Each month, our Moore Stephens L&D team brings you its top picks for essential reading. This month, we look at two great books about effectiveness – one perennial business favourite, and one lesser-known book. Both books are insightful reads into the art of getting the life you want, both professionally and personally.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Steven R. Covey)
This book continues to be a best seller for the simple reason that it ignores trends and pop psychology and focuses on timeless principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity. Since 1989, this compelling book has empowered and inspired millions of readers, across all professions and age groups, to become more effective – personally and professionally. Covey explains seven principles that make a person more effective in all areas of their life. He also shows how a principle-centred, character-based life helps you build the healthy relationships that are key to an effective life. This long-respected book will be of great worth to anyone seeking success in career, family or any other aspect of their life.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan & Charles Burck)
This is a vintage read from the early 2000s and assists senior managers, executives and CEOs to view the world of work from the top level instead of the trenches. The book revolves around a central truth: It's not enough to think strategically and fashion an exceptional strategic plan. A plan is only as good as its execution. So often leaders (and companies) are labelled as having a poor strategy when, in reality, it was poor execution that doomed them to failure. The book outlines the exact practices and principles to solve this, using real life examples of companies to which we can relate. This book will be of great value to any decision-maker in any organisation, as the authors focus relentlessly on how some decision-makers get results and why most others don't. It is an ideal read for leaders looking to amplify their own, and their team’s, execution and results!
Happy reading!