800-CEO-READ Blog

Design Thinking Books

We've started an interesting discussion about design books on this blog, and as the design thinker on the 800-CEO-READ Blog crew, I would like to add some fuel to the fire, as it were.

I teach a graduate-level class at Stanford's Institute for Design (aka the "d.school").  In this class we provide an introduction to a design process built upon three key themes:

1. Empathy for humans
2. Problem solving via iterative prototyping
3. Undertaking opportunities from an entrepreneurial point of view

This class isn't about the "craft" elements one commonly thinks of when the word "design" is mentioned.  We're not teaching people to draw, paint, or sculpt.  Instead, we're teaching people to think in an integrative fashion, pairing left-brain analytics with right-brain synthesis.  Mastering this way of thinking doesn't happen overnight.  You get there by reading, hanging out with interesting folks, and generally living life out loud.

I can only help you with the reading part.  Here's the "recommended reading" list for students in my d.school class.  Enjoy!

Design Process

• Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox, by Kenji Ekuan
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
• Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough
• Emotional Design, by Donald Norman
• Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud

Marketing

• Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore
• Purple Cow, by Seth Godin
• Marketing High Technology, by William Davidow
• Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
• The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

Business & Finances

• How to Read a Financial Report, by John Tracy
• Good Business, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki
• Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, by Jerry Kaplan
• Getting Part No, by William Ury

Innovation

• The Innovator's Solution, by Clayton Christensen
• Weird Ideas that Work, by Robert Sutton
• The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley
• Innovation & Entrepreneurship, by Peter Drucker

Personal Brand

• The Brand You 50, by Tom Peters
• Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It, by Peggy Klaus
• Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman
• Zen and the Art of Making a Living, by Laurence Boldt

Creativity

• The Universal Traveler, by Don Koberg & Jim Bagnall
• Conceptual Blockbusting, by James L. Adams
• Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

 

This Week - 2/28/05

Welcome to a new week and Milwaukee again has new snow for a Monday morning. This is gettin a little scary.

Sorry about Friday. Jack invited down to 8CR HQ for pizza and we managed to forget to post anything. We promise to make up for it this week.

Let me start with the new piece on the Excerpt Blog. We will be featuring Never Eat Alone by Keith Farrazzi this week. You may have seen his stuff in Inc. or Fast Company. His book is all about how to become better at networking.

We also have a new interview on the Podcasts Blog. Last week, I talked with Dorothy Leonard about her book Deep Smarts. What attracted me to the book was some of the overlap with Blink. The book is written more from a managerial perspective and talks about the building of intutition and wisdom in an organization. It also talks about building mechanisms of transfering that expertise. You can listen to the interview this link.

We have some other things already lined up as the week goes on.

Have a great week!

A Possible Future

This is a link to a great flash movie called EPIC 2014 on one possible future for the internet. It was done by some folks at the Poynter Institute for Journalism.

Big Kudos to Brand Autopsy for the post. They have alot more detail on their post.

Business Blog Book Tour 7 moves on...

After Wayne's visit yesterday, he is at the blog of Barry Moltz today [editor's note - you may want to check out You Need to Be A Little Crazy. If you want to know more about the first book, check out BBBT#1 that we did with Barry].

Tomorrow Anita at Small Business Trends will be the last stop on the tour.

Wired's Rave Awards - Book Category

In the March issue (now on newsstands), Wired Magazine announced their 2005 Rave Awards. The categories range from science to art to industrial design.

The winner in this year's book category is On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. From Wired:

"A neuroscience manifesto might be the last thing you'd expect from the guy who conceived the PalmPilot PDA and the Treo smartphone. Between product launches, though, Hawkins has been studyingthe human neocortex for 25 years. "I was fearful that I might go to my grave and not communicate this stuff," he says. "The day I finished writing the book, I felt a huge relief. No matter what happens, the ideas are out there."

Hawkins' thoughts on thin-slicing in science:

"Intuition leads scientists astray every time," [Hawkins] says. "Your intuition about the nature of reality is very likely to be wrong. Instead, take careful look at what you know. The answer is hidden there."

Our reviewer Rob May wrote a review of On Intelligence at the beginning of January. He had similar thoughts on the impact this book will have.

Other nominees in the Rave Awards book category included:

The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
O'Reilly Hacks Series by Rael Dornfest, Dale Dougherty, and Tim O'Reilly
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

800-CEO-READ wins Best Group Blog in Business Blogging Awards

It was announced yesterday that 800-CEO-READ won the award for Best Group Blog in the 2005 Business Blogging Awards. We want to thank everyone who voted for us. I also want to thank the 41 people who contributed to our blog this year and have helped make it the best resource for business books on the net.

Thanks again!

What have you read lately?

Because I am most interested in the cultural aspects of the corporate world, I do not read many business books. I tend to get more insights into our working world through other non-fiction writing such as:

Post Office by Charles Bukowski
On Human Nature by E.O. Wilson
Breakfast at Buck’s by Jamis MacNiven

However, one business book I enjoyed recently is:

Winning Smart After Losing Big by Rob Stearns

And the only startup book that I can wholeheartedly recommend is:

Startup by Jerry Kaplan

How important is talent?

