"Love Is the Killer App" by Tim Sanders

Is love really all you need? Tim Sanders, director of Yahoo's in house think tank, believes love is the crucial element in the search for personal and professional success. In Love Is the Killer App he explains why. Sander's advice is to be a "lovecat," which despite the cutesy moniker is his sincere and surprisingly practical prescription for advancement both inside and outside the office. It starts with amassing as much usable knowledge as possible,...

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"Lessons from the Monkey King" by Arthur F Carmazzi

This fantastic journey deals with the very real dynamics of how an organizational culture affects an individual and their personal effectiveness. Transform your corporate culture with Directive Communication Psychology and have fun in the process. This "HOW TO" journey empowers you to access the resources you need to make a BIG difference in the way people act and treat each other at work. Armed with psychology and force multiplication strategies...

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"Leadership and Self-Deception" by The Arbinger Institute

Using the story/parable format so popular these days, Leadership and Self-Deception takes a novel psychological approach to leadership. It's not what you do that matters, say the authors (presumably plural the book is credited to the esteemed Arbinger Institute), but why you do it. Latching onto the latest leadership trend won't make people follow you if your motives are selfish people can smell a rat, even one that says it's trying to empower...

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"Lateral Thinking" by Edward de Bono

This book, which is now internationally known and a bestseller, is a textbook of creativity. It shows how the habit of lateral thinking can be encouraged and new ideas generated. The author has worked out special techniques for doing this, in groups or alone, and the result is a triumph of entertaining educati...

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"Killing Sacred Cows" by Garrett Gunderson

In this thought-provoking work, entrepreneur and inspirational speaker Gunderson takes aim at the social brainwashing and financial planners and institutions that are constricting Americans' financial freedom and undermining their abilities to prosper with misguided and dangerous advice. The author debunks various investment myths offering a fresh look at 401(k) fallacies and false beliefs (high risk = high returns). In a book studded with anecdotes...

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"Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach

"Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight--how to get from shore to food and back again," writes author Richard Bach, in this allegory about a unique bird named Jonathan Livingston Seagull. "For most gulls it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight." Flight is indeed the metaphor that makes the story soar. Ultimately this is a fable about the importance...

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"In Search of Excellence" by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman

This publication is a survey written by a couple of McKinsey consultants that seek to define the characteristics of successful, I mean excellent, organizations using the McKinsey 7-S framework; Structure, Systems, Style, Staff, Skills, Strategy, and Shared Values. Their findings suggest that eight attributes are common for an excellent organization; bias for action, close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people,...

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"Illusions" by Richard Bach

Richard Bach's "Illusions" is a little book telling a story of two biplane pilots of whom one was Messiah and the other his student willing to become Messiah. In a form of the "Messiah Handbook" and continuous dialogues between the two as well as the situations happening in the book, Richard Bach delivers us the life changing information and the greatest wisdom of life where every person is responsible for the life he has and has power to change...

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"I'm OK, You're OK" by Thomas Harris

If you ever feel insecure and worry what others think about you then this is the book for you. Harris explains in simple terms the breakdown of the personality and enables you to understand what makes people the way they are. It would be a shame if people went through life never having had the fortune to comprehend the details in this book. The PAC model is simple and it wor...

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"How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" by Dale Carnegie

"Those who don't know how to fight worry, die young." This ominous advice begins Dale Carnegie's bestseller, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, an eight-part treatise on the follies of worrying. Like other Carnegie books, this one is packed with good old-fashioned common sense, illustrated with examples drawn from research on historical figures and interviews with business leaders. Somehow, even the most simple advice such as Carnegie's four-step...

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"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

Under the subheading "15,000,000 people can't be wrong," I proudly present one of the all-time business book classics. You've probably heard about this book, as it's one of those titles that have become part of the cultural lexicon (like CATCH-22). It floats around the edges of the pop-culture ether, easily recalled but little read. Written in 1936, it is based on courses in public speaking that had been taught in adult education courses by Dale...

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“Good to Great" by Jim Collins

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including...

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"Getting to Yes" by Roger Fischer and William Ury

This is the first book I ever read on negotiating, and at the time I found it extremely good. However, since then, I have read both Shell's "Bargaining for Advantage" and Cialdini's "Influence", and found those two books immensely better than Getting to Yes, for a few different reasons. Number of stories in Getting to Yes, the authors do not offer enough stories to burn the concepts into the reader's mind. I personally think stories are the best...

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"Getting Things Done" by David Allen

'With first-chapter allusions to martial arts, "flow", "mind like water", and other concepts borrowed from the East, you'd almost think this self-helper from David Allen should have been called Zen and the Art of Schedule Maintenance. Not quite. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta dos clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists all purportedly to free your...

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"Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler

Historians are more in fashion than futurologists nowadays but it is instructive to consider how far what has happened diverges from what futurologists thought would happen. I like to look back on one popular book which daringly probed the future, Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. C P Snow, scientist and novelist, said of it that, 'no one ought to have the nerve to pontificate on our present worries without reading it'. The remark holds one generation...

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"Follow Your Heart" by Andrew Matthews

A sequel to Andrew Matthew's "Being Happy" and "Making Friends", this is a simple and practical guide for anyone who wants to find purpose in their life and work. It is about: doing what one loves; dealing with bills and broken legs; discovering one's own power; finding peace of mind; dealing with disasters; and not blaming one's mother. The book is also about: how happy people think; why rich people make money, even by accident; and what losers...

