Winning Conditions: How to Achieve the Professional Success You Deserve by Managing the Details That Matter

A cheerful, get-out-the-pom-poms business guide arrives from consulting actuary and first-time author Hofbeck. She directs her advice and encouragement to hard-working businesspeople who have wondered, as she once did, why the “best” person—i.e., oneself—doesn’t always succeed. Success, she argues, is not just about the work one does, but about how one presents it—delivering “winning work” in a “winning way,” and creating a winning story around it. Hofbeck guides readers through the process of getting better at defining and communicating their own value and brand, self-reflection, building a support system, tailoring messages to the audience, and developing charisma, garnishing her advice with a little bit of behavioral economics and a lot of her own story and path to success, from making a bad first impression in a meeting with her company’s CFO, to being appointed to the Society of Actuaries’ board of directors. Fans of Survivor should particularly enjoy her story, as references to her 2017 stint on the show, and second-place finish, appear throughout. The advice is not particularly new, but the easy-to-follow presentation and encouraging tone may be just what’s needed for readers doing the work but not reaping the reward. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary. (Sept.)