As someone in Shared Services looking to learn more about what an auditor actually does in order to better understand how to best support and interface with someone in Client Services (especially AERS) is this a valid read?

In doing so I missed urizen’s item # @20. I assume that the choice is based on the sections that relate the teachings of JC. Certainly most of the Old T would be off subject, especially the Kashrut dietary laws sections in the Books of L and D, as well as the biblical creation and Judea historical content.

So, recognizing the value of u’s @25 post’s “years of prayer/meditation” aspect of that choice I personally, as an admitted non believer, would suggest The “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius” (who wrote on personal improvement and guidance to leadership) as a better source of ethics than what someone wrote that a person named JC possibly said. At least with Aurelius you considerably cut down on the question of existence, and you don’t have to wade thru the religious and other stuff (controversy).

FM@15 – “God to Great”was a great book – its only problem was that it wasn’t any good (at least not in how it was put into practice)

I found this book to be atypical “here’s what we aren’t going to do but will say we are so everyone onboard will think we are doing it”. It reminds me of some of the lines in A Hard Days Night.

This book was suggested reading @Deloitte a few years back (when JQ took the Global CEO role he championed it as reading material). I had read it previously. I remember sitting around the office (when it was announced) thinking to myself things like: “wow, this could be interesting if they really started to do what was in the book” and “these are the type of common philosophies and employee expectations businesses should be following that I have been voicing since I jumped on this ship”.

I’m reading an interesting book right now: Traffic (should be titled why we all think we are better at something than other people)

Before I started this book I would have easily stated that I am a great driver, probably the best, unless I’m driving in traffic or around other drivers who hog the road and block the flow of traffic without any consideration about who is behind them stuck in the traffic jam that they created, in which case I am one of the worst drivers, passing whole groups of cars on the right and weaving back into the fast lane as far up in the lineup as possible so as to be in position to take advantage of any similar opportunities that may arise.

So, you’re probably saying “Yo, @Deloitte, the subject is business books!”

Well, I only read nonfiction and everything I read I do so from the viewpoint of what can I learn from this book that is applicable or adaptable to business and business/relationship experiences. So far there has been plenty of content that directly relates to how and why people do things and think the way they do. I say that qualifies as business related.

This book also falls right in line with my favorite subject: “The Mask of Sanity” (Cleckley) and its relationship to the Jekyll and Hide sides of everyone’s personality. Now, there’s a couple of good business books for you, and talk about being acountable.

The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know: Studies in Organizational Behavior by R. Richard Ritti & Steve Levy

Buy Low, Sell High, Collect Early and Pay Late: The Manager’s Guide to Financial Survival by Dick Levin

The Ropes, in particular, is enlightening about the differences between some of the “rose tinted glasses” type academic theories of the way things should work in organizations according to official policy and the way things actually work as a result of the policies being implemented by people who act in ways that are affected by the person’s prejudices, character flaws, and self-interest. It is an easy read, written in the style of parables or fables, each presenting a specific organizational moral.

Surprisingly, both books were written by academics who apparently got tired of teaching the standard business management party line and felt the need to provide information based on the realities they had encountered in their dealings with real companies.

Unfortunately, both books are out of print, so only available through used books sources and libraries.

Richard

Chapter IX –

1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities
Felt their Nerves change into Morrow,
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro’ all the coasts; till weaken’d
The Senses inward rush’d, shrinking
Beneath the dark net of infection.

2. Till the shrunken eyes, clouded over,
Discern’d not the woven hiprocicy,
But the streaky slime in their heavens,
Brought together by narrowing perceptions,
Appear’d transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man,
And in reptile forms shrinking together
Of seven feet stature they remain’d.

3. Six days they shrunk up from existence,
And on the seventh day they rested.
And they bless’d the sevent day, in sick hope,
And forgot their eternal life.

4. And their thirty cities divided
In form of a human heart.
No more could they rise at will
In the infinite void but, bound down
To earth by their narrowing perceptions,
They lived a period of years,
Then left a noisom body
To the jaws of devouring darkness.

5 And their children wept & built
Tombs in the desolate places,
And formed laws of prudence, and call’d them
The eternal laws of God.

****

7. The remaining sons of Urizen
Beheld their brethren shrink together
Beneath the Net of Urizen.
Perswasion was in vain,
For the ears of the inhabitants
Were wither’d, & deafen’d, & cold,
And their eyes could not discern
Their brethren of other cities.

8. So Fuzon call’d all together
The remaining children of Urizen,
And they left the pendulous earth.
They called it Egypt, & left it.

9. And the salt ocean rolled englob’d.

Thanks for reminding me of Blake; it’s been far too long since I picked up a book of his poetry and let it roll around in my head.

– Tenacious T.

The Book of Bourbon: And other Fine American Whiskeys (Hardcover) by Gary Regan

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Bourbon-other-American-Whiskeys/dp/1881527891

What Color Is Your Parachute? http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/articles/wciyp.php
The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck http://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Traveled-25th-Anniversary/dp/0743243153

Francine

Any other suggestions for surviving accounting / Big 4 that go beyond accounting/finance ?