How's Your Rep These Days?

Books Worth Reading

October / November 2008 By: Rolf Dobelli Volume 6 Number 5

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New Strategies for
Reputation Management

A person's reputation is his or her most valuable asset. This is also true of corporations. Reputation management is a fairly new addition to the vocabulary of the corporate world, and though some companies now acknowledge its importance, most do not practice it diligently. As author Andrew Griffin explains, a corporation's reputation is the result of how it manages social responsibility, crises and issues. Griffin notes that more corporations now acknowledge the importance of reputation, but few turn that awareness into anything tangible. Yet, unfortunately, when a firm's reputation goes bad, it is nearly impossible to make right. By defining the key terms involved in reputation management and providing specific examples, Griffin makes his points clearly. He delves into issue management and the benefits of being a good corporate citizen. getAbstract recommends this book to business-communication professionals and other executives who want to learn how to shape the way the public regards their corporations.

Andrew Griffin. New Strategies for Reputation Management: Gaining Control of Issues, Crises & Corporate Social Responsibility. Kogan Page, 2008. List Price: $60.00. ISBN-13: 9780749450076.

Peak

Chip Conley's philosophy of business is also a practical guide to success. He shows you how to reach self-actualization by helping others —€”in this case, by providing your employees, customers and investors with what he calls "peak experiences." He uses an unusual framework for his recommendations about workplace culture: psychologist Abraham Maslow's well-known "hierarchy of needs," with self-actualization at the highest level. Creating a culture that recognizes good work has huge payoffs in employee motivation. Any job, even cleaning, can become inspirational if you can show how it's part of a larger project. Additionally, meeting customers' desires is what creates loyalty. If you can provide them with something they hadn't even thought to ask for, they'll not only stick with you; they'll also stand outside the door and pull others in. They'll become your "evangelists." The book is nicely organized, with "peak prescriptions" and reading lists at the end of each chapter. getAbstract recommends it to managers and workers who need a boost.

Chip Conley. Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. Jossey-Bass, 2007. List Price: $27.95. ISBN-13: 978-0787988616.

A Class With Drucker

William A. Cohen studied with management guru Peter Drucker while working toward his Ph.D. in executive management at Claremont Graduate School (now the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management). The lessons he learned from Drucker, he says, were life-changing, and in this book he aims to transmit to his readers the great man's wisdom. In fact, Drucker took a somewhat different approach with his students from the one in his books and articles. He said things during rough-and-tumble debates in the classroom that never made their way into his formal writing. Each new class created a dynamic that pulled Drucker, as a teacher, in a direction unique to that group, even though the essential thrust of his thinking remained the same. Thus, Cohen builds upon and reinterprets many of Drucker's insights and concepts. getAbstract particularly recommends this book to managers who are already Drucker fans and want to learn more —€”the book is really more like a CD of unreleased recordings by a great artist of the past than like an album of covers by a lesser artist.

William A. Cohen. A Class With Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher. Amacom, Year. List Price: $24.95. ISBN-13: 9780814409190.

Rolf Dobelli is chairman of getAbstract, a leading provider of business book summaries, with more than 4,500 titles covered. www.getabstract.com