Essential Managers: Achieving Excellence

If you're in search of career or managerial excellence in 72 short 'n' sweet pages or less, you'll love this visually snappy, pintsize guide to doing just that, from setting goals to developing the determination, energy, and skills required to achieve them. Here, you'll learn not only how to network effectively and make the most of your time, but how to master practical techniques for improving your memory, sharpening your mental agility, thinking creatively, and reducing stress. Lots of fun checklists and flow charts help you get a grip on such key building blocks to excellence as guided risk-taking, staying in top physical and mental shape, writing and speaking more fluently, prioritizing, and influencing others. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do you just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so damned cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy