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Reading lists of business elites

A person's bookshelf can provide a revealing glimpse into a psyche. So, let's peek at the ...

By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published June 20, 2005

Other than her ability to run a Coca-Cola Enterprises call center in Tampa and her fondness for a swift Porsche, I knew little about Nita Pennardt.

Then I asked Pennardt what she is reading this summer. She was one of 15 Tampa Bay area business people I queried to see what books are front-burners in the summer of 2005.

Funny how fast a literary chat can shed light on a reader.

"I know it sounds crazy, but unlike many business people, I don't enjoy reading business-related books or periodicals," Pennardt says. "And at my age, I've come to understand that if education is the goal, I personally learn much better in the classroom of life."

Her favorite fun writer? Florida's Randy Wayne White, whose "Doc Ford" novels based on Sanibel/Captiva rank high on my list. Pennardt just finished White's Tampa Burn.

But it was the next book mentioned by Pennardt that caught my attention: Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda by Army Times reporter Sean Naylor. It's about the March 2002 movement by poorly supported U.S. forces into Afghanistan's high and frigid Shahikot Mountains and their efforts to trap Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Pennardt chose the book on the recommendation of her son, an Army doctor. "He has spent a great deal of time over the last few years on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan," she says. "He says this book is the real thing."

More than a dozen Tampa Bay business managers offered up their summer reading plans. In the process, they divulged a bit more about themselves, their business concerns, priorities and diversions. They volunteered eight history titles, eight fictions, eight current events books, five mystery/thrillers, six books about leadership and self-help and a few titles of mindless entertainment. And perhaps a few recommendations.

This is the third summer I've asked business readers for their book lists. Each year has a different flavor. This time, Dan Brown's super-selling The Da Vinci Code is still on a few lists but is no longer the dominating read it was in past years. And books about Middle East history, religion and terrorism - big topics on summer lists after 9/11 - are less prominent but can be found.

Jabil Circuit CEO Tim Main, after finishing Edward P. Jones' pre-Civil War The Known World, recently plunged into Peter Mansfield's A History of the Middle East.

A few books of particular insight, including one about the virtues of the snap judgment and instinctive hunch, appeared on multiple lists this summer. Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, wins praise from AmSouth's Florida banking executive Susan Martinez, St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau chief Carole Ketterhagen and Peter Rummell, CEO of St. Joe Co. (Florida's biggest private land owner).

"EVERYONE who deals with people should HAVE to read it," Rummell wrote (the capitalized words are his) in an e-mail.

Others mentioned books with similar themes. Deanne Roberts of Roberts Communications in Tampa, just back from a tour of Eastern Europe, is reading James Surowiecki's long-titled The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. The book makes a counterintuitive argument that the wisdom of the masses "under the right circumstances" is often smarter than the smartest person in the crowd.

And Ernst & Young's Mike Poland, who chairs Tampa Bay's Gulf Coast Life Sciences Initiative to build a bioscience industry here, recently flew to London while reading Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence. The book, which Poland says was recommended by a client, examines how people think and react to issues based on their personality and style.

Indeed. Many business readers cited summer books that would help them better understand the faster-than-ever-changing world and even get a glimpse ahead.

One favorite (and I must agree) is Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, the New York Times columnist's look at how globalization and technology have enabled anyone with drive and talent to compete with anyone else, anywhere. In the United States, that message is only now starting to sink in.

Progress Energy Florida CEO Bill Habermeyer, Sembler Co. CEO Craig Sher and St. Joe's Rummell named Friedman's book. And Rummell is trying to get a jump on the future, with plans to read Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Pink, whose Free Agent Nation chronicled the rise of the self-employed, argues that those who get ahead in the future will be "right brain" or holistic thinkers, not sequential thinkers.

In a more Darwinian framework, Tech Data CEO Steve Raymund says he is enjoying the bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I'm running into local anecdotes from the book, too, especially the controversial argument that the 1973 court ruling that legalized abortion contributed to the biggest crime drop in recorded history in the 1990s.

"It's a fun read," Raymund says, "though Levitt's often counterintuitive findings may offend some people."

At WEDU in Tampa, CEO Richard Lobo has a personal reason to start reading former GE CEO Jack Welch's new book, Winning, written with his wife, Suzy. Lobo is a former executive of NBC, which is owned by GE. Lobo says he got to meet and know Welch while attending corporate meetings. Says Lobo: "My GE stock split three times while I was at NBC."

But what is Welch really like? After all, Welch did not earn his "Neutron Jack" nickname for his generosity but for his style of routinely firing employees considered less productive.

"Welch is a charmer, but don't cross him or lie to him or be unprepared when making a presentation," Lobo says. "He can be merciless."

At the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, business school dean Ron Hill is reading Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and the worthy Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by Florida resident John Perkins.

From the big picture to the highly focused, books on Six Sigma are also popular. Myron Hughes, vice president at the Tampa Chamber's Committee of One Hundred, is boning up on What Is Six Sigma? by Pete Pande and Larry Holpp so he can talk about the most popular system in Corporate America for improving the quality of organizational processes. Myron's a dedicated man.

In Tampa, TECO Energy CEO Sherrill Hudson obviously enjoys books on leadership, citing two (by ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and John Wooden, the winner of 10 NCAA basketball championships in 12 years with the UCLA Bruins) on his summer list. But it was the more unusual book, Andy Andrews' The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success, that prompted Hudson to give copies to his direct reports at TECO.

They, in turn, are sharing it with their employees. It's a motivational story of a man who travels through time, meeting such historical figures as Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank and Christopher Columbus. Each figure imparts some wisdom the writer asserts is key to personal success.

History also remains a hot topic.

This summer, Pinellas tourism chief Ketterhagen and WEDU's Lobo said they were reading or planned to read historian David McCullough's 1776, the you-are-there styled book about the military during the start of the American Revolution. And Mike Griffin, director of institutional services at the real estate firm Vertical Integration Inc. and a co-founder of the Emerge Tampa business group for young adults, is enjoying McCullough's earlier book, Truman.

You can take the sailor out of the Navy, but you can't take the former rear admiral out of his fascination with submarines. Progress Energy Florida's Habermeyer, who retired from the Navy 13 years ago, always has his eye out for a fresh material on subs. He just finished Rising Tide by Gary Weir and Walter Boyne about the Cold War submarine conflict as seen from the Soviet perspective.

Let's not forget this is a summer reading list. Enough with the business and history stuff.

AmSouth's Martinez has the popular French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure on her summer list. The book, which espouses "judicious consumption," was written by Mireille Guiliano, CEO of Veuve Clicquot, a maker of champagnes and wines. Martinez also enjoyed the humorous Lauren Weisberger novel of working in the pretentious fashion industry, The Devil Wears Prada.

St. Joe's Rummell also admits to reading the novel Slim and None by Dan Jenkins, a "complete fluff but funny book" about golf.

Not to be outdone, WEDU's Lobo is about to sink his teeth into a new book written by some former 40-something female colleagues who have collaborated as the Miami Bombshells. The book, Dish and Tell: Life, Love, and Secrets, may be just the right, light touch of South Florida angst and gossip to cap a day at the beach.

Personally, I'm digging into Moneyball, the Michael Lewis book on winning-baseball-on-a-budget (and praying the Devil Rays get the message), and Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen, still the unofficial poet laureate of modern Florida.

Whatever your tastes, get reading.

Robert Trigaux can be reached at 727 893-8405 or trigaux@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 18, 2005, 00:06:02]