Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert is the founder and former president of 800-CEO-READ. His Jack Covert Selects column grew out of a “new releases” column he ran in the local paper’s business pages, and blossomed into a monthly review series that ran in business journals and newspapers across the country. As the company grew, other members of the management and marketing team began writing reviews for the series, but Jack continued to contribute his own voice until his retirement in 2014. We kept the series—now weekly—alive under his name for another year, and transformed it into our current Editor’s Choice series at the beginning of 2016.
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - The Breakthrough Imperative
By 800-CEO-READ
The Breakthrough Imperative: How the Best Managers Get Outstanding Results by Mark Gottfredson and Steve Schaubert, Collins, 367pages, $26. 95, Hardcover, March 2008, ISBN 9780061358142 Bain & Company have produced some of the best books coming out of consulting industry over the last decade. Chris Zook's trilogy--Profit from the Core, Beyond the Core, and Unstoppable--is a treatise on the benefits of strategic focus in any organization.
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Jack Covert Selects - Africa Rising
By 800-CEO-READ
Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think by Vijay Mahajan, Wharton School Publishing, 288 pages, $29. 99, Hardcover, September 2008, ISBN 9780132339421 We tend to get an overly negative picture of Africa from its coverage in the press and on the silver screen, with stories focused on war, poverty, disease and corruption. This book awakens its reader to the great potential hidden by--and sometimes resulting from--the many challenges Africa faces, challenges innovative entrepreneurs are quietly addressing.
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Jack Covert Selects - The Levity Effect
By 800-CEO-READ
The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher, John Wiley & Sons, 229 pages, $22. 95, Hardcover, March 2008, ISBN 9780470195888 Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher have written a book whose tone perfectly matches its subject--levity. It isn't a word you often hear when discussing business strengths, but The Levity Effect makes a compelling and often hilarious case for why fun should be more common in the workplace.
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Jack Covert Selects - Sway
By 800-CEO-READ
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, Doubleday Business, 206 Pages, $21. 95, Hardcover, June 2008, ISBN 9780385524384 Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan. It's the 1984 NBA draft and the Portland Trail Blazers choose a promising 7-footer over the future face of basketball.
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Jack Covert Selects - How to Be Useful
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How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work by Megan Hustad, Houghton Mifflin Company, 232 pages, $19. 95, Hardcover, May 2008, ISBN 9780618713509 Basic common sense and courtesy sometimes seem to be lacking in today's organizations. So what if someone had read (and re-read) all the important "success literature" of the past 100 years, put it together in one resource, and then modernized it for the contemporary business world?
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Jack Covert Selects - Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic
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Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the World's Most Admired Service Organizations by Leonard L Berry and Kent D. Seltman, McGraw-Hill, 276 pages, $27. 95, Hardcover, June 2008, ISBN 9780071590730 Over a century ago, a family of doctors in a small Minnesotan town formed an organization that has gone on to touch countless lives.
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Jack Covert Selects - Good Is Not Enough
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Good Is Not Enough: And Other Unwritten Rules for Minority Professionals by Keith R. Wyche with Sonia Alleyne, Portfolio, 242 pages, $24. 95, Hardcover, July 2008, ISBN 9781591842101 It's no secret that the leaders of America's largest corporations do not reflect the makeup of our country's population.
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Jack Covert Selects - Predictably Irrational
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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, Harper, 280 pages, $25. 95, Hardcover, February 2008, ISBN 9780061353239 We've all been there--the skin-to-strip adhesive is beginning to give, and it's clearly time to give the Band-Aid the ol' yank. That truism from mom--"fast and easy"--rings true, but does it really?
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Summer Reading From the Wall Street Journal
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Carol Hymowitz in her In The Lead column for The Wall Street Journal recommends summer reading. Among the business titles you will find: John Kotter change fable Our Iceberg Is Melting (John has a new book coming in September, more on that soon). A.
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I Can't Remember The Last Time...
By 800-CEO-READ
Jack and I have been pretty quiet on the blog over the last year. The process of writing a book took more time than I ever imagined. I have a completely new appreciation for the authors who have come before me.
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