Intelligence Isn’t Enough: A Black Professional’s Guide to Thriving in the Workplace
By Carice Anderson (MBA 2006)
Jonathan Ball Publishers
Professional development manager, coach, and consultant Carice Anderson shares her insider knowledge from almost two decades working with top companies in South Africa and abroad, and sheds a light on the harsh realities of corporate environments. Drawing on her years of experience and research, the author argues that many young Black professionals struggle early on in their careers as they lack the necessary soft skills to successfully navigate their work environments and reach their full potential.

Including advice and anecdotes from 30 successful Black leaders who have worked across Africa, Europe, and North America, Intelligence Isn't Enough aims to empower young Black graduates who have just entered the workforce and professionals already at work. Anderson guides readers on how to survive and thrive in corporate spaces, how to take a more strategic approach to their careers, and how to understand themselves and others more deeply. In addition, the book provides useful tips on how young professionals can strengthen their workplace relationships, sharpen their communication skills, improve their personal brands and, ultimately, make an impact.

The World’s Littlest Book on Climate: 10 Facts in 10 Minutes about CO₂
By Mike Nelson, Pieter Tans, and Michael Banks (MBA 1983)
Independently published
The world’s smallest book on the world’s biggest problem—CO₂ and climate change—provides a quick and entertaining introduction to the science behind it. This concise primer is for anyone interested in how CO₂ impacts our climate, but even knowledgeable readers will learn something new and important about how climate change works. The book is available at no cost to climate outreach and education organizations.

Unfettered Journey
By Gary F. Bengier (MBA 1981)
Chiliagon Press
Unfettered Journey is the story of Joe Denkensmith, an AI scientist who seeks to create true robot consciousness. A mysterious woman on a personal mission interrupts his search. Fighting unjust forces, Joe is swept into an evil plot that neither can elude. Their struggles against machines, men, and nature test the resilience of the human spirit.

Set in a richly imagined near future, this cross-genre novel combines thrilling action, adventure, and a love story. It traces an epic journey from inside the human mind to the vastness of space, from AIs battling in the desert to the peace of a mountain refuge. It asks social, spiritual, and philosophical questions that will linger. How does the will to survive bring clarity to the human experience? What would you sacrifice to achieve social justice?

Lucky, Not Smart
By Michael Coles (MBA 1961)
Independently published
Most people go to Harvard Business School by way of a first-rate undergraduate college. Michael Coles did it the hard way. In lieu of college, his educational odyssey involved landing on an aircraft carrier in darkness, flying combat missions over Korea, breaking the sound barrier, and then teaching others to do the same. This is the story of that journey.

The Big Ordeal: Understanding and Managing the Psychological Turmoil of Cancer
By Cynthia Hayes (MBA 1983)
Greenleaf Book Group
Coping with cancer is hard. It’s an emotional ordeal as much as a physical one, with known and somewhat predictable psychological responses. And yet, patients often feel isolated and alone when dealing with the stress, anxiety, depression, and existential crises so typical with a cancer diagnosis.

The Big Ordeal, written in collaboration with a psychologist and two oncologists, tackles the emotional side of the experience head-on, to help newly diagnosed patients and their loved ones anticipate, understand, and deal with the psychological turmoil ahead. Based on interviews with scores of patients and experts across a variety of fields, combining patient stories with medical insights and advice from those who have been there, and structured around the typical phases of the process, this book is an accessible resource for anyone who receives a cancer diagnosis.

Britain’s Greatest Prime Minister: Lord Liverpool
By Martin Hutchinson (MBA 1973)
The Lutterworth Press
Britain's Greatest Prime Minister: Lord Liverpool unpacks two centuries of Whig history to redeem Lord Liverpool (1770 to 1828) from ‘arch-mediocrity’ and establish him as the greatest political leader the country has ever seen. In the past, biographers of Lord Liverpool have not sufficiently acknowledged the importance of his foremost skill: economic policy (including fiscal, monetary, and banking system questions). Here, Hutchinson's decades of experience in the finance sector provide a more specialized perspective on Liverpool's economic legacy than most historians are able to offer. From his adept handling of unparalleled economic and social difficulties, to his strategic defeat of Napoleon and unprecedented approach to the subsequent peace process, Liverpool is shown to have set Britain's course for prosperity and effective government for the following century. In addition to granting him his rightful place among British Prime Ministers on both domestic and foreign policy grounds, Hutchinson advances how a proper regard for Liverpool's career might have changed the structure and policies of today's government for the better.

Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company
By Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982) with Amy Wallace
Simon & Schuster
In September 2001, Jeff Immelt replaced the most famous CEO in history, Jack Welch, at the helm of General Electric. Less than a week into his tenure, the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the nation, and the company, to its core. GE was connected to nearly every part of the tragedy—GE-financed planes powered by GE-manufactured engines had just destroyed real estate that was insured by GE-issued policies. Facing an unprecedented situation, Immelt knew his response would set the tone for businesses everywhere that looked to GE—one of America’s biggest and most-heralded corporations—for direction.

Over the next sixteen years, Immelt would lead GE through many more dire moments, from the Global Financial Crisis to the 2011 meltdown of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, which were designed by GE. But Immelt’s biggest challenge was inherited: Welch had handed over a company that had great people, but was short on innovation. Immelt set out to change GE’s focus by making it more global, more rooted in technology, and more diverse. But the stock market rarely rewarded his efforts, and GE struggled. In Hot Seat, Immelt offers an introspection of his tenure. The most crucial component of leadership, he writes, is the willingness to make decisions. But knowing what to do is a thousand times easier than knowing when to do it.

How to Stash That Cash
By Christopher Kawaja (MBA 2004) and Shannon Matthiesen
Independently published
Most of us know how to balance the immediate needs of a checking account or to invest long term for our retirement plans. But financial advice falls apart in the middle ground—commonly known as an emergency or opportunity fund. How to Stash That Cash details how to invest your funds, using nine decades of data. It’s simple, consistently performing, ultra-low cost, and easy to implement.

Founding Sheriff
By Edward Massey (MBA 1967)
Five Star Publishing
A sheriff investigates a woman’s murder and tracks her husband, who escaped in the mountains. Capturing him in Bonanza Flat, the founding sheriff decides not to kill him and sets in motion a long and broken path to a tradition of justice where none existed before in Summit County, Utah Territory. Capture comes swift. Conviction takes longer. Execution drags on for years. Life in a growing frontier town that starts with six people and no buildings either demands frontier justice or unfolds its apparent willingness to assist the murderer's effort to avoid his fate. Indian troubles, vigilantes’ murderous justice, and a railroad hell-on-wheels town threaten the founding sheriff’s promise to the murdered girl’s mother.

The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right
By Gorick Ng (MBA 2018)
Harvard Business Review Press
Most career guides assume that you already know how the working world works. But if you’re starting your very first job or taking a job in a new company, you might not know all the unspoken rules that determine who gets ahead and who doesn’t. In Unspoken Rules, you’ll learn the basic workplace skills necessary for success.

Over the last four years, Gorick Ng interviewed more than 500 interns, early-career professionals, managers, and executives, from HR to finance, law firms to tech companies, across the world. Those conversations revolved around three key questions:

• What are the most common mistakes early-career professionals make at work?
• What would you do differently if you could relive your first years on the job?
• What do you think separates top performers from mediocre ones?

After testing the advice gathered from these interviews, Ng started coaching early-career professionals and distilled every lesson learned into this step-by-step guide to becoming a top performer. It begins with mastering the unspoken rules.

Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology
By Zibby Owens (MBA 2003)
Skyhorse
It’s impossible to ignore how life has changed since COVID-19 spread across the world. Zibby Owens, host of the award-winning podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books and a mother of four herself, wanted to do something to help people carry on and to give them something to focus on other than the horrors of their news feeds. So she launched an online magazine called We Found Time.

