I recently finished reading one of my last summer reading books. This book is called The Girl’s Guide to Being a Boss (without being a bitch) by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio. I found this book on amazon during a search to find management books for my work reading group. Since there were only two females in our group, we did not get to read this one together. However, I do think it would be beneficial for males to read this book as well because it would give them insight on what it’s “like” to be a female and some of the struggles that women deal with in the workplace.

I loved this book. In addition to being an easy read, the authors give tips/advice that you can actually use and they interview women (that are bosses at big companies) about what it is like to be in charge and the interviewees give tips and advice. The book is divided into ten different chapters which makes it easy to reference. Another benefit of the book is all of the references made in the book that you can look up online for additional sources.

I gave this book ***** (five stars) for its useful advice and because I enjoyed reading it.
The authors share their various experiences with handling difficult situations and decisions, they interviewed other women (there are probably ten to fifteen interviews in the book) so you get even more advice, they give you ideas of what you might be up against and how to avoid some situations and also ways of dealing with situations that have already happened.

Dealing with Difficult People by Roberta Cava is a book I read a few weeks ago as a required reading for our management team at the store I work at. We are required to read atleast 3 books together each year. We tend to focus on management books and every once in awhile we read a customer service book. I love the idea of reading a book with the group and discussing it. We are assigned a chapter or two at a time, we meet for about an hour each week and discuss what we got out of the book. It is a time for learning, but I usually feel like I learn more about my coworkers than I do about management, which is far more important to me. Discovering more about the people I spend 40+ hours a week with helps me relate to them and enjoy their company more. I learn far more about them during our book discussions than I do day-to-day.

The general consensus of this book was that we did not like it, to this end we discussed topics unrelated to the book more than issues related to it. The book repetitively uses feedback techniques to work through problems. Everything and every situation can be solved with feedback. Make sure you clarify that you understand what someone is saying to you and make sure they understand what you are saying. This summarizes up the book for the most part. The author gives examples of situations/people and implements feedback to get you through it. The examples are very textbook in that they are predictable and simple. The ‘solutions’ are unrealistic in that if you were to follow them whomever you were speaking with would ask you if you were a therapist and/or crazy. My biggest complaint about the book was the repetitiveness of it and the impractical suggestions of how to handle problems.
After having read this book, I do not feel like I am better equiped to handle difficult people, but I do actively use feeback in my daily life now. It is helpful.

As a group we gave the book a B (*** 3 stars). I personally gave it ** (2 stars).
However, I do recommend reading books together, be it with coworkers, friends, family, peers, etc because you are bound to get something out of the experience. But if you pick a mediocre book, you will just learn more about the views, feeling and opinions of the people you are reading it with- which can be invaluable (I say this in risk of sounding terribly sappy).

Almost instantly I thought of del.icio.us. This is a social bookmarking site that allows users to tag links under what ever they see fit, i.e. prgramming, anthropology, books, etc. You can than view your own tags or you can search what others have tagged under that catergory or what others have tagged the same link as. It really is a neat site.

The Mavens on del.icio.us are the people that tag a lot of different sites and tag a lot of sites under the same tags. Kerim over at Keywords and Savage Minds served as my Maven of choice when I first found del.icio.us over a year ago. He tagged a lot f things I was interested in and tagged often, so I subscribed to his account through RSS and followed him around until I learned my own way around. In fact, I emailed Kerim to ask him if he would mind that I use his account as an example and in true Maven fashion, he replied with an of course not and included a link to an article about Folksonomy and del.icio.us that he had written awhile ago. Mavens are here to help and want to help.

Why do Mavens hang out on Del.icio.us? I believe for some it’s accidental. Del.icio.us is a wonderful tool for keeping track of articles, sites, blogs that you are interested in. If you tag a lot for yourself in order to keep track of things, you may become a Maven. People tag links that they find interesting or useful. If your profile is public, than you are sharing all of the links you like with others.

But who are the Mavens on this site? Top Taggers makes it very easy to seek them out. This site tracks who is tagging the most under different tags. My boyfriend’s del.icio.us is in the top 25 taggers almost consistently on this site. He started tagging to keep track of the interesting things he came across on his 300+ blogs he reads everyday. He has quite a few people in his network that have linked to him as one of thier favorites. He didn’t know he was in the top taggers until a year after he was using his account. My account is ranked in the 6000s. Interestingly enough, Joshua, the creator of del.icio.us is listed as the 500th (or so) top tagger on this site.

I want to give a brief overview of the book so that my future posts about thoughts provoked by the book may be understood if you haven’t already read the book. I have found myself referencing the concepts and terms presented in this book quite frequently. I also found a few epidemics that I thought could be explained by the concepts. My summary is not going to be up to par with some of the others out there.

There are three rules of epidemics (Chapter 1 pg 15-29):

I. Law of the Few (explained further in Chapter 2 pg 30-88)-

a. Connectors: People that know a lot of people, a lot of people. Their social habits are natural to them and would exhaust the average person.

b. Mavens: People that endorse products, services, etc., but they do it for free and because they love it. These people know a lot about a lot, constantly search out new products, deals, etc and will actively share this information with anyone.

c. Salesman: Natural sellers that can sell you just about anything and have a natural way of persuading people.

II. The Stickiness Factor (explained further in Chapter 3 pg 89-132)-
The notion of a product, service, show, etc. being irresistible. Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues are used in the book as examples of children’s shows that are sticky.

III. Power of Context (explained further in Chapters 4 & 5 pg 133-192)-
“Epidemics” and how they are effected by the contexts of the situations. (This one is really hard for me to briefly explain.) A new craze or trend may catch on or thrive because of when, why, where it happens.

Gladwell sums up the book with two case studies and an afterward. I would like to add that this is the first book that I have ever voluntarily read the afterword. It really is that interesting. Moreover, it’s an easy read- I finished it in a weekend.

Overall I give this **** (4 stars). I am really looking forward to reading Gladwell’s other book Blink.