Astrally projecting itself to the top of the bestsellers list in 1994, The Celestine Prophecy became the must-read of the management and business leadership world. A self-help book-cum-novel-cum-historical myth, The Prophecy encourages its reader to lead a more spiritual life through the discovery of nine ‘insights’, supposedly based on those discovered in an ancient Peruvian
Summary It makes good business sense for firms to make their staff feel good. This new study warns that firms who do not implement a ‘work-life strategy’ – defined as ‘helping people to combine work with family and personal life’ – actually lose competitive advantage to firms who do.
Summary The core theme of this book is Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, otherwise referred to as TOC. Goldratt argues that manufacturing has for too long focused on producing, ignoring what is demanded by the market place, i.e. demand and capacity. Goldratt believes that one should balance flow through a system to meet the demand of
Summary Handy’s book is a groundbreaking philosophical and practical guide to the inevitable changing ways of organizing work and the workforce. Handy starts from the viewpoint that radical change is not only desirable but essential, if economics and society are not to be irreversibly damaged. The book focuses on the necessity of becoming more creative
Summary The academic and consultant Andrew Brown has selected six key elements of leadership that, he believes, illuminate the secrets of great leaders. Illustrated with countless examples of leaders from history and today, The Six Dimensions of Leadership, first published in 1999, tackles in 200 racy pages the six qualities in turn: heroism, acting
Summary Goffee and Jones – the BBC director of human resources – reject the assumption of some business books that the character of a corporation is a uniform, single concept. They see it as complex and multiple-faceted. Every firm is composed of several cultures, they explain. These are fluid, liable to change, and are sometimes
Adeline Iziren takes you straight to the top Is your dream to reach the top of your profession? Do you sometimes sit at your desk and visualise what it would be like to do your boss’s job or – even become CEO of a major company? Whether you want to make it to the top
Award-winning writer Adeline Iziren teaches you how to woo a potential employer over the phoneSo you’ve identified the job you want and your potential employer? Great. No doubt you’ll be trawling through the web to find out as much as you can about the company. That’s great too. But to get the edge over
Office politics are as varied and dangerous as military manoeuvres. There are those who pursue a vast campaign to ensure their promotion and those whose only involvement are minor skirmishes at the outposts. Here are just some of the characters you might find on the office battleground:
The concept of bullying at work is usually subject to two equally fallacious extremes. The first seems to exist solely on the internet where self-help sites proliferate, spreading the bullying gospel and painting gloomy pictures of the extent of workplace victimisation. One website even goes so far as to claim that one in thirty people
W.E. Oates claims to have invented the term workaholism in his 1971 book, Confessions of a Workaholic, when he defined it as an ‘addiction to work, the compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantly’. But though it seems a recent phenomenon, brought about by the relentless pace of modern civilisation, in reality workaholics have
Employability is now firmly on the workplace agenda, playing its part in the major shift in attitude towards employer-employee relationships. Here Tony Vickers, who has written extensively on career psychology, gives his perspective Neatly defined career paths and the golden age of a job for life are fast disappearing. Expecting to be employed on
Men and women now have equal rights in the workplace. But some, says Emma John, are still more equal than others An overwhelming 93% of employers are confident they offer women fair, unbiased pay systems, according to a new survey. Yet the poll, by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), is only one of a number
Want a super relationship with your boss? Then learn how to manage them properly, says award-winning writer Adeline Iziren Helen Sears has a great relationship with her boss Graham Lancaster. Key to its success is Helen’s ability to manage Graham. No, she doesn’t order him about, but rather than passively responding to his demands, she
Award-winning writer Adeline Iziren teaches you how to woo a potential employer over the phoneSo you’ve identified the job you want and your potential employer? Great. No doubt you’ll be trawling through the web to find out as much as you can about the company. That’s great too. But to get the edge over your
When Santa visits the City each Christmas, he leaves a bundle of slips of paper on the desks of each manager. These are the presents for the hardworking men and women of the square mile. Depending on whether they’ve been good or bad, the number on the slip will have more or less noughts. ‘Tis
Dress down Fridays and e-business casual work wear may be all the rage, but it still pays to check out the company dress code and, if in doubt, dress up When leading accountancy firm Arthur Andersen greeted the 21st Century with the introduction of a more informal dress code, it created a new dilemma
According to Management Today magazine, two in three employees say they lie to their boss. Whose responsibility is it to maintain ethical standards in the workplace? There is little doubt that a company’s ethics are becoming ever more important in the way it is viewed by its investors, its employees and its customers. Two years
How do you get a pay increase when your boss doesn’t see it as part of their 12 month-plan? Our award-winning writer Adeline Iziren shows how sometimes a gamble can pay off
The 1990s will be remembered for giving us the Teletubbies and stress. After the workaholism of the eighties, stress-related illness broke into our vocabulary and our workplace. Along with repetitive strain injury, cases of stressed-out workers made headline news and the western world became more aware of the physical dangers of overwork.
