800-CEO-READ Blog

New Yorker Cartoon - March 2, 1992

Jack Covert Selects--The Partnership Charter

Partnership Charter by David Gage, Basic Books, 260 pages, $17.50, Paperback, June 2004, ISBN 0738208981

I have to admit I found Partnership Charter completely by chance. I was going through a stack of galleys I received and opened the book to its Table of Contents. The first chapter called "The Rewards and Risks of Going Into Business Together" caught my attention and I decided to read on. These three points struck me as I read through:

1. Researchers from the Center for Study of Entrepreneurship at Marquette University investigated a sample of nearly two thousand companies and categorized the top performers as 'hypergrowth' companies and those at the bottom as low growth companies. Solo entrepreneurs founded only 6% of the 'hypergrowth' companies. Partner founded a whopping 94%, and many of those had three or more founders.
2. In a poll taken a few years ago, Inc. asked businesspeople if they thought partnerships were a bad idea. Two-thirds of the respondents said they were. When asked why, the majority said they disliked co-ownership because of the partners' 'inevitable conflicts'
and 'unmet expectations'.
3. Business school could teach students how to minimize the risk of partner disputes, but they do not. They are schools of business administration. They teach students how to run large companies.

Although they have started to do a better job of teaching students how to be entrepreneurial, they teach next to nothing about how to be a partner. Because most business schools' graduates who start their own businesses will have real partners some day, the school's neglect is hard to fathom. But business schools are not the only schools with this gap in their curriculum. Medical schools train physicians without regard to the fact that the vast majority of their graduates will have to struggle sooner or later with partners. The same is true of other professional schools."

I think all three of those are very compelling points. Entrepreneurs have a better chance of being successful if they partner with others, but many don't even consider it because of the potential problems. On top of that, there is no place where people are trained to work together well as partners.

That is where The Partnership Charter comes in. Author David Gage talks about everything from roles and titles to ownership issues to the importance of understanding personal styles. The most important chapter in my mind is one on scenario planning. Gage lays out questions that would be easy for one entrepreneur to answer, but could be a nightmare for three or five people to agree on. What happens if one partner hires a key employee whom the other partner(s) dislike(s)? What happens if the company receives an unsolicited buyout offer from a competitor? What happens if the partners decide to close the business and the company has nothing but debt?

I recommend this book for ALL entrepreneurs. After reading the book, I think more people will consider partnerships and if they do, The Partnership Charter will give them a blueprint for creating a successful one.

Six Sigma for All

I am a big fan of Six Sigma. When I worked at GE, I spent three years working in the quality program. So, understand that I am going to be a little partial to books on Six Sigma. The most recent title to cross my desk is Six Sigma Beyond the Factory Floor: Deployment Strategies for Financial Services, Health Care, and the Rest of the the Economy by Ronald Snee and Roger Hoerl.

The book is meant for managers and leaders in non-manufacturing companies. The authors lay out their case for why Six Sigma can be used by anyone. You will find definitions, process explanations, and plenty of case studies. The book is meant to convince you that you can do it too. I think they do a pretty good job of it.

Hardcore Six Sigma folks might be left disappointed, because most of it your already know. There is a section at the end of the book that does discuss some of the challenges in the non-manufacturing environment. These include the heavily reliance on discrete data and difficulty of verify your measurement systems.

This book is the third in a series for the authors. Their other books include Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance and Leading Six Sigma: A Step by Step Guide Based on Experience With GE and Other Six Sigma Companies.

Fireside Chat

Lisa at Management Craft is taking some time to talk about Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose by Richard Leider and David Shapiro. She had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Sharpiro and chat about the new book. She has two posts of Q&As (here and here) so far and it looks like there will be one or two more.

New Yorker Cartoon - February 16, 2004

The New Yorker Cartoons

Fun stuff…All work and no play makes Jack a…whatever.

When I was in a bookstore a couple of weeks ago, I found this HUGE gift/coffee table book called The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker. In fact, as Tom Ehrenfeld said “The book just needs four legs and it could be a coffee table by itself.” Tom contacted the publisher and got permission to run a selection of cartoons on the blog. We are creating a new category that will allow you to come on the blog and see all the posts. Everybody needs a little giggle.

What is especially cool is that the book comes with two cds and on the cds are ALL 68,647 cartoons EVER run in the magazine. We are talking about months of scrolling through some classic cartoons.

We'll run one or two cartoons a day until either we get tired (or you do).

Galdwell's Talent Myth

IT Conversations has audio archives from the recent PopTech Conference.

I want to point you to the recording of Malcolm Gladwell and his talk titled "Human Nature".

You can also check out the changethis manifesto by the same name.

Confronting Reality Interview II

Amazon also has an interview with Confronting Reality authors Larry Bosssidy and Ram Charan.

