So what makes a winner? "You have to make a decision based on how well known the subject is. Go was a no-brainer because the brand was strong and the marketing had been very powerful - Barbara (right) led a £25m buyout from BA, then sold to easyJet for £374m four years later. Jim Collins's Good To Great is a benchmark by which to measure other business books." Way to Go Tim Whiting, editorial director at Time Warner Books, published Barbara Cassani's Go: An Airline Adventure. You would be ill advised to base your whole career on one book, though. You have to be very careful about reading the reviews to find the right books.
It's equally valuable to read both the authorised and the un-authorised versions, provided you take both with a pinch of salt. I'd recommend Dirty Tricks: British Airways ' Secret War Against Virgin Atlantic by Martyn Gregory." Sir John Harvey-Jones, business troubleshooter and author "For the last 40 years I have tried to keep up with every business book published and consider they are essential to keep abreast of current thinking and developments. The business environment changes so fast that you need to try and read both the fundamental books which cover the whole scene and the more specialised ones which look at one or more aspects particularly relevant today." Alan Giles, chief executive, HMV Group "I think many business books are over-long, and are ideas which could and should have been expressed in an eight-page Harvard Business Review article, not padded out to 250 pages I prefer books with some analytical rigour behind them. Rules of Management: the definitive guide to managerial success by Richard Templar (Prentice Hall) 3. Winning: the ultimate business how-to book by Jack Welch & Suzy Welch (HarperCollins) 4 The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard (HarperCollins) 5.
Rules of Work: the definitive guide to personal success by Richard Templar (Prentice Hall) The money men take their pick Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyGroup "I think the most valuable from a practical point of view are the ones written about specific companies or entrepreneurs. Companies prefer neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and other half-baked ideas, designed to keep everyone talking and thinking in circles." Hello Laziness by Corinne Maier Cash cows Top five business titles in the first three months of 2005, according to Nielsen BookScan 1 The Apprentice by Sir Alan Sugar (BBC Books) 2. "Just as management is running out of steam as an improvement path, switching horses (and metaphors) to traditional leadership as an alternative growth mechanism has become a non-option, too." Seven Secrets of Inspired Leaders by Phil Dourado & Dr Phil Blackburn "Many managers would benefit from a course in speaking their native tongue, but unfortunately such a course is rarely among the firm's approved training programmes. Touch your forehead and say to yourself, 'This is the most powerful computer on the planet!'" Cracking the Millionaire Code by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen. Judy Piatkus, whose Piatkus Books is one of the biggest independents publishing in this field, snaps back: "No publisher is going to take on a book by someone that will sell 1,000 copies at their seminars. It is just not economically viable." Besides, she adds, there are enough people submitting manuscripts to pick the most commercially viable, which means it will sell through bookshops.
