BY OUR admittedly nonscientific count, 36,439 career and business self-help books were published this year. Or maybe it just seemed like it. one thing’s for sure: There’s never a shortage of titles to choose from when trolling bookstores for tips on finding career success.
Such tomes run the gamut, from those repackaging the same tired advice (Follow your passion! Don’t give up!) with a different huckster on the cover, to those offering actual worthwhile ideas and insights.
With this in mind, we offer a roundup of some of the 2007’s notable career-related books. It’s not a best-of list, nor do we claim it includes every such book worth reading, but here are a few with something interesting to say. (Those of you still scrambling to check names off of your gift list take note: They’re suitable for giving).
“45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy – and How To Avoid Them”
By Anita Bruzzese(Perigee)
“Everything your boss wanted to write down on your annual review but couldn’t” would make a good subtitle for this book, which targets the everyday things employees do that get under their boss’ skin. After all, there isn’t room on a
formal performance appraisal to note that you should stop picking lunch leftovers from your teeth during afternoon meetings, or punching the soda machine when you’re steamed at a client.
“Bosses give you a paycheck and they expect certain things – many of which they do not believe they should have to tell you,” writes Bruzzese, a workplace columnist for Gannett. Well duh, you may be thinking – and at first we thought so, too. But the truth is that we’re guilty of at least a few of these faux pas, and we certainly know others guilty of so many more. – Virginia Backaitis
“Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues”
By Laura Vanderkam (McGraw Hill)
Working long hours in a cubicle and aiming to climb the ladder in small, steady steps is one path to career success.
There’s a better one, argues Vanderkam, who says you can skip the grind and achieve a rewarding work life sooner by taking responsibility for your own career, rather than waiting for someone to reward your diligence.
In “Grindhopping,” she offers tips for making it happen (including how to live on the cheap while you’re waiting for your ship to come in), and tells the stories of those who’ve done it. These include the two New Jersey wine clerks who started the chic mint company Oral Fixation, and the insurance account manager who founded VocationVacations, which offers clients a chance to try out their dream jobs. – V.B.
“It’s Okay To Be the Boss”
By Bruce Tulgan (HarperCollins) What do soggy, lukewarm fries and DVDs that are in stock but impossible to find have in common?
They’re both symptoms of an “undermanagement epidemic,” writes Tulgan.
The era of hands-off, one-minute management has run its course, he says; the new generation of workers wants, and needs, to be led in a new way. Which means bosses need to quit being buddies and to start acting like managers – spelling out expectations, measuring performance constantly, correcting failure quickly and rewarding
success even more quickly.
It also means managers need to quit treating everyone the same under the guise of fairness, argues Tulgan. “If you are going to do more for those who deserve more, by definition you must do less for those who deserve less,” he writes. – V.B.
“The 4-Hour Workweek”
By Timothy Ferriss (Crown)
Ferriss became a guru of sorts to Silicon Valley bigs following the success of this book, which argues that it pays to be ignorant – at least selectively. Time is your most valuable currency, says Ferriss, so stop letting endless e-mails and cellphoning gobble it up. Instead, outsource simple, repetitive tasks like invoicing and e-mail sorting to Asia. Refuse to go to meetings unless there’s a decision to be made, and even then insist on an approved agenda and a 30-minute time limit.
Does he walk his talk? The disconnect between what he preaches and the speed with which he tends to answer e-mails from the press has been noted.
But a partial list of his extracurricular accomplishments includes setting a world record for tango in Argentina, riding his motorcycle across China, skiing the Andes and earning a kickboxing championship, so he definitely doesn’t seem to be logging long hours at the office. – V.B.
“Born Standing Up”
By Steve Martin (Scribner)
You won’t find this one in the career section, but Martin’s memoir of his stand-up years offers some insights applicable to many professions that don’t involve wearing an arrow through the head.
For example: Pay your dues, unanticipated rewards can follow. Martin’s comedic career began in a basement coffeehouse performing before an audience of no one, to attract window-peering passersby. Dismal as it might have seemed, it gave Martin the space to experiment, and he crafted the over-the-top persona that made him a star.
Also: craft an exit strategy. At the height of his popularity, Martin tired of stand-up and decided to quit. While touring, he penned “The Jerk” and used his clout to pitch it to studios. He went on to write six well-received literary works and five screenplays. – V.B.
“How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns To Live Like Everyone Else”
By Michael Gates Gill (Gotham)
In this riches-to-rags tale a Yale grad gets downsized from his job as an ad exec, signs on as a barista at Starbucks out of desperation, and not only lives happily ever after, but finds that serving up cafe mochas beats the executive life hands down.
It might not be everyone’s path to bliss, but there’s food for thought in Gill’s account of why he found service work a tonic after the posturing and ruthlesness of the corporate world. – Chris Erikson
“What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful”
By Marshall Goldsmith (Hyperion)
Goldsmith makes a pretty penny coaching star CEOs, but he’s not one for business strategy. Instead, this longtime Buddhist believes the way to get ahead is to behave better, both by observing some basic rules (don’t make excuses; be a good listener) and by curbing behaviors that annoy others.
Want to know what those behaviors are? Ask people, he says.
Often, what holds people back, he writes, “are simple behavioral tics . . . which can be cured by (a) pointing them out, (b) showing the havoc they cause among the people surrounding us, and (c) demonstrating that with a slight behavioral tweak we can achieve a much more appealing affect.”
To that end he highlights 20 of the most annoying workplace habits (“playing favorites,” “failing to express gratitude”) and offers tips for changing your ways. – C.E.
“The No A–hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t”
By Robert Sutton (Business Plus)
Remember that playground bully from second grade? Well, he never grew up, he just upgraded from teasing and pushing to kissing up and kicking down. Most workplaces have got one or three – and they’d be better off without them, Sutton argues in this book with a name we can’t print.
And if you think jerks are worth tolerating as long as they deliver the goods, think again, says the Stanford business professor, who inventories the damage they do, from demoralizing colleagues to decreasing retention rates. He also offers an A–hole Rating Self Exam (ARSE), so you can determine whether you’re part of the problem. – V.B and C.E.
“Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want To Return to Work”
By Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin (Business Plus)
While full-time moms rule the roost on the home front, their confidence can wane when they consider going back to work. They’re plagued by such questions as: How do I update my resume when my latest title is “soccer mom”? What do I want to do, anyway? Am I qualified?
Cohen and Rabin, who made their own journeys “from Play-Doh to real dough,” interviewed more than 100 mothers who relaunched their careers, and they include numerous examples. It also contains a relaunch-readiness quiz, worksheets, networking tips and the like. – V.B.
“Send: The Essential Guide to E-Mail for Office and Home”
By David Shipley and Will Schwalbe (Knopf)
Given the endless hours the average desk jockey now spends e-mailing, a how-to guide was overdue. Hence this smart, concise book, which is full of plainspoken advice for writing clear and effective messages and avoiding the many problems misfired e-mails can cause.
“Incautious e-mailing has cost jobs, ruined friendships, threatened marriages, subverted projects, even led to jail time,” write Shipley and Schwalbe, editors at the New York Times and Hyperion Books, respectively.
To help people navigate “the hardest written medium of all” the authors discuss such topics as subject headings, emoticons, whom to CC and when, and when you should stop typing and pick up the damn phone. – C.E.