800-CEO-READ Blog

MUST READ: Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense

I am a huge fan of the new book from Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton called Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense. I am making it my Must Read for Spring 2006.

Hard Facts is really the prequel to their 2000 book The Knowing Doing Gap. In their first book, they laid out a great case for why companies can't get anything done. They also said the information everyone has is pretty much the same, and the only difference left is what you do with that information (you can read my recent review and another from Diego Rodriguez).

Their new book takes on the Knowing side of the equation. Jeff and Bob say that executives are too often sucked into the company profiles reported in the business media. The common wisdom reported can often not be repeated. They suggest using a fact based approach to decision making. If you think you are already using hard data to run your company, answer a couple of these questions:

• Are Great Leaders In Control of Their Companies?
• Do The Best Organizations Have The Best People?
• Do Financial Incentives Drive Company Performance?

What I found were subtlies and nuances in their book. Management is a craft and there are no easy answers. If you are looking for easy answers and bold takeaways, do not read this book. This is about critical thinking and taking time to understand the effects your decisions will have on your organization.

Here is a nice primer on Hard Facts from U.S. News and World Report, ahead of our podcast with Jeff and Bob. We will have that up today or tomorrow.

Past Must Reads:

• Then We Set His Hair On Fire by Phil Dusenberry
• A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Peter Senge On Presence

This week Doubleday/Currency released a revised version of Peter Senge’s classic The Fifth Discipline, a paperback with more than 100 additional pages. This new material is based on interviews with many practitioners of Senge’s ideas over the past 15 years, and includes 8 strategies on the art of implementing the principles of organizational learning. A terrific upgrade to a fundamental resource.

This release gives us a nice opportunity to mention Peter Senge’s most recent book, Presence. Senge produced this book with three co-authors and refers to it as a “prequel� of sorts to The Fifth Discipline. Here’s a recent interview he conducted with us on the topic.

TE: You have referred to Presence as a “prequel� to The Fifth Discipline. Can you explain why?

PS: Presence deals with the state of mind, or state of spirit, of attempting to work with the five disciplines, in order to build a learning-oriented culture. There is an unexamined aspect of this process that the book explores. Otto Scharmer has referred to this as the “blind spot.� [Hanover Insurance former CEO] Bill O’Brien referred to this as the interior state of the leader or intervener. When discussing how to build a learning-oriented culture, we often talk about tools and methods and frameworks, but rarely ask the question of “where the heck is this person coming from?� This matters quite a bit, because the first rule that we all know is that change is threatening. And if you are in an organization with pressures to perform and people trying to climb the ladder, you will always be dealing with the issue of “whose agenda is this?� To what extent are these ideas self-serving? Creating the foundation of trust means addressing where we are coming from. This enables people to explore the extent to which change is aimed at the benefit of the whole or towards individuals.

TE: Presence has four authors who carry on a dialogue. What led you to this particular format?

PS: It became clear early on in the process of doing this book that it needed a first person voice, and not just a third person voice. We couldn’t just talk about these issues in the abstract. We laid out a theory by merging it with our own personal journeys of discovery and confusion. There are in fact many things that you don’t necessarily figure out in life. And you need to learn how to talk about these things coherently, though not with a sense of certainty. This means making sense of your experience without necessarily reducing it to some absolute statements about the nature of the universe and organizations.

The leaders who I admire have a deep sense of confidence; but they also have a willingness to embrace uncertainty and their own ignorance. And in fact embracing their ignorance creates a lot of space for many other people to join them as co-leaders. Every change effort reflects this kind of paradoxical balance between deep confidence and immense uncertainty that gives people the opportunity to participate at a deeper level. It starts with leaders who reveal that they are as fearful and concerned as everybody.

TE: While your fieldbooks supplied a wealth of tools to compliment The Fifth Discipline, Presence goes in another direction. Can you explain?

PS: You go into a bookstore today and find a remarkable number of books on meditation, Buddhism, and other spiritual practices. I think the challenge is to connect this opening to the deeper personal journeys of development we are all on, with our work and our organizations and our role in society.

Presence is focused on the largest questions: the context for all businesses. We aren’t discussing any one business, but the subject of leadership in the broadest sense. Running around trying to make your company more profitable is not what we are talking about. Trying to make the business better so its more profitable is.

And so we made a choice not to focus on applications. At the same time, this book absolutely helps people in their business in a powerful way, which is awareness. We explore the extent to which people can learn to see beyond their preconceptions. One powerful application of this relates to seeing into shifts in the marketplace. This type of work has gained quite a bit of recognition with Brian Arthur, who has mainly consulted with business about how to sense these radical changes.

