If finches can adapt to their changing environment, so can workers at all levels, according to Nacie Carson’s The Finch Effect, a career guide that takes its title and premise from Charles Darwin’s work on evolution and his theory of "survival of the fittest." Carson encourages readers to accept the post-recession economic environment and thrive in it rather than wait for a return to "normal" while ignoring the portents of career extinction. Applying Darwin’s theory to the professional world, Carson offers a set of strategies for taking charge of one’s own career design, self-branding, and skills development—the essential elements that propel the Fittest to the top of the work food chain. According to Carson: "The Finch Effect" suggests that people who are willing to adapt to changes in the career marketplace are the "Fittest," and therefore most likely to succeed. The concept is based on the work of Charles Darwin, known for his theory of evolution and book On the Origin of Species. Darwin observed that finches in the Galapagos Islands adapted within only a few generations to changes in their food sources. He credited the finches’ very survival to their ability to change. While it was once expected that employees would spend their entire lives working their way up the nine-to-five corporate ladder, economic forces have forced companies to turn to part-time and contract workers. Rather than wait for the traditional job market to return to "normal" the Fittest are adapting to the new paradigm. This is called "the gig mindset." Individuals should market themselves by creating an "adaptive professional brand" (APB). This is a tool that elucidates people’s skills, expertise, and the other factors that set job candidates apart from their competition. The Fittest are the ones who take charge of their careers and recognize that professional power and stability comes from individuals, not the companies that employ them. Even the very best, highly differentiated candidates do not get noticed without some effort. Each job seeker should create a "tagline" that encapsulates his or her brand in a single, short phrase. Job seekers should create two-minute "elevator" pitches as well as 15-minute versions that answer the questions "What is your story?" and "Why you?" and adapt these messages for use on social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. People should be careful to "clean up" personal posts and photographs that may not be appropriate for the eyes of prospective hiring managers and clients. People can — and should — act as entrepreneurs whether they are working for themselves or a company. This means approaching work with a spirit of ownership and taking initiative, rather than simply taking direction from others. To download three free summaries, please visit our site. Related book summaries in the BBS library: Disaster Proof Your Career, Career Contentment, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life

On September 26th, EBSCO Publishing’s Jerry Eonta will be joining Saul Carliner, author of Informal Learning Basics, to present a webinar on informal learning. The webinar will be hosted by the Human Capital Institute. Informal learning can represent as much as 70 percent of workplace learning. During this webinar, the presenters will seek to answer the following questions: What is informal learning? What forms can it take? When can it make a difference in workplace performance and when might it actually detract from it? Should you divert resources from formal training to facilitate it?  And how do you evaluate it? To participate in the webinar, just click the link below and register. http://www.hci.org/lib/informal-learning-basics

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) received a prestigious Learning In Practice Award from Chief Learning Officer magazine. The company was awarded the Bronze Excellence in Content Award for its accomplishments in creating superior learning content. This is the second year in a row that EBSCO has received this recognition. The 2013 Learning In Practice Awards were announced at special awards ceremonies during the Fall 2013 Chief Learning Officer Symposium in Palm Springs, Calif., which attracted more than 300 top corporate learning executives from around the world to discuss long-term learning strategies for creating and sustaining high performance. Tad Goltra, vice president of product management, says "We are honored with this recognition as a winner in the Excellence in Content category. EBSCO strives to support organizational effectiveness by providing best practices content from industry thought leaders, including journal articles, eBooks, book summaries, and videos. When mapped to customers’ key competencies, we provide a unique, on-demand solution that supports and sustains formal and informal learning programs." "The Learning In Practice Awards were established to recognize transformational and visionary leaders in enterprise education," said Norm Kamikow, president and editor-in-chief of the Human Capital Media Group. "More than 200 top learning executives and solution providers were nominated by their peers in 15 categories. These finalists are the industry leaders who truly champion innovation and transform it into learning and value for their organizations." To learn more, please visit www.ebscohost.com/newsroom.

