“Disruptive Change- When Trying Harder is Part of the Problem.” Harvard Business Review, May 2002. By Clark Gilbert and Joseph L. Bower. Interestingly enough, trying harder is a problem when the business environment changes because of the tendency to do more of the same thing you've always done. Typically, those things are not the right things to do anymore.

  CHANGE- Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. By Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, and Richard Fisch. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1974. These guys are academicians with an interest in how people perceive and solve problems. I don't know if it's still in print, but it's worth chasing down. For somebody like me who's done some turn around work with financially troubled businesses, this is practically a bible. It's only around 150 pages and doesn't talk about a single business situation. But the insights it gives into why people behave the way they do in circumstances of stress and change are invaluable.

  The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People . By Stephen R. Covey. First published 1989 by Simon & Schuster. Still widely available and worth reading. The trick, of course, is not in knowing what the seven habits are- they all seem obvious when you read them- but in making them your habits. (read a summary for free!)

  Competitive Strategy- Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors . By Michael E. Porter. Published 1980 by The Free Press. If you do nothing else, read chapters 10 (Competitive Strategy in Emerging Industries), 11 (The Transition to Industry Maturity), and 12 (Competitive Strategy in Declining Industries). I think it's safe to say that Professor Porter had never heard of action sports when he wrote this, but that makes his analysis of industry business cycles all the more interesting. I imagine you'll recognize some of the trends and patterns he discusses.

  And if Porter doesn't convince you that there's nothing new under the sun in business cycles, read Edward Chancellor's Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation . Published in 1999, it will convince you that fundamentally, the internet bubble was no different from the South Sea schemes of the early 18 th century. The statistical concept of regression to the mean rules- in financial markets or industries. What goes up must, indeed, eventually come down.

  Kellogg on Integrated Marketing. Edited by Dawn Iacobucci and Bobby Calder. Published in 2003 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This book was like a whack on the side of the head for me. Skip some of the chapters that go into extreme detail on some approaches to marketing and market research if you like. But when you read the chapters on how information how moved down the food chain, changing marketing and markets, you'll say, like I did, “Hell, I knew all that- why didn't I ever put it all together and do something about it?!”

  Okay, here's a really weird one. Bruce Catton, the noted Civil War historian, wrote a three volume centennial history of the Civil War. The second volume was called Terrible Swift Sword and was published in 1963. I'm kind of a Civil War nut, so I recommend all three volumes, but all I'd really like you to read is pages 308-321 on The Seven Days battle. If you think of Robert E. Lee as the entrepreneur who didn't allow his preconceptions to limit his options and Union General in Chief McClellan as a CEO who was paralyzed by perceptions and fear, you have one of the best business stories I've ever read.

  Relevance Lost- The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting. Written by H. Thomas Johnson and Robert S. Kaplan and published in 1987, it's particularly interesting in light of Enron, Global Crossing, and all the other paragons of corporate accounting we're reading about today.

  “Strategies for Surviving a Shakeout” George S. Day. Harvard Business Review, March/April 1997. I think the title speaks for itself.