This book explores the process of continually suspending your habitual ways of seeing the world. We ask: how do you suspend everything you think you know and embrace the uncertainty? This means living in the question of what are we here to do, versus living in the question of how do we exploit these questions. Continually rediscovering what you are here to do is at the heart of what we are talking about.

TE: Most influential business thinkers build on their success by introducing new tools for businesses to be more productive. Yet while you continue to work on the fundamental issue of change, you are addressing an increasingly broad arena. Why is this?

PS: The further you go the deeper you get into the dysfunctions in our society. That is one of the reasons why the developmental method has become so marginalized in our society. We placate ourselves with lots of material goodies, choosing television not reflection. It’s much easier to choose to be more comfortable than to pursue what you truly care about. A primary motivation for our writing Presence has to do with the condition of the world, which is of great concern.

It’s always been clear to me that the work we are involved in deals with the very long term. I had hoped that The Fifth Discipline would be the springboard for many changes. But let’s face it, it takes many hundreds of years to create techno-consumer changes. And that’s where real change is needed. Ultimately, this work is about consumption, and our values as a materialistic society.

And we don’t have an infinite amount of time. An awful lot of what is going on in the world is getting worse not better. People are scared and holding onto what is fundamentalism. All indications reveal that climate change is getting worse, with potentially catastrophic consequences. And what we need are truly radical changes. We need to get beyond talking about how many parts per million we will allow in the atmosphere. We need to start exploring whether we should, say, move to 200 mile per gallon cars? The point is that we have an enormous opportunity for innovation around this issue, and this will come down to how we frame the conversation. That is where the change is going to come.

TE: You published Presence independently, and only after a year released a trade version through Doubleday/Currency. What was the strategy for this?

PS: Two reasons. First, this was a very unusual book and we wanted a lot of feedback early on, to be able to refine it. Second, I wanted to get Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) into the publishing business. We have been too reliant on membership fees. Our model for Presence was designed to build knowledge for systemic needs. We formed a deal with Doubleday for wider distribution with a co-branded version of the book. We continue to publish the original edition, which is available with a workbook through SoL. We are also trying to build a brand with SoL. We are trying to get a message out into the world. We have a lot of knowledge in our network and we are trying to let people know about it.

Pachter on Chasing Daylight

Richard Pachter of the Miami Herald reviewed Eugene O'Kelly's Chasing Daylight this week.

Attention: Book Reviewers

I want to thank everyone for the overwhelming response to my book review offer. As I am sorting through them all, I just wanted to tell everyone that they will ALL get a book and be asked to review it. So, bear with me while I get the logistics worked out. You will be hearing from me soon.

Thanks again for all responses and the enthusiasm!

Prepared Mind World Tour #4 - Challenging

Greetings to all you Prepared Minds from Bill and Jeanie:

This is the fourth of eight blogs that we will post to give more insights into the skills needed to prepare for your future. Comments are appreciated.

BE PREPARED TO CHALLENGE: We are pretty comfortable at challenging others' thoughts and decisions. We’re sure that many authority figures (bosses, coaches, legislators, generals, etc.) are intellectual wimps and that we could do their job better than they. Sometimes we’re right. However, we’re often judging based on our biases, not our own ability to think well.

So how can you assess your ability to think and, consequently, challenge yourself to improve? Try using Benjamin Bloom’s levels of cognitive ability. (Bloom was a U of C professor who studied thought processes that are used in learning. Google him to learn more.) Bloom concluded that there are six levels of thought. Moving from the lowest to the highest they are: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. At what level is your thinking? Try the following example and then create some of your own.

Most of us know that General Motors is in a world of hurt, so let's use their problem to understand the levels of thinking and to test our thinking.

• Knowledge – can you recall specific information? What are the products and services provided by GM?


• Comprehension – can you state a problem in your own words? What is the major problem faced by GM and its unions?


• Application – can you apply concepts to the work place or to your "real world?" How has the labor contract trapped both parties? How does this apply to your workplace?


• Analysis – can you distinguish between facts and inferences? How is the labor situation at Ford different from the labor situation at GM?


• Synthesis – can you put the parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on proposing alternative solutions? Can you design an organizational structure and new “social contractâ€? that is agreeable to both management and unions?


• Evaluation – can you judge and evaluate actions and outcomes based on a defined set of criteria? What would you do to "fix" GM?

Maybe it was unfair to test your thinking about GM? What if I asked a similar set of questions about the war in Iraq? (Most of us hate it; but do we understand it?) What about your company’s strategy? (Why think about it? I’m sure “they� have everything under control.) And then there are your views of your local school system. (“I’m sure it’s broken, but they need to fix it without raising taxes. It’s not my problem�) Hmmmm.

