Book Reviews
Book Review – No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention is written by Netflix founder Reed Hastings and INSEAD Business School professor, and author of The Culture Map, Erin Meyer. Published in 2020, the book explores the innovative corporate culture of Netflix and how...
Book Review: The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham
The COO at one of my clients suggested this as a good read with applicability to accounting firms andI agree. In fact let me say up front that I reckon every accounting firm leader could benefit from reading this book. Jack Stack’s ideas were seen as new and radical...
Book Review – The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
It’s 10 years since this book by New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg was published. At its core it’s a book about the science of habits and how we can apply this understanding to help us establish good habits or change habits that are not serving us well. The...
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in the 21st century, observing the following features: Too much to do, too little time Information overload Still using outdated tools and strategies to organise work Senseless urgency It is the last...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...
