You selected the "We Recommend" link and were directed to "Jack Covert Selects". Don't be confused! Here, instead of run-of-the-mill staff recommendations, each month, our president and founder, Jack Covert, selects and reviews the very best new titles.

Jack Covert Selects -The China Price The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage by Alexandra Harney, Penguin Press, 336 pages, $25.95, Hardcover, April 2008, ISBN 9781594201578 Many of the books written about business in China in the past few years have come at the situation from a "half full" perspective. As a thinking person, you know there is another side to all these products we are buying so cheaply. This is the book that addresses that "half empty" side. Alexandra Harney reveals the damage our seemingly insatiable need for cheap goods causes. She explains that "as much as the responsibility seems to lie with Beijing, it also lies with the global consumer. Our appetite for the $30 DVD player and the $3 T-shirt helps keep jewelry factories filled with dust, illegal mines open and 16-year-olds working past midnight. We all pay the China price" (289). The China Price compiles an impressive list of some serious infractions in the international code of conduct. For example, the author joins a Wal-Mart representative as she audits a factory for compliance to the company's ethical standards with regard to child labor, factory safety and pay. Unethical factory owners, she is told, often carry a separate set of books with fake time sheets and fake pay stubs to satisfy the standards large American companies demand. These practices are driven by the desire of the factory owner to make more money, but, as Harney explains, it is also driven by the "race to zero" where the customer is demanding a reduced cost for the product. Because of the size of the country and the number of factories, customers can shop and demand better prices. This demand puts huge pressure on the environment, labor costs and safety issues. Harney also digs into the troubles China has gone through during its evolutions from a state-controlled economy to a country trying to cope with one of the largest migrations in human history. These conditions are simply not conducive to a rational growth policy. This book tells sobering stories with the quality you can expect from a Financial Times reporter. To fully understand our relationship with China and the internal state of that country, The China Price is a must-read.

Jack Covert Selects - It's Our Ship It's Our Ship: The No-Nonsense Guide to Leadership by Michael Abrashoff, Business Plus, 208 pages, $25.99, May 2008, ISBN 9780446199667 One of our best-selling books of the new century has been Michael Abrashoff's first book, It's Your Ship. Abrashoff was then a recently retired captain in the US Navy, and the book told the story of his successful turnaround of the USS Benfold. That book continues to sell in ever-increasing numbers, and Abrashoff is now in much demand as a speaker. In his new book, Abrashoff returns to his experience on the Benfold, this time focusing solely on leadership lessons. He asserts that there are key skills a good leader needs to learn. He offers 8 of them, and each skill is represented in a chapter within the book. In the chapter on inspiring your people to be their best, Buoy Up Your People, Abrashoff tells a story about Bill Walsh, the late, revered coach of the San Francisco 49ers. During one game, an offensive lineman was called for a holding penalty that cost the football team a touchdown, and, naturally, the player was dreading the film session the following Monday. As the coach was going over the film with the team, however, he said, "We all know what Bruce did on the play, but I want you to see what he did on the next play." Because the player was angry with himself, he had flattened the defensive lineman. Walsh said, "This is what I want you to do after you make a mistake. You don't need to be thinking about your mistakes. Do something constructive about it." Walsh had just changed the way the players viewed failure with a few minutes of game film. Abrashoff's writing is a joy to read. Very simple, basic sentences convey rather profound ideas. Sprinkled in with the stories of his ship, he includes stories from the civilian world of business and profiles a variety of people dealing with leadership issues. One of the strengths of It's Our Ship is that Abrashoff introduces us to businesses that are not your usual suspects. Following the Walsh story, for example, he includes a story on how the West Coast chain In-N-Out Burger manages to attract and motivate its great employees. I won't spoil that one for you though.