Going back to my rant about Reasoning (March 14th), I now challenge all of us to move up the scale of Bloom’s levels of thought. We have plenty of knowledge and most of us a pretty good at comprehension. However, if my view of the world is representative of reality, we are sorely lacking in the widespread capability of the higher levels of this taxonomy. The world of sound bites and “factoids� is a sterile world when it comes to good examples of the skills needed to synthesize and evaluate.

Please comment with your views of the world. I need more data to analyze.

[If you missed the first three Prepared Mind stops, here they are: Observing, Reasoning, Imagining]

[UPDATE: The next step of the tour can be found here.]

Need Book Reviewers

I thought it was time to pull some folks in again to review a book.

It is very simple. I will send you a book. I will give you two or three weeks to read it. Then you will write a review that we'll post here.

I have five copies.

If you are interested and have the time, drop me your name and address in a note to todd (at) 800ceoread dot com. Put "book review" in the subject line.

The World is Flat 2.0

Today's Publishers Weekly talks about a new version of The World is Flat which features 100 new pages and a new introduction. Check the story out here

The new edition will be available on April 18, 2006.

Order the new edition here.

Tuesday Links

Here are some miscellaneous things we have ran across last week that you might be interested in.

• Today's 6 Worst Business Books (Chief Executive) - I am not a big fan of these kinds of articles. We have always believed that people want to know what to read, not what not to read.
• World In A Box (The Economist) - They review The Box. Author Marc Levinson writes a great history of the ocean cargo container and how it has changed global trade. This was one of Jack's picks for March.
• How To Manage In An Unpredictable World (FT.com) - Dr. Don Sull presented an online course for the site. I think this is way cool. There are five short video segment (it was presented over a week's time) and extensive lecture notes. I think they are onto something.

Finance Tools

Rob Norton (former executive editor for Fortune) wrote an article in Strategy+Business on the art of finance (registration required). Describing today's finance world as being full of measurements and assessments, he suggests these seven resources for learning more:

• Against the Gods by Peter L. Bernstein
• Capital Ideas, also by Bernstein
• My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman
• Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance by Perry Mehrling
• Beyond Greed and Fear by Hersh Shefrin
• Trillion Dollar Bet
• Wikipedia

A Study of Used Books

This is a little on the business side of publishing, but the Book Industry Study Group has published the first comprehensive study of the used book market. The Idea Logical Company has a great review of the high points. My main takeaway is the used book market is growing and that it is happening online, not in bricks and mortar stores.

This Week - 3/27/06

Spring finally feels like it is coming. I was out in the backyard yesterday kicking the ball around with my three year old. Now of course, they are calling for snow tonight.

We have a full docket of new stuff for you this week. We have been trying to keep the new audio coming, so you will see another new podcast. This one is with Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton and it is about their new book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management. We also have an excerpt from Billy, Alfred, and General Motors by William Pelfrey.

We'll also do the normal pointing to other cool things we find and want you to know about.

Have a great week!

"More Shirt-Sleeve Than Pin-Stripe"

I love pin-stripes. They're classy and clean. But even with my love for them, I have to admit that I'm glad we're not a pin-stripe suit environment. While formality can be great for certain occasions, sometimes it can detract from the openness of an environment.

Why am I mentioning my love of pin-stripes? This book plopped on my desk today along with about 10 other books. It caught my attention. I randomly flipped to a page spread of a guy with a pin-stripe suit being rolled up over his elbows on the right and the following quote on the left:

MORE SHIRT-SLEEVE THAN PIN-STRIPE.

In a meeting you don't have to worry about how you are coming across to collagues, because they are busy worrying about how they are coming across to you.

Meetings are for those with not enough to do.

A meeting is a performance, an act to convince people of their own importance.

The real players don't need to act out the meeting game.

They roll up their sleeves and get on with the job.
From the book Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

It's the first paragraph that struck me. How often in business do we put on our pin-stripes and forget to roll up our sleeves and get the job done?

Bonus Audio on the Podcast Blog

Dan Pink sent over an mp3 file from a fan of A Whole New Mind. It is a rap written by Wyatt Jackson where he breaks a beat about how great the book is.

It is a nice midday diversion for y'all.

Check it out over on the Podcasts Blog.

Congrats to the Cult!

For guys looking for new hairstyle ideas, check out The Cult of iPod and The Cult of Mac. The Cult of iPod recently won a design award for its brilliant and cutting-edge style. It's full-color with rounded edges and a great feel (I love the design! It's very Apple-esque).

The designer of the book is Derek Yee of Octopod Studios; the award was for the Editorial category in STEP magazine (you can check it out in their March/April 2006 issue or check it out here).

Here's what Bill Pollock, founder of No Starch Press (the book's publisher) had to say,

You don’t hear about many computer books being recognized for outstanding design achievement, but it’s consistent with our desire to bring something new to the table and always push the envelope. We work with authors who have something interesting and different to say, and we like the design of their books to reflect that attitude. Derek has always known just how to capture it.

