800-CEO-READ Blog

Grab a box. Label it. Start a new project.

I really, really enjoy this book. It's an easy read and has a clean design. It's been around for a few years -- the hardcover was published back in 2003. The paperback is now available. The book: The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life (a practical guide) by Twyla Tharp.

She explains creativity to be a habit. It's not luck or something that just appears out of thin air.

This part in particular seemed to be relevant to the new year. With the annual creation of new year resolutions, we're all starting a few new projects and taking the first step towards the goals for 2006. This section of the bookt explains how Twyla starts new projects.

To commence a project, Twyla:
Starts with a file box. On the box, she writes the project name, then she fills it with items related to the project at hand.

For Twyla, the box makes her feel

• Organized -- "that I have my act together even when I don't know where I'm going yet."
• Committed -- "The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I've started work."
• Connected -- "It is my soil., I feel this even when I've back-burnered a project: I may have put the box away on a shelf, but I know it's there. The project name on the box in bold black lettering is a constant reminder that I had an idea once and may come back to it very soon."
• That the idea will be remembered -- "One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn't write it down and put it in a safe place. I don't worry about that because I know where to find it. It's all in the box."

Why boxes? They are "easily acquired. Inexpensive. Perfectly functional. Portable. Identifiable. Disposable. Eternal enough."

The book is a great read, a good starting point for new projects and an excellent guide to creativity. It tells Twyla's stories while providing interaction with its various exercises and questions throughout the book.

Also, it's the book of the day on inBubbleWrap.

Strategy+Business' Best Business Books of 2005

Strategy+Business publishes a great business book list every year. You can look back at the 2003 and 2004 lists to see what I am talking about.

I am going to give you rundown on categories and the books in each. The link on the category will take you to the s+b essay.

The Future by Howard Rheingold

• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman
• The Long Emergency: Surviving The Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler
• Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies--and What It Means To Be Human by Joel Garreau
• A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Dan Pink
• Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson
• In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara
• Massive Change by Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries

Strategy by Chuck Lucier and Jan Dyer

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
• MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Move The Drive Exceptional Growth by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillan
• The Fortune At The Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit by C.K. Prahalad

Globalization by Michael Moynihan

• End of Poverty: The Economic Possibilities of Our Time by Jeffery Sachs
• Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities Solving the World's Most Difficult Problems by Stuart Hart
• The Fortune At The Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit by C.K. Prahalad
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

Management by David Hurst

• Winning by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch
• Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal? Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Organization by Robert Mittelstaedt
• Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald
• Blood on the Street: The Sensational Story How Wall Street Analysts Duped A Generation of Investors by Charles Gasparino
• Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff

Work and Life by Ann Graham

• The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality by Jerry Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson
• In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honroe
• Time Off for Good Behavior: How Hardworking Women Can Take A Break Change Their Lives by Mary Lou Quinlan
• Creating the Good Life: Applying Aristotle's Wisdom to Find Meaning and Happiness by James O'Toole

Marketing by Kenneth Roman

• All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin
• Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing by Alex Wipperfurth
• How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market by Gerald Zaltman
• ProfitBrand: How to Increase the Profitability, Accountability, & Sustainability of Brands by Nick Wreden

Media by Everette Dennis

• Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for America Media by Seth Mnookin

Leadership by James O'Toole

• Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life by Michael Lewis
• Lessons on Leadership by Terror: Finding Shaka Zulu in the Attic by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries
• Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job by Dennis Bakke
• A Life in Leadership: From D-Day to Ground Zero: An Autobiography by John Whitehead

Barrons' Best of Books of 2005

In the December 5, 2005 issue of Barron's, Jay Palmer wrote a piece called The Best Books of 2005. Here is his list:

• A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester
• Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors by Charles Gasparino
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
• Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald
• DisneyWar by James B. Stewart
• Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of The Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone
• One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Busienss in China (Wall Street Journal Book) by James McGregor
• The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism by John Bogle
• The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood by Edward Jay Epstein
• The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste by Elin McCoy
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs
• The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New by Jeremy Siegel
• The Genomics Age: How DNA Technology Is Transforming the Way We Live and Who We Are by Gina Smith
• The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt
• The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets by William N. Goetzmann
• The Tycoons : How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy by Charles R. Morris
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy by Matthew R. Simmons
• Unconventional Success : A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment by David F. Swensen
• What Goes Up : The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen by Eric J. Weiner

[hat tip to Zane at Conference Calls Unlimited]

"From Idea to Execution"

As Todd mentioned earlier, a cover does not always represent the inside contents.

Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators is one such book. The book helps you take an idea and act upon it. Here's one glimpse into it: Todd's interview with Vijay and Chris. So, why does this book deserve two blog entries and one podcast? It's something new. The process of innovation is often written about; yet, as Vijay and Chris point out, being innovative is not necessarily the hardest part. The hardest part: executing it.

