Zoom: Surprising Ways to Supercharge Your Career

Zoom: Surprising Ways to Supercharge Your Career, Daniel Roberts, Fortune Books, 2013

Based on Fortune Magazine's "40 Under 40" column, this book gives short profiles of some of the biggest names in American business, and how they got there.

Of course, the people that one would expect to see in any such book are here, including Marissa Mayer, Elon Musk, Tony Hsieh, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Also included are the CEO's of Rent The Runway, TOMS Shoes and Change.org, senior executives from Heineken and ArcelorMittal (one of the biggest steel producers in the world), and Lebron James.

It is very acceptable to want to take on Goliath (the dominant company in your field). It is just as acceptable to concentrate on doing one thing really well. These days, it seems to be fashionable to jump from one company to another during your career, never spending more than a couple of years in one place. There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending your career at one company.

Some people are serial entrepreneurs. They thrive on getting a company established, or taking it public. Once that happens, they go one to the next one; they are less interested in actually running the company. What do you do after making a large, public blunder? Do you stay at the same company, withdraw from the public eye, and work to rebuild your image? Do you move to another company, and work to rebuild your image? Find something that you are passionate about, something that gets you up in the morning. It may be possible to find, or create, your dream job in that area, no matter how un-high tech it may be.

If they can do it, why can't you? This is a very inspiring group of portraits of today's business leaders. Each portrait is only a few pages long, so they are also easy to read. This is well worth reading for anyone in business, whether large, small or start-up.