As graduation season draws near, many college seniors are anxious about what awaits them in the “real world” of work. Employees, even those who’ve been working for years, wonder how they may move up the corporate ladder. Even C-suite executives welcome learnings on how to do business better.
Anvil Publishing offers three books on business that share leadership, success, and career growth tips.
Dr. Elfren S. Cruz and Dr. Benito L. Teehankee’s A Kind (of) Business: 50 Essays on Business, Leadership, and Society addresses a broad range of issues including income inequality, business ethics, and corporate responsibility in an engaging, easy-to-understand manner that feels like a couple of friends chatting over a cup of coffee. The lessons they share can help business owners and managers build a business founded on inclusivity and sustainability.
In one of his essays, Cruz posits that technology increases income inequality and, like globalization, it is “adversely affecting the lives of many people.” He quotes British physicist Stephen Hawking as having said that “great technological advances can leave most people ‘miserably poor.’”
Cruz also points to the “rise of populism and the electoral victory of populists like Trump and the Brexit vote could partly be attributed to the people’s anger over the loss of jobs due to technology.” For example, Amazon is automating some of its delivery by using drones, and its picking and packing process by using robots – these mean the loss of jobs for humans.
Cruz shares an interesting nugget of wisdom on reading; in his preface, he writes: “We hope the essays in this collection will engage your mind and provoke you into thinking, and even writing your own. A careful reader will always have something to add to a text they have read, whether mentally, orally, or in writing. In this sense, a piece of writing is never complete, but part of a continuing conversation with the reader.”
Both authors also tackle topics such as women and reforms in governance, disruption, the fourth industrial revolution, and the rise of artificial intelligence. This is an excellent collection to stimulate thought, and its use as a textbook is recommended.
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In The Business of Banking: Structure and Profitability, Risks and Controls, Deogracias N. Vistan offers a textbook for higher education with case studies that provide examples to help students and readers better understand the text.
The book is written from a banker’s perspective on banking as a profession, industry, and as a business. Among the topics it tackles are liquidity, interest rates, foreign exchange, credit line and loan process, audit and compliance, and the future of banking in the Philippines.
It is written in language that is easy to understand, and its structure is ideal for teaching, as the text is formatted as bullet points or lists with definitions and explanations of terms and concepts.
One item that would be of value to many, including journalists, is a timeline of the banking industry from 1970 to 2019, with a list of events by decade and a pertinent discussion.
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For those looking to grow or jump-start their career, Wen-Szu Lin’s Deliver: The Untaught Lessons to Growth Hack Your Career shares simple techniques that anyone may use to expand their career as an individual contributor, collaborator, and leader.
Lin, who is an executive at Uber Technologies, draws on his experiences of success and failure over the years to provide “a thoughtful and practical primer for everyone venturing into the corporate world for the first time and professionals steeling themselves for the next big step in their career.”
In Part 1, “How to be a Great Individual Performer,” Lin suggests studying how people are motivated, and makes use of, and goes beyond, Maslow’s pyramid to dissect how to use the hierarchy of needs in the workplace.
In Part 2, “How to be a Great Collaborator,” Lin shows how the skill of building and managing relationships leads to being a great manager.
In Part 3, “How to be a Great Leader,” he advises executives and managers to set direction, develop talent, and cultivate a work culture guided by values.
He adds that it is important that leaders walk their talk: “As leaders, growing and shaping the corporate culture is perhaps one of the most important responsibilities that will help the organization succeed or fail. Culture is shaped around the values that leadership has identified, and it grows or shrinks based on how we incorporate those values into our actions and decisions.
“We lead by example to uphold those values. When there are conflicting values, we partner with our teams to navigate them, as this will help reinforce the values even more.”
This is sound advice, not only for business but also for the government.
For comments and feedback, you may reach the author on Facebook and Twitter: @DrJennyO
From Anvil Publishing (anvilpublishing.com):
A Kind (of) Business: 50 Essays on Business, Leadership, and Society
By Dr. Elfren S. Cruz and Dr. Benito L. Teehankee
174 pages / P295.00
The Business of Banking: Structure and Profitability, Risks and Controls
By Deogracias N. Vistan
219 pages / P450.00
Deliver: The Untaught Lessons to Growth Hack Your Career
By Wen-Szu Lin
236 pages / P395.00