There is something about the beginning of summer that sets many of us on a course of self-improvement. Perhaps it’s the longer evenings that prompt us to contemplate new possibilities, or it could just be the next logical step after a spring-cleaning session. Whatever the reason, the temptation to take up a new hobby, learn another language, get fit, or generally improve oneself is hard to resist.

The trouble is, dedicating one evening every week to a training course can seem a prohibitively long-term commitment, while addressing workplace issues such as "why am I not achieving more?" can be rather daunting on your own.

Which is where the self-development book comes in. Whether it’s a nutritionist offering the diet to end all diets, a management guru promising to make your business a success, or a faith healer claiming to increase a football team’s chances in the cup final, bookshelves around the world are bursting at the seams with Guides to… and …Made Easy. It seems that whatever you want to achieve can be found on the pages of a book, whether it’s leadership skills via the One Minute Manager, or stress-release via the Little Book of Calm.

The question is, do they work? Can a book offer the solutions to your problems? And do you learn anything new once you’ve read one or two management/self-development books, or are they all much the same substance in different packaging?

Taking the view that the proof of the pudding is very much in the eating, the editorial team at Accounting Technician decided to find out whether a book really can change your life. Each of us agreed to live by the advice of a selected tome for a whole week, both in and out of work.

Those of us who had not been promoted, set up international conglomerates or moved to California by the end of the week agreed to meet and discuss just how far our self-help books had lived up to their promises.

Moses on Leadership

Richard Koch, Capstone Publishing

Subtitled "Or why everyone is a leader", Moses on Leadership is business guru Richard Koch’s take on successful management. The idea is that just as Moses managed to convince the Israelites to trust and follow him despite immense problems (the Red Sea to cross; no food; lack of direction; a 40-year wait while Moses made up his mind, and so on), so managers can rally their employees and motivate them even when times are tough.

And it’s not just managers who can benefit. Teachers, team leaders and anyone who manages their own time can benefit from Moses’ approach. The key, he says, is to find a cause.

Of course this is where Moses had one up on most of us. "Liberating people from slavery" is a great cause, and one that is likely to attract a lot of support, particularly from those who happen to be enslaved at the time. "Finding food for the starving’ is also a pretty good cause, as is "reaching the Promised Land". Unfortunately, "Improving efficiency" is less of a crowd pleaser and "boosting profit margins" is only slightly better.

But a cause needs only one or two supporters to become a movement. Has your head of department fallen out of favour with some key people? Align yourself with either the head or with the key people, convince them that your cause will defeat the rival, and they will soon be your biggest supporters. Apparently.

It’s then a small step to staging a coup, building an army, and implementing your strategy, assuming, of course, that you have one.

And that is the fundamental problem with this book. Although it purports to be a leadership guide for everyone, it is in reality a tool for managers who wish to change the direction of their company and land themselves the chief executive’s job.

Of course, it may also offer some tips for bookkeepers who intend to shake up their finance department and achieve controller status, but it is not much use for those who wish simply to improve their leadership abilities.

Nevertheless, this small problem was not going to deter me from living by the book’s advice and reviewing its effects. I just had to find a cause.

Having considered the usual suspects (a better product, more revenue, better customer service), I concluded that the Accounting Technician team are a friendly, motivated and hard-working bunch. Convincing them to follow my lead to improve, for example, efficiency, would not be worthwhile when efficiency is something they’re rather good at already.

And so I turned to fitness. After all, we are forever being told that a healthy body means a healthy mind, and being fit can only be good for work. In any case, Cathy, AT editorial assistant, had already embarked on a Marathon training programme, so I had one supporter from the start.

In fact, Ruth, AT assistant editor, turned out to be an easy convert; a member of the gym, she was already au fait with treadmills, dumbbells and stairclimbers. Which only left me.

So I began to climb my own Mount Sinai - in this case the Total Body Conditioning class at the local gym. I even came up with a few commandments (courtesy of Alison, the fitness instructor). Thou shalt exercise three times a week; thou shalt try strengthening exercises as well as aerobics and thou shalt drink lots of water. Armed with these, I returned to the AT offices to begin the Moses process.

It worked, to a point. Ruth and I still attend, not just Total Body Conditioning, but also classes entitled FAB (zap the bits you love to hate) and Bodymax (lots of weights). Cathy, meanwhile, is ploughing through her required 10 bananas a day, and goes for 15 mile runs at the weekend.

But my cause has not caused a revolution. We may be happier, healthier, and less prone to coughs and colds, but I have not lead the team into the land of milk and honey. Revolutions, however, don’t always achieve their aims. Dramatic changes can alienate and demotivate staff. And, after all, if it ain’t broke, why try and fix it? GT

Verdict: Anyone considering a management buy-out will find this book interesting. But if it’s a hands-on practical management book you’re after, look elsewhere. Rating: 5/10

NLP and the New Manager

Ian McDermott and Ian Shircore, Orion business toolkit

When your boss asks you what’s on your desk, do you reply airily "Oh just a few things," or do you scratch your head and respond "five sheets of white A4 paper, blank, probably about 70gsm"? And what response does this trigger? Does your boss regularly walk away murmuring platitudes when you are in the middle of a sentence, or do your colleagues ask the same question at half-hourly intervals in the vain hope that they’ll actually get some information.