For more, check out the blog entry by Chris Trimble (co-author of the book).

Holiday Shopping and Wal-Mart

As your holiday shopping comes to a close, following the December 26 bargains, here are a few interesting factoids from a soon-to-be published book, The Wal-Mart Effect. The book is due out in January and you can expect a Jack Covert Selects on it.

Here are the facts:

Wal-Mart sells $178,125 worth of stuff per employee. Target sells $156,506 worth of stuff per employee. Whole Foods sells $121,875 worth of stuff per employee.

From another chapter of the book:

A typical Wal-Mart has 60,000 different items for sale. You could fill a shopping cart with 50 items every day for three years without buying the same thing twice.

That's a LOT of stuff.

Todd's Best of 2005

It has been an incredible year. I know it sounds like a big echo here on the blog, but we are so happy and want to thank everyone who has help make this year such a success. Like the awards shows, there are too many names to list. We went to thank all of the individual customers, publishers, authors, agents, public relations folks, speakers bureaus, distributors, corporations, and universities that have been a part of everything we have accomplished this year.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

You'll find my many best of's below:

Best Things That Have Happened:

1. The arrival of my second son

2. Joining 800-CEO-READ full-time. I love my job and hope the fun we are having is showing through.

3. More Space

4. Bringing Kate onboard

Tied 5. Changethis and inBubbleWrap

Best Books I Have Seen:

I still stand by my two Must Reads - A Whole New Mind and Then We Set His Hair on Fire...

I really enjoyed Rules of the Red Rubber Ball and Radical Careering because they took the normal black & white of business books and gave us a great message in Technicolor.

Two books I missed from prior years - Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices and The Republic of Tea (out of print); both are brilliant - take the time and go read them.

Best Blog Posts We Have Done:

What's In A Name? (1/17/05)
Design Thinking Books (2/28/05)
The Last Personal Finance Book You'll Need (3/23/05)
Moving Pictures for Business People (3/24/05)
A Whole New Summary (of A Whole New Mind) (3/25/05)
Democratizing Innovation: This Book Needs More Love (5/25/05)
800-CEO-READ and ChangeThis (5/26/05)
Reading The Future (6/8/05)
Unwritten Rules of Management B2.0 article (6/23/05) and where to get it (11/04/05)
Examples from Abroad (7/18/05)
Tom's Make Your Own Magazine Karma (10/4/05)
100 Day Projects (10/5/05)
Kevin Caroll's Play List (10/27/05)
Paul Brown's Tribute to Peter Drucker (11/16/05)
Great Ideas Interview with Simon Wilder (12/1/05)

Best Excerpts We Have Run:

Just go read one - The Battle The Soul of Capitalism by John Bogle

Best Audio We Have Recorded:

It would be a tie between the interview with Kevin Carroll and The Church of The Customer Remix.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We'll see you next year!

Today is the Day

I told you Christmas was going to arrive a little earlier.

You might want to go check it out.

Best of the Year for Jack

It is that time of year. What was really extraordinary this past year was...

Movies

Capote with Walk the Line a close second. My only issue with the Cash film was I wanted more music and less drugs…but that’s just me. Capote was as close to a perfect movie as I have seen in awhile. The place was perfectly drawn, the acting was superb. Loved it.

Music

This is a tough one. I thought the new Neil Young was really good. I also liked the new The White Stripes. I think the newly found Monk and Trane concert is a treasure. My Morning Jacket has brought out an album that is pretty much a consensus best of 05. I liked it a lot but my best of the year is……Crooked Fingers, Dignity and Shame. If the cut Call to Love isn’t the most perfect pop song, I don’t know what is. And nothing works for me more than a perfect pop song.

Books

Business book of the year is the book Travels Of A T-shirt In The Global Economy. This book meets my criteria for a great business book. It is really well written and takes a subject we think we know about and teaches us tons we didn’t realize. I love books like this book. Blue Ocean Strategy is a great second book.

Reminiscing about 2005 (from August on) and business thoughts

Here we are, a few days from Santa's visit and 1.5 weeks away from ringing in 2006. As promised by Todd earlier this week, here is my Best of 2005.

Let's start with the beginning -- or at least, my beginning here at 8cr. I started in early August and have since learned a lot (don't tell Jack and Todd!).