In The New Workforce Challenge, Andrés Hatum aims to help companies meet the challenge of absorbing the technologically savvy millennial generation into the workforce at the very time that organizations are changing faster than ever before in response to the turbulence they face worldwide. Hatum examines how firms are organizing for the future, the impact of the new organizational forms on the workplace, and the practices that firms are putting into place to attract, develop, and retain the new generation of workers. Hatum believes that the workplace and workforce need to be analyzed together in order to present the big picture. By shedding light on recent changes that organizations have gone through and likely changes to come in the future, companies can better understand how to manage the new workforce. In his book, Hatum informs readers that: Successful firms are adaptable and innovative; they combine changes in structure, such as decentralization, delayering, and project forms of organizing; processes, such as horizontal communication, investments in information technology, and new human resource (HR) practices; and firm boundaries, such as downscoping, outsourcing, and greater use of strategic alliances. Agile and virtual firms will shape the marketplace and at the same time will influence and be influenced by the new workforce. Heterogeneity and diversity characterize the new workforce and have replaced the previously homogeneous workforce. Millennials, the generation born between 1979 and 1997, value work-life integration and a flexible workplace. There are four main values that drive Millennials: multitasking, desire to integrate work and personal life, concern for society and the environment, and access to technology. Companies’ are relying less on their brands to attract and retain employees and more on their Employee Value Propositions (EVPs), which consist of the features that allow companies to promote themselves outwardly and generate loyalty internally. Millennial learning characteristics can be described with the acronym EPIC, which stands for: Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, and Connected. To download three free summaries, please visit our site. Related book summaries in the BBS library: Keeping the Millennials, Managing the Millennials, The Trophy Kids Grow Up

Change is endemic in the modern corporate setting, and employees who are continually learning are better equipped to evolve with this change. In Managers as Mentors, Chip R. Bell and Marshall Goldsmith present a mentoring guide that assists managers in taking on coaching roles to enhance the skills and abilities of associates. The authors emphasize that protégés are meant to develop into confident individuals who assume greater roles, and that the mentor/protégé connection is a partnership in which both parties gain valuable insights throughout the process. Managers as Mentors explores the full range of mentoring, from creating empathy, sharing knowledge, and effective listening to stimulating curiosity, assessing performance, and letting the protégé independently exercise newly-mastered skills. According to the authors: The best mentors recognize that their relationships are based on mutual interests, interdependence, and respect. The communication between mentor and protégé must be honest, straightforward, and open. Protégés learn best when they are tutored in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. Some may bring anxiety to the relationship, and this is a learning barrier because it suppresses risk taking. The mentor must overcome this by building rapport to a level where the protégé is willing to take rational risks. A motivated protégé is one who will learn. Learners are better prepared psychologically if they accept the "why" of learning before they hear the "what" and the "how." Communication without judgment is essential to mentoring. Mentors should express themselves to protégés in terms of acceptance and affirmation in order to eliminate protégé defensiveness and encourage freer expression. Mentors must remember that discussions are opportunities to augment their learning, not lecture. Good mentors yield the pulpit as much as possible to allow their protégés to think for themselves. Listening is essential to mentoring. Mentors should give undivided attention to their protégés, deny distractions, and make their protégés the absolute focus of their energies. This fosters greater understanding by ensuring that communication between the two parties becomes the foundation of intellectual linkage. A certain level of dependency is unavoidable in the mentor/protégé relationship, but it can be harmful if permitted to become too influential. To avoid hindering growth and development, alternative routes to learning must be explored. To download three free summaries, please visit our site. Related book summaries in the BBS library: Monday Morning Leadership, Power Mentoring, The Complete Guide to Mentoring  

In an increasingly complex world, decision making has become a Herculean task for today’s leaders. There is a growing tendency for leaders to prolong and even avoid making hard decisions. This lack of decisiveness is problematic because it translates into an absence of action and makes a leader ineffective. In The Proactive Leader, David De Cremer examines this trend from a behavioral perspective. He explains both what spurs people to make decisions and what prevents them from taking action, or procrastinating. This book will assist leaders in understanding their own decision-making processes and help them make decisions that are more in line with their values. To download three free summaries, please visit our site. Related book summaries in the BBS library: Make Up Your Mind, Think Fast!, The Deciding Factor

