Book Reviews
Book Review – The Captain Class – Sam Walker
Sam Walker is the Wall Street Journal’s deputy editor for enterprise, the unit that directs the paper’s in depth page on features and investigative reporting projects. He also founded the paper’s daily sports coverage. The sub title of this book is “The hidden force...
Book Review – Deep Work by Cal Newport
As part of building my time management (managing yourself and your priorities) workshops I spent over 100 hours researching best practice. One of the many books, articles and research papers I read was a book by American computer science Professor Cal Newport. His...
Holiday reading suggestions
I like to keep an eye out for books that provide ideas for my clients and for me. Here are four suggestions for some holiday reading. Is anyone else a compulsive highlighter of books? I was so excited years ago when I discovered that you could highlight text in...
Book Review: Scaling Up – Verne Harnish
Scaling Up - How a Few Companies Make it…and Why the Rest Don’t (Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0) Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles This book was first published in 2014, and as the title suggests, is an update and refresh of Verne’s first book published in...
Smart Work – How to Boost Your Productivity in 3 Easy Steps, Dermot Crowley 2016
Crowley introduces his book with some comments about how we work in the 21st century, observing the following features: Too much to do, too little time Information overload Still using outdated tools and strategies to organise work Senseless urgency It is the last...
Lessons for accountants from the career of Margaret Court
Like many of you I suspect, I received a few books for Christmas. One of these was the autobiography of Australian tennis legend Margaret Court. I couldn’t put it down and had finished it less than 24 hours after unwrapping it! As I read about Margaret Court’s...
Book Review – the Future of the Professions -How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts – Richard and Daniel Susskind
There is a view amongst some professionals that talking about the disruption of the professions by the application of technology is scaremongering by people with a vested interest to sell products and services. It is true that there are some pretty wild statements...
The Checklist Manifesto – How to Get Things Right – Atal Gawande
This book by a medical doctor / surgeon was first published in 2009 and not surprisingly has a number of medical related stories in it. But there is much more to it than that and it is extremely relevant to accountants, lawyers and other professionals. Gawande notes...
7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
When I first read this book I must confess I didn’t “get it”. And yet, today I consider it one of the most important books I’ve ever read. When I came back and read it a second time I was completely engaged by what Covey was writing. I wrote myself a 25-page summary...