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"First Things First" by Stephen Covey

Dr Covey appears to have worked out life to a mint here - how to organize every second of your life to what you want to do, and how to make decisions based on what you set yourself. He starts from the roots - and tells you how to lead yourself to form your character, with a singular mission in life based on your values, which form the secondary base of the leadership principles he describes. It's a complicated process which needs all 368 pages...

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"First Break All the Rules" by Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham

The authors, both management consultants for the Gallup Organization, use the company's study of 80,000 managers in 400 companies to reach the conclusion that a company that lacks great frontline managers will bleed talent, no matter how attractive the compensation packages and training opportunities. With this in mind, they sought the answers to the follow-up questions: "How do great managers find, focus and keep talented employees." Using case...

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"Finding Your Strength In Difficult Times" by David Viscott

I do not try to be accepted. I do not search for love. I want only to be me and am grateful for the gift of myself. The road of life is seldom a smooth one - it's dotted with potholes, treacherous turns, speed bumps, and numerous detours. While it's easy to lose your way traveling along such a road, you need not despair. This comforting, portable book will help you find your inner strength. The many mediations and affirmations collected in "Finding...

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"Facilitation" by Trevor Bentley

Trevor Bentley's book on Facilitation is a wonderful source of learning. This is partly because of what the author shares of his experiences as a facilitator, and partly because of the way in which he does so. The book is structured around a case study of a facilitation skills workshop that he facilitated, which he describes with such clarity that as I read the book I felt like I was part of the workshop and that I cared about what was happening...

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"Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done" by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

Disciplines like strategy, leadership development, and innovation are the sexier aspects of being at the helm of a successful business; actually getting things done never seems quite as glamorous. But as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan demonstrate in Execution, the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute. Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen...

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"Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman

There was a time when IQ was considered the leading determinant of success. In this fascinating book, based on brain and behavioral research, Daniel Goleman argues that our IQ-idolizing view of intelligence is far too narrow. Instead, Goleman makes the case for "emotional intelligence" being the strongest indicator of human success. He defines emotional intelligence in terms of self-awareness, altruism, personal motivation, empathy, and the ability...

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"Embracing Change" by Tony Buzan

In this book, Tony Buzan, as usual, reiterates his favourite techniques like Mind Maps, TEFCAS, Radian Thinking, etc. If you've read other books by Tony Buzan, you may find parts of this book monotonous, uninteresting and not engaging readers' interest. However, there were valuable thought worth consideration in the other parts of the book. Everything changes around us. According to Darwin, neither the strongest nor the smartest species will survive...

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"Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" by Richard Carlson and Kristine Carlson

The cover of this book says it was a bestselling book of the year at one time. After opening it up and glancing through it, it's not hard to see why. The purpose of the book is to get you to look at things, common situations we all come across every day, like being criticized or being given more work than you can possibly finish, and see them a little differently. Believe it or not, it delivers- and in just a page or two at a time if you can believe...

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"Crucial Conversations" by Kerry Patterson

Wanna argue? Nope. Then you need Kerry Patterson and his co-writers, who describe techniques for effective negotiation and conflict resolution in the context of important, potentially life changing conversations. Examples include talking yourself into a promotion, bringing up important information at meetings and working out problems with your spouse. Some tips will sound familiar, such as knowing what you really want and being open to alternatives....

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"Conversations with God" by Neale Donald Walsch

Blasphemy! Heresy! Who does this man think he is, claiming to speak directly to God?! Jesus did it, Muhammad did it, the Jewish prophets did it, but none of their Gods had the sardonic wit or raw verve of Prophet Walsch's God. Neale Donald Walsch isn't claiming to be the Messiah of a new religion, just a frustrated man who sat down one day with pen in his hand and some tough questions in his heart. As he wrote his questions to God, he realized...

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"Clear Leadership" by Gervase Bushe

Expanding on the fresh concepts that made the first edition of "Clear Leadership" such a success a decade ago, Bushe brings up-to-date the tools and techniques needed to build sustaining partnerships and make today's collaborative organizations work. This fully revised edition now includes 23 skill-building exercises, dozens of personal stories and examples, and completely new chapters that add a sharper focus on ways that the original model of...

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"Built to Last" by James C Collins and Jerry Porras

Built To Last was an extremely thought provoking and eye opening read. Built To Last studies some of the most successful (called the leading companies) and the following companies (non-leaders in an industry). The research for this book produced surprising results for the authors (and the reader). The authors found the there were at least twelve commonly held businesses beliefs that their research refuted. In essence these dearly held business...

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The Creative Process In the Individual

I have already pointed out that the presence of a single all-embracing Cosmic Mind is an absolute necessity for the existence of any creation whatever, for the reason that if each individual mind were an entirely separate center of perception, not linked to all other minds by a common ground of underlying mentality independent of all individual action, then no two persons would seem to be same thing at the same time, in fact no two individuals...

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The Mental Phase

The mental phase of personal magnetism depends upon two coordinated manifestations of mental power, as follows: (1) the holding of certain mental states until the mental atmosphere becomes charged with the vibrations of the particular mental states; and (2) the conscious projection of the mental current from the brain centers, by the action of the will of the individual. I shall now proceed to describe these two mental phases of manifestation...

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