800-CEO-READ Blog

Looking for someone for next Book Tour

I am looking for one more stop for the next Business Blog Book Tour.

It will taking place the last week of September. You get a free book and a chance to chat with the author.

If you are interested, drop me a line at todd at 800ceoread dot com and I will tell you more.

How to Write Good

Good writing skills are essential for success in business. You are going to write reports for your superiors and they are going to be decisions based on what you have written. You will write a cover letter or two as you move from job to job. On occasion, you may be responsible for send out plans for Happy Hour.

The serious folks will send you to The Elements of Style or On Writing Well. I wanted to suggest an something. Quirk Books has come out with an alternative: How Not To Write: An Office Primer for the Grammatically Perplexed. It is one of those books with a small trim size and you will only have 159 pages to read. Author Terence Denman has given reader 10 sets of tips and myths. One combination is "Chopping Off Your Unwanted Auxiliaries" and "You Can't Have a Comma Before And".

I like the book. It is short and punchy, and you can put the 5 page points to work immediately.

Examples from Abroad

If you want a guaranteed way to get mentioned on the 800-CEO-READ blog, write a book with examples and anecdotes from outside the United States. Simply Better did a good job with that last year.

Today I am going to point you to Made in China: What Western Managers Can Learn from Trailblazing Chinese Entrepreneurs by Donald Sull with Yong Wang. My first attraction to the book with the idea of learning about how Chinese start-ups get their start. The authors have built the book around some interesting ideas. Here are the main chapter headings:

• Meet the Players
• Acknowledge the Fog of the Future
• Conduct Reconaissance Into the Future
• Outcycle the Competition
• Develop a Flexible Hierarchy
• Manage Relationships Dynamically
• Go For The Gold
• Get Big Right
• Leading in an Unpredictable Way

The real question for you on this book is how many of the companies listed below do you recognize:

• Legend Group Ltd.
• Sina Corporation
• Haier Group
• Guangdong Galanz
• UTStarcom
• AsiaInfo Holdings
• Hangzhou Wahaha Group
• Ting Hsin Group

That's what I thought. You better pick this book up.

This Week - 7/18/05

We are going to try get things running on a more regular basis again. We have been really busy since the beginning of June and things might finally settle down a bit.

I promise new audio content this week. We will also post an excerpt.

We might have another surprise for you this week too.

Have a great week!

Pitchman for the Gray Revolution

Ken Dychtwald has written about "age" issues for awhile. Being a card carrying "senior" member of this revolution, I found this quote fascinating.

“‘Did you know that two-thirds of all the men and women who have ever lived past 65 in the entire history of the world are alive today?’ [Dychtwald] asks. ‘Throughout all of history, most people didn’t age. They died. So in the 18th century, couples didn’t say, ‘Gee, what would you like to do in retirement?’ Because you’d be dead...From where I sit...this longevity revolution will have a bigger impact on people’s lives, their money, on the economy, on our families, on work, than either the industrial or technological revolutions of previous centuries.’ “

You can get a bigger taste of what he has to say, here is a link (sub req.)

Ken has a new book coming this Fall. Here it is.

zzz-marketing

Mark Hughes’s recent title Buzzmarketing: get people to talk about your stuff brought to mind one of Groucho Marx’s more famous quips: “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.” That’s because I have a steadfast rule of not reviewing or commenting on books that I haven’t fully read. But in this case I’m willing to make an exception.

I’ll start with the cover, which is the one thing I really like about this book. The bright, playful illustration of one person speaking into another’s ear is eye-catching, and serves the core message of the book well.

What did I not like about this book? For starters, the topic. Do we really need yet another book on the art of buzz marketing? On generating word-of-mouth, creating tipping points, spawning viral marketing, all in the service of garnering attention for the latest insignificant bauble? To date the only proven success of buzz marketing has been the buzz marketers themselves. The author is famous for the gimmick of convincing the people of Halfway, Oregon, to rename themselves Half.com, when he was VP of marketing at that company. Okay, that’s a real applicable lesson for all you marketers out there.

In his book, Hughes draws lessons from such important business topics as American Idol and Britney Spears, advising people to start conversations (and buzz) by pushing one of the six buttons of buzz: the taboo, unusual, outrageous, hilarious, remarkable, and secret. I can’t quite figure out which one of these categories his book fits into. Was humdrum one of them? Or maybe the “piling-on,” as in jumping onto a topic already covered to death by many predecessors. At least he has the grace to avoid drawing lessons from the Blair Witch Trial, a case study that has inspired far too many business authors.