Such personal idiosyncrasies are more than minor quirks. At worst, they can cause the kind of misunderstandings that seriously damage your company and your career. Neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP to those in the know, is the art of tailoring your responses to different people in order to improve both your own and their performance. Great idea isn’t it?

Unfortunately, while robust egocentrics will enjoy wallowing in self-analysis, insecure souls are likely to react badly at being presented with a book on how to be more sensitive.

Those of us scarred for life by being given 0 marks for lifeskills at primary school fall into the latter camp. Was Gemma giving me a not-so-subtle hint? Surely Cathy hadn’t complained about that silly little computer incident - after all, I didn’t mean to wipe the files. Or was I failing to pull my weight on the biscuit rota?

I considered my options. I could hurl the book back commenting that when I needed help, I’d ask for it. I could demand a private meeting with Gemma and explain at great length that I never intended to wipe the files and resented Cathy going to her behind my back. Or I could smile sweetly, read the book and emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, the kind of person who could have given Mother Teresa a few hints about sympathy and understanding.

But what could a book tell the perfect employee (me) about how to deal with pernickety, demanding types who nurture grievances about little things such as lost computer files (them)?And how was I to be transformed into this sensitive, smooth-talking success?

After all, we all know that getting on well with your manager and your team is good for your career. But if you’re a "just a few things" (big chunk) kind of person and your boss is a "five sheets of white A4 paper" (small chunk) kind of person, you’re just not on the same wavelength are you?

The good news is that you can be. The bad is that it could be hard work. And the secret is communication. Identify the way in which your colleagues prefer to take in new ideas and half the battle is won. All I had to do was to give Gemma and Cathy feedback on this book in a form they could understand and appreciate.

This then, is the basic principle, and the book suggests how it can help you to motivate others, clarify your own ambitions and achieve them, market yourself to your boss, give effective feedback and become more creative. Much of it is common sense, which, as this is the first thing that goes out of the window when a dispute begins, is well worth having in writing.

For example, giving people unnecessary details when they need a summary is a bad idea. Hauling Gemma into a meeting when she was trying to meet three deadlines, to explain why I wiped Cathy’s files a fortnight ago would be foolish (especially when she may not have known about it).

But sorting out a system that would make such mistakes a thing of the past, explaining this to Cathy and presenting it to Gemma as an up-and-running solution, would be a good idea. Cathy would see that I had taken her complaints seriously. Gemma would understand that I was a go-getting, well-organised problem-solver who could be trusted to prevent such mistakes happening again. Wow.

So the book did show me how to manage delicate situations. It encouraged awareness of other peoples’ points of view. And, best of all, it made me view my own behaviour slightly more objectively. Now, where was the chapter on how to negotiate a well-deserved pay rise…

RP

Verdict: accessible and straightforward with lots of common sense and useful exercises. 8/10

Who Do You Think You Are?

Dr Nick Isbister and Dr Martin Robinson, Harper Collins

Who Do You Think You Are? is an in-depth guide to understanding your motives and using this knowledge to maximise your abilities. The aim is to "learn to be the best you can be".

Based on a system developed in the 1950s for identifying motivated abilities, the idea is that if you examine all your achievements, from learning to swim to winning a major business contract, you will find a repeated pattern of behaviour. By developing a motivational blueprint, you will identify what you need to function at your best so that you can aim for opportunities offering the right circumstances.

The book is targeted primarily at those who are dissatisfied with their current careers, but who are unsure about how to climb out of the rut. It starts by asking you to identify eight major achievements and to examine how they got going, the part you played in the proceedings, the subject matter, the support you received and what the result meant to you.

And this is where the problem starts. The 16 exercises take a recommended nine hours (not counting time spent reading the book). Readers with busy jobs may decide that their comfortable rut is not so bad after all.

Those who don’t enjoy in-depth analysis and research will probably find the self-evaluation dull. The first chapter starts with the question "Why have you picked up this book? What is wrong with your life which prompted you to read the blurb on the back and conclude ‘I need this book’". Being marked as a failure could, perhaps, put readers on the defensive and is hardly the way to encourage them to look at their achievements. But none of this was going to thwart me and, having listed my eight achievements and gone through the theme-finding process, I decided that I am motivated by the desire to see a finished product.

This could be the monthly publication of Accounting Technician, buying and decorating my flat or crossing the finishing line of the London Marathon. The achievements vary widely - some are team efforts, others individual achievements, some use mental strengths, others physical, some are achieved out of necessity, others are a personal success.

Knowing that I need to gain a finished product may, therefore, be too general to be useful. But trends did emerge: a preference to work to deadlines, pleasure in a challenge and a desire to work independently or in a small team rather than as part of a large group. But this still didn’t tell me much about my ideal career.

The book may show where you are going wrong and what you should aim for, but it doesn’t tell you how to get there. Presumably, you need a further book of the "Which career for you?" variety. And anyone who is prepared to wade through another tome at least demonstrates that they’re truly motivated to change their career.

No job is ever going to motivate you all the time. Isbister and Robinson aim for a 70 per cent fit and recommend further self-evaluation when your motivation dries up. Personally, I find that a packet of Rich Tea shared on press day is quite as good a motivator as anything else.

CH

Verdict: Anyone feeling dissatisfied with their current job and unsure about what they want from a career will find this book useful, but they will need strong motivation to complete all the exercises and get the most benefit from it. 4/10

AT, May 1999, page 14-16