This is a deceptively simple question. I have always been drawn to talented people. And I have had the luxury of meeting and working with many stunningly talented people. But this is where I must add a critical caveat… the talent I am most enamored by is characterized by creativity… the ability to see things differently.

This type of talent is needed in every company. However, it is only one kind of talent. For example, the ability to read people is critical to HR, management and sales people. But many very creative people are oblivious to the emotional state of others. And the ability to focus… to receive an assignment, understand the limits of its scope and to fulfill its requirements is not necessarily tied to creativity, academic intelligence or management skills. But people with this ability to focus and fulfill make up the backbone of every successful company.

So… talent isn’t particularly important. Obtaining the right balance of talented people is.

Why did you got public with Neoforma?

Once we brought on a tier one venture firm in mid-1998, it was not a question of whether we would pursue becoming a public company, but when. There was no decision.

The IPOs of Netscape and others had proven that the public was willing to bet on earlier companies than previously. And gambling is what the public stock market is all about. Anyone who pretends otherwise is doing just that… pretending. Based on the economic reality of the time, the first company in each market sector to go public would reap the majority of the available mindshare.

We had run up against the frustrating inertia inherent in healthcare and knew that huge resources could help accelerate fundamental and much needed change. When the economic mood shifted from optimism to pessimism, a different, more patient approach is required. That is what we are doing at Attainia now.

Why write the book?

When starting Neoforma, I was terribly excited by the idea of bringing together a group of talented people to tackle some important challenges. Everything seemed possible and I assumed that being a part of something special would be enough to hold everyone together. And that was true… for awhile. Once the company became too large for everyone to communicate with everyone (15-20 people), interesting stuff started to happen. And much of that stuff was not fun.

None of the books I had read prepared me for the complexity of the task of building a strong corporate culture. While my partner and I were more experienced than most of the stereotypical entrepreneurs of the time, and we did many things very well, I made more mistakes than I should have. While our experience was more extreme than most, the issues we faced are universal to startups.

At the time Neoforma was soaring into the spotlight, I was struck by the contrast between our public persona and our private chaos. And I knew through other entrepreneurs I had met that ours was not a unique situation. I decided at that time that I wanted to write the book that I wish I had read before starting the company. So I began saving everything I could get my hands on. After leaving Neoforma, it took me more than a year to sift through the information, establish a timeline and determine what was important and what was irrelevant. Then I had to figure out how to write a book.

Hi.

Hi Todd, I wanted to begin by thanking you and Jack at 800-CEO-READ for putting this Business Blog Tour together. When I released Starting Something a few months ago, I knew that a traditional book tour would not be an efficient means to get the word out. With the exception of a few celebrities, business book authors don’t tend to draw crowds. I was thrilled to hear about your creation of the Business Blog Tour, because… well… because it makes so much sense.

Book Tour Stop at 8cr

We are getting started a little late today. Wayne McVicker will be by in just a little bit talking about his book Starting Something. This is a part of the Business Blog Book Tour running this week.

I am going to get out of the way and let Wayne have the stage.

The 8th Habit Buzz

I realized the other day that we haven't talked much about Stephen Covey's latest work. I had a post the week the book launched, but we haven't done much since.

I opened my ears and let Technorati go to work. Here is what bloggers have been saying about The 8th Habit:

That Dwayne - Finding Your Voice

"This book is all about anchoring your actions and decisions to your values and passion, and about providing encouragement and opportunity to others to give them a chance to make Meaningful contributions. Easier than it sounds, of course, but a very inspiring concept."

aaron21 - The 8th Habit

"The problem that Covey identifies in the first part of the book is that we are working in an Information Age, where the ideas that people contribute to organizations are the true assets in this new global economy. However, most organizations still operate in an Industrial Age mindset. In doing so, Knowledge Workers are often micro-managed, "carrot-and-sticked" and dehumanized. Leaders aren't often in the actual position of leadership, and managers with operational control don't always lead the people they're responsible for. So how do organizations survive and thrive in a marketplace that values, no less demands innovative ideas? They need to model and grow the values that invite collaboration."

Reba's Blog - The 8th Habit

" Went roaming thru Stephen Covey's new book, The Eighth Habit, at B&N today. It's not on my purchase list, but I may venture into it in more depth, using the cool new hold'em for pick up option at the SAPL site.

What I did see in the, well - I hate to use the word "tome" here, but it was somewhat weighty. Okay, maybe just heavy. I digress. What I did see that I want to learn more about was an obvious focus upon the absence of trust within our current business culture, as well as a pervasive "what's in it for me" -itis. This, coupled with a lack of what Covey calls "spiritual intelligence." Wow. You think????..."

Changing Minds by Howard Gardner

I picked up Howard Gardner’s book “Changing Minds” with the hope that it contained some sure fire tricks for getting people to come around and see things my way. Unfortunately, there are no such tricks, but there are some helpful ideas.

Howard Gardner begins the book by talking about theories of mind, how we acquire ideas, and how our minds change. He then transitions into chapters that present the levers of change, which are: reason, research, resonance, redescriptions, resources and rewards, real world events, and resistances. The rest of the book talks about these levers of change, how they work, when they work, and gives examples of them in action.