As I imagine is true for everyone, a lot has gone on in the past 4+ months. Some of the highlights include:

• LAUNCH: Our launching of inBubbleWrap -- a new "business thought" giveaway site. It started with an inspiration, turned into an idea, and eventually become reality. I just wish I could legally enter contests, especially this contest. Okay. I still can't enter legally -- luckily, you can.
• TAKEOVER: Another major event of our year is taking over ChangeThis. This was something I was excited about even when interviewing with Jack, Todd and Sally. I love the idea behind ChangeThis -- the idea of ideas manifesting and then turning them into manifestos for the world to see. Here are a few of my favorite manifestos (from August through now):
  
  • Speak Softly -- Ira re-defines humbleness as an important virtue and encourages people to become more humble
  
  
  • The Creative Generalist -- I found the message in this manifesto to be unique because lately (at least in my lifetime) it seems that people are trained, taught and begin to have what I will call "tunnel-think". We're all specialists of some sort -- brain surgeons, early-childhood development teachers, history of Africa professors, marketing majors, etc., etc. There's so much to know that we've started to concentrate on each slice of the pie rather than the pie as a whole. Yes, there is an emphasis on looking at the big picture but perhaps, we need to be trained to look at the bigger picture. In his manifesto, Steve is basically explaining that we need to return to thinking broadly.
  
  
• PODCAST: Each month we try to do a few podcasts which are typically audio book excerpts or interviews with interesting people. My favorite two podcasts:
  
  1. Todd's interview with Kevin Carroll (author of Rules of the Red Rubber Ball). It's a Q&A session about finding your red rubber ball -- i.e. your passion. The book is great, quick, and easy read.
  
  
  2. A clip from Confessions of an Economic Hitman. The idea, alone, is very captivating.
  
  
• READ: Two of my favorite books from 2005 are Radical Careering and Let My People Go Surfing. The first being a cutting-edge designed book on jumpstarting your career and life (for a preview, check out Sally's manifesto) and the latter written by Yvon Chouinard on the beginnings of Patagonia. Personally, I love the adventure stories as they remind me of my week in Switzerland (but that's another story).

I'll stop there. What have been your favorite books, manifestos, podcasts, excerpts and/or _______ of 2005?

Kevin Roberts: New and Improved

In January, Saatchi & Saatchi's Kevin Roberts is returning to business books with two titles.

The first is an expanded edition of Lovemarks: the future beyond brands. We have talked alot about this one (see blog search). The main thing you get in the new and improved is an additional chapter called "Diamonds in The Mine". Roberts talks about the shopping experience with the pictures and passion you'd find in the rest of the book.

The second title is a new one called Sisomo: The Future on Screen. The sub-subtitle is "Creating Emotional Connections in The Market with Sight, Sound, and Motion." Here is the first two paragraphs from the introduction:

People have always loved watching screens. We have all felt the attraction. In the early days of television, before we got a set of our own, I remember the fascination of televisions on display in store windows. Like everyone else, I'd stand on the street gazing in at the magic of the moving pictures and feel the future had arrived.

We are now living in that future. The Screen Age. Screens are informing, entertaining, communicating, connecting, transacting, controlling. Screens for every need and purpose. And as these screens spread everywhere in our lives, it is becoming clear that using them with skill and creativity is the solution to the key communications and marketing challenges of our time.

I really like this book. I think it is because it takes the topic and looks at it from lots of angles - profiles of different screens, the myths of television (he says the 30 second spot lives!), storytelling on screens, and examples of folks doing cool things on screens.

BusinessWeek's Best of 2005: Ideas

BusinessWeek has a special feature on 21 ideas that were really important for 2005. Two of them involved books:

#11 - Chris Anderson and the Long Tail - This book isn't even out yet (expected release May '06), but you can read a lot building up to it on Chris' blog.

#17 - Yvon Chounard and Let My People Go Surfing - BW talks about the book, but they really think Yvon is one to something with the idea of trusting people to manage themselves.

Merry Christmas

We here at 800ceoread are all getting for holidays.

You'll find that theme on the front page of the website.

It is Christmas everyday over at inBubbleWrap. I can tell you there is going to be a really cool feature this week. I can't tell you when or what it is going to be, so be on the look out this week. Santa is going to be coming a little early.

We have a new audio excerpt on the Podcasts Blog.

We'll also be sharing more of our "Best of 2005" thoughts.

King Kong Week

Before we rolled out of this week, I want to make sure you saw Jack's King Kong tribute on the front page of the 800ceoread site.

