Hammer's Book Reviews

My good friend and mentor sent me an email about several books. I thought his email important enough to share...

From J. Hammer:

Books that I have found useful recently include:

Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers (Citrin, Smith)
This is good for understanding career paths and your options in muchgreater detail.

Good to Great (Collins)
This book is stunning. What factors would cause an average company topull away from its competitors for a long period of time (i.e., totransition from good to great). A lot of people will read this book,but few will be able to pull off what it recommends. It may alsoirritate you when you realize that you work for (only) a good company.

Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done (Bossidy, Charan)
This book had a big impact on my thinking about employee evaluation,employee development, HR, discipline, and (most importantly) businessmanagement that actually knows what it is doing.

Elements of Mentoring (Johnson, Ridley)
Patterned after Strunk and White's classic, this book synthesizes a vastbody of research literature down to what a mentor needs to know.