The book contained some very interesting information, with the following passage being one of the most striking:

Studies of moral development, for example, show that individuals at X stage of sophistication are likely to be persuaded by arguments that are couched at X+1 level of complexity. Thus, youngsters at the “might = right” level find convincing an argument that states that a person who is smart or moral might be more worthy of resources than a person with bigger muscles. If the complexity is greater, say +2 or +3 stages, then the youngsters cannot assimilate the argument and simply ignore it (arguments in terms of complex concepts like “distributive justice” or the “categorical imperative” fall on the deaf ears of ten-year-olds).

The passage made me wonder how much the quality of political debate in this country might improve if the educational system improved. It is also relevant to business in that when introducing a new product or service, you have to keep your explanation at a level that people can understand, or else they will just ignore your message.

Gardner ends the book by discussing changing one’s own mind, and offers a summary of what we have learned. The trick in “psychosurgery” (i.e. mindchanging) is to accept the changes that will happen anyway, acknowledge that certain other changes may be impossible, and concentrate one’s efforts on those changes of mind that are important, won’t occur naturally, but can be achieved with sufficient effort and motivation. In other words, pick your battles wisely.

This book is pretty good overall, but is slow and technical in some places. This book would be most interesting to people who don’t know much about psychology, or don’t change their minds very often. The rest of you may find it too dry to finish.

Rush Kidder Interview Posted

It was a busy day for us at 8cr. I finally got the Rush Kidder interview posted. I am no Charlie Rose, but I think Rush makes some outstanding points.

Rush has authored eight books including:

• Moral Courage (the subject of the interview)
• How Good People Make Tough Choices
• Shared Values in a Trouble World
• Heartland Ethics
• Global Ethics
• E.E. Cummings: An introduction to the Poetry
• Dylan Thomas: The Country of the Spirit

This Week - 2/21/05

Another Monday and more snow to report. We got three to six inches here yesterday and have a good ground cover again.

Lots going on this week.

The 7th Business Blog Book Tour starts today. We are featuring Starting Something by Wayne McVicker. Rob at Businesspundit has already gotten things going this morning. Wayne will be here Wednesday talking about the book.

I will be posting the first of our audio interviews on 800-CEO-READ podcasts. I will let you know when that is ready.

We are going to continue the discussion on design books. I got feedback from a few of my designer friends. I also came across a couple of other things that I think apply well to the non-designer.

As always, we'll bring you whatever news and links we find.

Have a great week!

The design book I'd read if I could read only one

Just a follow up to Todd's post:

The art of looking sideways - Alan Fletcher

I seriously loved experiencing this book...!

Your Apprentice Update

Well, Michael finally got voted off last night. That was not a big surprise.

Sitting to the left of Donald was trusted advisor George Ross. The reason for the post is the George is the latest Apprentice cast member to release a book. This one is called Trump Strategies for Real Estate: Billionaire Lessons for the Small Investor.

George has been in the New York real estate game since the 1950's, so he knows all the players and has the background on all of Trump's buildings. The book is story after story of deals. The best lesson you can learn from the book is "Get to know the rules very well and then get creative." Trump World Tower was built on a parcel that had restriction on the size of the building that could be put up. To get around it, he bought the air rights from the buildings around the parcel and was able to put up a 72 story building of luxury condominiums.

The details of the deals gets to be a little much. I did like chapter four on negotiation. Who better to learn from than the Donald?

If you are into Donaldmania, buy the book. If not, find it locally, take a browse, and see if it pulls you in.

Reviews of Beyond the Brand

I ran across two more people have been talking about Beyond the Brand by John Winsor.

We had John at the 800-CEO-READ blog in November. This link will get you to his first entry and you can page forward through his entries.

That caught Evelyn's attention and she wrote about it a couple of times (here and here).

In the last week, Johnnie Moore penned a piece and Rob at Businesspundit gave the book a thumbs up.

Books for Your Design Library

Design, design, design...you can't avoid hearing it almost every day. Tom Peters spends alot of time in Re-Imagine talking about it. Design is one of the themes in Dan Pink's new book A Whole New Mind.

I noticed a list in HOW Magazine this month entitled "20 Essential Books For The Designer's Shelf". To get out of your normal reading pattern, you may want to check out a couple of these. I have added comments on the books I know:

• A Notebook or Journal [it has to be a Moleskine]
• Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color by Leatrice Eiseman
• Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss [classic, I have been reading this one alot lately with the 2 year old]
• A History of Graphic Design by Philip Meggs
• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
• Creativity for Graphic Designers by Mark Oldach
• Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines by the Graphic Artists Guild
• Color Index, Layout Index, Idea Index by Jim Krause
• Pocket Pal by International Paper
• The Photoshop7 WOW! Book by Jack Davis
• The Creative Business Guide to Running a Graphic Design Business by Cameron Foote
• The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams [I bought this recently and I like it, it didn't turn me into a designer, but helped me understand what makes good design]
• Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger
• Design Form and Choas by Paul Rand [out of print]
• S, M, L, XL by Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, and Hans Werlemann
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie [I just finished this a couple days ago, and it is outstanding. It is about Mackenzie's journey at the Hallmark.]
• Art and Fear by David Bayles
• The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
• The End of Print by David Carson and Lewis Blackwell
• Dictionary and thesaurus

P.S. I added a category called Design. I think we are going to be talking about it more and more.

Blink, Blink, Blink

I have been watching what bloggers have to say about Blink. What is interesting is that this is one of those books that appeals to bloggers and a book they want to talk about and say they have read. I put a sampling of the chatter below the fold...

Making of A Parent - Malcolm Gladwell

Baby: I just got back from listening to Malcolm Gladwell speak about his book Blink on the campus of SLU. I've really enjoyed both Blink and The Tipping Point. After reading the books you can actually see everyday things in a different light. That's pretty powerful. I went to the event by myself because Jen had made a date to hang out with 2 of her nieces this evening. She's really good that way. After the BABY comes we'll have less time to do things like we did this evening. Our entire world will change. But only temporarily. Just for the next 20 or so years.

Build a Stronger Business - Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink talk [Part 1 and Part 2]

Here are four lessons I learned from his presentation:

1. People are unaware of our biases. We all have blind spots. Becoming aware of them on your own is like a fish pondering a bicycle ride
2. Snap judgements happen fast. This isn't just a clever witicism. Consider the study where two groups evaluated the effectiveness of a college instructor. Group A evaluated the professor at the end of the term. Group B in one version only spent an hour listening to single lecture. Turns out the evaluations between the groups were quite similar. Now, the variations become interesting: Group B only gets a 1 hour video of the instructor -- essentially same evaluations; when Group B only got 10 minutes of video, it turned in essentially the same evals; when Group B got only 10 seconds of the lecture, yes, essential the same evaluation; and then, finally, when the sound was removed and only 10 seconds of a visual was presented, the same essential evals were scored. Wow!
3. Sometimes it's important to exclude data to make better evaluations. Gladwell is a big fan of screens to remove visual data because of the overwhelming bias it creates. When asked how he would structure presidential campaigns to remove extraneous influences, he said he'd want the candidates to be hidden from public view for the year prior to elections, and only issue written or accent-neutralized audio speeches.
4. Changing the environment changes solves the problem now! Admitting bias is hard; removing its influence by changing the environment is considerably easier and more expedient.

Facetious Japery - Books and Links

As an aside, Malcom Gladwell who wrote the Tipping Point, has a new book that I perused the first few chapters of, called Blink that seems pretty interesting. On the whole, Gladwell is a good writer whose book(s) will probably never be cited in any peer-reviewed journals, but nonetheless contains the sort of information that might come in handy at parties when you want to look smart.

coffee house - February 15th, 2005

blink's subtitle says 'the art of thinking without thinking'. but the book, i feel, is really about prejudices. as i approached the end of the book, i wondered if he was going to give three/five/seven ways to develop the ability to thin-slice. instead he just says, dont be prejudiced. people have talked about how biases hurt others (and thus in an indirect way hurt us too). but what gladwell says is they hurt us directly. we, it seems, have the inherent ability to take right decisions in a split of a second. something that can save lives, save millions of dollars. what, really, come in the way are our prejudices.

Realm of the Wombat - Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)

As I read this book it didn’t seem like the author was really accomplishing what he set out to do, which was to understand how people make split second decisions, but now that I think about it, it was pretty successful. One of the conclusions is that having a expertise in what you’re deciding gives you an advantage of some type. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to accept that. However, the book’s real strength is the compilation of experiments to support conclusion. For instance, most people can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a direct taste test. But if you’re given three unlabeled samples (two Cokes/one Pepsi or vice versa), you’ll have a difficult time determining which two are the same, let alone what brand they are. It turns out that the colas are so similar that, unless you are a food expert, when you sip sample three you won’t be able to remember what the first was like. It’s the series of these experiments that made Blink a good read.

dystropoppygus - Rapid Cognition

"Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.

Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like." -- Barbara Mackoff

Goose the Blog - stop the madness: 30 second reviews

This is pretty interesting book, but it pales for me in comparison with Mind Wide Open. Gladwell writes about the power and problems of subconscious, non-analytical thinking. Hunches, prejudice, bias, reflex, and a whole lot of things like that. He does a little in the way of technical explanation, but focuses mainly on telling stories about how non-analytical thinking has affected certain people, e.g. saved lives. Thankfully, he is not slow to point out the problems with this kind of thinking, either, and yet I still fear that business managers will soon be telling us worker bees that this or that plan just doesn't "feel right" while using this book to justify their laziness to themselves.

About.com [Human Resources] - Why Blink Matters: The Power of First Impressions

The key take away from the book is the necessity for each of us to be aware of and control our thin-slicing. After reading Blink, I’m more convinced than ever that we make snap decisions about situations and people, unconsciously, that bring into play all of our biases. All candidates for positions deserve the same treatment and the same attention to factors other than race, religion, appearance and size.