Holiday Season Treats

My favorite three non-business business books for the holidays:

Crap Cars by Richard Porter (Bloomsbury). I dare you to resist Porter’s challenge to “Come take a ride in fifty of the most craptastic cars ever to hit the American highway.� This gleeful little book perfectly skewers 50 of the most egregiously awful vehicles produced in the past 40 years. Each model garners a one-page photo paired with a page of pure snark. To wit, Porter’s take on the Ferrari 400:

“It doesn’t take a genius to explain that the two things you should expect from any Ferrari are performance and beauty. Unfortunately Ferrari themselves completely forgot about that when they designed this monster. With a 4.8-liter V12 engine up front you might have vainly hoped that this car would be quick, but it wasn’t, especially when hooked up to a smothering automatic gearbox. Couple this with graceless cornering and disturbingly feeble brakes and you had a real recipe for misery. Expensive, handmade misery, but misery nonetheless. In any other Ferrari you might have consoled yourself by slipping down to the garage and simply drinking in its smooth, sinuous curves, but not with this horror. Not unless you got really excited by large-scale origami. A sobering reminder that the intern is there to make coffee and photocopy stuff, not to design a whole car.�

In the spirit of Make Magazine, which by the way, has spawned Makers, I call your attention to the recently published The Unofficial Lego Builder’s Guide by Allan Bedford (No Starch Press). This book will help you, um, build things with Legos. Actually, make that…it will help you build better things with Legos, not to mention build things better with Legos. Produced with the same care and no-nonsense ease-of-use that so many O’Reilly technical guides to computers and software display, this sweet and extremely practical guide will delight any person of any age who, upon spying a few errant Lego pieces, finds themselves clicking them together almost without thinking. This book offers sage advice on everything from understanding the strongest way to connect blocks to building a complex structure from a design to storing the pieces. If you are a fan of the Sims, Christopher Alexander, Make Magazine, or, of course, Legos, you will savor this gem.

And finally, for a completely out-of-the-box pick, I highly recommend the young adult novel The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancey. Yancey, as you may recall, is the author of last year’s terrific Confessions of A Tax Collector: One Man’s Tour Inside the IRS, which I loved. Kropp, mind you, is not a business book by any definition. It’s a straight old-fashioned potboiler (and I say this in a good way), a gripping read about your average big-headed boy who unwittingly puts the fate of the earth at risk when he unintentionally releases the Sword of Excalibur into evil hands. Clever, funny, and satisfying (I read this in a day), this book will appeal to any 10-14 year-old reader, not to mention the ‘yout’ in any of us. Yancey proves himself to be as comfortable animating the mundane world of the IRS as he is finding the familiar and intimate in the phantasmagorical world of Lancelot’s lineage. Enjoy.

New ChangeThis manifestos are up and ready to read

Today we posted the new ChangeThis manifestos. Here are the topics:

• Going Home -- (a slice of More Space)

  A new culture is arising. A culture that challenges the Matrix in which we live. A culture that will revive our sense of community and lead us home.

  View it online.
  Check out the PDF.

• How to speak a teen’s language, even if you’re not one

  Speaking "teen" is not easy. It means knowing the difference between Beyonce, Britney, Ashlee and Jessica. Josh Shipp will help you become fluent in "teen". He'll teach you to entertain, inspire and empower.

  View it online.
  Check out the PDF.

• Simplified Security: 25 Tips to Help Companies Implement Security

  This manifesto helps companies of all sizes understand and implement the necessary level of security. The 25 tips cover everything from physical security to SPAM.

  View it online.
  Check out the PDF.

• Community Greens: Green Infrastructure and Community Revitalization

  Scientists have proven that a lack of nature can have negative effects. Learn, with help from Kate Herrod, why a slice of green is good and vital.

  View it online.
  Check out the PDF.

Enjoy.

Great Sales Advice or Sales #2a--What to say when are sitting across from the decision maker

In a new Kaplan title called Selling to Big Companies comes advice for when you are talking with decision makers.

“Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make�

• Don’t waste their time


• Don’t try to be their friend


• Don’t expect them to tell you about their business


• Don’t give them a product dump


• Don’t use any self-serving verbiage


• Don’t expect them to intuit the value of your offering

I just finished the book and wrote a Jack Covert Selects review. I loved the book.

Chapter One of The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism

I just got done posting the first chapter to The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism by John Bogle. Tom Ehrenfeld told me the book was good and that I should check it out. After reading through the first chapter, I am hooked. Bogle writes with crystal clarity. You read magazine articles talking about excessive compensation for executives, but Bogle pulls together some amazing numbers to make the case like I have not seen.

You can find the entire excerpt here. Check it out.

Selling #2 - How To Sell To An Idiot

I know I originally said I would have all of these sales books reviewed in a week. I am changing my thinking to reviewing one sales book every week. Last week was Selling Is Dead by Marc Miller.

This week we are going to look at a more tactical title. John Hoover and Bill Sparkman have written a book called How To Sell To An Idiot: 12 Steps to Selling Anything to Anyone.