Healthy Networking

While radically new business books are refreshing, most of us get the most use from solid and action-oriented titles that help us manage key skills more proficiently. Take the topic of networking. Some folks might dress up this topic as arguments helping one achieve a “Tipping Point” through spotting mavens and mavericks blablabla….but the most valuable books may be those that simply strip away the clutter and get to the point. That’s why, for example, I recommend the recent The Networking Survival Guide by Diane Darling. A strong, clear, and straightforward guide to mastering this key business skill.

And I must also cite a book closer to my heart, Networking Magic: Find the Best—from Doctors, Lawyers, and Accountants to Homes, Schools, and Jobs by Rick Frishman and Jill Lublin. (Disclosure—I know both the authors, which, however, has little to do with this tout.) This book manages to practice its core message, which is that people should think of networking as more than a skill to develop but literally a way of life. The book’s warm and inviting tone will charm many readers, who will feel they have connected with the authors. So meet one of the authors. Here are a few questions I asked Rick Frishman.

Q: There have been a number of recent books about networking. How is yours different?

A: Networking Magic is about how to find the best, not just anyone. It teaches readers to strive for the best and how to get there. Secondly, it is based on interviews and information provided by acknowledged experts in their fields and networking pros who know the ropes and reveal the inside secrets. Finally, its much more comprehensive in the range and scope of the material covered in other books.

Q: What’s going on in the world today that makes it more important for people to develop their networking chops?

A: Life today is a contact sport. Having information and expertise is simply not enough. You can be a genius, the world's leading expert, but you also must know how to use that brilliance to get the highest return. You must be able to identify and reach the right target market. In today's world, where the best people are protected by electronic fences and are impossible to reach, good networkers can get through and do so in a way that can get their targets to actually listen and act. We teach readers those secrets.

Q You argue that networking entails more than developing a large database of names and addresses. Please define networking as it applies to daily practice and as a way of life:

A: It's about giving, which is a way of life, not an occasional tactic. It encourages readers to establish a wide reputation as a person who is genuinely eager to help out and not simply to set up others to get something in return. It's learning to be selfless, to be helpful and generous. It will enrich your life by making you rich in the resource of people and when we get down to core values, NOTHING is more important than having close friends in life. So giving is the key.

Jonathan Tisch thoughts on leadership

Jonathan M. Tisch, chairman and CEO of Loes Hotels and author of our best selling book The Power of We: Succeeding Through Partnerships, wrote Manager’s Journal column in Tuesday October 26, 2004 Wall Street Journal.

He concludes by saying:

“Raising a generation of “We” managers will require a serious ethical reorientation on the part of businesses, colleges and universities. And managing through partnerships may be tougher than managing through manipulation. But as David Neeleman [founder of JetBlue] and other exceptional leaders illustrate, it can be done. It’s the only way to achieve lasting success—and keep American CEOs from appearing on the docket in even more courtrooms.”

One more thing

In the WSJ book review today, they also talk about The Transparent Leader by Herb Baum, CEO of Dial Corporation. A little birdie told me that we are going to have a review of this book next week. Stay tuned...

Worth* Reads

The coroners at Brand Autopsy have posted their 3rd edition of the Worthy and Worthless Reads.

Regardless of their review, here is a list of what they reviewed if you need help finding them:

• The Rules of the Red Rubber Ball by Kevin Carroll
• Writing the Breakthrough Business Book by Tom Gorman
• MBA in A Box by Joel Kurtzman
• Wordcraft by Alex Frankel
• Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts
• Secret Service by John Dijulius
• Clued In by Lou Carbone
• Creative Company by Andrew Law
• Mass Affluence by Nunes and Johnson
• We The Media by Dan Gillmor
• Confronting Reality by Bossidy and Charan

Wall Street Journal agrees with me

In Tuesday's WSJ they reviewed Bad Leadership By Barbara Kellerman and say it is "elegantly written and a pleasure to read" [sub. needed]. That is something you don't often see in describing a business book.

You can read my review by scrolling down to the post on October 22, 2004 or by clicking here.

Kawasaki Video Interview

Guy Kawasaki is interviewed by ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber on news.com. The video interview runs 19 minutes 16 minutes.

[via Scoble's Linkblog and Chris Woodruff]

Supporting Firefox

We like what the Mozilla folks are doing with the Firefox NY Times campaign. Jack has decided to support the effort and make 800-CEO-READ one of the business sponsors for the campaign.

After listing all of us and our best friends, we still have two open slots left for names we can submit for the ad. We have decided to offer those slots to our readers who blog.

It is very simple: link to this entry.

The first slot will go to the first person who links to this entry. The second slot will go to a random person who links to this entry in the next 24 hours. The selection process will be pulling names out of a hat.

I have trackbacks turned on. I'll be looking at Technorati for results. If you want to be certain your entry is counted, send me an email at todd at 800ceoread [dot] com with the subject title "NYT link" and the link in the body.

You've got until noon tomorrow.

Good Luck!

Perseus Books and the WSJ

In today’s WSJ they have a special section on Leadership. In that section they have an overview of one of the newer publishers that started as an acquirer. They put together a nice stable of mid level publishers. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Perseus was an important business book publisher that has made the strategic decision to leave our segment. What makes the article is especially interesting is it highlights many of the problems with the publishing industry - backlist and returns. Check it out here [sub. needed].

