, as well as upper level managers with hiring responsibility, should read this book. Ball and Ball offer insight into the secrets of tapping and, more importantly, attracting superstar candidates. With keen understanding and years of corporate experience to boot, they outline the crucial steps every recruiter (for businesses big or small) needs to succeed when bringing a superstar player on board. While Impact Hiring offers insight into how to attract the best new recruits, Winning the Talent Wars: How to manage and compete in the high-tech, high-speed, knowledge-based, superfluid economy by management expert Bruce Tulgan traces the reasons companies lose their best talent. Tulgan says company loyalty is a thing of the past. The corporate downsizing and restructuring of recent years sent a clear message to employees: individuals must take responsibility for their own careers. Free-agency is an existing mindset for employees, and it will drive a more efficient market-driven economy, Tulgan believes.

Winning the Talent Wars explores the macro-level employment forces at work in the economy and confronts employers with the reality that they need to reevaluate their compensation systems to best attract and retain talented employees. Tulgan says employers must embrace the new economy and come to understand its effect on current employment trends. He stresses pay-for-performance approaches and wants businesses to turn managers into coaches, leading the team to perform. He challenges corporate leaders to "create as many career paths as you have people" and restructure the traditional notion of climbing the corporate ladder. His is an exciting proposition, one that will appeal to many 25- to 40-year-olds seeking jobs.

Winning the Talent Wars tells the stories of corporate executives who have gone to battle for talent and are beginning to win the war. "More and more of your best people are leaving, or talking about it, or thinking about it," Tulgan says. Learn strategy that allows retaining employees and hiring new ones to be a win-win situation.

In recent years, newspapers have seen a decline in classified advertising revenue as employers put more want-ads on the Internet. But not everyone, and certainly not every company, is taking advantage of the Internet revolution. Poor Richard’s Internet Recruiting: Easy, Low-Cost Ways to Find Great Employees Online by Barbara Ling is a great introduction to both looking for employees and looking for your own new job.

Why recruit on the Internet? For most businesses the advantages are easy to see. First, Ling says, it’s often free. And who doesn’t want to free up money for R&andD or salary incentives or customer research? Just look at the bottom line. The Web is quicker, can be read 24/7, is easy to use for both prospective employees and employers and is an easy form of corporate advertising.

Ling knows her subject area well. An online columnist for the Boston Herald, she has written on Internet recruiting and led seminars on the subject. After you’ve finished her comprehensive guide to web recruiting, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.

Staying ahead of the competition is the idea behind Richard C. Whiteley’s Love the Work You’re With: A Practical Guide to Finding New Joy and Productivity in Your Job. What causes people to leave their jobs? Increasingly, personal satisfaction ranks high on the list of reasons. Employees, however, often find their new jobs also fail to offer an advanced level of personal enrichment. He likens this syndrome to a failed relationship. How many people walk away from one relationship only to make the same mistakes again in another? Whitely convincingly helps employees and their employers recognize unconscious patterns of attitude and behavior that mark unchallenging and passionless workplaces.

Sometimes, Whiteley says, employees live in fear that they will be downsized, discarded or laid off. They never develop their potential to enjoy their job because they go to work every day wondering, what next? Whitely encourages employees to see themselves as positive forces at work, responsible for their own level of job satisfaction.

Both employees and employers can benefit from Whiteley’s insights. In the competitive marketplace, he says, each employee, each CEO and each manager has to infuse the workplace with a spirit of energy. He offers a series of exercises and self-evaluations for employees. They should also be required reading for human resource professionals who watch long-time and long-sought employees walk out the door in search of the "perfect" opportunity.

Briefly noted The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, one of design firm IDEO’s leaders, offers a rich and exciting ride through the mindset of a unique company. A leadership book with style, charisma and fun, this book also demonstrates how to capitalize on fresh ideas.
 

 Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan’s High-Tech Start-Up Boot Camp by Rob Ryan. From Roaring Lion Ranch in Montana, the founder of Ascend Communications infuses this model of how to start a business with his unique humor, wit and practicality. Ryan shoots down entrepreneurial wannabes but goes on to tell them how to get up and continue the battle.
 

The PR Crisis Bible: How to Take Charge of the Media When All Hell Breaks Loose by Robin Cohn is the definitive source for what to do when the worst case scenario unfolds at your company. How to handle public relations crisis, how to prepare for them and, most importantly, how to handle them honestly is the goal of this deft manual. Required reading for every CEO.