This is a "man on the street" kind of book. If you are knocking on doors and making the calls, this one is for you. I think you will find similar stuff to what you have heard before. Take a look at the Table of Contents:

• Step One: Be Prepared Or Be The Idiot
• Step Two: Connect With the Clueless
• Step Three: Confuse To Clarify
• Step Four: Play The Match Game
• Step Five: Showtime
• Step Six: Ask For The Business
• Step Seven: Circle Around and Make Another Pass
• Step Eight: Annoy Them A Little and Ask For the Business Again
• Step Nine: Appreciate
• Step Ten: Get A Referral
• Step Eleven: Follow-up
• Step Twelve: Practice

One of the things I have notice that is a little different is each chapter helps you deal with a variety of personality types. They spend most of the time on the difficult ones and give you tips for dealing with them at each step in the sales process. For example, how do you get referrals from Machiavellians? The answer is show them how it is going to move them up the pyramid a little faster.

So, check out How To Sell To An Idiot if you are looking for a book on sales basics. For those already doing it, you might find a tip or two.

Outside of the Inbox

I keep picking up Todd's book, More Space, from time to time and reading a bit more. It's divided into nine stories so I almost feel encouraged to jump around from story to story, reading as time allows.

The other day I was chatting with a friend about one of the stories: Work is Broken -- Here's How We Fix It by Marc Orchant. It's interesting because people (not meaning to generalize, as I'm sure not everyone does this) become stuck in their ruts, routines, or whatever you prefer to call them. We become so accustomed to one method, system, and/or set of rules that we start living within these boundaries. We stop reaching beyond them even while the world around us keeps growing and innovating.

It's the Einsteins, Newtons, and the Edisons of the world that keep us on our toes -- that keep us from becoming too complacent.

The question is, how do we mirror our outside world to innovate and grow within the work world? How do we ensure that our processes, methods and routines complement the capabilities of the world?

I don't have an answer for that--at least not on a Monday. I doubt that Marc would admit having an answer to that, either. (Not knowing Marc personally, I cannot speak for him). Nonetheless, Marc does offer a few tips on how to fix our broken work place. Here's a morsel of one of his tips and the reason for the blog title.

Marc steps outside of the subject, recipient and date method of classifying emails in an inbox. He provides nine tags for senders to use to label their emails. When placed before the email subject, the tags enable recipients to easily wade through their emails without opening each email and reading the content.

Here's a few of his tags:

RRAL: Reply Requested at Leisure
URG: Urgent
NRN: No Reply Necessary
IMP: Important (but not requiring action)

Now it's your turn. In what ways do you step out of your inbox? What methods to you use at your company to encourage growth and innovation?

BusinessWeek's Best Business Books of 2005

BusinessWeek's December 19th issue covers "The Best of 2005".

Included in this issue is a list of their choices for the top 10 business books of the year.

Here's the list:

1. The Big Picture
2. Blink
3. Conspiracy of Fools
4. Disneywar
5. FAB (also chosen as a Jack Covert Selects)
6. Fortune's Formula
7. The Future for Investors
8. Three Billion New Capitalists
9. Winning (also chosen as a Jack Covert Selects)
10. The World is Flat (also chosen as a Jack Covert Selects)

The Soul of Capitalism: John Bogle Interview

One of my favorite books this year is The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the financial system undermined social ideals, damaged trust in the markets, robbed investors of millions—and what to do about it by John C. “Jack” Bogle, the founder of Vanguard (i.e. the pioneer of no-load index funds, which revolutionized the industry). This ambitious book requires your full attention. Bogle draws from his authority as a key player in the world of finance over the past 50 years, who has revolutionized the investment industry, witnessed huge changes, and never backed down from a fight. His book takes on the whole rotten system, and bears reading for a number of reasons.

Battle tackles the systematic rot gnawing at the effectiveness of large corporations, the power of small investors to beat the system, and the integrity of enterprise as many of us see it. Bogle cites isolates trends that other writers have noted, such as out-of-control CEO compensation, the dereliction of duty by boards, the systemic siphoning of profits away from investors by conglomerate-owned managed funds, and weaves them all together into a compelling overall argument. Not only that, but he writes wonderfully, to boot. It’s hard to argue with a book so smart and persuasive. The first chapter is available online as an excerpt. Here’s a nugget that I particularly enjoyed:

Over the past century, a gradual move from owner’s capitalism—providing the lion’s share of the rewards of the investment to those who put up the money and risk their own capital—has culminated in an extreme version of managers’ capitalism—providing vastly disproportionate rewards to those whom we have trusted to manage our enterprises in the interest of their owners. Managers’ capitalism is a betrayal of owners’ capitalism, a system that worked, albeit imperfectly, with remarkable effectiveness for the better part of the past two centuries, beginning with the Industrial Revolution as the eighteenth century turned to the nineteenth.

Earlier this fall I had the chance to do a question and answer with the man called Jack. Here’s what he said.

