Books

Never Say Whatever: How Small Decisions Make a Big Difference

Life Is Choices. Make Them.

Calling in late to a Zoom meeting with kids playing in the background. Avoiding optional meetings. Dodging low-profile assignments. Giving H.R. lunch-and-learns a hard pass. There are countless ways we've become the apathetic version of our corporate selves―dismissing what seems unimportant with a big shrug emoji. Whatever. Who cares?

In Never Say Whatever, veteran author, radio host, and former college president Dr. Richard Moran reveals with stunning clarity why you should care: The W-word is a career killer. In fact, he likens it to the similarly NSFW F-bomb. It can be a whole sentence, an attitude, an "OK," or nothing at all. It's a word that comes in handy and can be habit forming, but the consequences of using it as your fallback response can have drastically negative results over time.

The numerous daily decisions we make, both at work and in life, are small chances to make big impact. Understanding this―and banishing that "meh" attitude―is key to success.

Written with unflinching honesty, humor, and interviews with corporate decision makers, Never Say Whatever offers a blueprint to help everyone understand why and how the choices we make, even the minor ones, are in fact pivotal to professional development and career trajectory. For young graduates just starting out to seasoned professionals seeking ways to reenergize their careers, it's a timely call to get on track, and stay on track, with boosted productivity, an impressive personal brand, and a fortified gameplan for a supercharged career.

The Thing About Work: Showing Up and Other Important Matters

Why does a CEO who has already made hundreds of millions of dollars continue to work? Why does a rock star who has made a bundle continue to tour? Why do retirees’ miss work as soon as they stop doing it? Why do we all wrestle with our life’s work and talk about it incessantly? The thing about work is that we love it, we hate it, we need it, we miss it, we measure ourselves by it, we judge others by it-we are addicted to it. Work often defines us and fulfills us. Yet, today’s rapidly changing workplace environment is stressful and confusing to deal with.

In The Thing About Work, Richard Moran takes a ground-level perspective on what is happening at work and how to thrive in the new professional world. Through funny, prescriptive vignettes and short essays, Moran finds the “white space” in the company manual-those issues that you encounter every day at work but which are not covered in employee training. He uses hilarious and true stories from his own life and others’ to answer questions like, “Should you take your dog to work?” and “How late is late?” and “What is that foreign object growing in the refrigerator?” This very contemporary view of work will prove invaluable for the modern employee.

Navigating Tweets, Feats, and Deletes: Lessons for the New Workplace

Confounded by the new workplace? You’ll appreciate these aphorisms, tips, and observations from business expert Richard A. Moran. Based on the aphorisms from Never Confuse A Memo with Reality, Moran’s bestseller from 1993, this edition has been updated to reflect our zany new protocols, habits, and devices. A great gift for the graduate in your life, for a friend embarking on a new job, or for anyone dumbfounded in an office—or, as Moran asks, “What’s an office these days?”

“Deceptively simple yet profoundly important tips on how to succeed in today’s digitally disrupted workplace. A smorgasbord of brilliant business insights, written to be consumed in small bites: each is digestible, tweetable, and at the same time complex and practical. I wanted to pause after each and savor the secret to success that it belies.”
—Glenn Platt, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Interactive Media at Miami University

“Rich Moran cuts through all the pablum that is on the web today to show us, with wit and humor, what is important and what works at work.”
—Kerry A. Dolan, Assistant Managing Editor, Forbes

Sins And CEOs

A high-profiled consultant and venture capitalist, Richard A. Moran works with hundreds of the top executives who run corporate America. As he knows from experience, most of them aren’t heartless egomaniacs like “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap or crooks like Kenneth Lay, Bernard Ebbers, and John Rigas. “CEOs are not bad people,” Moran stresses, acknowledging the challenges of making the right decisions in a highly complicated world under pressure to please everyone from Wall Street analysts to their board members, employees, suppliers, and customers to their own families. “Sometimes they just don’t understand that their thoughtless, inelegant, or sinful actions may have drastic implications for everyone around them.”

In his new book, Sins and CEOs: Lessons from Leaders and Losers, That Will Change Your Career, by Richard A. Moran with a Foreword by John Hofmeister, points out the peccadilloes that pervade the workplace and wreak havoc. Through the telling of true stories (but keeping company and CEO names private to protect individuals, share prices, and his future employment), he addresses nine common offenses, including sins of omission, which are easier to hide and justify, as well as the most egregious intentional sins. While indicting business leaders, Moran makes clear that we are all CEOs—that is, everyone is in charge of something, whether it’s a department, project team, volunteer committee, or family unit—and we are all guilty.

Nuts, Bolts, & Jolts

The bestselling bullet point king is back with his most comprehensive guide, Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts: Fundamental Business and Life Lessons You Must Know. Imparting more than just humorous observations, Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts offers prescriptions for the common workplace ills.

These insights are the true “nuts and bolts” of business fundamentals, yet you won’t find this bullet-proof advice in any MBA program or employee handbook. Developed from years of observations (and countless awkward moments), Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts delivers over 2,000 bullets of dead-on advice ranging from how to always stay productive to knowing what food not eat before an important meeting.

Never Confuse A Memo With Reality

Never Confuse A Memo With Reality is the complete guide to functioning in a business environment. Moran’s lessons remind readers to understand thoroughly their business and maintain the proper perspective on work and life as well as to strive for excellence and cultivate humor and civility in their professional lives. This thoughtful compendium can help anyone function more effectively and confidently in a business environment.

Fear No Yellow Stickies

More business wisdom too simple not to know. From the management consultant known as the Garrison Keillor of the workplace and author of the bestselling Never Confuse a Memo with Reality, here is timeless, accessible, and humorous advice on how to take control of your career and maintain a balance between work and the rest of your life.

Beware Of Those Who Ask For Feedback

A sequel to the best-selling Never Confuse a Memo with Reality introduces a new collection of business maxims and tips that addresses such problems and issues as nepotism, business ethics, and overcoming past failures.

Cancel The Meetings, Keep The Donuts

A collection of simple and effective rules-of-thumb offers humorous insight into job security, business travel, managing, meetings, balancing work and home life, and other aspects of the corporate environment. An extremely practical collection of business maxims that provide humorous, insightful, and keen observations and advice for succeeding in the corporate world.