Sharon Secor, who helped jump-start two businesses, is a Nashville-based writer.

es for job seekers and employers It’s that time of year again. The days are short and dreary; your job seems tedious and boring. Staggering mountains of holiday bills convince you that career advancement should be a springtime priority.

We’ve all seen the TV commercial in which a prospective employee receives flowers and fruit baskets from CEOs trying to lure him to work for their companies. All he did was post his resume on the Internet. If he can do it, you think, so can I. A mountain of fruit baskets waits in your future! Who’s not thrilled about the prospect of your potential advancement? The human resources department at your present employer. As the clever commercial suggests, the HR game is getting tougher and tougher these days. It is not too strong a statement to say that successful hiring can directly affect a company’s bottom line.

In fact, Frederich W. Ball and Barbara B. Ball say the most critical battle waged in business today is the war for talent. They address this hot topic head-on in Impact Hiring: The Secrets of Hiring a Superstar. Today, these recruiting and interviewing experts say, job candidates aren’t interviewing to try to get a job; they interview to see if they even want a new job. Superstar candidates know that for every offer they receive, there are two or three more corporations queuing up to court them. This happened to a friend recently. Following an MBA program at a top school, he was offered seven jobs with different corporations; all considered him a superstar candidate. Each post offered significant pay and an array of wonderful benefits. All offered to help his spouse relocate, find childcare, even pay for closing costs on a new house. Ultimately his choice hinged on what the Balls call “knowing the candidate’s agenda.” The financial strength of the company, the entrŽe to an interesting and challenging position and the strength of the senior management team led him to choose a job with a company whose culture reflected his own beliefs and whose corporate vision was filled with future possibilities. CEOs and human resource directors, as well as upper level managers with hiring responsibility, should read this book. Ball and Ball offer insight into the secrets of tapping and, more importantly, attracting superstar candidates. With keen understanding and years of corporate experience to boot, they outline the crucial steps every recruiter (for businesses big or small) needs to succeed when bringing a superstar player on board. While Impact Hiring offers insight into how to attract the best new recruits, Winning the Talent Wars: How to manage and compete in the high-tech, high-speed, knowledge-based, superfluid economy by management expert Bruce Tulgan traces the reasons companies lose their best talent. Tulgan says company loyalty is a thing of the past. The corporate downsizing and restructuring of recent years sent a clear message to employees: individuals must take responsibility for their own careers. Free-agency is an existing mindset for employees, and it will drive a more efficient market-driven economy, Tulgan believes.

Winning the Talent Wars explores the macro-level employment forces at work in the economy and confronts employers with the reality that they need to reevaluate their compensation systems to best attract and retain talented employees. Tulgan says employers must embrace the new economy and come to understand its effect on current employment trends. He stresses pay-for-performance approaches and wants businesses to turn managers into coaches, leading the team to perform. He challenges corporate leaders to “create as many career paths as you have people” and restructure the traditional notion of climbing the corporate ladder. His is an exciting proposition, one that will appeal to many 25- to 40-year-olds seeking jobs.

Winning the Talent Wars tells the stories of corporate executives who have gone to battle for talent and are beginning to win the war. “More and more of your best people are leaving, or talking about it, or thinking about it,” Tulgan says. Learn strategy that allows retaining employees and hiring new ones to be a win-win situation.

In recent years, newspapers have seen a decline in classified advertising revenue as employers put more want-ads on the Internet. But not everyone, and certainly not every company, is taking advantage of the Internet revolution. Poor Richard’s Internet Recruiting: Easy, Low-Cost Ways to Find Great Employees Online by Barbara Ling is a great introduction to both looking for employees and looking for your own new job.

Why recruit on the Internet? For most businesses the advantages are easy to see. First, Ling says, it’s often free. And who doesn’t want to free up money for R&andD or salary incentives or customer research? Just look at the bottom line. The Web is quicker, can be read 24/7, is easy to use for both prospective employees and employers and is an easy form of corporate advertising.

Ling knows her subject area well. An online columnist for the Boston Herald, she has written on Internet recruiting and led seminars on the subject. After you’ve finished her comprehensive guide to web recruiting, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.

Staying ahead of the competition is the idea behind Richard C. Whiteley’s Love the Work You’re With: A Practical Guide to Finding New Joy and Productivity in Your Job. What causes people to leave their jobs? Increasingly, personal satisfaction ranks high on the list of reasons. Employees, however, often find their new jobs also fail to offer an advanced level of personal enrichment. He likens this syndrome to a failed relationship. How many people walk away from one relationship only to make the same mistakes again in another? Whitely convincingly helps employees and their employers recognize unconscious patterns of attitude and behavior that mark unchallenging and passionless workplaces.