Guests on her podcast wrote original essays for busy readers, which Zibby organized into themes inspired by five things moms don’t have time to do: eat, read, work out, breathe, and have sex. Actress Evangeline Lilly writes about the importance and impact of film. Bestselling author Rene Denfeld focuses on her relationship with food after growing up homeless. Screenwriter and author Lea Carpenter and Suzanne Falter, author, speaker, and podcast host, focus on loss. New York Times bestselling authors Chris Bohjalian and Gretchen Rubin write about the importance of reading. Now compiled as an anthology, these essays speak to the ever-increasing demands on our time, especially during the quarantine, in a unique, literary way.

The Money Train: 10 Things Young Businesses Need to Know About Investors
By David Pattison (AMP 152, 1997)
Practical Inspiration Publishing
Before you get on the money train, here’s what you need to know. Say you have a great business idea but no money and there are investors with money out there looking for interesting new businesses. On the face of it, it’s a match made in heaven, with lots of positives; but beware the negatives. Those investment decisions will shape the future of your business. The standard models that investors impose on startups and young companies can mean loss of control, overbearing input, disproportionate reward to the wrong shareholders, or founders being squeezed out of their own businesses. Investment can also prop up a business artificially, building false hope and disappointment in the long term. Money Train provides action steps and meaningful advice to any entrepreneur seeking investor funding.

Civility Rules! Creating a Purposeful Practice of Civility
By Shelby Joy Scarbrough (OPM 47, 2015)
Forbes Books
While our civilization continues to advance, our capacity to live civilly―to appreciate our common humanity with empathy and humility―ironically dwindles daily. Even as we become more technologically connected, many of us feel increasingly disconnected and disengaged from each other. Civility Rules! offers an opportunity to learn about the history, substance, and significance of civility through the lens of George Washington’s “Rules of Civility.”

Drawing on personal experience, real-life examples, and a foundational belief that civility is integral to a democratic society, Shelby Scarbrough shares how we might work toward a more perfect union by building a personal practice of civility. Civility is not an archaic concept of manners and politeness but rather a crucial component of a functioning democracy. Civility Rules! shows us how, with conscientious practice and patience, we can each contribute to the preservation of our democracy, one interaction at a time.

The Complete Guide to ETF Portfolio Management: The Essential Toolkit for Practitioners
By Scott M. Weiner (AMP 193, 2017)
McGraw-Hill Education
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are growing, and they’re not slowing down. With more than $4.5 trillion in assets, and cash flows exceeding those of mutual funds for several years running, ETFs have become the dominant investment vehicle of our time. The Complete Guide to ETF Portfolio Management provides everything you need to know to manage an ETF with knowledge and skill.

As Janus Capital’s first ETF portfolio manager, Scott Weiner helped build much of the infrastructure around index-based ETF portfolio management for the global asset management group Janus Henderson. In this comprehensive and insightful guide, he takes you step by step through the life of a sample ETF―fund launch to fund closure―from the perspective of a portfolio manager.

Better, Not Perfect: A Realist’s Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness
By Max Bazerman, Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration
Harper Business
Every day, you make hundreds of decisions. They’re largely personal, but these choices have an ethical element as well; they value certain principles and ends over others. We can better balance both dimensions—and we needn’t seek perfection to make a real difference for ourselves and the world. Better, Not Perfect provides a deeply researched, prescriptive roadmap for how to maximize our pleasure and minimize pain. Professor Max Bazerman shares a framework to be smarter and more efficient, honest, and aware—to attain your “maximum sustainable goodness.” He identifies four training grounds to practice these newfound skills for outsized impact: how you think about equality and your tribe(s); waste—from garbage to corporate excess; the way you spend time; and your approach to giving—whether your attention or your money. Once ready to nudge yourself toward better, the book trains your eye on how to extend what you’ve learned and positively influence others.

Melding philosophy and psychology as never before, this down-to-earth guide will help clarify your goals, assist you in doing more good with your limited time on the planet, and experience greater satisfaction in the process.

Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing
By Frank V. Cespedes, MBA Class of 1973 Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
Harvard Business Review Press
The rise of e-commerce. Big data. AI. Given these trends (and many others), there’s no doubt that sales is changing. Yet much of the current conventional wisdom is misleading and not supported by empirical data. In this no-nonsense book, sales expert and Harvard Business School senior lecturer Frank Cespedes provides sales managers and executives with the tools they need to separate the signal from the noise. These include how to hire and deploy the right talent, pay and incentivize your sales force, improve ROI from your training programs, create a comprehensive sales model, set and test the right prices, and build and manage a multichannel approach. Sales Management That Works will help sales managers build a great sales team, create an optimal strategy, and steer clear of hype and fads.

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
By Tom Eisenmann, Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration and Peter O. Crisp Faculty Chair of Harvard Innovation Labs
Currency
Why do startups fail? That question caught Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns account for the vast majority of startup failures:

• Bad bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly.
• False starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions.
• False promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand.
• Speed traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hyper-growth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures.
• Help wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both.
• Cascading miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the greater number of things that can go wrong.

Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise, Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them.

Hidden Truths: What Leaders Need to Hear But Are Rarely Told
By David Fubini, Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behavior
Wiley
Hidden Truths: What Leaders Need to Hear But Are Rarely Told delivers profound and rarely discussed insights about C-suite jobs that provide aspiring leaders with practical, new skills that will equip them for the immense challenges of their desired jobs. In 14 illuminating chapters, Fubini sets out the essential habits that help leaders create success, time and time again. Perfect for managers, executives, and other business leaders with an eye on the C-suite, Hidden Truths also belongs on the bookshelves of people who already find themselves in a C-level position and wish to learn how to better manage the stresses and challenges of the job.

Glass Half Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work
By Gender Initiatives Director Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg, Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business Review Press
For years, women have made up the majority of college-educated workers in the United States. In 2019, the gap between the percentage of women and the percentage of men in the workforce was the smallest on record. Yet, despite these statistics, women remain underrepresented in positions of power and status, with the highest-paying jobs the most gender-imbalanced. Even in fields where the numbers of men and women are roughly equal, or where women actually make up the majority, leadership ranks remain male-dominated. The persistence of these inequalities begs the question: Why haven’t we made more progress?

In Glass Half Broken, Colleen Ammerman and HBS professor Boris Groysberg reveal the pervasive organizational obstacles and managerial actions—limited opportunities for development, lack of role models and sponsors, and bias in hiring, compensation, and promotion—that create gender imbalances. Bringing to light the key findings from the latest research in psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, and economics, Ammerman and Groysberg show that, throughout their careers—from entry-level to mid-level to senior-level positions—women get pushed out of the leadership pipeline, each time for different reasons. Presenting organizational and managerial strategies designed to weaken and ultimately break down these barriers, Glass Half Broken is the authoritative resource that managers and leaders at all levels can use to finally shatter the glass ceiling.

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism
By Hubert Joly, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration, with Caroline Lambert
Harvard Business Review Press
Former chair and CEO of Best Buy and HBS senior lecturer Hubert Joly shares leadership principles that underpinned the remarkable resurgence of Best Buy, which he believes are at the heart of business: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center, embrace all stakeholders, and treat profit as an outcome.

There was a time when many would call this a “soft” philosophy. But the world and business are facing unprecedented challenges, and business can be—in fact, needs to be—a force for good. In 2019, Best Buy and 180 other companies signed the momentous Business Roundtable statement in support of stakeholder capitalism, highlighting that you can do well by doing good. Most recently, the pandemic has pushed many businesses to lead from a place of purpose and with humanity.

Joly shares how so much of what he initially learned about management is either dated, incomplete, or simply wrong. He offers a set of essential leadership principles and provides concrete advice on how to turn them into action, including: how to turn around a business without everyone hating you; how to develop and implement a strategy in a way that truly inspires and mobilizes; how to concretely embrace and align all stakeholders around a noble purpose; how to unleash human magic and create outcomes that defy logic; and how to become a great leader by pursuing a noble purpose and embracing one’s humanity.