Q: Jack, you are one of the most influential investment figures of the past 50 years. Why have you written this book?

A: This is meant to be a lot more than a business book. It addresses this country’s role in the world, and our faltering practice of capitalism. We have turned a system of owners’ capitalism (where the idea is to earn the maximum return on the capital invested by the owners) into managers’ capitalism. In corporate America, the investor-owner is now at the bottom of the food chain, and managers are at the top. And there’s a very simple equation at stake here: the more that managers of America take, the less that investors make. This formula may not be up there with “e=mc squared,” but it is tautologically true. I say in the book that if investment returns are 7 percent annually and the system takes 2.5 percent then you are left with only 4.5 percent.

One key problem is that we’ve gone from an own-a-stock society to a rent-a-stock one, which has a terrible impact on the shareholders. When, as Larry Summers asked, was the last time you washed a rental car? Likewise, when was the last time someone voted a rental stock? The typical fund manager with all that turnover doesn’t care about real business value. And index managers, on the other hand, can’t follow that threadbare rule of ‘if you don’t like the manager sell the stock.’ Instead, they should be advocating a model of ‘if you don’t like the management then change the manager.’ They should be an activist in corporate proxies, by putting proposals in the proxy to limit compensation, for example, and by nominating directors. But you can’t find a fund manager like this. When was the last time there was any proxy proposal raised by a mutual fund? Isn’t that amazing for an industry which owns 28 percent of corporate America?

It’s very clear from a statistical standpoint that all this high turnover is to the disadvantage of fund shareholders. When I came into this industry, turnover was around 15-16 percent annually, and now it is 100 percent. This just doesn’t work in the long run. Fund shareholders will eventually gravitate toward more intelligently run mutual funds. They will encourage funds to focus more on the long run than the short run. People laugh at me, but it is going to happen. These ideas are on the right side of history. They are so fundamentally common sense.

Q: Your book takes on more than fund management however. It critiques the way corporate boards govern and how CEOs manage their companies. Why take such a systematic approach?

A: It’s all of a piece. You have the CEO compensation issue, where the game becomes not to build the company but to build the price of the stock, and then to capitalize on stock options. The fact of the matter is that everyone knows that the value of the stock is the discounted future cash flow, plain and simple. That’s it. And yet we have this industry practicing witchcraft. You have CEOs promising earnings growth of 11 percent annually and delivering six. You wonder why they don’t get fired! The real question that motivates them is ‘how do I drive the stock up?’ And they do this by making outrageous projections and then doing whatever they can by hook or by crook to achieve these projections. And to accomplish this they bring others into the system. One of the most egregious examples of course is Enron, which involved conspiracy with the accountants. And why do the accountants conspire? Because on a basic level, the companies pay them. The companies pay five times as much for consulting services than for accounting, so, naturally, the accounting firms did not want to lose the consulting business. Then in the mutual fund business you have the failure of directors who are captive to the fund managers who sit on the other side of the table. These executives are generally the kind of men you’d like your daughter to marry—I’ve never met a corrupt person in the industry. But the industry itself is corrupt because it is taking too much money out of the returns and is ignoring its fiduciary duty to fund owners.

In the old days, directors answered directly to the stockholders. But we no longer have direct representation. That ended in 1981, which was the last year that more than 50 percent of public equities was owned by direct investors. We went from 92 percent of individual ownership in 1950 to 32 percent today. And what has emerged at the same time are financial agents whose ownership rose from 8 percent to 68 percent. Astonishing! But these agents don’t represent the interests of the principals . . . largely mutual fund shareholders and pension beneficiaries. Today the money management companies are largely owned by giant conglomerates, and their goal is to earn a return on their capital, not on your capital as a fund shareholder. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, and they also have to make as much money as possible for their owners. They are serving two masters. And what necessarily happens is that they serve the one that is paying their compensation. So you see it’s all of a piece.

Q: How do you change it?

A: I don’t think that change is going to be easy. The book is my attempt to give a little impetus to the changes that we have to make. When I say investors of the world unite, I mean it. There are several key things we must change. The biggest risk to our financial system is the failure of our retirement system. Right now half the savings assets of the American economy—nearly $10 trillion—are in retirement plans, which are failing badly. The problem is that over an investment lifetime only about 25 percent of the rewards go to the investors and 75 percent go to the intermediaries. We have to change this. We need to have a federal blue ribbon commission to study the entire system. Right now we have a whole series of isolated pockets of retirement savings when we need an integrated system—something that would be linked, for example to corporate 401k plans and corporate pension plans, which would be integrated with the social security system. But in order to do so we need to make sure that there is a federal standard of fiduciary duty. We need to codify that standard and state what it means. We also need to have a massive education campaign so that investors understand simple investment fundamentals, and the confiscatory power of trading costs and fund expenses. The sooner investors look after their own economic interests the better off they will be.

