Business thinking between the covers

The Pocket Pitching Bible

by Paul Boross

CWG Publishing €11.99

Boross, the self-styled pitch doctor has written a very breezy guide to his subject, as one would expect. It is packed full of good advice in bite-sized chunks for those who want to make a stronger impact with their presentations.

Some of his best advice is on the use of slides, which he says should only be used when you cannot convey something in words alone.

You should create slides based on what you want the audience to feel and what you want them to do, not on what you want them to know.

Create half as many slides as you think you will have time to use and, when they are done, ask a colleague to look through them.

When they are finished, ask them what stories they feel the slides tell and, if you don’t like the response, thank them for the input and change the slides.

He also has an interesting take on handling questions. Rather than finishing the pitch and then opening things up to the floor for discussion, Boross suggests that questions should be taken before the end of the presentation and then a summary should be made.

This is an effective way of retaining control of the pitch and a way to end the presentation when you want and on the note that you want to end it on.

The New Depression

by Richard Duncan

Wiley €24

The nature of money changed the day the United States stopped backing the dollar with gold in 1968, says Duncan. From then on, constraints on credit creation were removed and, over the next four decades, total debt in the United States expanded fiftyfold to $50 trillion. While the dramatic increase in debt that followed created unprecedented growth, jobs and tax revenues, it was all a mirage. The debt could never be repaid and the 2008 collapse was inevitable.

Duncan devotes much of the book to an analysis of what went wrong in the US, but he also has some interesting suggestions as to how to put its economy right. The best option is to borrow and invest in a way that not only supports the economy but restructures it to restore its long-term viability.

He cites a radical example of what could be done. The US should announce it will be entirely fuelled by domestically generated solar energy by 2025, building solar panels in the Nevada Desert. The nationwide grid would be built to transmit the current and the automobile industry would be restructured to produce only electric-powered vehicles. The price of oil would collapse, allowing the government to impose a large tax on gasoline to finance a $100 billion a year investment programme in solar power.

There is an I in Team

by Mark de Rond

Harvard Business Review €24.99

De Rond looks at what top performance athletes and coaches know about high performance and at the performance of teams through the lens of sports.

Using interviews or first-hand accounts from elite sportspeople and their coaches, he explores the relationships between individuals and teams, and asks how we can harness the talent of individual performers into a cohesive, productive team.

The subjects include Michael Jordan, Sir Alex Ferguson, Magic Johnson, Joe Di Maggio, Michael Phelps, Adrian Moorhouse, Seve Ballesteros and Brian Clough.

De Rond challenges common assumptions about teams. Where managers often go wrong, he says, is that they focus on what matters to the organisation, assuming the organisation matters to individuals. They also focus exclusively on the importance of cooperation without considering the relevance of competition within teams.

Team leaders need to understand the idiosyncrasies, ambitions and anxieties of those in their charge.

Only by knowing and playing to these will a team ever fulfil its potential. People do what they do for their own reasons and sometimes these reasons include the organisation, while sometimes they do not, he concludes.