Crepuscule - Blink--Thin Slicing-Music

Being in a couple Bands (The Field & Duplomacy) I've found that Blink directly relates to my experiences in bands and in my aural preferences. Whether I like it or not (and most of the time I wish people didn't thin-slice my music) people are continually judging my music as it relates to all music. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell discusses phenom Kenna and his ability to garner support from the industry but not the radio. Gladwell discusses how crowds and artists went wild for Kenna, yet when his album was tested by radio focus groups he failed horribly. Is his music bad or is it just a fact that some music is so new and different that it takes repeated listens before it becomes something people respond to? This takes me to my bands. One of my bands is much more radio friendly and easier to quickly dissect into an affable reaction; where the other band has songs that all work themselves out at about 5 minutes and in my opinion are more fresh than other radio friendly songs. The reaction to the band with the "crowd challenging" songs has had much less success, smaller crowds and never gets played on that radio. Does this make it a failure? Not in the least. It's a matter of people thin-slicing the "crowd challenging" band too quickly and not giving the songs time to sink in enough to come see us again. It's frustrating and invigorating at the same time. Frustrating in that we don't get the response we want, but invigorating in knowing that we're challenging people's perceptions of what music is in these '00s. Anyway...enough rambling.

The Common Scold - Can You Hear Me Now?

But Gladwell brings even the most arcane social psychology experiments to life, with fascinating results -- and includes topics that every single practicing lawyer simply must listen to. The most riveting (so far, I'm only 1/3rd into the book) is his discussion of medical malpractice.

Lissen up, litigators:

Studies show, sez Gladwell, that you can predict who will get sued for med mal by listening to the tone of voice of the doctor as he talks to his patients -- even if you strip out all the content! That doctors who speak with an open, compassionate tone -- rather than with patronizing or condescending inflection and cadence -- simply do not get sued. Even when they make mistakes.

He also discusses studies that show that doctors who spend JUST a few more minutes with a patient -- and manage expectations of the patient -- by offering them roadmaps (e.g., "I'll do this examination, and then we'll talk about the options and I'll answer any questions you might have") trigger loyalty and appreciation from patients, who DO NOT SUE even when their doctors make mistakes.

Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a Ph.D sociologist) to translate this to our profession. I'm willing to bet my bar ticket that if those exact same studies were performed on lawyers, the studies would generate the exact same results.

Get More Out of PowerPoint

I have been looking forward to Cliff Atkinson's book for a long time. In Beyond Bullet Points, Cliff writes about making Powerpoint a more valuable communication device. He told me the other day that it is really all about learning to tell great stories. He wrote an entry on his blog a couple of weeks ago about the books that heavily influenced his book (he must have known that would guarantee a link from 8cr):

1. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White
2. Screenplay, by Syd Field
3. Story, by Robert McKee
4. Stealing Fire from the Gods, by Jim Bonnet
5. Moving Mountains, by Henry Boettinger
6. The Minto Pyramid Principle, by Barbara Minto
7. Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
8. Multimedia Learning, by Richard E. Mayer
9. Eloquence in an Electronic Age, by Kathleen Hall Jamieson
10. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle

More on his book soon...

Lucky or Short?

Brad Feld wrote a review of Lucky or Smart? on his blog. This is the book by Tripod founder and Village Ventures Partner Bo Peabody.

We like the book and wrote a Jack Covert Selects on it in January. The book is pretty short at 58 pages (Brad calls it a half book), but you can try an even shorter version by reading the Inc. article in the January 2005 issue.

How to Read a Business Book

Bren at Slacker Manager create a marvelous post on How to Read A Business Book [disclosure - bren says nice things about us]. What I have always believed is that reading business books is an active process. You are learning. Find a good place to do it. Take notes. Make marks. Or dog-ear pages. Whatever works for you.

The Ultimate Business Library

Stuart Crainer wrote a book back in 1997 called "The Ultimate Business Library: 50 Books That Shaped Management Thinking". The book is out of print now, but I found the list of books during my internet travels last week. I thought it went nicely with the FT list of 80 books every manager should read.

Below the fold, you will find the 50 books that Crainer thought should be in your library. They are organized by category and then listed in alphabetical.