The point is, why aren’t there more celebrated books about how to make great products? Or books that question the role of business today? Or take on topics like making meaning among the employees? Marketing is essential, but most marketing books are tired. And one last gripe: in the notes the author misspells the name of Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

Have they got a deal for you

From last months' Washington Post comes an article about new pricing policies being used on the Net:

"The idea used to be that you, the consumer, could shop around, compare goods and prices, and make a smart choice. But now the reverse is also true: The vendor looks at its consumer base, gathers information, and decides whether you are worth pleasing, or whether it can profit from your loyalty and habits. You may try to jump from site to site to hunt for the best buy, but that's time-consuming. And there are comparative shopping sites such as Bizrate or Nextag, but these can be tough to navigate, and companies are learning quickly how to game the system."

Read more

Outsourcing

Clyde Prestowitz has written a couple of seriously important books when it comes to international trade. Back many years ago, he wrote the primer on Japan and U.S. business called Trading Places—currently out of print. He has just published a great book about China and our international trade issues called THREE BILLION NEW CAPITALISTS. I loved the book and so does Henry Blodget, who is a former securities analyst, who writes frequently for Slate and New York magazine. He reviewed the book in the Sunday July 3, 2005 New York Times.
One snippet from the review:

"The work is getting done faster and better, Prestowitz argues, because Indians are not only hungrier than we are, but better educated. China, India, Japan and Europe all churn out more science and engineering degrees than we do. Worse -- and downright embarrassing -- is the state of American education. Globally, our 12th-graders rank only in the 10th percentile in math (that's 10th percentile, not 10th). Our students also rank first in their assessment of their own performance: we're not only poorly prepared, we have delusions of grandeur."

Check out the complete review here.

BusinessWeek B-School Book Bets

BusinessWeek asked B-schoolers what books they are reading this summer. The list includes:

• The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
• The Travels of a T-Shirt In the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change At Work by Debra Meyerson
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffery Sachs
• A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Books and Blogs Going Hand in Hand

We are a little late on this, but The New York Times ran an interesting piece on how authors are using blogs. Among those profiled are John Battelle (The Search), David Weinberger (Everything is Miscellaneous), Chris Anderson (The Long Tail), Stephen Levitt (Freakonomics), and Steven Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good For You).

The Breakevens on Book Clubs

In the July issue of Real Simple Magazine, they have an article about clubs and memberships. One type of club they look at is book clubs. Here is the lowdown:

*Barnes and Noble Member program - $25 a year gets you 10% off.

Breakeven -> ~12 books

*Amazon Prime - $79 gets you free two day shipping (and overnight shipping for $4).

Breakeven -> 8 books

*Book Clubs - You typically pay $1 and get three to six books, and you are normally on the hook for three to six more.

Breakeven -> Hard saying; if you read lots of books you could save some money

Books To Make You A Millionaire?

Andy Serwer has penned the article Can These Books Really Make You a Millionaire? for Fortune's annual retirement issue. Not to spoil it for you, but he thinks the books won't help you. We generally think the same thing. You'll notice we don't talk much about the personal finance category, because it really seems like alot of the same.

Andy says Amazon will give you 40,000 results on "millionaire". To begin to show ridiculous it is, I am going to list all of the titles from Andy's article :

• The Millionaire Next Door
• The Millionaire Mind
• Millionaire Women Next Door
• The Automatic Millionaire
• The Weekend Millionaire's Secrets to Investing in Real Estate
• Lunchtime Millionaire
• The Instant Millionaire
• The Accidental Millionaire
• How to Marry a Multi-Millionaire
• Becoming a Millionaire God's Way
• Millionaire by 40
• Millionaire by 26
• How to Be a Teenage Millionaire
• Discovering the Millionaire in Every Child
• Cracking the Millionaire Code
• The One Minute Millioniare

Sorry about leaving out the links. There are just too many... :)

The What and Where Generation

This a little further into the Immelt/Fast Company interview:

What makes a growth leader today, and how does that differ from the sort of leader who was effective at GE in the past?

