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You can only imagine the gloom that pervaded my soul. Here was my one opportunity to contribute something significant to the world, and someone else had gotten there first.

But hope springs eternal, and optimist that I am, I believe I have found a new concept and a new acronym. I believe I may have assured my business school immortality as the person who coined the phrase "Management By Reading Books," to which I’ve applied the acronym MBRB.

Here’s how it works.

You go to a management meeting and your boss — just back from a business trip — pulls out multiple copies of a book, hands them out and says, "Read this book. I bought a copy at the airport and read it on the plane. It will transform our organization."

Invariably the book he or she hands out will have been a heckuva lot more interesting to the boss than it will be to you. But on the plane the light went on for the boss, just as it did in the bathtub for Archimedes. Both people had an epiphanous experience. Both shouted "Eureka!" One jumped out of the bathtub and ran around the room naked. The other thought, "My staff needs to read this!"

The difference between Archimedes and your boss is that (are you ready for this terrible pun?) Archimedes was a principled person and he did not inflict his epiphany on those around him — nor his nakedness for that matter (at least as far as we know).

So you get stuck reading a book you probably otherwise would not have bought and you spend the next six months to a year waiting for the boss to get over his or her experience. But the nature of the business book business is that you’ll be getting another one to read sooner or later. The dynamic here is quite understandable. In the course of one business trip and two to four reading sessions, your boss has watched a terribly performing organization be transformed by the magic in the book you just got handed to you. What may have taken years to achieve can be read and absorbed in a week or less. By getting the book (minus the excitement felt by the original reader) in the hands of the management staff, your boss believes that your organization will be similarly transformed in three to six months!

There are, of course, some flaws to this logic. For example:

• The book was written to sell books. Has anyone verified the claims?

• Cultures change much more slowly than you can read about their change

• And back to No. 1 – the book was written to sell books. Has anyone verified the claims?

So you read the book, sing "Kumbaya" and quietly go back to the way you did things before — knowing that someday soon another book will come along…

Through the years I have read several assigned books — none of which had the same effect on me as they had on the person generating the assignment. But I don’t think my psyche has been unalterably damaged from the exercise, and many of the books were at least somewhat enjoyable reads.

Once in my career I turned the tables. I was in the process of leaving an organization for a better opportunity. Part of the reason I was leaving was my dissatisfaction with the CEO. He showed absolutely no leadership skills and had no idea whatsoever what was really happening in the organization.

So when I left, I bought him three books to read and left them with him. They were:

• Make it So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek the Next Generation, by Wess Roberts, Ph.D., and Bill Ross

• Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus

• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

I threw in Atlas Shrugged because it was over a thousand pages long, and he had nothing better to do than read it.

I don’t know if the CEO ever actually read the books, but my actions were a big hit with the rest of the senior management team. I received a call less than a year ago from one of them (who is now a CEO in his own right), and he mentioned to me that my deed had achieved immediate legendary status.

Of course, that’s not what I was looking for. I was simply trying to make a point about what leaders need to be.

So in keeping with the concept, I am now going to suggest some books for you to read. They share some common tenets. None of them are business books. None of them relate directly to what you do in your job. All of them lead you toward a better understanding of the human experience. Here goes:

• Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. The book contains both the account of life in Auschwitz and the explanation of logotherapy. Frankl’s account of life in the concentration camps is both chilling and inspiring, and leaves the reader with a new reverence for life itself.

• Night, by Elie Wiesel. Similar to Frankl’s book, it provides a chilling account of the Holocaust.

• Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. This book is one of the most controversial novels ever written. It tells the story of a doughboy in World War I who is terribly disfigured by an artillery round. Along with its obvious anti-war message, it relates the concept of the powerful vs. the average man. I read this book after I returned from Vietnam, and it has made a deep and lasting impression on the way I view the world.

• The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. I first read this book when I was 50. It is one of the best novels ever written and contains four psychological archetypes. The book tells the story of the phenomenal architect Howard Roark — a man whose talent is so overwhelming that it intimidates those of lesser skills (which is everyone). Therefore, Roark must be kept down. As I read the book I began to identify people I had known who fit the personality profile of the four main characters. As you read it, you may do the same.

• The Mitch Albom Trilogy — Tuesday’s With Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and For One More Day, by Mitch Albom. These three small books together total about 450 pages. They must be read with a full box of facial tissue because they tug mightily at the heart. Albom, better than anyone I have read, has the ability to hit us all where we live. He makes us address what is important to each of us. You can’t read his simple stories without turning them toward your own life. And ultimately you feel better for the experience.

• The Tao of Willie, by Willie Nelson. The Hillbilly Dalai Lama’s guide to life, this pearl is a quick and satisfying read. Remember, Willie wrote it, so sometime during the experience, you will probably get hit by the munchies and have an out-of-body experience.

There you go. What makes my effort different than your CEO’s? Well, I didn’t buy you a copy. I don’t expect it to turn your organization around in six months or less.