Scoble interviews Zagula

Robert Scoble interviewed John Zagula this weekend. They talk about John's new book The Marketing Playbook.

Jack Covert Selects--Bad Leadership

Bad Leadership: What it is, How it Happens, Why it Matters by Barbara Kellerman, Harvard Business School Press, 250 Pages, $26.95 Hardcover, October 2004, ISBN 1591391660

Clever title. It was eye-catching enough for me to grab it from the stack of Harvard Business School Press books I had been sent recently. First, I wanted to know what bad leadership is. Looking at the table of contents gave me a pretty solid clue. Names like Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, David Koresh, Andrew Fastow and Leona Helmsley gave me a good idea of where the author was going.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part, The Bad Side, discusses and explains the reasons behind bad leadership. The second part, Leading Badly, deals with the seven types of bad leadership, and this part alone is well worth the price of admission. The seven types of bad leadership she identifies are: Incompetent, Rigid, Intemperate, Callous, Corrupt, Insular and Evil. As she elaborates:

…dividing the universe of bad leadership into seven types gives us certain advantages. First, the ability to distinguish among the ways of being bad orders an untidy world, where the idea of bad leadership is as confusing as it is ubiquitous. Second, the seven types serve a practical purpose. They make it easier to detect inflection points—points at which an intervention might have stopped bad leadership or at least cut it short. Finally, the types make meaning of being bad. They enable us to know better and more clearly what bad leadership consists of.

Each type of bad leadership has a chapter that starts with a brief example, and offers us illustrations of very recognizable people with the story behind their bad leadership. Each chapter follows a logical template that gives context, history and hindsight of the leader and his/her followers. The last part, From Bad to Better, sheds light on how to rid ourselves from bad leadership.

This is a very well-written, easy-to-understand, scholarly look at leadership from the underside. It shows us that we have to recognize bad leadership, and in doing so, dares us to not only examine the dark side of leadership, but to become better leaders ourselves.

Looking for help

I am looking for good books on open source. There have been a lot written about the movement and the personalities. I am specifically looking for a good book(s) on how to run a open source project. What I am trying to do is see if there are wider business applications of how open source projects are run.

Here is what books I have thus far (and have only just started reading):

• Rebel Code: Inside Linux and The Open Source Revolution by Glyn Moody (ISBN 0738206709)


• Just for Fun by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond (ISBN 0066620732)


• Managing Open Source Projects by Jan Sandred (ISBN 0471403962)


• Understanding Open Source Software Development by Joseph Feller and Brian Fitzgerald (ISBN 0201734966)


• The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber (ISBN 0674012925)


• Free Software Free Society by Richard Stallman (ISBN 1882114981)


• Open Source: The Unauthorized White Paper by Donald Rosenberg (ISBN 076454660)

I second that.

I just want to second Jack's endorsement of Bo Peabody's "Lucky or Smart?: Secrets to an Entrepreneurial Life".

The first thing I would say is this book should not be confused with the other titles that have been released this fall on the subject of luck. Peabody does start the book by saying, "Lucky things happen to entrepreneurs who start fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive companies." and "...the best way to ensure that lucky things happen is to make sure lots of things happen."

The rest of the book is about the things you should be doing. Peabody thinks you should figure out if you really are an entrepreneur. If you are, make sure you have friends that aren't - they are the one you are going to run your company. He says you also need faith and perseverance. He says some other things too.

It looks like the book is coming out right around New Year's. We'll let you know when you can get your hands on a copy.

The Expert's Guide

When I was going through the Crown catalog, there was a book that caught my attention and thought would be worth checking into. It is called The Expert's Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do. The book was put together by Samantha Ettus.

There are a number of things I found interesting about the book. First, all of the essays are written by the experts themselves and their personalities shows through. Donald Trump's thoughts on negotiation is 22 lines long. Stephen Covey writes a great summary of philosophy of time management. In the work section, you will also find Larry King on listening, Howard Stephen Berg on speed reading, and Tory Johnson on how to handle a job interview.

The second thing I like about the book is the 100 things are timeless. The book tells you the right way to tie a tie and how to hold a baby. It describes how to make a martini and what to look for when buying a diamond. You won't find a section on checking your email

The last thing I like is the design of the book. It is beautiful. The Clarkson Potter imprint is well known for that.

If you are starting to think about gifts, you may want to consider this one for those on your holiday list.

P.S. If you want to find out a little more about Samantha, I noticed she is one of the main sources for the cold-calling article in Inc. magazine this month.