Sometimes, Whiteley says, employees live in fear that they will be downsized, discarded or laid off. They never develop their potential to enjoy their job because they go to work every day wondering, what next? Whitely encourages employees to see themselves as positive forces at work, responsible for their own level of job satisfaction.

Both employees and employers can benefit from Whiteley’s insights. In the competitive marketplace, he says, each employee, each CEO and each manager has to infuse the workplace with a spirit of energy. He offers a series of exercises and self-evaluations for employees. They should also be required reading for human resource professionals who watch long-time and long-sought employees walk out the door in search of the “perfect” opportunity.

Briefly noted Â¥ The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, one of design firm IDEO’s leaders, offers a rich and exciting ride through the mindset of a unique company. A leadership book with style, charisma and fun, this book also demonstrates how to capitalize on fresh ideas.

Â¥ Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan’s High-Tech Start-Up Boot Camp by Rob Ryan. From Roaring Lion Ranch in Montana, the founder of Ascend Communications infuses this model of how to start a business with his unique humor, wit and practicality. Ryan shoots down entrepreneurial wannabes but goes on to tell them how to get up and continue the battle.

Â¥ The PR Crisis Bible: How to Take Charge of the Media When All Hell Breaks Loose by Robin Cohn is the definitive source for what to do when the worst case scenario unfolds at your company. How to handle public relations crisis, how to prepare for them and, most importantly, how to handle them honestly is the goal of this deft manual. Required reading for every CEO.

Sharon Secor, who helped jump-start two businesses, is a Nashville-based writer.

Back in America, economic tidings have been a lot brighter. For one thing, a whole previously unknown venue for commerce seems about to blossom on the Internet. How did things change so quickly on a medium that a few short years ago seemed to have no commercial potential? You’ll find some answers in the richly entertaining Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, a first-person account of an unwitting entrepreneurial journey through the first phase of the Internet’s commercialization.

Journalist Michael Wolff was an early believer in the Internet and started a company. It was the mid-1990s and the American financial machine was getting awfully excited about the Internet. (It still is.) That doesn’t mean that every entrepreneurial dream is a happy one, especially in an Internet world where the rules are being made up as the companies exponentially grow. Profits don’t exist and the almighty “burn rate” (the money a company spends each month that exceeds revenues) forms an ever-present cloud ready to rain on the entrepreneur’s parade.

Wolff is a strong, self-deprecating, and often humorous writer. He relates his own experiences with financial backers, venture capitalists, investment bankers, and some well-known Internet names. This is interspersed with some hyperhistory of the “net,” circa 1994 through 1997. The book reads like a novel (a good thing), but in that sense the conclusion of Wolff’s story is a bit of an anti-climax (I won’t reveal details). Still, you won’t often find a first-person account of starting a business in the fast lane that so provocatively reveals the voraciousness, duplicity, and plain old hardball tactics that are the province of the financial types who keep capitalism humming. When the sky is the limit and a company’s financial reserves will only last a matter of weeks, it makes for some hectic action.

Reviewed by Neal Lipschutz.

The authors of BLUR: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy make the case that it’s increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a product and a service. Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer, both associated with the Ernst ∧ Young Center for Business Innovation, start with this provocative quote: “Has the pace of change accelerated well beyond your comfort zone? Are the rules that guided your decisions in the past no longer reliable? . . . You are experiencing things as they really are, a BLUR.” By necessity a bit general, BLUR does give us a framework with which to understand the changes going on around us. The authors cite speed, connectivity, and the increasing value of the intangible over the tangible as the guiding forces of the economic revolution. A couple of quick examples of intangible value are the value of brands and the increasing value of intellectual capital (what’s in people’s heads) over hard assets, especially for technology companies. Most of the examples cited from the book are from the Internet or from high-tech companies, even though two-thirds of Americans still aren’t even online. Still, even if we all haven’t moved to an economy where companies join with suppliers and even competitors on mutually beneficial projects and bricks-and-mortar assets are viewed as a negative, we’re all headed in that direction. Although sometimes guilty of employing buzzwords, the authors offer a knowledgeable introduction to a changing world and some advice on how to cope with it.

Davis and Meyer devote an entire section to the changed meaning of career in their blurred economy. They write of “the disappearing line between you as laborer and capitalist” and they even envision the development of financial instruments based on individuals’ work value, like David Bowie’s offering of bonds that securitized his future earnings. In short, the careerist is becoming a free agent who develops short-term relationships with employers, often more than one at a time.

