Books About Business, and the CEOs Who Love Them

Joline Godfrey's reasons for recommending 'The Executive's Compass: Business and the Good Society.'

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A recent article in Business Insurance offered advice on combating the negative impact of depression in the workplace. Among the tips: "Pay depressed people less in salary until they have proved they have emerged from their depressed state and are ready to resume full work duties." Or try this: "Reduce the level of participation the depressed person has with mainstream job personnel."

Feel any better?

Books About Business, and the CEOs Who Love Them

CEO: Joline Godfrey, founder of An Income of Her Own, a nonprofit that exposes teen women to business

Book: The Executive's Compass: Business and the Good Society, by James O'Toole (Oxford University Press, 1993, $19.95)

"Ever since I was a little girl growing up in a traditional family business, I've been curious about the intersection between life and work. This small book does a better job than any I've read at explaining how you can integrate your personal values into your organization and systematize them so that you don't have to depend on personal charisma to communicate them to each individual as the organization grows.

"But this is also a book about reconciling tensions on a larger scale -- for example, between business and society. I don't know any CEO or company owner who isn't enormously frustrated at the increased intervention of outside forces in business -- through government regulation especially. While O'Toole doesn't offer any simple solutions, he does provide a context for understanding how those tensions can coexist and how society can benefit in the process. This book may never attract enormous numbers of readers, but it is being read by some of the country's top CEOs, which should tell us something about the timeliness of its themes."