MBA in a Day

A couple pf days ago, I wrote about applying to Harvard. Today, I am going to give you an alternative. Consider saving yourself the $120,000 and buying MBA in a Day by Steven Stralser instead. I would never say that you can replace two years of classroom instruction with a 298 page book, but I like the book. You will find the theory they are teaching in B-school today. You will practical examples. I like it as a primer and that is the point. Stralser explains in the preface why he wrote the book:

Every semster, in addition to the traditional MBA students who had taken time off from their corporate life to enroll in the MBA Program, I would find one or two students who were clearly "outliers" to these mainstream corporate types- for example, a physican, an attorney, an executive director from non-profit organization, or a small business owner or entrepreneur...

I also realized that for every physician, attorney, architect, or entrepreneur who can take the time to enroll in an MBA program, there are many more who are pressed for time and focused on the day-to-day challenges of running a successful practice, operating a small business, or launching a new venture but who would benefit from learning the essential principles and concepts found in the coursework of an MBA program. It is for these successful- ableit time-sensitive- professionals that this book is written.

Confronting Reality: Larry Bossidy Interview

Here is our second interview with the authors of Confronting Reality. In this one, you'll hear from retired Honeywell CEO and chairman Larry Bossidy:

Q: Would this book be any different if you had written in five or ten years ago?

Bossidy: It has always been appropriate to confront reality under any conditions. The difference today is that the penalties for not doing so are far more stark and significant. You have a business environment that is moving at record speed, and which is more competitive than ever before. And so if you are in a stymied position with your company and you don’t do anything about it you are in better chance of losing it than ever before. There are more industries that are structurally defective, in the sense that their business model doesn’t work anymore. Steel companies, rubber companies, large airlines. And because they have waited so long they don’t have the same luxuries they had before. So either you can capitalize on that and take your business to new heights and or not face it, and see your business fail.

One example of failing to confront reality is the steel industry. They were confronted with adversity for so many years and so it is a shell of its former self. Same with airlines. The big ones don’t have good choices moving forward. Going into bankruptcy might be only choice they have. On the other hand look at Jetblue, which has responded positively. It has a different cost structure is having different success.

Q: Too much change?

Bossidy: I don’t think this book is about change. The principle message is to try to take a realistic standing of where you are. We provide a business model, which, if applied correctly, gives people a standing of where they are as a business. Look at the business envirronment, the people, the strategy. If you are honest in assessing these characteristics you can get a pretty good handle on where you are—and understand whether you have to change or not. There are many people who change simply for the sake of change. We argue that it is as important to not change as it is to change. Developing this realistic assessment of where you are gives you choices and options.

In fact, in this book we cite cases where people have had the courage not to change radically. They responded to the business environment with iterations that were not radical but were the right thing to do. In addition to P&G, Cisco is good example. They faced many problems in the market. But they added products while staying true to their basic business model. They are in essentially the same business today in terms of what they are trying to convey to their customers, across what has become a broader marketfront. But at the same time they didn’t change radically in the face of the telecom explosion.

Q: Doesn’t culture often drive leaders away from reality?

Bossidy: I define culture as nothing more than the behavior of the leader of the business. That is what influences and frames the business. I always blame leadership for cultural decisions. The leaders can have their heads in the sand and are unwilling to deal with the realities around them, or they can be constantly looking for new information on what is going on with regulatory frontiers, technology, whether they executing, whether their people are growing. If leaders are constantly working on those things and make the right decisions about the future the culture takes care of itself.

The results speak for themselves. You don’t change culture by films or speeches. You do it by having people meeting targets. You put out goals that have to be met and demand accountability.

Credibility throgh immediate folks.

Q: Election?

Bossidy: I don’t think that presidential election years are very responsive to confronting reality. There is too much rhetoric. Reality will only happen when the winners are declared and they are faced with the reality of dealing with deficits. If these are two of the more challenging financial matters why haven ‘t we heard more debate? This isn’t a time period where people face reality and it won’t be up to the election. When the people elected are forced to del with these issues, then they will take some action.

One last interesting point—there seems to be a certain type of person who is more suited to confront reality. They have courage, can contain their ego, be capable of dealing with failure, and are willing to grow themselves and change. People who have been successful with one model and insists on staying with the same model will not be successful in the next decade. The trick is to stick to the same principles and values while changing strategies and operations according to the demands of different business environment. You must be adaptable and light on your feet. Those who are defensive and internally protective will have the most trouble in the next decade. internally will have the most troubles in the next decade—will have the most trouble.

Art of the Start Live

Guy Kawasaki is doing two live events with the folks from Raindance.

The first session is tomorrow and they are free.

Register here.

Confronting Reality: Ram Charan Interview

Confronting Reality starting officially shipping yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, 800-CEO-READ was offered an outstanding opportunity to interview the book's two authors. We are going to start with the interview Jack and Tom did with Ram Charan (I will post the second with Larry Bossidy later today):

Q: Would this book have been different if written five or ten years ago?

