Gary Harpst, the author, was the CEO of Solomon Software for 23 years. Over those 23 years he built a successful software company that achieved $60 million dollars in sales before being sold to Microsoft. With his experience in hand he set out to write a book that was focused towards small businesses.

He wanted to help small business not only achieve excellence, but to sustain it. In Six Disciplines, we are provided with six essential disciplines to help your business grow and succeed. The Six Disciplines are a systematic approach to running your business. Each discipline is explained in full detail and supplies you with the tools to implement them into the business. This book is a must read for any small business CEO or leader who wants to take his company to the next level. You must note though, that the methodologies aren’t a quick fix solution. These are changes that are going to need some extensive work to implement into your company. Especially if you have a business that has been around for a while and has picked up ‘bad’ habits along the way.

Check out the Six Disciplines website for more information about the corporation behind the book. Gary has created the Six Disciplines corporation to help the readers of the book implement these ideas, and to stay on the path of excellence.

Discuss Six Disciplines for Excellence in our business book discussion forum under Small Business & Entrepreneurship section.

John T. Reed’s site gives you an interesting critical view (short of calling him a fraud) towards the “best selling” author Robert Kiyosaki. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the book is a story about his two fathers. His real dad, the ‘poor dad’ lives a life similar to the typical American, which includes going to college, and getting a full time job with a company (for his father it was a teacher). His rich dad owns his own company and invests in real estate. The poor dad ‘works for his money’, while the rich dad had his ‘money work for him’. It’s basically a watered down informational book that leads to other products Mr.Kiyosaki offers. Kiyosaki is so popular that his book has been on the best sellers list for 250+ weeks, and is a featured writer on Yahoo! Finance. Definitely check out the link to see a different view of Mr. Kiyosaki. One thing I noticed is that a Google search for Robert Kiyosaki gives you Mr. Reed’s critical opinion as the first result! Ouch!