Pegasus Book Club

This book is about assholes and fighting them. The back cover summarizes the content of book very nicely: The definitive guide to working with—and surviving—Bullies, Creeps, Jerks, Tyrants, Tormentors, Despots, Back stabbers, Egomaniacs, and all the other assholes who do their best to destroy you at work.

In this book Robert Sutton, a professor of Management Science at the Stanford University expands on his article More Trouble than They’re Worth that appeared in the February 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review. This book explains why our workplaces have many nasty people, why they survive and thrive and how they ruin other people’s life and career. The author argues that assholes—those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful—poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. Sutton goes on to explain how to build a civilized workplace and surviving one that is not.

The book contains an introduction, seven chapters, additional reading, acknowledgments and an index. In the introduction, the author explains how he stumbled on the ‘No asshole rule’ and how it got published in HBR and how it became a book.

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In this book Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most successful executive coaches of our times tells us how successful people become even more successful. He enumerates 21 habits that could hinder one’s success, how to identify these dysfunctions and how to get rid of them.

Many people, at the start of their careers have enjoyed tremendous growth with double and triple promotions fast track career paths and have moved up the corporate leader very fast only to stumble after a certain point in their growth. However hard they try, they seem anchored to that position. They can never hope to reach the top and most of them never will. But they are the very same people who have been earmarked for the top slots. Why some people fail to reach the top? What stands between these people and the top position? This book provides the answers to the above questions and explains how to get rid of the bad habits and handicaps that pull you down and prevent you from moving forward.

The book contains 4 sections, an appendix and an index. The first section—The Trouble with Success—discusses how our previous success often prevents us from achieving more success. It contains three chapters: You are Here, Enough about You, and The Success Delusion (why we resist change). This section acts as an introduction to the book and explains whom the book is for, how the book is organized and how to use this book. It introduces a few habits that inhibit success with real world examples.

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Made to Stick explains why some ideas survive and others stick. This book is inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book—The Tipping Point. In this book, the Heath brothers—Chip Heath, a professor at Stanford’s business school and Dan Heath, a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication.

Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of “stickiness”—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring.

What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles—Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions and Stories. Each principle is explained and illustrated with stories, real life anecdotes and other examples.

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The Go Point is a book about decision-making. It is about knowing what to do and when to do it when it’s time to decide. In this book, Michael Useem, the Wiliam and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and the director of its Center for Leadership and Change Management, has explained and illustrated how to make the right decisions at the right time.

The ‘Go Point’ is the moment of truth; it is the moment when you have to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; it’s the time to get off the fence. The history of mankind is full of stories where people have faced the ‘Go Points’ and their decisions have had dramatic consequences—both good and bad. Professor Useem uses a select set of historical events to demonstrate the decision making process, how the decisions were made, why some decisions were right and some were wrong. The beauty of the book is the author’s ability to transport the readers to the scene of action and make them feel part of the decision making process.

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