2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Shortlist: Management

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we'll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we'll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Management category are:

• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass
• All In: How the Best Managers Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results by Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton, Free Press
• Judgment on the Front Line: How Smart Companies Win by Trusting Their People by Christopher DeRose & Noel Tichy, Portfolio
• The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change by Jason Jennings, Portfolio
• Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press

A common thread through this year's Management category shortlist involves 'the customer'—a focus on creating value, providing quality service (Uncommon Service), and helping employees be happy enough to follow through on those tasks. Instead of looking at a particular management style, the focus of how companies can better serve customers is comprehensive, filled with approaches to staff (The Advantage and All In), process (Judgment on the Front Line), adaption (The Reinventors), and more; all with one goal in mind: to serve. These are the books that seemed to best exemplify this approach.