Business thinking between the covers

Winning Investors Over

by Baruch Lev

Harvard Business Review Press €24.99

While written ostensibly as a guide for managers on how to keep Wall Street happy, Lev’s book is instructional for a much wider audience than US publicly quoted corporations.

An accounting and finance professor at New York Universitys Stern School of Business, Lev has conducted exhaustive research on investor concerns and has advice on such issues as how to communicate disappointing news without undermining investor confidence.

Written against the backdrop of the collapse of confidence in financial markets, the book’s thesis is that company executives can build long-term mutually beneficial partnerships with investors but that they must change their practices and attitudes to do so.

This includes structuring executive compensation packages in new ways and in engaging in meaningful corporate social responsibility projects. Companies also have to learn how to deal constructively with activist shareholders, he says. Lev warns against the dangers of drip-feeding bad news and putting off the disclosure of bad news to coincide with positive announcements.

On executive compensation, his advice is very clear: investors don’t begrudge high managerial compensation – it’s the undeserved pay that infuriates them.

Sleeping with your Smartphone

by Leslie Perlow

Harvard Business Review Press €24.99

Perlow looks at the phenomenon of the always-on generation of workers and challenges the notion that we must be constantly digitally connected to be successful.

A Harvard Business School professor, Perlow has studied the working habits of thousands of executives and concludes that this 24/7 mentality is counter- productive. She recommends active disengagement from internet- enabled devices for some down time.

Perlow has developed a new process of managing work that she calls “PTO” – predictable time off.

When people work together to create it, people, teams and ultimately the organisation all stand to benefit. PTO can be so effective for both individuals’ work lives and the work itself: busy managers and professionals tend to amplify and reinforce the inevitable pressures of their jobs, making their own and their colleagues’ lives more intense, more overwhelming, more demanding and less fulfilling than they need to be.

The result of this “vicious cycle of responsiveness” is that the work process ends up being less effective and efficient than it could be. The power of PTO, she says, is that it breaks this cycle, mitigating the pressure, freeing individuals to spend time in ways that are more desirable for themselves personally and for the work process.

How to Change Absolutely Everything

by Damian Hughes

Pearson €12.99

The subject of change is treated differently depending on the circumstances, with change management for business, self- help for individuals and change the world advice for activists, notes Hughes in this book.

This is a shame, he says, because all change has something fundamental in common; for anything to change, someone has to start acting differently. Ultimately, he says, all change efforts boil down to the same mission – can you start behaving in a new way and influence others to do the same?

The book has sections on subjects from approaching change in a way that makes the journey smoother, using what you do and say to win over others, avoiding the emotional triggers that may jeopardise change and anticipating how those around you will react to change. He also looks at how to understand your reaction to change and how to anticipate how those around you will react to change.

Hughes draws on his a background as a former human resources director and applies cognitive behavioural therapy theories to the subject.

One black mark is the fact that he uses a postscript section to make a very obvious pitch for speaking engagements, corporate seminars and reader referrals to journalists.