• Management
• Chester Barnard (1938), The Functions of the Executive, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
• Dale Carnegie (1937), How to Win Friends and Influence People, Simon & Schuster, New York.
• Peter F. Drucker (1954), The Practice of Management , Harper & Row, New York.
• Henri Fayol (1949), General and Industrial Management , Pitman, London.
• Mary Parker Follett (1941), Dynamic Administration , (editors Fox, Elliot & Urwick, Lyndall) Harper & Row, New York.
• Henry Mintzberg (1973), The Nature of Managerial Work , Harper & Row, New York.
• Ricardo Semler (1993), Maverick! , Century, London.
• Leadership
• Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus (1985), Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge , Harper & Row, New York.
• James MacGregor Burns (1978), Leadership , Harper & Row, New York.
• Henry Ford (1923), My Life and Work , Doubleday, Page & Co, New York.
• Nicolo Machiavelli (1513), The Prince , Penguin, London(1967).
• Thomas Watson Jr. (1963), A Business and its Beliefs: The Ideas that Helped Build IBM , McGraw Hill, New York.
• Complexity
• Alfred Chandler (1962), Strategy and Structure , MIT Press, Boston.
• Michael Goold, Andrew Campbell & Marcus Alexander (1994), Corporate Level Strategy , John Wiley, New York.
• Alfred P. Sloan (1963), My Years with General Motors , Doubleday, New York.
• Max Weber (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization , Free Press, New York.
• People
• Meredith Belbin (1984), Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail , Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford.
• Frederick Herzberg (1959), The Motivation to Work , (with Mausner, B. and Snyderman, B.), Wiley, New York.
• Douglas McGregor (1960), The Human Side of Enterprise , McGraw Hill, New York.
• Abraham Maslow (1954), Motivation and Personality , Harper & Row, New York.
• Customers
• W. Edwards Deming (1982), Out of the Crisis , MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• Joseph M. Juran (1988), Juran on Planning for Quality , Free Press, New York.
• Philip Kotler (1967), Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control , Prentice Hall, New Jersey(1994, 8th edition).
• Ted Levitt (1962), Innovation in Marketing , McGraw Hill, New York.
• Adam Smith (1776), The Wealth of Nations , Modern Library, New York(1937).
• Global
• Christopher Bartlett & Sumantra Ghoshal (1989), Managing Across Borders , Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
• Kenichi Ohmae (1990), The Borderless World , William Collins, London.
• Richard Pascale & Anthony Athos (1981), The Art of Japanese Management , Penguin Books, London.
Michael Porter (1990), The Competitive Advantage of Nations , Macmillan, London. Fons Trompenaars (1993), Riding the Waves of Culture , Nicholas Brealey, London.
• The Future
• Peter F. Drucker (1969), The Age of Discontinuity , Heinemann, London.
• Gary Hamel & C.K. Prahalad (1994), Competing for the Future , Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
• Charles Handy (1989), The Age of Unreason , Business Books, London.
• Alvin Toffler (1980), The Third Wave , Bantam, New York.
• Renewal
• Chris Argyris & Donald Schon (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective , Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
• Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1983), The Change Masters , Simon & Schuster, New York.
• Richard Pascale (1990), Managing on the Edge , Simon & Schuster, New York.
• Tom Peters & Robert Waterman (1982), In Search of Excellence , Harper & Row, New York & London.
• Tom Peters (1992), Liberation Management , Alfred P. Knopf, New York.
• Edgar H. Schein (1985), Organizational Culture and Leadership , Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
• Peter Senge (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization , Doubleday, New York.
• Competition
  • Michael Porter (1980), Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors , Free Press, New York.
  • Sun Tzu (500 BC), The Art of War
• Efficiency
  • James Champy & Michael Hammer (1993), Reengineering the Corporation , Harper Business, New York.
  • Frederick W. Taylor (1911), The Principles of Scientific Management , Harper & Row, New York.
• Strategy
  • Igor Ansoff (1965), Corporate Strategy , McGraw Hill, New York.
  • Gary Hamel & C.K. Prahalad (1994), Competing for the Future , Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
  • Henry Mintzberg (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning , Prentice Hall International, Hemel Hempstead.
  • Kenichi Ohmae (1982), The Mind of the Strategist , McGraw Hill, New York.
• Fun
• C.N. Parkinson (1958), Parkinson's Law , John Murray, London.
• Robert Townsend (1970), Up the Organization , Michael Joseph, London.




By Alphabet

1. Igor Ansoff (1965), Corporate Strategy , McGraw Hill, New York.
2. Chris Argyris & Donald Schon (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective , Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
3. Chester Barnard (1938), The Functions of the Executive, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
4. Christopher Bartlett & Sumantra Ghoshal (1989), Managing Across Borders , Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
5. Meredith Belbin (1984), Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail , Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford.
6. Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus (1985), Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge , Harper & Row, New York.
7. James MacGregor Burns (1978), Leadership , Harper & Row, New York.
8. Dale Carnegie (1937), How to Win Friends and Influence People, Simon & Schuster, New York.
9. James Champy & Michael Hammer (1993), Reengineering the Corporation , Harper Business, New York.
10. Alfred Chandler (1962), Strategy and Structure , MIT Press, Boston.
11. W. Edwards Deming (1982), Out of the Crisis , MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
12. Peter F. Drucker (1954), The Practice of Management , Harper & Row, New York.
13. Peter F. Drucker (1969), The Age of Discontinuity , Heinemann, London.
14. Henri Fayol (1949), General and Industrial Management , Pitman, London.
15. Mary Parker Follett (1941), Dynamic Administration , (editors Fox, Elliot & Urwick, Lyndall) Harper & Row, New York.
16. Henry Ford (1923), My Life and Work , Doubleday, Page & Co, New York
17. Michael Goold, Andrew Campbell & Marcus Alexander (1994), Corporate Level Strategy , John Wiley, New York.
18. Gary Hamel & C.K. Prahalad (1994), Competing for the Future , Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
19. Charles Handy (1989), The Age of Unreason , Business Books, London.
20. Frederick Herzberg (1959), The Motivation to Work , (with Mausner, B. and Snyderman, B.), Wiley, New York.
21. Joseph M. Juran (1988), Juran on Planning for Quality , Free Press, New York.
22. Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1983), The Change Masters , Simon & Schuster, New York.
23. Philip Kotler (1967), Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control , Prentice Hall, New Jersey(1994, 8th edition).
24. Ted Levitt (1962), Innovation in Marketing , McGraw Hill, New York.
25. Nicolo Machiavelli (1513), The Prince , Penguin, London(1967).
26. Douglas McGregor (1960), The Human Side of Enterprise , McGraw Hill, New York.
27. Abraham Maslow (1954), Motivation and Personality , Harper & Row, New York.
28. Henry Mintzberg (1973), The Nature of Managerial Work , Harper & Row, New York.
29. Henry Mintzberg (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning , Prentice Hall International, Hemel Hempstead.
30. Kenichi Ohmae (1982), The Mind of the Strategist , McGraw Hill, New York.
31. Kenichi Ohmae (1990), The Borderless World , William Collins, London.
32. C.N. Parkinson (1958), Parkinson's Law , John Murray, London.
33. Richard Pascale & Anthony Athos (1981), The Art of Japanese Management , Penguin Books, London.
34. Richard Pascale (1990), Managing on the Edge , Simon & Schuster, New York.
35. Tom Peters & Robert Waterman (1982), In Search of Excellence , Harper & Row, New York & London.
36. Tom Peters (1992), Liberation Management , Alfred P. Knopf, New York.
37. Michael Porter (1980), Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors , Free Press, New York.
38. Michael Porter (1990), The Competitive Advantage of Nations , Macmillan, London.
39. Edgar H. Schein (1985), Organizational Culture and Leadership , Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
40. Ricardo Semler (1993), Maverick! , Century, London.
41. Peter Senge (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization , Doubleday, New York.
42. Alfred P. Sloan (1963), My Years with General Motors , Doubleday, New York.
43. Adam Smith (1776), The Wealth of Nations , Modern Library, New York(1937).
44. Frederick W. Taylor (1911), The Principles of Scientific Management , Harper & Row, New York.
45. Alvin Toffler (1980), The Third Wave , Bantam, New York.
46. Robert Townsend (1970), Up the Organization , Michael Joseph, London.
47. Fons Trompenaars (1993), Riding the Waves of Culture , Nicholas Brealey, London.
48. Sun Tzu (500 BC), The Art of War
49. Thomas Watson Jr. (1963), A Business and its Beliefs: The Ideas that Helped Build IBM , McGraw Hill, New York.
50. Max Weber (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization , Free Press, New York.
Posted by Todd S. at 3:38 PM | Comments (0)