GE has always been a believer in leadership development. When the economy was growing at 5% a year, when oil was $14 a barrel, and when the world was at peace, the science of management was all about the how-to. That was the how-to generation. You didn't have to think about the what. Instead, there were management initiatives such as Six Sigma, which was the how.

So most of management literature, certainly for the past 10 years, was all about the how-to. I think we're now in the what-and-where generation. Global economies are slow and more volatile. Oil is at $50 a barrel. So this ability to pick markets, growth trends, customers, and to do segmentation-that is management today. We have a generation of people who know how to process flow charts. We have a generation of people who know how to do quality function deployment and things like that, but don't necessarily know why we're doing them. What's the what and the where? I believe that wholeheartedly. Nothing is completely black and white. But we are in a completely different cycle of what good managers know how to do.

This is what Jack (and I mean Covert) has been saying about business books. It is kind of cool to see the CEO of the largest, most successful company in the world saying the same thing (I should mention I am a GE alumni).

I think the great business books right now are the ones that give us a different way to look at the world -- Blink, Wisdom of Crowds, A Whole New Mind, The World is Flat. It is about starting the conversation, but not necessarily being given the conclusion. These books don't give the how-to to go do it. And that is because the world is changing and the next set of rules and practices aren't clear yet.

So while we are travelling through this crazy time, you need to keep an open mind and be willing to read a different kind of book.

Running a Marathon

This is from the Jeff Immelt interview in Fast Company this month:

What have you learned so far in the job?

One of the things Jack said every on that I think is totally right is: It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. All these books about the first 90 days are kind of rubbish in many ways. You have to have a plan. You have to stick to it. You have to modify it at times, but every day you've got to get up and play hard. Jack used to see me running around, even after he left, and he'd say to me, "Remember, it's a marathon. Ten years. Fifteen years. You've got to get up every day with a new idea, a new spin, and you've got to bring it in here every day." I always kind of knew that, but until you are right in the middle of it, you never get it. His advice was right. It's sustained ability to manage change that really counts.

Jack Covert Selects--The Forgotten Half of Change

The Forgotten Half of Change: Achieving Greater Creativity Through Changes in Perception by Luc De Brabandere, Dearborn Trade, 160 Pages, $20.00 Hardcover, May 2005, ISBN 1419502751

As regular readers know, I get lots of books and separating the wheat from the chaff is something I try very hard to do in a fair, unbiased way. The advance readers copy of this book has sat on my desk for six months. During that time, several hundred books have been passed over, but for some reason, this book stayed. Something about appealed to me. To start off with it has an interesting cover and the concept itself interested with me. I know I’ll reread this great book again soon, because, as the book shows, that’s how change happens. Having worked in the same business for many years, I have seen many change initiatives fail—not necessarily because the idea was bad but because it didn’t resonate with the people involved and was doomed to fail.. As the author says:

“If you want to change, you have to change twice. You not only need to change the reality of your situation, you need to change your perception of this reality. This is the essence of this book.”

Hence, the forgotten half of change. This book is a prime example of a growing trend where business books don’t tell you how to run or manage a company, but instead helps you look at your business in a different light.. I personally like this trend because the books and the information is based on practical situations. To support the practical applications, each chapter ends with a “Key ideas in this chapter.” For example, the chapter “Seeing is Believing” has the following key ideas:

There are hundreds of laws of perception.
Some are “hardware,” but most of them are “software.” You don’t see the world like it is; you see the world like you are.
We think only in forms: stereotypes, patterns, and paradigms.
Many bad decisions are not due to a lack of information, but rather to the way our minds work.

This book stayed on my desk for a reason. After having read it, I understand why, and have made the book a permanent addition to my bookshelf.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE MONTHLY BOOK REVIEWS, PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO JACK AT 800-CEO-READ.COM.

ChangeThis Returns

The new issue of Changethis is out.

You will find manifestos from Tom Peters, Art Kleiner, and Rosa Say among others.

What Bill Says CEOs Should Be Reading

Bill Gates held his annual CEO Summit last month.

We have a little inside scoop for you.

There were five books recommended to the attendees:

• The Trendmaster's Guide: Get A Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next by Robyn Waters


• Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne


• The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown


• FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld


• MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. Macmillan

If you are a regular reader of the blog, you will have seen most of these. FAB was a new one for us. We are currently in pursuit of a copy, and will have some thoughts in the next week or two.