Way to go Derek Yee, Leander Kahney and No Starch Press! Congratulations.

Quote of the Day: Sales

Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.

-Zig Ziglar

From The 100 Greatest Sales Tips of All Time Edited by Leslie Pockell with Adrienne Avila

Predictive Business

We've got dashboards, CRM databases and operation numbers everywhere. There seems to be an ever-increasing emphasis on real-time managing. At a certain point, real-time stops because we've reached that final milisecond and have a 360 degree view of everything that's going on at that moment. I never cease to be amazed by the number of metrics available even now at just the touch of a computer screen.

And then where do we go? To predicting the future. As interesting as it'd be to see business folks consulting their crystal balls and reading up on Nostradamus, Vivek Randadive has a better idea.

His latest book, The Power to Predict describes predictive business as "taking the best approach to getting that extra goal when the opportunity presents itself."

Then goes on,

Fortunately, you don't have to be a psychic to successfully run your organization. Over time, patterns emerge, and if you can marry those patterns with real-time information, you can get half a step ahead.

Luckily, it doesn't appear that crystal balls will become common place in the cubicles and offices that dot the world.

Seth's New Book

Today, I got a galley of Seth Godin's new book Small is The New Big and 193 other riffs, rants, and remarkable business ideas. It is a compilation of his writings over the last decade. You might think greatest hits and to a certain extent it is, but Seth always says play to your core audience. Anyone who is a fan of Seth and his stuff will love the book. I am a daily reader of his blog and recognize some of the pieces from there. To fans it is not going to matter.

It is slated for an August 17th release. More as we get closer.

Donna Fenn's Favorites

I posted my interview with Donna Fenn over on the Podcasts Blog this afternoon. I also asked Donna what her favorite business books were. Here is the list she whipped up for me along with a thought on each.

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. Still relevant after these years; still the entrepreneur’s Bible!
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I know, I know – it’s on everyone’s list. But as someone trying to market a book in a wildly crowded marketplace, the lessons are very relevant to me.
• The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley. And anything else he writes because the guy is in the trenches at IDEO and understands innovation in a way that’s up close and personal.
• Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods... And How Companies Create Them by Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske. Provides great insight on how entrepreneurs can differentiate themselves by catering to consumer lust for “new luxuriesâ€?.
• The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki. Thought provoking, highly original and superbly written.
• Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell. Jack is one of the most successful independent retailers in the country, and he’s also managed to keep the business in the family for three generations. Again, great wisdom straight from the trenches.

Prepared Mind World Tour #3 - Imagining

Welcome to the third installment of The Prepared Mind blog! Bill did the honors of opening up the Blog with the first two skills, and now I am venturing out with Imagining.

Last week, I spent several day with my three year old niece whose most consistent expressions where, “Why?� “Remember when….?� And “What if….?� She was spending her time making sense, making memories and making possibilities. I thought to myself, “I need to prop this little one up in my office and just let her spark my imagination.�

Speaking of children, I imagine that just as we are not supposed to “play favorites� with our children, authors are not supposed to “play favorites� with their characters or, in our case, our Prepared Mind skills. However, I have to confess that Imagining is my favorite Prepared Mind skill. I think this is so for three reasons.

First, according to the executives we interviewed when writing the book, it is the most underutilized of all the skills. I like a skill with lots of growth potential! Second, imagining is the most open-ended skill, some would say the least practical, so you can do anything with it. Now, whether you can turn it into a decision, an innovation or a problem solved is where the other skills come in, but without it, you have no future. So, the third reason imagining is so important in my mind is that it is sets the possibility for something new, different, truly innovative. It gives you the landscape and even the permission for your future. Without it, there is no energy to plant new seeds or recombine them, only to execute on the old crop of ideas.

Why do you think it is the most under-utilized of The Prepared Mind skills? Bill and I debated about this as we wrote the book, and included some risks and challenges in the chapter dedicated to Imagining. They included a focus on facts (e.g., metrics), lack of time and ingrained habits. Those are all legitimate reasons why imagining in the adult work world is difficult. However, after writing the book and keeping an eye out for imagination, or lack of it, I have come to believe there are two main reasons why we do not invest much of ourselves in imagining and leave it to the three year olds and artists.

The first is fear of failure. The adult development and learning research has said for years that the number one thing that gets in the way of learning in adulthood is fear of failure, sometimes translated as fear of looking stupid in front of one’s peers or boss. And think about it, even to learn something new, we have to imagine that it is possible or that we can possibly do it. The irony is that imagination really cannot be wrong or fail in the empirical sense. It is simply a possibility, a proposal if you will. It can however, be different, and we are not always comfortable with being different or challenging what seems like ground truths and limitations, even in ourselves. Interestingly, “the failure to imagine� is the most memorable summary statement that came out of the 9/11 report. Not imagining can lead to bigger failures than imagining and then using other skills to test our ideas against reality and possibility.

