business case 1
«(…) All of the value is in the implementation—it’s not what you know that counts in management, it’s what you do.
This book costs about the same as a day’s parking on your next business trip, the coffee break at your next meeting, or the cost of a 25-minute transatlantic mobile phone call. It could be the best investment you ever made—but only if you implement the ideas. Good luck!» Kevan Hall, in the introduction chapter of his «SPEED LEAD: Faster, Simpler Ways to Manage People, Projects and Teams in Complex Companies» book.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
We only recommend business books that are eminently practical. But it is not enough to just READ them.
We must identify the best ideas, which will certainly be different for each one of us.
And we must design and implement an ACTION PLAN.
Only then, you will gain more money (in time saved or in time better spent on increasing sales through increased motivation of people who work with us, etc …) than what the book costed you plus the value of the time you invested in reading it.
We are happy to help you implement the ideas contained in the books you choose and measure the return on your investment if this matters to you or you company.
One way to speed up the process is to get a subscription to a business book summaries service. We strongly recommend GetAbstract:
Summary of the Week
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
business case 2
«Although it is hard to imagine Mr de Azevedo (…) staying in an ivory tower for long, his fondness for management theory is not a pose. Few bosses would admit that their success came from others’ ideas. However, ever since he bought a teach-yourself book on cost-accounting in the 1960s, Mr de Azevedo has steered Sonae by studying new foreign ideas and applying them at home. (…)
Each year Mr de Azevedo names business books that managers are expected to read: one recent example was “Competing For the Future”, by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (Harvard Business School Press, 1994). The notion of coming home from a hard day being bossed around by Mr de Azevedo to an evening snuggled up with Messrs Hamel and Prahalad would surely strike even talented managers as hell.
So why do Sonae’s “students” put up with it? One reason is that, although their teacher tells them to study such new ideas, he does not insist that they follow them: “We never take more than 10-20% of any new fashion,” says Mr de Azevedo, “but we always take
something.” Another is that it seems to work. Any system that has turned a carpenter’s son into Portugal’s most powerful businessman must have something going for it.» in FACE VALUE | The Portuguese professor: How following the latest management trends can, sometimes, turn into a sure-fire way to make money | The Economist; May 11, 1996