Jack Covert Selects - The Game-Changer The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan, Crown Business, 336 pages, $27.50, Hardcover, April 2008, ISBN 9780307381736 Ram Charan has written some of the finest business books in the genre--most notably Execution, which he coauthored with former Honeywell Chairman Larry Bossidy. In this new offering, he teams up with another executive, Chairman and CEO of Proctor and Gamble A.G. Lafley. When Lafley took over P&G;, the company was in trouble, trying to respond to the quick changes of the global economy and not meeting stakeholders' expectations. In Lafley's words, the company was "trying to do too much, too fast, and nothing was being done well." This book documents P&G;'s turnaround. It is a practical, nuts-and-bolts guide to innovation, written in three parts. In the first part, "Drawing the Big Picture," Charan and Lafley stress that the customer is always the boss of any company, and discuss how to shore up an organization's core strengths and choose the right goals and strategies for future growth accordingly. This part of the book inspires reflection, and you'll immediately start forming a view of what you want the future of your business to look like. The second part gives you the tools to design innovation structures into everything you do. In "Making Innovation Happen," the authors show you how to funnel outside ideas into your company effectively, and how to create innovation teams within your existing structure. This phase is when you design your organizational structure, consumer products and interaction. Throughout the book, Charan and Lafley stress that "innovation is a social process." In the third part of the book they give you a view of what "The Culture of Innovation" looks like--and not only within your company, but also with your customers, suppliers, retailers, and even competitors. Lafley made a change to put P&G; back on the right track--putting the customer in their rightful spot as boss--but he has also did some remarkable things in that pursuit, such as sharing propriety technology in a joint venture with Clorox, a key competitor for over 20 years, to develop a new line of GLAD products. Every chapter in The Game-Changer ends with great takeaway questions to "Ask Yourself Monday Morning." But with the combined talents of Charan and Lafley at your disposal, you'll find that you'll be thinking about this book every day of the week.

Jack Covert Selects - The Pixar Touch The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company by David A. Price, Knopf, 304 pages, $27.95 Hardcover, May 2008, ISBN 9780307265753 Disney's The Sword in the Stone may have inspired some youngsters with dreams of becoming a knight or magician, leading them to a life of role-playing and dice-throwing. But, one little boy, John Lassater, thought instead about becoming an animator right then and there. He's now one of the people at the helm of Pixar, and yes, he did get to animate some pictures. David A. Price's The Pixar Touch walks readers through the genesis of Pixar. Its beginnings reach far back into the 1960s, before computer technology was even a glimmer on the horizon of film making, let alone in our everyday workforce and home life. The book weaves the tales of not just one or two great masterminds behind Pixar, but actually dives into the contributions of the many different people who helped establish what it is today. This is no small feat, as there are literally thousands of such individuals to acknowledge (George Lucas, Tim Burton, Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs, just to name a few). The author also takes on the huge task of talking about the technology, innovation and expertise that fueled Pixar into an Academy Award-winning company. He does so with great care, making the story accessible and easy to comprehend even though readers may not know anything about mainframes, pixels, frame buffers and other such computer hardware. Detailing the histories of the company's huge hits (including Monster's Inc. and Finding Nemo) as well as some of its misses, Price shows how Pixar demonstrates the value in having faith not only in yourself, but also in those around you. The Pixar Touch never loses sight of the company's greatest renewable resource, the human spirit. Just envision that little boy looking up at the big screen, watching another little boy pull a huge sword out of a stone, thinking, "Hey, I could do that!"

Jack Covert Selects - Nudge Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard. H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Yale University Press, 304 pages, $26.00, Hardcover, April 2008, ISBN 9780300122237 Every layout and piece of input we interact with influences the decisions we make each day. At the grocery store, product placement plays to our impressionable nature with candy stocked near the cash register. Our magazine subscriptions renew automatically because the magazine companies know busy subscribers rarely take the time to unsubscribe, even when magazines begin to pile up on our kitchen table. Our cars remind us with an annoying beep to buckle up. When it comes to what influences our decision-making, authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explain that, "A good rule of thumb is to assume that 'everything matters.'" That's where Nudge comes into play. Thaler and Sunstein are believers in libertarian paternalism, a belief combining two seemingly disparate ideas. The libertarian aspect reflects the belief that, "in general, people should be free to do what they like--and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to." The paternalistic side seeks to influence "choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves." That is, the choices stay the same; it is the presentation of the choices that may change. Take retirement plans, for example. One application of libertarian paternalism would be a human resource manager electing for an automatic annual renewal of employees' 401K benefits. Employees would be free to leave the plan at any point. The automatic renewal would simply remedy our tendency to be forgetful and push things off until the last minute. This nudge, Thaler and Sunstein would argue, would be in the best interest of the employees. Most of us would agree we would be better off in the long run. There are numerous applications for nudges that can, and do, exist. As the authors point out, one of the first misconceptions is that "it is possible to avoid influencing people's choices. In many situations, some organization or agent must make a choice that will affect the behavior of some other people." They go on to imbue readers with six factors that influence our choices, hoping that with this knowledge, companies, governments and choice architects will guide people responsibly with small nudges. With Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein show that liberty and guidance can be the right combination to help people make smarter decisions.

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