Above the Bottom Line: Building Business Success Through Individual Growth

Jane M. Wilson is a Toronto-based chartered financial analyst in the
investment business.

Both individuals and organizations must concentrate not on the bottom
line, but on the intermediate factors that will help them achieve their
ultimate goals. Fuller and Hobson extend the central message of this
timely book by taking us through six steps (or “footprints”) for
defining our personal values and visions and those of our organization,
and then acting on them and measuring the results.

Above the Bottom Line is aimed at business people who want to become
leaders. As a book on organizational management, it deals quite well
with such concepts as communication and motivation. The section on
creative performance measurement is particularly good. There are
numerous quotations from business leaders and examples of the creeds
used by several corporations. The emphasis is on corporate culture, not
on specific business strategies.

As a product of the self-help genre, the book is typical of today’s
frothy secular works of inspiration where God is replaced by the self
and humility is a lost virtue. Devotees of this genre will be accustomed
to the relentless effervescence and condescending cajolery, not to
mention the metaphoric passages dealing with race cars and the
worksheets for self-analysis.

Fuller has conducted motivational business seminars in North America
and abroad. Hobson is an accomplished athlete and mountaineer as well as
an author.