No Consultant Left Behind
As our leaders remind us, it is increasingly important for every American to embrace greater literacy and higher standards if we are to meet the competitive challenges of the coming century. A key component of higher standards in business is, of course, exposure to age-appropriate reading material. As a public service, the Consultant Debunking Unit (CDU) has applied standard reading-level assessment formulas* used by educators to some of the most popular management texts. How does your favorite guru rate?
| Grade level | Best-selling Business Book |
|---|---|
| 10th | Now, Discover Your Strengths (Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton) |
| 10th | The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick M. Lencioni) |
| 9th | Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Robert T. Kiyosaki) |
| 8th | Fish!(Stephen C. Lundin, et al.) |
| 8th | Good to Great (James Collins, Jerry I. Porras) |
| 7th | Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill) |
| 7th | Who Moved My Cheese? (Spencer Johnson, Kenneth H. Blanchard) |
| 7th | Who Moved My Cheese? For Kids (Spencer Johnson, Steve Pileggi) |
| 6th | Who Moved My Cheese? For Teens (Spencer Johnson) |
| 5th | The Automatic Millionaire (David Bach) |
| 5th | Trump: Think Like a Billionaire (Donald J. Trump, Meredith McIver) |
* Average of Dale-Chall and Flesch Reading Ease scores of representative text selections
CDUniversity
sporty (adj.) optimistic, e.g., “25% growth in the dried-milk sector seems really sporty to me.”
Martin Kihn is author of House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time (Warner Books, 2005).FCS