Charan: Yes. That’s because we have significant change underway. There are periods, such as now, where you have unidirectional change. Everything is changing. Starting in March 2000 when the Federal Reserve began to change high interest rates, combined with the dotcom era and other key factures you are seeing a stretch period starting then and now with a different kind of a change. And business leaders have to anticipate and perceive the nature of this change, and then either take advantage of this dynamic or adapt to it. We are trying to stimulate this fundamental skill in every manager. In the past you had most people just saying that change is everywhere. This was largely exhortations on their part. In our book we take you through the nature of change in a granular way and give you hooks to dissect this change. We don’t just say that significant change is upon us. We tell you what needs to be done about it—and that is to confront reality,

Confronting reality means recognizing new opportunities or an extreme threat to the business you are in. One such opportunity is iPod. The music industry faced issues such as piracy. And Steve Jobs took a hard look at this and created an industry from it. Another extreme involves the company Thomson, which realized that its core business, the paper industry, was less attractive than it had been in the past, and so it sold out at the peak of the market. This enabled the company to transform itself and in the process double sales and growth.

Our purpose with this book is to provide tools and insights that enable all managers to see the business from both 50,000 feet and 50 feet.

Q: Most business books argue that change is everywhere and so you must look for the next great strategic inflection point. Isn’t this essentially telling people to apply quantum physics in a universe that is largely Newtonian?

Charan: Over the past 35 years working with more than 500 companies I have seen many many outsiders telling people that they need to make quantum change. But if you make a change of this nature every day you will never have the energy or focus to execute anything! The real issue is knowing what to change and when to change—understanding the timing and magnitude of the key dynamic. The most crucial element of leadership is judgment. Consider A.J. Laffley of Procter & Gamble. He has taken a very resilient and consistent approach to the growth of a business. He inherited a company in which certain products and operations were not in very good shape, but he did not respond by making a quantum change. Instead he exercised judgment, showing that he had the skills and temperament to determine the timing and scope of the necessary changes. Exceptional leaders can sift through the structure of change and not be carried away by fads.

Q: Where does culture fit in? Doesn’t a corporate culture often drive leaders away from confronting reality?

Charan: Yes, and this brings up one of the two most critical things a CEO does, which is select the right people and create the right culture. The ability to confront reality should be an important criteria for forming the top team. The top team needs to be connected with the outside world, particularly with the customers. They need to understand what is going on with related industries and with key trends. Through the process of perception and dialogue the CEO and his direct reports sets the agenda for the company. If you don’t have reality at the top level you can’t get it at the company as a whole. This links to the second critical task, of setting the direction of where to take the company.

Culture is often too ethereal and high-level. We need to make translate the mission into operational practices. Values must reflect behaviors. And a key behavior is a realistic assessment of the business activities of the model. The four components of the business model are strategy, people, operating activities, and organization. When you go to people and organization that is where the values are reflected, where the behaviors are reflected. Leaders must always ask the question of whether the big goals can be actually be achieved—how to make them operational rather than strand people at a very high level.

The most important thing that a leader has is his or her credibility. All these inspirational goals that academics spout and CEOs need are fading for lack of credibility. The essence of leadership is building credibility and faith. Today transparency is very high. Analysts are smarter. People know if you are real or not. This means that credibility is the deciding factor and not hollow inspiration that comes back to haunt people.

Q: We’re in the midst of a presidential election at a time when the trade deficit and the federal deficit are creating concern among many financial veterans. Are the candidates confronting reality?

Charan: I think there are a couple of things worth noting here. Just as every business has a scorecard, so do the politicians. What is a scorecard? Whether it is for Bush or for Kerry, the scorecard is about getting elected, which means winning electoral votes. Their message has to be to win the electoral votes. That is the reality they are confronted with. That is how the whole democratic system is because the alternative is not better. Very few people understand the reality of those twin deficits. And in my opinion the worst part is not those two deficits but the fact that the global financial system lives on the edge. It is driven by complicated mechanisms such as derivatives, and if a crisis came it would be quite vulnerable. But the politician’s job is to get the electoral votes. Over time someone will win and have to deal with it.

Miami Herald reviews Art of the Start

Richard Pachter of the Miami Herald reviews Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start this week.

Guide to Hardball

We had alot of Hardball last week and I forgot to post one link.

George Stalk is a director at Boston Consulting Group. On BCG's website, they have the Hardball Manifesto. It is a great summary if you are looking for more information about the book.

Malcolm Gladwell on Ketchup

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and soon to be published Blink, has written a fascinating article about Ketchup and all things food. This guy is one of the best non fiction "business" writers currently putting words to paper.

Check it out here

Applying to Harvard

[I found this one back in the archives and we had never posted it.]

On Tuesday [8/24/04], The Wall Street Journal reviewed [sub. needed] a new book from St. Martin's Press called 65 Successful Harvard Business School Applications: With Analysis by the Staff of the Harbus, The Harvard Business School Newspaper.

The current application asks six personal-essay questions and allows 400 words for each answer. (With the exception of the question about your three most substantial accomplishments, for which you get 600 words; I guess the applicant pool is a very accomplished bunch.) Some questions stay the same from year to year. For example: "Provide a candid assessment of your strengths and weaknesses." Or: "What are your career aspirations, and how can an MBA help you to reach them?" There is always some kind of leadership question. In the book, it is: "Discuss an experience that has had an impact on your development as a leader."