The second is the fear of success. How many times have you encountered clients, co-workers, students maybe even yourself diminishing the possibility of an idea before the last syllable is even out of the speaker’s mouth? I think we tend to play it safe so we don’t have to reach, change, reorganize our thinking, our work, maybe even our companies if some “big idea� really catches on. We say we are looking for the next big thing, but are we? Success can make us as uncomfortable as failure. Either way, we have to change.

What are your ideas that, if articulated, might make you look like a loose cannon or, perhaps, unreasonable? What are your ideas that, if they took off, might put a lot of wanted and unwanted pressure on you and those around you? Whether you articulate them this time is up to you, but at least spend some time imagining them and the world with them in action. If all else fails, get yourself a three year old!

[If you missed the first two tours, check them out: Observing and Reasoning]

Classic Drucker

Over on inBubbleWrap today, we are featuring a new book called Classic Drucker. This book has been put together Harvard Business Review and it is an amazing collection of essays Peter Drucker wrote for their publication. I thought I would share with you the Table of Contents so you could get an idea of the great stuff you'll find in this book.

Classic Drucker by Peter F. Drucker

Introduction - Written by Thomas A. Stewart

Part I The Manager's Responsibilities

1 Managing Oneself
2 The Theory of the Business
3 The Effective Decision
4 They're Not Employees, They're People
5 How to Make People Decisions
6 Managing For Business Effectiveness

Part II The Executive's World

8 The Information Executives Truly Need
9 What Makes an Effective Executive
10 The Coming of the New Organization
11 The New Society of Organizations
12 The New Productivity Challenge
13 What Business Can Learn from Non-Profits
14 Management and the World's Work
15 The Post-Capitalist Executive: An Interview with Peter Drucker (Written by T George Harris)

I don't know what else to say. It's Drucker!

Business Books in Advertising?

IBM has a new ad campaign with the tagline "What Makes You Special?" They have run a couple of big spreads in The Wall Street Journal over the past couple of weeks. I am sure they have shown up other places. It ran again today.

In the ad, they feature Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat and a quote from the book:

"...the flattening of the world means...we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which...could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation."

I am not sure I have ever seen a business book quoted and featured in advertising for a F500 company.

WSJ's Five Best: Advertising

In the Weekend Edition of The Wall Street Journal, the editors asked Jerry Della Femina what were his five best books on advertising:

• The 100 Greatest Advertisments 1852-1958 by Julian Lewis Watkins (1959)
• Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy (1963)
• Bill Bernbach's Book: A History of Advertising That Changed Advertising by Bob Levenson (1987, out of print, ISBN 0394549201)
• A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young (1940)
• Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves (1961, out of print, ISBN 0394442288)

This Week - 3/20/04

Welcome to a new week.

We have new audio. I posted an audio interview late Friday. it is with Chris Denove, co-author of Satisfaction. I will also be posting another interview today or tomorrow with Donna Fenn, author of Alpha Dogs.

We will have another post in the continuing series from Bill Welter and Jean Egmon on The Prepared Mind of a Leader.

And the rest, we'll just have to wait and see... :)

The Big Picture

There's an email list that goes out called Ideas in the News (registration required; get it here).

This week Ram Charan, co-author of Confronting Reality. It's titled Getting to the Bigger Picture

In it, Ram coaches people on how to get to the bigger picture. As he says, "The ability to construct and act upon the mental model of the big picture requires plenty of practice. The essence of the skill is to find patterns from among a wide variety of trends and to posit the missing ingredients that could catalyze convergence."

He then provides, six questions to help get to the big picture. In his words,

One simple way to begin is by asking yourself a series of six questions, exploring the ideas with colleagues and peers: 1. What is happening in the world today? 2. What does it mean for others? 3. What does it mean for us? 4. What would have to happen first (for the results we want to occur)? 5. What do we have to do to play a role? 6. What do we do next?

He finally conclues by saying, "But the ability to perceive trends quickly, or even to make sense of them, will not automatically guarantee success. Rather, success depends on the rigor and discipline applied to the entire process of envisioning the changes, deducing specific actions, and implementing the plan."

Blogs -- there are no rules!

Blogs are a fairly new medium and evolving rapidly. There are plenty of good guidelines for blog usage – e.g. write in a conversational tone, be honest, be open to criticism, etc.

But there are no rules. You can do whatever you want to do – whatever works for you.

