The People Principle, by Ron Willingham. Subtitle: a revolutionary redefinition of leadership. Willingham owns a very successful sales and customer service training company, and I've seen his training packages in a couple client sites. As you might imagine, I read LOTS of books like this, and unfortunately for Mr. Willingham, I am probably way too discerning. This book was terrible. It certainly wasn't revolutionary.

I almost recommend The Box, by Mark Levinson.

Part of the book is fascinating: it talks about the history of the lowly-seeming shipping container, which revolutionized shipping through standardization.

I promised everyone monthly updates on the progress of my book, The Effective Manager. The last 4 weeks have not been good ones for the book, and I only achieved about 50% of my writing/volume goals.

That said, I'm not worried. I have added some more sessions in the next few weeks, and am reasonably certain I can overcome the slight fallback. This has happened before a couple of times, and each time I was able to get back on track. The desire to write is quite palpable.

I admit that the culprit lately has been Manager Tools growth.

One of our members posted that Marshall Goldsmith, a truly outstanding executive coach, as famous to many as Tom Peters, has decided to release his archives for free to everyone. Here's the post:

Now here is an inspiring thing regarding intellectual property.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top 10 management consultants, has decided to give away his work for free. And, this from a guy who doesn't get paid for 18 months when he signs up to be your coach.

"In my older years, I have decided to "give away as much as I can".

This book is by Henry Mintzberg, another brilliant and effective management consultant. I've read much of his work, and he is routinely sharp and insightful.

But I don't recommend this book, for three reasons.

First, it's terribly academic, even more so than Pffeffer's recent book, The Knowing-Doing Gap. Maybe it makes me a Philistine, but whenever a business book has, on virtually every page, 3-5 parenthetical references to other scholarly and academic works, it comes across to me as intended for other academics.

I almost didn't review this book, and when you read the review, you'll wonder why. The reason I almost did not review it is because it was originally published in 1981. I thought, "Naah. Too old... old technology, everybody's either read it or I won't be able to get anyone to read it."

Then I remembered Peter Drucker, whom people shy away from. I thought about when he started writing (those books still have traction), and I thought...

I was hoping that this book - The Knowing-Doing Gap, by Pfeffer and Sutton - was going to be great. I mean, really great – the kind that makes me stay up late one night finishing it, and then another week of nights writing and re-writing my own book.

It is not. I don’t recommend it.

I thought that it was going to talk about something that I’ve been noticing for years.

[I've gotten several emails and private messages related to a 'cast comment I made a while back and then a blog post reply, regarding my reading habits. Because it's easy for folks to miss comments, I thought I'd bring it to the forefront here. It also relates to my recent post regarding reviewing books. - H]

Yes, I read 200 books a year. To be candid, I never thought it was a big deal until I mentioned it in a speech several years ago, and got inundated with questions like yours.

I do have some suggestions, but they aren’t specific to reading faster.

1.

I'll be posting more book reviews on the site in the coming weeks and months, as Manager Tools starts its second year. (Happy Birthday, Mike!). Nearby this post is a re-print of an answer I provided to a member question, talking about reading and my habits related thereto.

You'll note that I read 200 books a year, probably. I do this because I truly love to do it.

by Ron Willingham. Subtitle: a revolutionary redefinition of leadership. Willingham owns a sales and customer service training company, and I've seen his training packages in a couple client sites. As you might imagine, I read LOTS of books like this, and unfortunately for Mr. Willingham, I am probably way too discerning. This book was terrible. It certainly wasn't revolutionary. Don't buy it, even if it gets 4 and a half stars on Amazon.

[Full disclosure: I was predisposed to not like this book, but read it anyway in a spirit of being fair and open to my own narrow-mindedness.