What We’re Reading From the June 15, 2010 Issue of CIO Magazine

Work Your Strengths: A Scientific Process to Identify Your Skills and Match Them to the Best Career for You

By Chuck Martin, Richard Guare and Peg Dawson

Book One skill that often separates IT execs from their staffs is the ability to manage stress, finds this survey of more than 2,000 high-performing employees at hundreds of companies. Even if you’re not considering a career change, this book can help you use your skills more effectively and make better management decisions. AMACOM Books, $21.95

Windley’s Technometria 

By Phillip J. Windley

Blog Windley is the co-founder and CTO of Kynetx, a web app company, and the former CIO for the state of Utah. In his blog, he muses on a variety of topics, most related in some way to Web 2.0. Recent posts include a nuanced attempt to balance the benefits of sharing personal data across a wide range of platforms with the privacy concerns that brings. In another post, he breaks down the potential benefits of an application that could allow context-specific contract negotiation—determining which clauses are appropriate to the situation and which can be cut. https://www.windley.com

The Yes Factor 

By Tonya Reiman

Book Up to 93 percent of communication is nonverbal, and people form first impressions in just a tenth of a second, according to recent research. With so much conveyed so quickly, we could all stand to refine our conversation and body language skills. This book aims to help you do just that by providing relatable tips, lots of concrete examples and dozens of illustrations to make its points crystal clear. Plus, it lays out a plan to get you executing its techniques like an expert in less than a month. Hudson Street Press, $29.95

The Horizon Report: 2010 Edition

Research This report will be of particular interest to those in academia because it focuses on the effects of technology on universities, but there’s a lot of interesting trend analysis for everyone. For example, it predicts the widespread adoption of e-books and augmented reality in the next two to three years, and of gesture-based computing in the next five. It’s free and it’s only 40 pages, so it’s worth a look. wp.nmc.org/horizon2010

Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder

By Jody Heymann with Magda Barrera

Book Heymann looked at all kinds of businesses—big and small, public and private, manufacturers and service providers, in industrialized and developing worlds—that treated their lowest-wage employees significantly better than conventional wisdom dictated they should. What she found was that not only did it not put them out of business, it actually increased their profitability. These companies were able to attract and retain better employees and get more out of the workers already on board, and they were handed solutions to problems they didn’t know they had by alert staff. Harvard Business Press, $29.95