Using the "Influence Tools" from Student to CEO: 97 Ways To Influence Your Way To The Top In Banking & Finance

I recently purchased "Student to CEO: 97 Ways To Influence Your Way To The Top In Banking & Finance".

I've provided my views on the book below (the summary: it's pretty average but definitely good enough to be worth a glance through - the best bits are the "bite-sized" "influence tool" boxouts and there are some useful financial services-specific examples throughout).

But that's not the purpose of this blog post.

Using Influence Tools

The purpose of this blog post, and the reason I'm highlighting the book here is that it provides 99 (yes, more than the advertised 97) "influence tools" as box-outs throughout the book, which I have decided to use as prompts to write about.

I don't entirely agree with every single prompt, I'm not convinced that the order in which they appear is at all times the most logical, and I might skip some of them  because they are too specifically focused on the contents of the book so don't make much sense out of context, but most of them are great common sense and they do provide nice, concise points to write about.

As you can tell from my comments above, I'm not overflowing with praise for the book, but the very fact that it got me writing this is a positive thing and there are a few points that he makes that provide a slightly different perspective on things.  Please read the below for more info, and if you are interested in buying a copy, you can get it on Amazon.co.UK here, and Amazon.COM here.

  

About the book

Whilst this book tries to put a clear emphasis on "banking and finance", it turns out that it's actually a pretty standard self-help book, which takes the usual approach of using the author's experiences as a story to knit together a string of personal development advice.

Its key differentiator is the "Banking and Finance" focus, and this is the main reason that I bought it, because it is an industry that is fairly new to me but that I am currently working in and I have recently accepted a senior role for a global bank, which I will be starting in the New Year.

The anecdotes and stories based on the author's experience are all Banking and Finance related (as you would expect), and the famous people, example scenarios and case studies that he presents are also Banking and Finance related.  However, the majority of the advice is pretty generic.  That's not a bad thing at all, as it is all pretty sound advice - but the author seems to have tried to compensate for this by writing the phrase "Banking and Finance" every other sentence.  Yes, we know this is a book about Banking and Finance but telling us that Banking and Finance is what it's about because it's a Banking and Finance book can become a bit irritating because in a Banking and Finance book you already know it's about Banking and Finance because it says Banking and Finance on the cover and you've already said that your'e writing it for people who want to get ahead in Banking and Finance over 20 times in the intro.  You get the idea here...

The other slightly odd thing about this book is that although it has 97 (well actually 99) "influence tool" prompts, the main text of the books doesn't directly reference them.  Or at least, it doesn't reference them consistently.  They are generally relevant to whatever has been written on the pages that they are included on, but they just seem to be dropped in there.  This means that many of them aren't even really explained.  In most self-help books that use this kind of concept, the "tips" are either used as headings then explained with supporting anecdotes and exercises, or are clearly and directly relevant to the section that they are included in.  If this had been the case in this book, it could have significantly improved the flow of the writing and would have provided more specific take-away points.

Of course, this book is also a marketing tool to get you to go to the author's presentations and buy his services.  Unfortunately this also comes across quite clearly at times.

However, despite these points, it's not all bad.  There is some real content here and the points made are largely common sense and useful.  From the wide range of self-help books that are out there, this wouldn't be the first one that I'd recommend, but if someone asked me whether it was worth a read, I would still say yes.