Some examples:

Many bloggers insist you can never delete a post. Even changing text requires you strike a line though it and add the new text so the change is apparent. NONSENSE. It's your blog – do whatever you want.

Some will claim that only "pure blog writing" (my term) belongs on blogs, BALDERDASH! I know people who use blogs to publish their somewhat formal newsletters. Guess what? It works.

Others say "if you don't allow comments it's not a blog." ABSURD! While I believe a feedback mechanism is great for blogs, it doesn't HAVE to be via comments.

The "If whatever, then it's not a blog" is the silliest thing I've ever heard. Sometimes it's "it's not a real blog" or "true blog."

Blogging for business is about business results. It's not about whether you have a "real" blog or what some "holier than thou" blogger thinks.

Blogs are a tool. Use them well and your business will benefit.

Thanks 800CEOREAD! Over and out.

Post Titles are critical!

The titles/headlines of your posts (and blog) are very important.

Not only can they “grab� people and entice them to read, but they can also generate search engine traffic, and an incredible amount of Internet traffic, including for blogs, is driven by search engines. Many blogging platforms also use the blog title to help generate the filename they store the post in, making it even more important to search engines as they consider file names in their rankings.

“Look Better Naked� is an interesting title. The local health club is using it in their advertising. Hey, fit people look better naked. I think it’s brilliant – offline.

Online, it has problems. It both contains no “keywords� or “ key phrases,� things people would search on when looking for a health club, and it’s too generic. People might look because it’s cute and sexy, but it doesn’t particularly appeal to someone looking for a health club, and it won’t help get search engine traffic.

Let's improve it by adding keywords. The follow two titles are infinitely better:

1. Exercise – Look Better Naked


2. Health clubs help you "Look Better Naked�

So, what keyword is best, “exercise,� “health club,� or . . .

There are simple tools that will help you out. I like the “Keyword Selector Tool� (or look in the "Resource Center" at overture.com) - it’s free. Other keyword tools include the well-regarded wordtracker.com (free trial available).

The keyword selector tool tells you roughly how many times a term has been searched on in search engines in the past month. It’s the relative numbers that matter.

1. exercise has been searched on 116437 times


2. health club has been searched on 333616 times


3. gym has been searched on 183545 times


4. world gym has been searched on 14572 times

Since this happens to be a “World Gym,� and that phrase includes “gym,� I’m going to pick “World Gym� and the final title is . . . World Gym – Look Better Naked.

No it’s not exact science! Health clubs help you Look Better Naked would be fine as well.

Now in the post, include the other keywords and phrases as well to please the search engines and help people find your no-doubt great content. Make sure you include them in a natural way – i.e., write for the reader, not the search engines. DO NOT write something like the following garbage. People, and the increasingly intelligent search engines, will hate it!

Health clubs and gyms are great for exercise to look better naked. Everyone should exercise in a health club or gym. Give a health club or gym membership as a present to a loved one. I love to exercise in health clubs and gyms because I love exercising in health clubs and gyms . . .

Some hints:

1. Keywords at the beginning of a title are better than keywords at the end of a title.


2. Put keywords early in the post.


3. Don't obsess over this!

One final hint: if you’re writing about a local establishment, for example the Worlds Gym in Seabrook NH, make sure you include “Seabrook NH� at least once or twice in the title and/or body!

Your customers are talking about you and you're not listening?

Are you insane? Don't you want to know what they're saying about you?

Knowing could be very valuable – if something is great, you've got strengths to play on.

They love your tropical flavored dingalings? Hmmm, maybe you should add more tropical flavors or offer a tropical flavored variety pack. Maybe you should send your non-tropical flavor dingaling eaters a coupon so they can try them and fall in love with them too!

If something is wrong, the faster you find out the better. Better than finding out via decreasing sales or maybe on the 6PM news or Sixty Minutes!

Your three handled family gradunzas are often arriving damaged and getting returned to dealers? Maybe your new packing, or new shipping arrangements, aren't up to snuff. It's better to know immediately, than several weeks down the road when your dealers start returning them to you.

The blogosphere can contain information that is hard to get anywhere else, especially about your customers, products, industry, and even competitors. Sure, some of this information can be obtained in other ways, for example customer feedback via surveys and focus groups, but this information is so fast, easy, and cheap to gather via the blogosphere, how can you justify NOT looking at this info?

Companies that use blogs are gaining a competitive advantage, whether they blog or not. Companies that are ignoring the blogosphere are missing out on a critical source of business intelligence.

Blogging Benefits for Non-Bloggers

Blogs have enormous benefits for non-bloggers.

Let's be serious, most people don't and may never blog. Many of you reading this may never blog.

Most inhabitants of the blogosphere don't blog. But they keep reading blogs. Why? What are the benefits?