It start[ed] shipping September 1st.

Play to your Strengths

I was told recently I had to go out and buy immediately a copy of Now, Discover Your Strengths. Authors Buckingham and Clifton believe you should make your strengths stronger and forget the hot air about concentrating on your weaknesses.

Well, in baseball if you hit the ball successfully 270 times for every thousand plate appearances, you will be a middling player. If you can manage 320 hits per thousand, you will be hailed as one of the leagues's best. So in baseball the difference between middle of the road and superstardom is about twenty-five better decisions per season (on average, a batter will make 500 plate appearances a season). In professional golf the difference between excellence and average is similarly slight. The top players average twenty-seven putts per round. The middling player averages thirty-two world.

In the world of work, the difference between the struggling salesperson and the great on might be three extra calls made each week or two more emotional signals picked up during a presentation or one more fact tossed in at just the right moment in the conversation...

Included with the book, they give you a code to take a 180 question web-based quiz. The result is a list of five themes from thirty-four they have found through their research. The book then has tips on how to manage each of the themes and how to build an organization built on using people's strengths.

I know this book has been around awhile (it was a Jack Covert Selects in Jan. 2001), but I thought it might be new to you.

Built to Last?

In the Nov 04 Fast Company, Jennifer Reingold and Ryan Underwood look at the companies that Jim Collins and Jerry Porras featured in the classic Built to Last that was published ten years ago. "Was Built to Last Built to Last?" is a also a classic magazine article in that if offers some interesting insight and some not so interesting insight. For example, we find out that Tom Peters gets $65k to speak in the US and $85k to speak outside the US. We learn that according to R.R. Bowker 5,301 books “claming” to be about business were published, up 30% from three years ago.

FC offers a piece on “How to read a business book” 1) Take a big grain of salt—which has a great Tom Peters quote “It ain’t the Bible.” 2) Distill the central idea 3) Create your own toolbox—you are going to have to go to a newsstand or buy the mag and look at page 108 to figure that out (or you can wait until the article goes up online).

It is hard to argue with the last sentence in the article “Perhaps Built to Last readers would do well to follow the title of chapter seven ‘Try a lot of stuff and keep what works.’ Now there’s some business advice worth taking.”

All in all, the article kind of got my hackles up when I first read it because I feel looking at anything written ten years ago about business would come up short considering all that has happened. After reflection, it’s OK.

Books inspired by "The Apprentice"

With Season Two of The Apprentice in full swing, you will find a number of titles authored by the cast. There is even one that is inspired by the show.

• You're Hired: How To Succeed In Business And Life From The Winner Of The Apprentice by Bill Rancic (HarperCollins, Sept. 2004)
• What It Takes: Speak Up, Step Up, Move Up : A Modern Woman's Guide to Success in Business by Amy Henry (St. Martins Press, Sept. 2004)
• Carolyn 101 : Business Lessons from The Apprentice's Straight Shooter by Carolyn Kepcher (Fireside, Oct. 2004)
• 10 Secrets I Learned from The Apprentice: Unauthorized Expert Tips by Anthony Parinello with Beth Gottfried (Chamberlain Bros., July 2004)

and of course...


• Trump: Think Like a Billionaire : Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life by Donald Trump (Random House, October 2004)

Seth says...

Malcolm Galdwell's Blink "[will be] the most important book of the year".

I just got a galley. I'll let you know my thoughts next week.

Don't Save Nanoseconds: Say YES, when you want to say NO!

Want to save a few seconds? "Don't say yes when asked to do something, Say NO." is the standard advice. After all, everyone is busy, has full plates, is overworked and over scheduled. Makes sense? Maybe.

The people who turn serendipity into success behave in the counterintuitive manner described in How To Create Your Own Luck and make the effort, expend the energy and often say YES, when no would make more sense.

When "Joe's " son was seven it was time for him to join a soccer team. Dad knew nothing about soccer as he is a 49er, San Francisco Giants, mountain biking guy. But, he agreed to be the assistant coach only to find out that noone signed on as coach. This time commitment exponentially increased because he not only had to go to practices and games and meetings, he had to learn the rules.

None of the Dads ever showed up. However, when the team started winning, they started to attend the games. Bonds were forged, friendships started.

Joe got to know the other parents, the sponsors, the league officials and stayed in touch over the years periodically because he believed in community.

Eight years later he wanted to make a career change and instead, built a second career/business to augment his day job. Guess who his clients became? The parents of the kids he coached and other members of the community who he met through soccer league and Little League.

"Joe" didn't want to coach soccer... but said yes instead of no. And the payoff in friendships, quality of life and the client base for his business has been worthwhile. He embodies the eight trait of 'you never know it alls'... and he created his own luck.

Hardball and The Wall Street Journal

Congratulations to George Stalk, Rob Lachenauer and Mark Bloomfield of Harvard Business School Press on getting a real rave review in today's WSJ for Hardball.

