Media bites

Making the human connection

Hug Your People

Jack Mitchell wants to bring back the human connection as part of doing business, which he feels has disappeared in many business practices ever since the world has gone virtual.

As the co-owner of three successful, family-owned clothing stores in the U.S., Mitchell reveals the “personalization with people” in his new book Hug Your People. The book is a blend of anecdotes from the author’s own life and a practical guidebook for building relationships. “Motivating the workforce and employee retention is a huge global challenge,” writes Mitchell, “and business leaders are eager for a detailed but simple blueprint that tells them how to assemble a happy and effective workforce that doesn’t desert them the minute the business across the street offers $10 more a week and an extra vacation day.”

Mitchell offers five core principles: nice, trust, pride, include, and recognize, to create an engaged workforce that stays together. When used in real-life leadership, Mitchell’s principles help businesses attract talent, lower marketing costs, maintain high gross margins, and build long-term revenue.

By Jack Mitchell. Published by Hyperion.

Megacommunities

Written by four vice-presidents from the global consultancy, Booze Allen Hamilton, Megacommunities explains how tri-sector leadership — business, government, and nonprofits — work together to reach solutions for today’s thorniest problems. The book is based on interviews with over 100 leaders from around the world — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Hank Paulsen, Melanne Verveer, Jody Williams, Kenneth Chenault and Richard Parsons and shows how a mega-community approach is countering devastating health issues, conserving the environment and natural resources, and helping communities to grow and compete. For example, in India, a mega community is battling HIV/AIDS by bringing together both public, private, and civil-sector organizations, including PepsiCo, the Gates Foundation, U.S. health care experts and UN development programs. The mega-community approach is also changing neighbourhoods like Harlem in the U.S. by including local small businesses, community groups and global companies.

By Mark Gerencser, Reginald Van Lee, Fernando Napolitano, Christopher Kelly. Published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Think Better

For more than 25 years, Tim Hurson has taught Fortune 500 organizations in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. how to use productive thinking. In Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking, Hurson teaches businesses and individuals how to think more productively using a six-step brainstorming process that results in new ideas, better strategies, and fresh solutions. Think Better shows how people avoid thinking productively because they are usually too distracted (“money mind”), act based on their primitive instincts (“gator brain”) or fall into well-worn patterns (“elephants tether”). Hurson describes the “the productive thinking process” as avoiding these patterns and generating useful, creative solutions. His six-step system used by businesses and individuals to solve “sticky” problems and overcome obstacles are: what’s going on, what’s success, what’s the question? generate answers, forge the solution, and align resources.

By Tim Hurson. Published by McGraw-Hill.

Top