Blogs are an enormous and effective information source. I can think of many stories that the mainstream media didn't get quite right, but that blogs did. Often these are admittedly in niche areas, but hey, we all live and work in our own niches!

I know a great salesguy – the kind you want to buy from because he doesn't waste your time and is always trying to offer you value. He wouldn't dream on calling on a company without doing basic blog research – reading any official company as well as non-official employee blogs, and looking for any recent mentions of the company and their products in blogs. He benefits from the blogosphere, and I don't see him ever blogging.

One big company I've work with has no immediate plans to blog, although I set them up to regularly monitor the blogsphere using tools like PubSub and Technorati to see what their customers are saying and get a lot of valuable feedback that way, as well as keep up on industry trends and sentiments.

Most people don't write books, but a lot of us benefit from reading – probably everyone here. Blogs are getting a greater percentage of people to publish information, and that benefits both bloggers AND non-bloggers.

Your Blog Topic

So, you're starting a business blog. What are you going to blog about?

Obviously this depends on your blog's goals, your business, and your target audience.

You do NOT need to blog on your industry, your products, or even anything related --although this is extremely common, but your topics need to be interesting to your target audience.

Maybe you are a manufacturer of Yellow Gray Widgets and you want to "connect" somehow with your target buyers (your planning had better be more detailed than just "connect with target buyers via blog!"). As we all know, Yellow Gray Widgets are horribly dull yet critical for many people.

A blog on Yellow Gray Widgets would probably fall flat on it's face – yes, some people might use it for research which is good, but it'll probably have few regular readers or interactivity. Your proposed Yellow Gray Widget material may be better suited for spec sheets, case studies, etc. on your corporate web site.

Who buys your horribly dull yet essential product? Hmmm, if you know, you can tailor your blog to their interests. Maybe your research has shown most of your buyers are male, between 20-30, and have an income of 25-50 thousand a year. What is this demographic interested in? – maybe Sports? Cars? Women? I don't know, I haven't done the research, but write "stuff" interesting for them.

Washing machines are pretty dull – especially when they work like they should. What did Whirlpool do, start a blog on washing machines? They could have called it "Whirlpools are Exciting!"

No, they targeted families – families buy washing machines. Whirlpool started the American Family series of podcasts, covering topics like "homeschooling," "positive parenting," and other topics of interest to families (note: podcast – think audio blog with a show like format).

So, your blog needs goals, and that includes a target audience. Write for your target audience. And hopefully, you are one of your target audience and share their interests and passions! If you don't maybe someone else should be writing the blog.

The Worst Type Of Business Blog

Driving to work naked and starting a Biz Blog with zero planning or thought are similar. Both might start out ok . . .

"Joe, I heard blogs are hot on the news, and our competitor XYZ Corp has one. I don't know what a blog is, but start one. NOW!!"

"Yes, sir, Mr. President! Right Away"

NO NO NO. A blog requires planning. The worst type of blog is the "let's start a blog" blog.

A blog needs to be part of your strategy, whether you are a mammoth multinational with a well thought-out corporate communications and marketing strategy, or just me, one person Ted's Company.

What are the blog's main goals? Who will write it? What will it be about? Maybe you should simply encourage employees to blog instead of starting an official company blog?

How will you keep legal, marketing and PR from turning your wannabeblog into a shiny and glossy "produced" non blog like this one from Nike, that does NOT have most of the advantages of a real blog? Nice job, for a corporate marketing brochure, but not a blog.

It takes planning. Not necessarily a lot, depending on the company or individual, but absolutely some thought.

Middlescents

No not adolescents, middlescents. The people who,

make up more than half your workforce. They work longer hours than anyone else in your company. From their ranks come most of your top managers. They're your mid-career employees, the solid citizens between the ages of 35 and 55 whom you bank on for their loyalty and commitment. And they're not happy.

Like adolescents, they're experiencing a time of change. They want to feel involved in their work but most (in fact, 33% of the 7,700 workers surveyed by Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson and Ken Dychtwald) are not. Satisfaction is hard to find; will they find it in your company?

According to the authors of Workforce Crisis ,

Companies are ill-prepared to manage middlescence because it is so pervasive, largely invisible, and culturally uncharted. That neglect is bad for business: Many companies risk losing some of their best people or--even worse--ending up with an army of disaffected people who stay. The best way to engage middlescents is to tap into their hunger for renewal and help them launch into more meaningful roles...Millions of mid-career men and women would like nothing better than to convert their restlessness into fresh energy.

The Middlescent idea is from a Harvard Business Review titled Managing Middlescence by Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson and Ken Dychtwald. The article's available here to purchase.

The authors also wrote Workforce Crisis.