Q: You continue to advocate index funds. Couldn’t your prescriptions be seen as somewhat self-serving?

A: I don’t see how. Vanguard index funds are the core of what I am talking about today: giving the investor no more and no less than his or her fair share of whatever returns the financial markets are kind enough to deliver. That’s just what I said in my senior thesis from college in 1951 and have said ever since. I have no vested interest in whether or not Vanguard gets bigger.

I do believe that we are seeing some positive change. The best investors today are accepting the message of index funds and low-cost investing. Peter Lynch said years ago that most investors would be better off with an index fund. How could he be wrong? The numbers are there. Jack Meyer, who is leaving Harvard, says the investment industry is a giant scam. And David Swensen of Yale calls the mutual fund industry a colossal failure for individual investors. You can even go back to the legendary Benjamin Graham, who in a late interview in 1976 seemed to indicate that indexing was the best strategy. Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson challenged those who had brute evidence that management worked in favor of the investor to prove it. He’s still waiting. Warren Buffett has recommended low cost index funds for decades. If those investors are all agreeing, then sooner or later people will sit up and take attention. When the dumb investor realizes how dumb he is and buys an index fund, he immediately becomes a smart investor.

For investors to gain the almost universally accepted benefits of maximum diversification, they must have intermediaries, whether pension funds or other managed funds, to pool their resources and own literally hundreds of stocks and bonds. So agents are necessary; we have an agency society. And the whole darn book can be summed up by the fact that these agents aren’t representing their principals. We need a fiduciary society where we enjoin the agents to represent their principals, a society in which stewardship and trusteeship are the watchwords.

getAbstract's Best Books of 2005

getAbstract has a list of their favorite business books for 2005:

• Irrational Exuberance by Robert Schiller
• Scenarios by Kees van der Heijden
• The One Thing You Need to Know by Marcus Buckingham
• The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
• Blue Ocean Strategy by Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim
• The People's Tycoon by Steven Watts
• And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) by Paul Bluestein
• Winners Never Cheat by Jon Huntsman
• The German Economy by Horst Siebert
• Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein
• Icon Steve Jobs by Jeffery Young and William Simon
• Brand Hijack by Alex Wipperfurth
• How to Grow Leaders by John Adair
• Trillion-Dollar Moms by Bonnie W. Ulman and Maria Bailey
• New American Expat by William Russell Melton
• The Secret Man by Bob Woodward
• The Search by John Battelle
• The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli

BOOK REVIEW: The Future of Men

It's Their Turn: Watching the Men's Movement Transpire

A review of The Future of Men by Andrea Learned

Given this reviewer's own bias and the recent much-dissected women's market ad campaign launches (Dove or Nike anyone?), the business world has long been in need of a comprehensive look at the other gender. Within the first few paragraphs of The Future of Men you get a sense for just how much men's societal roles are changing and how confusing that could be for marketers, let alone men themselves. Keep reading, and you will gain a helpful perspective on gender roles and how your marketing plans should be developing for 2006 and beyond.

The three co-authors of The Future of Men, Marian Salzman, Ira Matathia and Ann O’Reilly, use a relatable "voice" and recognizable examples to deliver historically based and research-informed insights. Their look at gender and societal changes will save you time and dollars in your own future market research, as well as give you a fresh take on your own life as a consumer, whether you are male or female.

It All Starts With A Shift

The authors begin The Future of Men by presenting what they call The Great Gender Shift, or "the seismic social-psychological shifts taking place between the sexes." Because men have long been the gender with the power, they are understandably resisting this transfer of power to women, who have traditionally had less. But, as the authors attest this "increasing equalization of women’s power occurs inexorably and 'naturally' in modern service-oriented economies," so resistance is futile. Adaption is smarter, and that’s what the men interviewed for the book’s research were doing.

As books like Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind describe, society is moving from the information age to the conceptual age. As efforts develop to reconnect with the human side and embrace holistic thinking during this transitional period, the more typically female specialities of interpersonal and multi-tasking skills become ever more useful. The Future of Men helps to illustrate how this newly female-brain friendly world came about and how it has resulted in the marginalization of a man’s longtime advantages. Add to this the likelihood that perhaps men have underdeveloped friend networks when compared to women, and the effect of their marginalization compounds. Men are experiencing significant changes in expectations, but likely have few people with whom to swap stories or gain support. Interconnectedness is a distinct female advantage, but that tide is changing as we find out by book’s end.