Social media has become a mainstream marketing tool must for any business that wants to succeed in today’s competitive environment. Pinterest, a social media tool centered on creating and sharing collections of digital images by "pinning" them to digital bulletin boards, is rapidly joining Facebook and Twitter as an essential avenue for reaching and appealing to customers. In Pinfluence, social media guru, blogger, and Pinterest expert Beth Hayden provides a step-by-step method for business professionals to engage customers and grow their businesses by leveraging the power of Pinterest. According to Hayden: For an ever-increasing group of savvy business owners, Pinterest is a must-have component of their marketing strategies. Pinterest is easy to use, has emotional appeal, and is a great way to drive traffic to a business’s website and increase sales. The number of businesses that are using Pinterest is increasing rapidly. Pinterest should not be used "standalone," without strategic intent. For the best results, Pinterest must be strategically positioned within a broader marketing strategy and work in an integrated way with other social media channels to appeal to defined target audiences. Combining images and words has the most impact. Pinterest provides both. Descriptions that accompany pins can be as important as the images themselves, capturing the viewer’s attention and creating a personal connection. Descriptions provide the opportunity to inject honesty and humor, which can help build trust and deepen relationships. Pinterest is all about creating connections. Growing a following is just as important as choosing what content to pin to the boards. Pinterest has several built-in connection tools for drawing in new followers. All efforts to build a following should be centered on attracting the pre-defined ideal client. Pinterest pins must add value for followers, not sell to them. While Pinterest as a business tool is intended to drive increased profits, it should be implemented in a way that brings value to customers, either in terms of solving a problem or entertaining them. It should not be used to sell them something. To download three free summaries, please visit our site. Related book summaries in the BBS library: Likeable Social Media, Going Social, Engagement Marketing

Politics exist in organizations of all sizes. This is because people by their very nature are political animals that constantly engage in power-seeking behavior. When not fully understood, the politics at play in professional relationships can prevent a person from achieving success. In The Office Politics Handbook, author and political scientist Jack Godwin, PhD, examines the role power and politics play in all social relationships. Through an exploration of political theory and examples of eight different politically powerful archetypes, Godwin offers readers tools to gain more power in their lives and greater participation in decision making on personal and professional scales. Despite the fact that politics are an intrinsic part of human nature, most people do not know how to navigate the politics of their personal and professional relationships. It is only when people learn the true nature of interpersonal politics, or "micropolitics," that they can acquire more power and success in their lives. Godwin offers the following insights on micropolitics: People are political animals, therefore politics exist anywhere people are present. Politics is about power. Politics exist in any social relationship that facilitates the control of one human over another. Politics is a social affair rooted in human nature. Those who master micropolitics, or politics on the most basic and interpersonal level, do so by pushing their sense of objectivity outward into social space, and downward into their primitive human nature. The "political mystique" is composed of the acquisition of power and the distribution of power. To better understand how power is acquisitioned and distributed, it is necessary to break micropolitics into its most basic components: political structures, power instruments, and complex systems. In order for people to master micropolitics, they must first journey inward. For people to be able to gain more power in their personal and professional relationships, they must first get in touch with their inner political animals. By putting forth a political persona, people protect themselves and make better strategic decisions. Political personas are masks, or the strategic way people present themselves to the world that can be used to conceal a person’s vulnerabilities, such as their motives and interests. By mastering the eight "Gods of micropolitics" a person can learn how to win people over in any personal or professional situation. The "Gods of micropolitics" are archetypes that represent the different ways people can use power and protect themselves against an adversary. Everyone must assign themselves their own roles in life. Many people are assigned roles in life that have little significance. People must act on the foundation of freedom that is accessible to all humans to assign their own roles in life and work humbly toward fulfilling this goal. To download three free summaries, please visit our site. Related book summaries in the BBS library: The Drama-Free Office, The Blame Game, Outsiders on the Inside

We are proud to announce that Business Book Summaries is now the exclusive provider of Harvard Business School book summaries. The Harvard Business School is one of the most respected business schools in the world, and Harvard Business School Publishing produces some of the most influential business books today. Harvard summaries are now available to full subscribers. Going forward, we will continually add summaries of new and classic Harvard titles to our catalogue. To see our current list of Harvard titles, just click here!

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog post, executive coach Harrison Monarth argues that removing job titles at a company doesn’t really make a difference when it comes to organizational power structures. Monarth points to research that suggests "people naturally strive to attain higher status in the form of admiration and respect from peers and those perceived to be more powerful … because status is as important to us as breathing." For companies striving to eliminate or reduce their organizational hierarchies, this would seem to present a dilemma. On the one hand, employees in a "flat" organizational structure have no real authority over others in the company, which has the benefit of breaking down silos, increasing collaboration, and speeding up decision making. On the other hand, if we are psychologically predisposed to creating hierarchies on our own, it is likely that these benefits may not be realized to the extent hoped for by companies. While there probably isn’t a clear solution to this problem, one way companies can realize more benefits from a "flatter" organization is by teaching employees how to influence and lead without formal authority. Doing so would better prepare employees to work in an environment with less structure and possibly prevent an organic or unofficial hierarchy from forming. Some great books on the subject include Results without Authority, Flat Army, and The Titleless Leader.