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Jack Covert Selects - Why Pride Matters More Than Money

Why Pride Matters More Than Money: The Power of the World’s Greatest Motivational Force by Jon R. Katzenbach, Crown Business, April 2003, 203 pages, $18.95 Hardcover, ISBN 0609610651

We are so often taught that pride is a bad thing. It is, after all, one of the seven deadly sins. However, the pride that Jon Katzenbach is referring to is not the excessive, regressive kind, but the constructive kind. The kind of pride that if you don’t have, can hurt you.

Katzenbach, an expert on effective team building, has written this new book which is totally dedicated to one very important aspect of a team. He argues that pride can be a better motivator than monetary rewards, on both an individual and organizational level. Plus, instilling pride in your workforce is cheaper and better all around.

“Institution-building pride,” as Katzenbach calls it, is the good kind of pride. When an individual has this, they care about their work, do an excellent job, and are proud of their accomplishments. This attitude exudes a positive energy that can spread to others in the organization and cause them to act with the same feelings of pride in what they do. On the other hand, “self-serving pride” is driven by more selfish goals such as power and/or money—not the greater good of an individual or the organization. Self-serving pride doesn’t exude positivity, but it engenders competitiveness and does not promote loyalty or commitment to the organization.

The way to avoid promoting self-serving pride in your organization, Katzenbach says, is to avoid using money as a motivator, as a reward for work. He lists a whole bunch of reasons why money-as-motivator can be risky and lead to limited employee performance, and is only effective in the short-term. For long term results that cultivate relationships, meaningful purpose, and high character, pride is the motivator employers should use.

In this compact, short book, Katzenbach gets to the meat of the issue right away and gives many ideas, strategies, and tips on how to instill pride in your employees. It’s not difficult! Plus, no matter what size your organization is, you can use pride effectively and inexpensively. This book is for managers of all levels, of all organizations.

Jack Covert Selects - The Maverick and His Machine

The Maverick and His Machine by Kevin Maney, John Wiley and Sons, 500 Pages, $29.95 Hardcover, April 2003, ISBN 0471414638

I love business success stories, and have read some very good ones. Not surprisingly, many of them are about IBM, like the Lou Gertsner book (Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?) from last year. However, until reading The Maverick and His Machine, I did not realize the extent that IBM grew in its early years—even in the harsh economic reality of the Depression. Although the Social Security Act of 1934 helped their card punch machine business because everybody needed to keep more records, Thomas Watson, Sr. earlier increased R&D; in 1931, he spent $1 million—nearly 6 percent of their total revenue—to build the first corporate research lab. In fact, between 1929 and 1932, Watson increased IBM’s production capacity by one-third! After learning all this information, I couldn’t wait to turn the page to find out what was coming up. Kevin Maney, USA Today’s technology columnist, has written an engaging biography of one of the most interesting business people of the first half of the 20th Century.

An autocratic man who was always working the boundaries of ethical behavior ran National Cash Register, the company Watson was involved in during the start of his career. In a 1912 federal antitrust suit, Watson was convicted with 29 other NCR people on three counts of unethical business practices. The verdict was later overturned. Peter Drucker, who knew Watson during the 30s and 40s, said, “People underestimated how badly that trial hurt him. He was portrayed as a villain. I don’t think he ever recovered from it.” Although it was overturned, the conviction helped to create the company that IBM became: a straight laced, ethical organization with a distinctive culture. Maney states:
“The combination of his style and values simply worked and drew to him others who either shared his style and values or bought into them. As that cultural core permeated the whole company, Watson grasped the importance of culture, supported it, and stoked it to ever-greater levels.”

This is one of the best corporate biographies I have read in a while; and on a more frivolous end, the design of the book with a large old-fashioned font and stunning cover added to my enjoyment.

If you like this book, you will love the BEST corporate bio I have read, Father Son and Company: My Life at IBM and Beyond by Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Even though I first read it over ten years ago, I still consider it excellent.

Jack Covert Selects - The Productive Narcissist

The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership by Michael Maccoby, Broadway, April 2003, 320 pages, $26.95 Hardcover, ISBN 0767910230

Before we start, we need to set something straight. The narcissist Michael Maccoby is talking about is not what you probably have in mind: a vain person so out of touch with reality because they’re always looking in the mirror. Maccoby, a psychoanalyst, is basing his definition off of Freud’s narcissist. Freud coined the term to describe the kind of person that “impress others as being personalities. They are especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders, and to give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or damage the established state of affairs.” In other words, Maccoby says, narcissists have a vision of how things should be and they freely act to achieve that vision. Narcissists often have the idea that they can “change the world.”

