Wear Clean Underwear: Business Wisdom from Mom

Columnist and consultant Rhonda Abrams believes today's most successful businesses are shifting from a patriarchal style of leadership to one in which characteristics such as growth, development, maturity, and nurturing--all traits traditionally associated more often with mothers than fathers--have moved to the forefront. Wear Clean Underwear: Using Mom's Fundamental Lessons to Run an Extraordinary Business is her light-hearted but utterly serious examination of this continuing trend, matching familiar motherly maxims like "How do you know you won't like it, if you've never tried it?" and "Don't get too big for your britches" with actual managerial practices at companies such as Nordstrom, Kinko's, and 3M. "Moms everywhere have developed an almost universal language to achieve their goals and instill common values," she writes.

Virtually everyone's mother at one time or another told them to "Clean your plate, children are starving in China" or whatever country happened to be in the news. Think about all the lessons in that one little line: don't waste your resources, understand that you are more fortunate than others, empathize with those who have less.

In this clever volume, Abrams shows how such wisdom can be both relevant and useful in today's business environment. --Howard Rothman