Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki

Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki could be the most useful business book of the year -- I highly recommend purchasing it even if you do not typically purchase business books.

Guy has put all of his years of knowledge, including information from his blog, into a single volume of reference. One word of warning: this book is huge (think 400+ pages). I actually read the book all the way through and am glad that I did because I can now use it to reference particular topics. Whether you choose to read it using my method or prefer to have it around as a reference on particular topics is up to you, but the writing style is engaging enough to not make it a chore to read all the way through.

Although Guy has a tech and venture background, most of the lessons and information that he provides in the book are applicable to all businesses. For example, designing good PowerPoint for a venture pitch provides excellent guidelines for designing good PowerPoint in general.

I was fortunate enough to participate in a teleseminar with Guy and he explained two reasons for his book: (1) all the information in his book are answers to questions that he gets asked all the time, and; (2) although some of the information is available on his blog, blog posts do not necessarily stay fresh and current and get lost, even with Google's ability to index them.

There is only one bad and inexplicable thing about Guy's book: the Kindle version is only $1.99 less than the hardback version.

Definitely a worthy purchase and a no bull shiitake corporate/employee gift.