To quote Roger Lowenstein:

Hardball is an intelligent and textured primer ...the authors' message, eminently worth the read, is that you can succeed by competing relentlessly, intelligently and, yes, fairly.

It is nice to be the "first on the block" to point out the quality of this book and to have George Stalk as a guest blogger.

Hardball - The Closing

Although the winners I talk about in Hardball are very tough competitors, they play clean and fair. They never jeopardize their customers or make a move that might weaken their industry or that benefits them alone. And of course, they never do anything illegal. Playing hardball is about focusing on the really difficult “heart-of-the-matter” issues that are crucial to executing a hardball strategy. It’s about creating discomfort for your rivals and being able to tolerate it yourself. To use a baseball analogy, playing business hardball is like throwing a 98-mile-an-hour fastball high and inside. Batters are rattled and uncertain what pitch is next. It’s a tough, perfectly legal, and very effective move. But it takes a lot of skill and confidence to execute it well.

Playing hardball and going for the win may seem self-centered, but from my experience working with many of the world’s most successful companies, I know their leaders believe that playing hardball is good for the economy and society. Playing to win cleanses the market. It makes all companies stronger. It brings about innovations in products and services and often makes them more affordable. It creates more satisfied customers and it makes for happier employees.

In the coming years, companies are going to have to move more quickly, act smarter, and battle more fiercely than ever before. There will be the leading players and lots of niche players, but very few, if any, players in between. I believe the only way to stay on the field, win, and keep on winning is by playing hardball.

If you would like to get more information on the book, you can contact us at hardball.strategies at bcg.com.

High Expectations for Confronting Reality

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, the first book by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (which I have not read), was highly lauded and three years later still manages to occupy prime shelf space in brick-and-mortar bookstores and so it was with high expectations that I turned to the first page of their follow-on book, Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right.

All is for naught if you are executing against a business model that is increasingly obsolete in the global marketplace, and so I suspect Confronting Reality was written to make sure that you're not racing a hundred miles an hour...off a cliff. (And to get you moving in the right direction.) The term "broken business model" is used repeatedly in the book.

Intended to shake up executives, business line managers, and business owners who may be lured - easier than you'd think - into assuming they have a cyclical "V-shaped blip in the growth curve", the book forces you to ascertain whether there are structural rifts underway making a business model increasingly obsolete. For entrepreneurs, this book offers food for thought on creating disruptive business models. Even with all the signals, most companies - yes, even entrepreneurs - have a bias toward hearing good news and Confronting Reality does devote a chapter to "Looking Around Corners."

We are entering a new era, defined by structural changes that won't reverse themselves anytime soon. Such epochal shifts have a habit of changing the rules for running a business, and this one is no exception.

I agree with the authors in much of their assessment and Bossidy shares his own sobering tale about the automotive components business unit during his helm at AlliedSignal.

[W]e asked ourselves why we hadn't seen the solution earlier, before investing time and money doing the right things to the wrong business...Allied and its competitors alike made products that were essentially high-level commodities...The basics of making money simply weren't there, so trying to fix the business was a futile undertaking.

From that experience Bossidy sees that the flaw - one that leads to bad decisions - is the "absence of a clear, integrated picture of your business reality, calculated at the very beginning of any effort to plan a business's course."

This effort typically begins with the presentation of a strategy. We've seen thousands of such presentations, many of them highly detailed, complex, and bolstered with masses of data. But we've rarely seen equally detailed plumbing of the exterior environment, the realism of financial targets that are set given the nature of that environment, and the organization's ability to deliver on those targets.

The rest of the book lays out what the authors see as a comprehensive "business model" - "one that modeled the business as a whole" - and rigorously analyzed all the elements and then "harmonized them." The entire exercise begins with a good hard look at the external environment including customers (and the authors state that too many companies think inside-out rather than outside-in) and financial targets before tackling strategy, operational activities, selection and development of people and organizational structure.

Their "business model" then becomes "an early warning system for real-world changes that pose threats or provide glimpses of opportunities." The emphasis is not on salvaging broken business models to limp along a wee bit longer but to breathe new life into them or significantly alter them to take on new opportunities.

I particularly liked the Kmart and Wal-Mart story. The writing was on the wall long before Kmart declared bankruptcy. "[Sam] Walton's business model created a structural change in retailing..." Kmart thought it was merely yet another competitor without understanding that Wal-Mart was changing the rules of the game. Wal-mart was doing something fundamentally different in the way they earned money and operated but K-mart didn't take the time to understand what it was. "Instead, they [Kmart] put their resources into strategy and positioning - signing on Martha Stewart, for example, and at the same time cutting prices aggressively. Such measures, while helpful in generating sales, couldn't possibly get to the root of the problem of the obsolete business model.

The authors draw from many good examples - including many cautionary tales - throughout the book, including first-hand experience at GE and Allied Signal as well as Dell, Kmart, Wal-mart, EMC, Sun, Cisco, IBM, Stanley Works, Home Depot, Thomson Corporation among other company mentions within anecdotes.