Maccoby’s experience in psychoanalysis, as well as anthropology and business, contribute to the unique and fresh ideas in The Productive Narcissist. I was really taken aback at some of the things he says in the book. They fly in the face of leadership trends so often championed in recent business books. He argues that the extraordinary leaders of our time are such because of their personality type, not necessarily because of their leadership behaviors or skills. Maccoby takes issue with the bestseller Good to Great which looks at companies who have made a leap to extraordinary success from average performance. The author of that book, Jim Collins, says the leaders of each of those companies all share certain qualities, that they are for the most part humble, modest, gracious, etc. The inference is that these leaders have a high “emotional intelligence” (another thing Maccoby takes issue with). Maccoby says this kind of leadership is fine for CEOs who are operating companies that are not in innovative businesses; but, if you want innovative leadership in an industry that is changing the way people live in some way, you need to look at a person’s personality traits. He points to people like Martha Stewart, Henry Ford, Jack Welch, and Bill Gates to illustrate his points. Through many examples, Maccoby shows how some actions by the above mentioned are not necessarily great—sometimes even rude or cut-throat; but they consistently get the job done, and with incredible results.

The book focuses on personality types: what their characteristics are, how to determine them, and how to deal with them. Maccoby is fair-handed and shares both the strengths and weaknesses of each type. He also differentiates between the different levels of productivity a person can achieve. If a person gives in to his weaknesses too much, he can become unproductive. Again using many examples from the business, entertainment, and sports industries, Maccoby clearly illustrates his points. He also argues for his concept of “strategic intelligence” which has five elements: foresight, systems thinking, visioning, motivating, and partnering. While strategic intelligence can help any personality type, the narcissist type especially needs to work on strategic intelligence. It is what could keep him from the disastrous decline that is common among the personality type.

Another thing I liked about the book is the personality test. After you find out which type you most closely resemble, you’ll be able to put many of the ideas in this book to work for you. You’ll know what to do if you are a narcissist; and if you’re not one, you’ll know how to better work with one.

This is a fascinating book. I like Maccoby’s approach; it is much more concrete than some of the self-help approaches in many business books. Maccoby gets at the root of business—people and what makes them tick; not management theories or cost-reduction plans. This book is definitely worth the read.

Jack Covert Selects - Marketing Insights From A to Z

Marketing Insights From A to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know by Philip Kotler, John Wiley & Sons, 190 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, April 2003, ISBN 0471268674

All right ladies and gentlemen, I have a book for you. (A little PT Barnum, going on here.) Seriously, Phil Kotler has been described as the “Father of Modern Marketing”; but in my small part of the publishing pond, he is a god. He ranks with Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis in stature.

The book is laid out with 80 concepts listed alphabetically. The concepts are truly ones that every manager needs to know, on subjects like Advertising Brands, Design, Differentiation, Direct Mail, Price, Product and Profits. You get the idea. Each one of the 80 concepts is covered in a page or two, and the pages are crammed with quotes and spot-on advice. He references books and articles by other authors that will help you drill down the concept he is covering. The book has many boxes spread throughout that simplify the concepts even more. The true beauty of the book is the fact that the author has laid the book out in 80 easily digestible chapters that you can pick up for a quick refresher, or to find out what “Information and Analytics” really means.

If Phil Kotler had a weakness in the past, it was that he is a distinguished college professor who wrote books for that audience. However, this is a book that anyone, even yours truly, can read and get tons of very valuable basic information from. A very knowledge-packed source, this is the book you keep on your desk for the quick summary before the next meeting on strategy.

Jack Covert Selects - Big Change at Best Buy

Big Change at Best Buy: Working Through Hypergrowth to Sustained Excellence by Elizabeth Gibson and Andy Billings, Davies-Black, 325 Pages, $26.95 Hardcover, March 2003, ISBN 0891061762

As many of you know by now, I am a confessed music junkie. And, I also enjoy playing the occasional computer game. So, naturally, I know Best Buy. During this past holiday season, I went shopping at one of their stores a couple days before Christmas. The place was packed. I really expected an awful experience. However, everybody—customers and employees—seemed to be happy. Then, after I found what I was looking for, I was dreading the check-out lines. No problem! The store had two employees directing people to open registers, and the clerk was smiling and chatty. That wasn’t even the most shocking thing. The day after Christmas, I went back to cash in a gift certificate to get a bigger hard drive. I was greeted at the front door, asked what I was looking for, and directed to where I needed to go. As I was looking at the drives, somebody stopped restocking to come and help me. It was truly a wondrous experience--I even told my family and friends about it, I was so amazed. Three days later, Big Change at Best Buy came across my desk. I had seen the results of this big change, and now I had the opportunity to learn about the company’s journey to that change.

In 1997, Best Buy had $5 billion in sales but only $1 million in profits. Plus, the stock was in trouble. The executives knew they needed help, so they hired the consulting firm of RHR International. This book tells the story of that transformation as seen through the eyes of RHR, and shows how a company-wide culture shift was accomplished. Two ways of measuring the company’s success are their profit growth and stock prices: they have grown 1,000% in just three years.

The book is very in-depth and loaded with charts and graphs. The authors Gibson and Billings focused on the three areas where they feel change matters the most: the Head, the Heart, and the Hands. Another one of the things that appealed to me about this book is that it is extremely straightforward in it’s approach. Divided into three parts, the book details the process of change; those parts are Introducing Change, Implementing Change, and Lasting Change—exactly how I think change needs to be dealt with. Big Change at Best Buy is a real handbook of a successful change initiative.