This Week - 2/14/05

Snow is falling here in Milwaukee on this Valentine's Day.

We are running an excerpt from Brand Hijack by Alex Wipperfurth. Fast Company has a little piece on the book last month. Brand Autopsy is also a fan.

FYI, we now have excerpts from 17 books on the Excerpts Blog. You can find a complete list on the left side.

I have some links burning to get into entries. So, I will be doing some writing this week.

Who knows what else? Have a great week!

DisneyWar Excerpt in WSJ

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt of the highly-hyped DisneyWar. This piece talks about many of the people problems on the television side of things.

Slate thinks this business scandal book will sell while others haven't. The article quotes sales numbers from others in the genre. These are from Bookscan, which capture retail data and represents about 70% of the U.S. market.

• 24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies That Destroyed Faith in Corporate America by Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller - 16,765 copies
• Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner by Alec Klein - 9,176 copies
• Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett Packard by George Anders - 8,081 copies
• Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner by Nina Munk - 5,000 copies
• There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future by Kara Swisher - 3,744 copies
• The Man Who Tried to Buy the World: Jean-Marie Messier and Vivendi Universal by Jo Johnson and Martine Orange - 654 copies

Simon & Schuster has printed 200,000 copies of DisneyWar. I guess we'll see.

Planning for the Unknown

I got a copy of Talespin in the mail the other day. The book is subtitled "public relations disasters - inside stories & lessons learned". It caught my interest and I took a look at this morning. The book is made up of a hundred or so stories that are two to three page in length. Each starts with the media headline, followed by the background, how the story evolved and ends with a lesson learned. The book also has an A-Z format, but I am not sure you could use it as a way to find what you are looking for. You are not going to find a recommended PR process for your business, but you are going to get some great insight through the lens of a PR pro.

Trevor at Corporate Engagement has also read the book. He has a book review and an interview with the McCusker on his site.

Malcolm Gladwell and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Harry Potter isn’t great literature; however, it is inspiring a large number of kids (and adults) to read. And that’s a good thing. Judging by the New York Times Bestseller List, Malcolm Gladwell is doing the same thing; getting people to read. We are left with two choices: lament that they are not reading “Oliver Twist,” and “Intuition at Work,” or rejoice that at least they are reading something!

I liked Blink. It delivered precisely what I want in a non-fiction book. Fast read, cool ideas, things that made me go “Hmmmm?” and I was left pondering what I might do differently in my own life.

I liked the reminder that the mind process is happening faster than we realize and I liked the reminder that we can be proactive about our programming. We are not victims of the messages we received as a kid or receive daily in the news and media. We can make conscious choices.

There are a lot of new age books and motivational business books that deal with intention. And despite our skepticism, it seems to work. Perhaps the “affirmations” are working at reprogramming the preconscious level that was discussed in Blink. If it sounds corny, just consider how silly “you need to wash your hands because there are invisible bad things on them that are too small to see,” must have sounded in the 1800’s.