However, whether it is due to nature, nurture or culture, as presented in of The Future of Men, "real men" still have a predisposition toward getting their self-worth from being the provider or breadwinner. The authors describe in some detail, and within historical context (at one point reminding the reader how famed television talk show host, Phil Donahue, brought sensitive and intelligent discussion to the airwaves in the mid-70s), just how much the definition of “real man� or “masculinity� has changed over the years.

Masculinity In Transition

The leading edge of this masculinity in transition was called "metrosexuality," a hip moniker that became common parlance in the summer of 2003, apparently partially due to the authors themselves, their Euro RSCG colleagues and their book-preceding study, “The Future of Men�. Metrosexuals were defined as those men who lived their lives and spent their money outside of the traditional definition of what is "manly." The authors found that men who fit this label and embraced their feminine sides by buying Prada suits or having facials, reflected a confidence in their masculinity that couldn’t be questioned.

Quoting research papers and a wide variety of books, The Future of Men describes how the criteria for a man’s emotional maturity have changed, and how perhaps “metrosexuality� partially evolved as men caught up to women emotionally. One thing that is fairly certain, as related to embattled masculinity and as the authors put it: "Society’s changing notions of who men should be, combined with media images that deride who they currently are, leave many men bewildered as to whether they can do anything right."

"The new balance of power calls for lighter versions of masculinity that take more account of what used to be ‘female’ values." And, as the authors note, women are responding positively to those lighter versions. Of course, there are limits. If men take feminine traits too far, they risk being perceived by women as losing backbone and become not-so positively described "emo boys."

The latest version of man, as defined by Salzman, Matathia and O’Reilly, is the perfect mix of passion and style. He is the "übersexual." This type of man is more sensual than self-conscious, and the authors feel he may be the best response to the woman’s movement. According to them, this über-man, unlike the metrosexual or emo man, is self-defined, and has goals and needs of his own. He is not simply responding to feminism or others expectations and perceptions.

Societal Expectations Are Changing

So how well does all this veering from the norm work for men? In the chapter entitled, “The Tables Turn for Women,� the authors point out that the women’s movement was positioned to be about "choice," but that is not the case with this current "men’s movement." Today’s male struggle is actually with "societal expectations," and not choice.

And, societal expectations can be rough on a guy. With a look at academia, work and child-bearing, the authors came to notice that we now "live in a world of mutuality, where women see men as a preference rather than as an imperative."

From that point, the reader gets a chance to observe just how that mutuality evolved as the middle chapters of The Future of Men deliver a few fascinating looks at men in media and advertising images, and consideration of men’s changing role models and the new mating game rules. Haven’t many of us noticed the examples cited in the book, such as: how film’s male action heroes have gone from stoic, Rambo-types, to more sensitive, Spiderman-types? Or, how the men on television now seem milder-mannered, taking most cues on how to cope from their mothers or wives?

As the authors put it, "... society is defining new and more complex notions of what maleness should be," and this may be part of the difficulties today’s young men have in identifying positive role models. And, with regard to the romantic relationships and the notion that “life partners are necessary for fulfillment,� Salzman et al have concluded that man’s once fundamental contribution to survival may now be “an optional add-on - and one that comes at a price some women aren’t willing to pay.�
With such confusion about what makes for appropriate male behavior in this day and age, the authors point out that men have indeed followed the lead of so many women with regard to their interconnectedness. They have begun to seek affirmation from more male friendships and friend groups, and they are learning to help one another adapt to these huge societal shifts.

A Broader Definition Emerges

Taken chapter by chapter, things could look a bit grim for the men from here on out. However, the authors of The Future of Men tie things up in a positive and empowering light, with final points that will likely resonate with both men and women. Those include the need:

for people to develop a broader definition of what’s “masculine,�

for men to further adapt and develop their “female traits� of multitasking and collaboration,

for the realization that there is a more level “playing field� (and, that straight white men don’t have an automatic advantage), and,

for a redefinition of equality and success that will include a more fair division of labor and equal access to free time for both genders.

There’s more to men than meets the eye or is portrayed in the media. A lot of changes and adjusting will need to take place, and those developments won’t necessarily be easy for many men to go through. However, by reading The Future of Men, you discover that men now have an exciting opportunity to shape their lives, and society’s future expectations of them, for themselves.

As the authors put it: “Man’s greatest battle is not against women or other men or even changing times. It’s against the inertia that falsely tells him that he’s on top and will always be on top.�

It will be the prerogative of the business world to roll with the changes in men, and perhaps a bit more fluidly than business went about changing with the women’s movement. The Future of Men makes for an informative and insightful head start.

Andrea Learned writes, speaks and consults on how brands can better resonate with today's women. The coauthor of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy—And How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market (AMACOM, 2004), Andrea continues to cover a variety of women's market-related topics, including the significance of men, in her Web log: www.learnedonwomen.com.