Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers

January 28, 2009 0 COMMENTS

Resources for Humans managing editor Celeste Blackburn reviews the book Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers by Susan Drake, Michelle Gullman, and Sara Roberts.

In Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers, employee communications experts Susan Drake, Michelle Gullman, and Sara Roberts offer case studies of internal marketing successes and failures and strategies that companies can apply to their own internal marketing programs.

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Hot List: New York Times Hardcover Bestseller List

January 26, 2009 0 COMMENTS

The following is a list of the bestselling hardcover business books as ranked by the New York Times on January 26.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. hy some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

2. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. The life of Warren Buffett.

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The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s Dreams

January 21, 2009 0 COMMENTS

Employment law attorney Michael Maslanka looks at the book The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s Dreams by Yahoo! executive Tim Sanders.

Here are a few big ideas for HR professionals and others from Yahoo! executive Tim Sanders’ latest book, The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s Dreams: read more…

Hot List: Bestselling Organizational Behavior Books on Amazon.com

January 19, 2009 0 COMMENTS

Amazon.com updates its list of the bestselling business books every hour. Here is a snapshot of what is hot right now, this Monday morning, January 19, in the “Organizational Behavior” category.

1. Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Teal Book of Trust: How to Earn It, Grow It, and Keep It to Become a Trusted Advisor in Sales, Business and Life (Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Books) by Jeffrey Gitomer. Gitomer advises that trust is not the product of any secret formula. It’s not something you can lay there and wait for it to happen to you. Gaining, building, and maintaining a high level of trust involves thinking, and requires reading, a clear mind, a focus on becoming a world-class expert, studying, risking, failing, the right attitude, and lacing your boots straps tighter when times are tough.

2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.

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The High Cost of Low Morale . . . and What to Do About It

January 14, 2009 0 COMMENTS

Author and talent management expert Carol A. Hacker writes about her book “The High Cost of Low Morale . . . and What to Do About It.” She offers tips from her book for reducing employee turnover.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the average cost of one turnover is 30 percent of the first year’s projected annualized salary. Although sometimes viewed as inevitable, turnover is a controllable expense. Because making money is important, it’s essential to examine anything that interferes with profitability. In my book, The High Cost of Low Morale…and what to do about it, I offer insight into how businesses of all sizes are improving morale, reducing turnover, and becoming more profitable. Regardless of your organization’s size, the principles are the same for reducing morale problems. Here are some thoughts from the book:

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Business Week’s Bestseller List

January 12, 2009 0 COMMENTS

Business Week ranks business books that are the most recent bestsellers and provides a short summary.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. As you’d expect with Gladwell, there are lots of surprises in his explanation of why some people succeed fantastically. Pluck and smarts get less play here than such matters as one’s birth month and access to the right resources at just the right time. There are many points worth pondering in this enjoyable volume.

2. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times columnist Friedman offers an urgent plea to unleash U.S. creativity—and capitalism—on the challenges of energy, climate change, and world population growth. “I am convinced that the public is ready,” he writes—“they’re ahead of the politicians.”

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E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide

January 07, 2009 0 COMMENTS

Resources for Humans managing editor Celeste Blackburn reviews the book E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide — How to Write and Manage E-Mail In the Workplace by Janis Fisher Chan. An industrious HR person could not only benefit personally from reading this book and applying its theories but could also condense the information to create a instructional class or worksheet for employees.

We do it every day without a second thought. E-mail has become the most prevalent form of communication in the business world. Professionals are increasingly known by their “e-mail personas” as this medium replaces face-to-face meetings and phone calls. Executives who once dictated letters to their secretaries now send their own e-mail from PCs, laptops, and Blackberries. In the space of a decade, all the rules have changed — and what we e-mail is, in the eyes of the recipients, who we are.

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Hot List: New York Times Bestselling Paperback Business Books

January 05, 2009 0 COMMENTS

The following is a list of the bestselling paperback business books as ranked by the New York Times on January 5.

1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. How and why certain products and ideas become fads.

2.  Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.

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