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere
By Tsedal Neeley, Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration
Harper Business
Rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by the pandemic have accelerated the transition to remote work, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in mere weeks and leaving managers and employees scrambling to adjust. This massive transition has forced companies to rapidly advance their digital footprint, using cloud storage, cybersecurity, and device tools to accommodate their new remote workforce.

Experiencing the benefits of remote working—including nonexistent commute times, lower operational costs, and a larger pool of global job applicants—many companies, including Twitter and Google, plan to permanently incorporate remote days or give employees the option to work from home on a full-time basis. But virtual work has it challenges. Employees feel lost, isolated, out of sync, and out of sight. They want to know how to build trust, maintain connections without in-person interactions, and strike a proper work/life balance. Managers want to know how to lead virtually, how to keep their teams motivated, what digital tools they’ll need, and how to keep employees productive.

Remote Work Revolution will help employers navigate the enduring challenges teams and managers face. Filled with specific actionable steps, original illustrations, and interactive tools, this timely book will help team members deliver results previously out of reach.

Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance
By Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business Review Press
Extreme market volatility, pandemic, industry change, supply-chain disruption. The list of potential threats and strategic challenges seems to be growing exponentially. At the same time, the laborious processes used by many firms to develop a workable strategy often feel overly bureaucratic and behind the curve. There is no question that strategic decision-making has become more challenging and complex. In fact, many companies seem to have given up on strategy altogether.

In Better, Simpler Strategy, Felix Oberholzer-Gee provides executives with a simple tool to cut through technological complexity and market uncertainties. The Value Stick, based on proven economic mechanics, is an extraordinarily powerful tool that helps executives decide where to focus their attention and how to deepen their firm’s competitive advantage.

Based on the author’s successful strategy course, Better, Simpler Strategy will become every business strategist’s must-have guide for making better strategic decisions and gaining competitive advantage.

We the Possibility: Harnessing Public Entrepreneurship to Solve Our Most Urgent Problems
By Mitchell Weiss, Professor of Management Practice and Richard L. Menschel Faculty Fellow
Harvard Business Review Press
The huge challenges we face are daunting indeed: climate change, crumbling infrastructure, and declining public education and social services. At the same time, we’ve come to accept the sad notion that government can’t do new things or solve tough problems—it’s too big, too slow, and mired in bureaucracy. Not so says Mitchell Weiss, a former public official. The truth is that entrepreneurial spirit and savvy in government are growing, transforming the public sector’s response to big problems at all levels. The key, Weiss argues, is a shift from a mindset of Probability Government—overly focused on safe solutions and mimicking so-called best practices—to Possibility Government. This means public leadership and management that’s willing to boldly imagine new possibilities and to experiment.

Weiss shares the three basic tenets of this new way of governing:

• Government that can imagine: Seeing problems as opportunities and involving citizens in designing solutions
• Government that can try new things: Testing and experimentation as a regular part of solving public problems
• Government that can scale: Harnessing platform techniques for innovation and growth

The lessons unfold in the timely episodes Weiss has seen and studied: the US Special Operations Command prototyping of a hoverboard for chasing pirates, a heroin hackathon in opioid-ravaged Cincinnati, and a series of experiments in Singapore to rein in COVID-19, among many others.

HBR Presents: Coaching Real Leaders
Real-life coaching sessions with leaders working to overcome professional challenges.

Muriel Maignan Wilkins (MBA 1997), cofounder of Paravis Partners and coauthor of Own the Room, is a leadership coach with a track record of helping CEOs and senior leaders take their effectiveness to the next level.

The AEI Presents: The Invisible Men
A video podcast sharing stories of amazing Black men at Harvard University who have achieved success by leaning on the core principles of family, faith, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship.

Ian Rowe (MBA 1993) is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on education and upward mobility, family formation, and adoption.
Nique Fajors (MBA 1993) is a senior vice president of Premium Retail Services, author, thought leader, and creator of The Invisible Men, an educational video.

Post a Comment