Reviewed by Neil Lipschutz.

Reading Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology by David Gelernter is like sneaking into the back of a college classroom and being treated to a free-wheeling, provocative lecture. Gelernter, a noted computer technologist and professor at Yale University, takes the reader on an exciting romp through the connections (too often ignored) between artistic beauty and excellent technology. From a broad discussion of the unexpected links between science and math and aesthetics, to an idiosyncratic history of computing (the section on Apple versus Microsoft is top-notch), Gelernter’s writing often achieves his stated goal in his technology work: elegance. He is erudite without being stiff, expert without being condescending. He can also be quite funny. He explains complex computing issues to those of us with no educational grounding in the subject and keep us with him (most of the time). This book is part of the MasterMinds Series, a collection of accessible and concise books that aim to present “cutting-edge ideas by leading thinkers.” That noble goal is fully achieved between these hard covers.

Reviewed by Neal Lipschutz.

The faster I go, the behinder I get, runs the rustic saw, which would have made a good epigraph to James Gleick’s Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything. For that matter, so would the famous cry from Walt Kelly’s comic strip, Pogo, We have met the enemy, and he is us, because in just about everything we modern Westerners do concerning time, we are our own worst enemy.

This utterly engaging book by the author of Chaos: Making a New Science is the best work in the science/technology/sociology genre I have read since Stanley Coren’s Sleep Thieves: An Eye-opening Exploration Into the Science and Mysteries of Sleep of three years ago. Like Faster, it, too, dealt with attempts to gain more time in its case, by stealing it from sleep time, a practice that is not only dangerous but almost always self-defeating.

Self-disappointing might be a better description of the efforts at saving time as with money, we never have enough depicted in Gleick’s book, which goes beyond such efforts to examine the concept of time and what we do with it. It is a book-length meditation studded with fascinating facts.

If there is a focus to this wide-ranging book, it is our frustration with our own desires in regard to time. We say we don’t have enough of it, yet our efforts to get more make our lives seem hurried and harried, a feeling we say we deplore but which we actually like.

We thought by squeezing more activities into less time, we’d be better off. Gleick quotes social historian Theodore Zeldin: Nobody expected that it would create the feeling that life moves too fast. Innovations fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing, instant credit give us more minutes to bank, yet we still feel impoverished, so we cut back even more on sleep, breakfast, lunch, leisure.

Yet we thrive on it. Our ability to work fast and play fast gives us power, Gleick writes. It thrills us. If we have learned the name of just one hormone, it is adrenaline. No wonder we call sudden exhilaration a rush. So we look for more, because the connectedness pleases us, though it creates glut. Because we revel in the glut of cell phones, e-mail, multitasking, what have you. Entire technologies are devoted to facilitating multitasking think of waterproof shower radios. Economist Herbert Stein says the hordes of men and women walking the streets with cell phones pressed to their heads are trying to reassure themselves that they are not alone. Ultimately, he says, no matter who’s on the other end, they’re really calling Mommy.

It comes at a price, of course. Now it is rare for a person to listen to the radio and do nothing else, Gleick says. Even lovers of classical music find it hard to devote chunks of time solely to their passion. There is even a CD called Presto! World’s Fastest Classics, even though music is the art form most clearly about time. There are other, less benign forms of the price, but, as the author says more than once, it is a price we are happy to pay. While these ruminative aspects of the book are a delight, so are the facts upon which the ruminations rest. Such as the way telephone companies compress elements in a directory-assistance call to save time, or the elaborate flimflam of being put on hold for such things as computer technical support an estimated 3 billion minutes per year. They are simply shifting time from your ledger to the company’s.

There is a circuitousness about Faster that reflects the circuitousness of its topic. The complications beget choice; the choices inspire technology; the technologies create complication, Gleick says as he chases the tale of our chasing our tails, and there is no answer, unless acceleration finally gives way to paralysis.

Well, there is another answer, really. We could be like the Ankore of Uganda, whose slow pace of life makes them, by our lights, seem lazy. Yet in their laziness they are, in effect, contentedly creating, producing, and making time, as much time as they want, and none of it wasted. Whereas we are overbusily using, selling, and buying time, and constantly feeling it’s wasted.

But that’s no answer for us. We have been captured by our own worst enemy, and we love the captivity, going ever faster and getting ever behinder.

Roger Miller is a freelance writer. He can be reached at roger@bookpage.com.