Words of WISDOM

Business books and the minds behind them

The Review

Tim Wade, director of Tim Wade International, is a Singapore-based Australian who travels the region delivering seminars and workshops on wealth, leadership and personal development (www.timwade.com). We gave him Roger Hamilton’s Your Life, Your Legacy to review:

Who doesn’t want to possess sufficient wealth to live enjoyably? But what are the secrets of this success? The fact is, as Hamilton explains, there are very different paths to wealth for different people – and the true secret of acquiring the wealth we desire lies in finding our own path. Then, “Once you begin following your path, luck happens as a result of the flow you grow.”

Why do some people succeed in acquiring great wealth, while others who appear to work just as hard do not succeed? According to Hamilton, the answer lies in our natural “Wealth Profile” – each person’s is important in determining which path they should follow.

Here you’ll ?nd insights into the lives of 38 “Wealth Creators”, with their paths to ultimate success (or, after deviating, failure) tracked. But, with your success secure, how to give back effectively? Understand how you can deliver value to others, without necessarily a need for any return.

THE INTERVIEW

Delighting in navigating logical patterns through modern life’s realities, Tim Harford is the author of The Undercover Economist and new release, The Logic of Life. LUKE CLARK asks him about his work and recommended reading

A self-proclaimed chronicler of the “economics of everyday life”, Harford brings a breezy, t-shirted persona to a field usually peopled by power-suits and PhDs. His column “The Undercover Economist” is published in both the FT and Slate, evidence of a dual command of economic theory and down-to-earth humour that sets him apart. As the New York Times wrote of his latest book, The Logic of Life, “[He] has a knack for explaining economic principles and problems in plain language and, even better, for making them fun.”

On a recent visit to Asia, Harford told CONNECT that writing an economics book on tough issues such as teen sex, juvenile delinquents and Vegas gamblers was a way of bringing his ideas to life. “With a book about people behaving rationally and responding to incentives, you risk sounding like you’re saying something really obvious. The best example I could think of for showing I was saying something quite interesting was of teenagers responding to incentives when they’re deciding what kind of sex they’re going to have. When you explain it like that, some are delighted and some are horrified. But everybody gets it.”

Readers will likely leave The Logic seeing patterns in situations that had previous appeared chaotic.

Describe a book that:

Every businessperson should read
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Fisher, Patton and Ury. It sounds like an airport potboiler, but it’s actually an amazing book about negotiations. There is a lot of secret economics in it. Economists see the world in terms of: “There is always some mutual gain somewhere”. But the authors think about negotiations by saying: “Ok, where is it? Let’s find it”.

Shifted your perspective on a topic
Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She builds up one tiny observation after another in tiny little steps – and suddenly you’ve got this amazing theory about how cities work.

Changed your life
E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis. It’s a great book, but the reason it changed my life is because I met David and said, “I wish I could be an author like you.” And he said, “Well why don’t you?” So I did. www.timharford.com

THE BIG THREE

New releases on leadership techniques and employee management

Leadership Experiences in Asia: Insight and Inspiration from 20 Innovators
by Steven J. DeKrey & David M. Messick

Learn important lessons from Asian and expatriate executives working in some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Analysing these lessons are the course leaders of an Asia-US Executive MBA programme. Does leadership differ from East to West, and which methods are best to employ in each?

The Invisible Employee: Realizing the Hidden Potential in Everyone
by Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton

For those who like parables – and businesspeople tend to – this follow-up to Managing with Carrots won’t disappoint. In illustrating how not to treat people who work for you, a rather long-winded fable is presented about two tribes, a master race and a servant class. The message: engage with and praise your employees.

Leadership Without Borders: Successful Strategies from World-Class Leaders
by Ed Cohen

The results of the author’s Global Leadership Survey (interviews with more than 50 global leaders), this title identifies the new global competencies and groups them into a cohesive set of guidelines for worldly management.

All published by Wiley