80% accounting-free!That's the promise of the business reporting model outlined in Performance-Based Reporting: New Management Tools for Unpredictable Times. After studying over 1,500 businesses, the authors concluded that the accounting model in use now - which is close to 500 years old - doesn't offer an accurate picture of a company's health. They propose a new set of performance-based indicators that they claim produces information that is more transparent, reliable and relevant that what the current model offers. At the very least, their innovative approach should get you thinking critically about the way businesses report now.
Price: $65.
John Wiley & Sons
www.wiley.com
(800) 762-2974
Controlling the flow
Cost control is all about the Benjamins (even if you don't put it quite that way): Rounding them up, making sure they don't get away, and ensuring that no one wastes them. If you're looking for help in that department, consider IOMA's Complete Guide to Cost Control Best Practices, a newly updated loose-leaf service that offers the current best practices; benchmark studies; over 700 pages of cost-cutting techniques; 50 detailed worksheets, charts, tables and checklists; and a monthly e-mail update of new ideas. Plus, IOMA will ship you annual supplements on an approval basis.
Price: $334.95.
Institute of Management and Administration
www.ioma.com
(800) 401-5937 ext. 2
The new diversity
"Diversity" is a diverse subject: Everyone defines it differently, and tries to achieve it in different ways - but what most people can agree on is that they're not making much headway. R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr.'s Building on the Promise of Diversity suggests that that may be because they're not thinking or going about it the right way.
Business and diversity management consultant Roosevelt says it's not about race and gender, harmony, reducing racial tension, or treating everyone the same. What it is about is getting disparate groups of people to work together with a common purpose to achieve a goal. His "Strategic Diversity Management" method promises to help companies get beyond the standard narrow thinking, and to use that broader understanding to fulfill diversity's potential.
Price: $27.95.
Amacom
www.amacombooks.org
(212) 903-8316
'Financial Intelligence'
On any given subject, it's safe to say that most people don't know what they're talking about. That goes double for finance and accounting, a subject that leaves many nonprofessionals trembling. Take pity, and give them a copy of Financial Intelligence: A Manager's Guide to Understanding What the Numbers Really Mean.
Written for non-financial executives, this accessible, jargon-free book teaches the basics of financial measurement, the art of finance, the mechanics of analysis, and much more, so that when you present them with the results of your hard work, they don't get that deer-in-the-headlights look.
Price: $24.95.
Harvard Business School Press
harvardbusinessonline.org
The soul market
If you put your heart and soul into a business, and then sell it, do you get to keep your soul? Similarly, if you buy someone else's business, do you get their soul? We suspect not, because we know how easy it is to sell your soul, and how hard it is to sell or buy a business.
Fortunately, Nolo has published The Complete Guide to Selling a Business and The Complete Guide to Buying a Business, both by Fred S. Steingold. Both are plain-English guides to the process, with all the details you might need on negotiating, pricing, legal and tax considerations, and more, and each book comes with a CD-ROM containing forms and legal documents.
Even if you're not considering buying or selling a firm - and if you aren't, you probably soon will be, as Baby Boom generation partners start looking to retire - the books are chock full of information that can make you more useful to your small business clients. Next up: The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Souls.
Price: Selling - $24.99;
Buying - $24.99.
Nolo
www.nolo.com
(510) 549-1976
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