If nothing else, the next time you see a cop on TV nonchalantly kill someone and then go out for coffee as if nothing had happened, or the next time you fill out demographic information on some type of test or assessment, or the next time you get your pulse above 155 you might be aware that there is more going on here than what is immediately obvious.

When all is said and done, from time to time we need to be reminded that our body/ brain system is pretty amazing and that with a little care, we can live more consciously.

So bring on more.

Todd, you may be taking this too seriously. If you don’t like a book it can always be used to balance a wobbly table.

The blogosphere, according to the right

The blogosphere, according to the right
Hugh Hewitt’s skewed thesis on the 21st Century Information Reformation

By Shayne Bowman

2004 was the year of the blog. Merriam-Webster added the word “blog” to it’s official lexicon. Blogs made the cover of Time for Rathergate and were nearly named the magazine’s People of the Year. Bloggers covered the presidential conventions of both major parites; and impacted the outcome of the presidential campaign in numerous ways — through grass-roots reporting, fact-checking the media, providing analysis and perspective on issues, as well as fundraising, social networking and advocacy for candidates.

It’s no surprise that 2004 was also the year that weblogs began to significantly enter the awareness of the mass media consumer, achieving a collective readership of 32 million U.S. citizens.

A new book by nationally syndicated conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World, aims to convince today’s leaders (in business, government, church, media, etc.) to pay attention to and engage an emerging new media power — the blogosphere.

The blogosphere is the term used to describe the sum total of all interactive blog communication. Hewitt ought to know something about the subject. He’s been writing about the rise of new media since 2001. Since HughHewitt.com was launched in early 2002, more than 10 million people have visited his weblog.

Unfortunately, right from the start, Hewitt’s conservative ideology takes over and distracts from otherwise sound messages in his Introduction. “People don’t trust the old mainstream media with anything like the old level of confidence,” says Hewitt. Okay, I’m with you Hugh. “There are plenty of books out there that explain what happened, but it basically comes down to the left-leaning ideology that was always there and increasingly became so widespread, transparent, and arrogant as to repel half the country. If you want to argue the point, this book isn’t for you. Go watch your DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11 again.” Um…. I’ll get right on that.

I’m not a professional media critic, but I’m fairly well-read on the subject of declining credibility in mainstream media, and it isn’t as simple as a partisan debate. In a column about the post-Jayson Blair state of journalism, Time magazine media critic James Poniewozik summed up the complex facets of the issue like this:

“Journalists think trust equals accuracy. But it's about much more: passion, genuineness, integrity. There are the perennial charges of bias, which grow louder the more bitterly split the electorate gets. But there's also the problem that many big-media journalists are now cautious, well-paid conformists distant from their audiences and more responsive to urban elites, powerful people and megacorporations — especially the ones they work for. Hence the bland news anchors who verge on self-parody; magazines so commercial they're practically catalogs; timid pack journalism; local newscasts shilling for their corporate parents; saturation coverage of trials-of-the-minute and movies we know will be lousy but will have big opening weekends. Yes, people watch and buy all this stuff. That doesn't mean they respect it. They see a profession that acts excited about a lot — Laci Peterson, The Matrix Reloaded, political horse races — but cares about nothing.”

Passion is exactly what is attractive about weblogs. They are usually created, not for pure economic gain, but because the author is wildly passionate about a subject. The creators genuinely seem to care and hope to make a difference. When they make a mistake, webloggers often admit to it. They are willing to debate and link to differences of opinion. Bloggers are also equally as biased as mainstream media. The difference is that webloggers are much more likely to be transparent about their affiliations, whereas mainstream journalists aren’t allowed to admit such things.

Throughout the book, Hewitt doesn’t miss a chance to drop some partisan condescension. Any blogger mentioned in the book who is even remotely left-leaning is described parenthetically as “off-the-wall,” “incoherent” or “like the crazy aunt in the basement.”

Not to mention, according to Hewitt, there is currently a talent gap among political bloggers. “The political left is seriously behind in the promotion and development of bloggers with insight and good humor,” Hewitt claims. “And there is a great deal more encouragement among the center-right for entrants… a generosity of spirit that I just don’t see on the left side of the spectrum. This is a decided advantage for my center-right ideology.” Hewitt provides little or no evidence to support this theory.

The only thing about leftist blogs that draws any respect from Hewitt is a large number of site visitors. But really, is it necessary to be so condescending to liberals in a business book about the blogosphere?

Hewitt appears to have missed the driving spirit of the blogosphere. Weblogs did not emerge solely as a reaction against a leftist establishment media. The blogosphere empowers anyone who is disenfranchised — for any reason. This is why the blogosphere is often described as the “democritization of media.”

Overall, I support the advice in Hewitt’s book. His main message is spot on: the weblog bus has left the station at a tremendous speed and businesses seriously need to consider getting on the bus or prepare to get run off the road.

In the book’s first of three sections, Hewitt focuses on understanding the power and influence of the blogosphere. Foremost evidence is what Hewitt calls “the founding myths of the blogosphere” — major news events that were ignored or missed by mainstream media but were discovered, discussed and made internationally known by weblogs.

Hewitt’s four myths are: the ousting of Senator Trent Lott over comments at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party; the plagiarism by New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and the resulting resignation of the paper’s editor-in-chi