BNET & Business Books: Buy or Bye?
September 13, 2007 by David Zinger
Filed under Business
Slacker Managers are readers. Of course, you are reading this right now, so it proves my point!
BNET has done a provocative piece on the 10 most overrated and 10 most underrated business books. Read the 2 lists below to see where they might have put a book you love or loathe.
Here are their 10 OVERRATED books:
- Reengineering the Corporation
- In Search of Excellence
- Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun
- Jack Welch & the G. E. Way
- Jesus CEO
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- The One Minute Manager
- Who Moved My Cheese
- Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Here is BNET’s 10 most UNDERRATED books:
- The Tipping Point
- Freakonomics
- Nickel and Dimed
- The Long Tail
- The New Rules of Marketing and PR
- Managers Not MBAs
- The E-Myth Revisited
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- Personal Finance for Dummies.
I was pleased to see The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, and The Long Tail on their underrated list yet How to Win Friends and Influence People has been around so long that I doubt it is underrated.
I never was a big fan of Attila the Hun but I sometimes enjoy my 7 habits and having a little cheese with my chicken soup.
What’s your take on these books? Did they get it right, wrong, or some right and some wrong? Do you have a book you would add to either of the lists? I encourage you to go to the BNET site and read their rationale for the placements of the books into the two categories.
David Zinger is addicted to business books and rates any time reading a book as time well spent.
I (loudly) echo their sentiments on “Who Moved My Cheese?” and “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” both of which can be summarized in a single sentence without missing out on anything at all.
I think Freakonomics is overrated, not underrated. It was an enjoyable fluff read but not particularly substantive or beneficial.
I rarely see Jack Canfield’s “The Success Principles” on must-read lists but I consider it a sort of business bible — flip to any page at a given moment and glean some inspiration/motivation!
I am a bookaholic, and have read most of the books on the lists.
Quite frankly, they mostly bore me. You have to read a whole book,
to get just one or two ideas.
I prefer to look for those kind of books that are full of ideas that I can use. The best example I can think right now of a book that qualifies as being busting at the seams with ideas is..
How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas by Chris Barez-Brown
I came across it by accident at the book store and I’m now reading it for the second time. Now there’s a question to offer your readers…
What business books were so good, that you read them a second or third time?
Eduardo
Marina & Eduardo:
Thank you for taking time and energy to comment. I will have to check out the books you mentioned.
I wonder about books. I love reading books but find the bite size morsels of managment wisdom of blogs increasingly more appealing.
Seth Godin was saying that business book are shrinking from 400 to 200 pages and now 200 pages is too long. Dip was about 78 pages and he said no one complained that it wasn’t long enough.
David
Hi David,
Thanks for pointing this out. I heartily enjoyed the “Read this book instead” recommendations!
As for Seth’s comment about the length of books, I would agree with him. Most business books do have a high fluff-insight ratio, and I am loathe to pick up something that weighs in over 200 pages.
It was great to see “Influence” make the underrated list. If Charlie Munger says it’s the most important book he’s ever read and you can do your loved ones and associates no greater service than to buy it for them, it’s probably a good idea.
Mike
Mike,
I have been using the Influence book in psychology courses for a number of years and it is good to see the whole topic get more coverage as it can be so useful for us — command and control is now prehistoric and influence becomes an important tool or approach for managers.
I do worry that it is used by others to just manipulate us but to know the tools of influence also makes us much less gullible. I guess instead of buyer beware we should now have influencer and “influencee” beware.
David
David,
I first learned this material via Cialdini’s excellent audiobook version, which pointed out your concern and addressed each one in terms of good use and bad use. Wasn’t the whole point of the book to say that the bad guys have been using this stuff for eons so you should be on the lookout for it?
Mike
Mike:
Yes, hopefully that are not all bad and we should also know how to influence in a postive way too.
David
David,
Having worked in change management, I have come to appreciate incredible power of the Influence elements when yielded skillfully. If you combine the six elements of influence with William James’ How an Individual Settles Into a New Opinion, you have a powerful recipe for organizational development!
Mike
Mike
What a helpful one page’r from William James and Pragamatism. The first thingk I did was print it out. Thanks for the resource as I always liked William James and his contributions to Psychology
David
I was glad to see ‘Influence’ made the cut. I’m also a big fan of HtWFaIP. I didn’t consider Freakonomics a ‘business’ book. Wasn’t it a little lacking in practical application?
Don’t know why Personal Finance for Dummies is there. It’s a fine book, but light for ‘business’ reading. Tipping Point and Long Tail belong, but they won’t be underrated in 10 years.
Hey Mike. Thanks for the William James shout. I bet I find some new material for my collection…
Eric:
It took me a second to translate HtWFaIP, I thought it was a new WIFII something – I wonder what Norman would think?
I also wonder if it will take even 10 years, perhaps less than a year or two for Tipping Point and Long Tail not to be underrated. I think our time cycles are so much shorter these days.
David