Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates In His Own Words (© 2012, Agate B2), edited by Lisa Rogak, assembles quotations by Gates on subjects ranging from Microsoft to competition to philanthropy to China to the future of technology. The Bill Gates who emerges from these three decades of public statements is driven, highly engaged, and highly attuned to the transformative power of computer technology. Gates’s company created software that revolutionized the way we live. Now, in the second act of his remarkable career, he has turned that same focus and passion to philanthropy, tackling large-scale challenges like eradicating malaria and reforming the U.S. public education system through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Impatient Optimist provides a look into the mind of this pivotal figure in recent American history.
Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World (© 2012, Jossey-Bass), by Dan Pallotta is a blueprint for a national leadership movement that will alter the way the public thinks about charity. He argues that the humanitarian sector needs is own civil rights movement, and lays out a plan for a new “Charity Defense Council” to lead it. He calls upon the Council to attack the problem on five fronts by:
- Establishing an anti-defamation league to proactively inform the media and make sure the community is being accurately represented;
- Launching an aggressive paid public media campaign to inform the public about how social change gets made;
- Enacting a national civil rights act for charity and soecial enterprise to give the nonprofit sector a statutory code custom-designed to help change the world;
- Establishing a legal defense fund to protect and fight for the civil and constitutional rights of the humanitarian community; and
- Organizing the sector on behalf of its own issues.
The Impact Equation (©2012, Penguin Group), by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, maintain that many organizations are using social media, but most are making a lot of noise and very little impact. The authors explain how to add more impact to a blog, tweet, video, or mainstream media ad campaign; predict if a blog post that reaches 1,000 people will have more impact than a newspaper feature seen by millions; move ideas through a platform so that they will be shared and discussed; and create a strong human element so that people know you really care about their participation.
With multiple qualified applicants competing for limited positions, it is now more important than ever to actively manage your career path and skill-set to be sure you have the ability to stand out from the crowd. Empower Your Inner Manager: Essential Skills, Self-Assessment and Effective Planning That Secure Successful Careers (©2012, iUniverse), by Ian R. Mackintosh, describes a systematic approach to take your professional future into your own hands, develop only essential management skills, and secure the position you desire. The book shows readers how to:
- Identify management positions;
- Honestly assess the skills needed to optimize candidacy;
- Target only the skills needed to improve;
- Develop a personalized plan to implement necessary improvements; and
- Reassess and revisit growth needs as they evolve in the future.
Create a Brand That Inspires: How to Sell, Organize and Sustain Internal Branding (©2012, AuthorHouse), by Wolfgang Giehl and F. Joseph LePla, lays out a framework for effective brand management that balances inside-out and outside-in brand strategies. The concept of integrated branding, introduced in the early 1990s, describest he process of aligning organizational structure, corporate culture, business strategy, employee actions, visual brand, and communications to create compelling customer (member) experiences. Through case studies, the book offers a set of practical and detailed rules for internal branding—actions to take to create this alignment.