The chosen theme, message and angle of the book is extremely viable, timely and compelling for smaller companies and corporate executives alike but....

After Chapter 2 my enthusiasm took a nosedive and I set it aside. In a world drowning in business resources for the executive and manager, this book is decidedly not a page-turner. Had I not committed to write this review, it might have sat in the too-be-finished pile for a bit before sliding into the realistically-will-never-finish bin.

Even this review reflects the dry, parched ambivalence of the book's style as I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm based on content alone.

Bossidy and Charan acknowledge many of us have enough internal business problems to keep ourselves occupied twelve hours a day, so taking the time to understand the macro perspective isn't necessarily on the top of the priority list. And these are precisely the people that never find the time to read a business book. So ultimately I'm disappointed that the book was not written, rewritten and edited to ensure a fully engaging and enlightening product that begs to be read, heavily underlined, and zealously shared.

Evelyn Rodriguez is a marketing consultant offering strategic advice in reaching and engaging the empowered Customer 2.0 in an increasingly networked media world.

Inside look at movie tie-ins

Thursday’s 10-14-04 WSJ has an insightful look at the publishing industry and the lucrative movie tie-ins. It is in the “Tracking the Numbers” column and they look at Perseus Books and Friday Night Lights, one on my personal favorite sports books—in fact, it is one of my favorite non fiction books. The book reads with a clear voice. You really care for the kids and the tensions of being a Texas high school football player. Riding on the back of the success of the movie Seabiscuit—sorry,--the publisher is issuing multiple configurations of the FNL book fourteen years after it was first published. They are publishing hardcover, trade paperback and the mass-market version. The article gave the numbers of books already sold and the number being printed and they are huge. The article is a very interesting look at how a successful movie can make a publisher a ton of money.

A Better Personal Finance Book

Personal finance is one of those areas with about three basic rules for success (track your finances, avoid bad debt, and save money as a goal.) And yet the vast majority of Americans are hopelessly in debt, or miserable about their finances, or simply have no basic skills at managing them with the proficiency they display in other aspects of their lives.

To date few business books have done much to address this crisis. Far too many finance books promise easy wealth, propose sleazy tactics, or ignore the fundamental fact that personal finance books need two types of smarts: intelligence for the money part, and wisdom for the personal aspect.

Welcome Jean Chatzky. Her new book, Pay It Down Today, is a clean, clear, and lovely book on personal finance. Recently she conducted a brief conversation about what sets her book apart from others in this field.

Q: Your book really emphasizes the personal aspect of personal finance. Why is that?

A: It’s all about better common sense choices. Some people are very skilled in analyzing a balance sheet in a business, but that is not what I’m talking about. This is a different set of skills. People who adopt a few basic personal finance habits have more in savings than those who don’t. They know what is coming in and what is going out and they manage to spend a little less than what is going out. There is nothing all that difficult about it. But that is not to say that changing lifelong habits is easy.

Q: What keeps people from practicing these simple things?

A: Many people simply have strong preceding habits. They haven’t learned, from an early age, what they need to do, and how to set the sufficient limits for themselves. And today the credit card companies are to blame as well. They are wiling to lend a lot of money in the form of a credit line to people who don’t make a lot of money. They have figured out how much money they can afford to lose and don’t care if they lose it on your back because they will more than make it up on others.

Q: How can individuals use some early victories to change their more fundamental habits?

A; Scoring a few successes makes you feel much better, and helps you realize that you can take a step back and see how you can begin to save even $10 a day. This is a significant milestone. Having people pay attention to what they do throughout the day with their money is a big step in the process. Quite often, we simply don’t pay attention to what we do with our money. In my book I try to show how to keep your eye on the ball. Let me be very clear: I am not saying ‘don’t spend money’. In fact, I like to shop and spend as much as anyone else. The real message is that we do make choices. And everyone must make them consciously. Whether you are well off or have more limited means this message holds true. And if you are dealing with limited resources than you can’t have everything. So choose: is it the vacation or the jeans?

Q: But by the same token, is a more attentive approach to personal finance also likely to lead to a more productive of these same finances?

A: Absolutely. Tracking how you spend your money pays off in many ways. You become a more effective consumer, for one. And you enjoy more leverage from your resources.

Q: In your book you share the story of how you received literally thousands of emails after announcing on the Today Show that you would do a series about helping individuals get out of debt. What did that tell you?

A: Yes, I got 5000 emails within 24 hours of the Today Show. And when I announced the same thing on a local station I got 1000 emails. I always knew debt was a dangerous problem but never knew how big it was. This response is a clear signal that debt is a problem that we don’t devote enough attention to, on the air or in the pages of the media. Debt is a problem on a scale of obesity in this country. And if we don’t do something about it we are heading for a crash. This is not because Americans are greedy or careless people. It’s just a consequence of living a way that we are used to living, and not understanding how dangerous this is. The consequences today are far greater than before. In previous generations, for example, we had pensions to pick up the slack. We don’t have that type of protection any more.