Saturday, October 27, 2007

Five best books: how to succeed in business

Cathie Black, author of the recently published Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life), named a five best list of books for how to succeed in business for Opinion Journal.

One title from her list:
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp (Simon & Schuster, 2003).

Choreographer Twyla Tharp's study of creativity isn't just engaging reading -- it's an antidote to writer's block, stalled projects set against hard deadlines or any life situation where you need a jolt of out-of-the-box thinking. The book, a sleeper success, has been embraced by many corporations for management study. Tharp has taken her message on the lecture circuit as well, with stops that have included Georgia Pacific, NASA and my own magazine group at Hearst, where she was inspiring as she talked about the correlations between choreography and real-life problem solving. "Action will wake you," she advises, because "once the blood gets moving, ideas will come." My favorite lines are about the importance of naïveté, which she sees as a great advantage. Tharp renames it "forever the child" or "the ability to not know." She writes: "You do not know that failure can hurt, or even that you can fail." Not a bad state of mind, in work and in life.
Read about Number One on Black's list.

--Marshal Zeringue