Blogging for Business

I'm Ted Demopoulos, co-author of Blogging for Business, and excited to be blogging here today. 800CEOREAD and I share a passion for business books as well as blogging!

We're going to skip Blogging 101 and go straight to Blogging 201 - you're an advanced audience. No "what is a blog" here.

But, as an intro, "Why do I Blog??" – simple, RESULTS.

I started The Ted Rap with a somewhat lame "interview of myself by myself" post. Literally with 24 hours, my placement in the search engines had improved greatly. The traffic to my website more than doubled in a month (sounds like an infomercial, and it's even true!). I've also sold keynotes, consulting and training classes from my blog.

In one case a potential client called me back after reading my blog and gave me the job -- skipping the "selection committee" and proposal process I'd been told to expect. He felt he knew me well enough from reading my blog and was comfortable immediately hiring me.

I interviewed an E-commerce consultant last week who told me that all 20 or so blogs he had started for clients recently had increased traffic and profits to their related sites. The BloggingforBusinessBook.com blog is a main part of promotion for the book, as well as guest blogging as I'm enjoying here.

"Big" companies are getting massive benefits as well. Microsoft is no longer a faceless 800 pound gorilla due to the efforts of Robert Scoble, Channel9, and many others. Companies are getting valuable feedback from their blogs - often far better than from "focus groups" and surveys.

Blogging is NOT a silver bullet. Your results may vary. It DOES take time and effort, however the time and effort spent is enjoyable for most bloggers, and blogging helps bloggers stay current in their field.

Bloggers also usually become better writers -- and writing IS a critical business skill.

Defining a customer

I just wanted to highlight Steve Yastrow's (at the Tom Peters' blog) defintion of a customer:

Anyone whose actions affect your results.

I think it's an interesting and simple definition. The comments on both Steve's entry and Tom's reminder are also worth a look.

If you're in Milwaukee...

If you're in the Milwaukee area on Tuesday, March 21, check out the James Surowiecki (author of The Wisdom of Crowds) talk at the Milwaukee Public Library. It's hosted by Schwartz Bookshops; tickets are available for $15 here.

Prepared Mind World Tour #2 - Reasoning

Greetings to all you Prepared Minds from Bill and Jeanie:

This is the second of eight blogs that we will post to give more insights into the skills needed to prepare for your future. Comments are appreciated.

BE PREPARED TO REASON: Please excuse me while I get up on my metaphorical soapbox and have a short rant. We are becoming intellectually lazy and losing our ability to reason!! 50% of American households buy a newspaper today while over 100% bought a newspaper in 1950! (Over 100% because we had morning and evening editions then.) OK, I’m down from the soapbox and I have a question for you. Is the above conclusion a good conclusion? Or am I simply an old person ranting about the “younger generation?�

Here, try this one instead. “People who drink green tea show a lower incidence of heart disease. Therefore, drinking green tea reduces the risk of heart disease.�

Both examples show bad reasoning. In the first instance I used emotion (bold type and double exclamation points) and then gave you an unrelated fact to “back up� my statement. Hmmm, do you ever see that kind of “reasoning� coming from our politicians, or talk-show hosts? In the second example I gave you a conclusion based on a related fact – but a fact only showed correlation, not a cause.

Early in the book we mentioned that the skills of the Prepared Mind are rarely used in isolation. The skill of Reasoning is certainly in-line with that warning. Good reasoning requires that we Challenge the “facts� and assumptions that underlie our thinking. Good reasoning is informed through ongoing Learning; and new data comes through the skill of Observing. Finally, we test our reasoning and the results of our decisions when we Reflect.

But let’s get back to the rant of intellectual laziness. (I like ranting, it comes with age.) Good thinking requires that we use evidence to support our conclusions. So here is our Prepared Mind question of the day: Where do you get your evidence for the decisions and actions that guide you and your daily life? Do you take the time to educate your thinking process? Are you willing to plow though a fifteen page article in Atlantic Monthly magazine or do you pick-up your “factoids� from USA Today? By the way, newspaper readership is down significantly, so where are we getting “the news.� And, for that matter, how much of the news on TV or the web or radio is really important news?

Reasoning is hard work and it takes time; so, sometimes, we get a bit lazy and let others do our reasoning for us. Or, we let opinions substitute for reasoning. And, more often than not, we form our opinions based on “received knowledge.� That is, we let others tell us what to think. We see this all the time in people who are devoted to a political or religious ideology. (Does Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken do your thinking for you?) When this happens we fall into the traps of never looking for disconfirming information or not considering other points of view.

Going back to my opening rant, I really do believe that we are becoming intellectually lazy. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Now it’s your job to prove me wrong. You can give me your opinion (which I’ll ignore because it does not support my opinion.) Or you can reason with me. It’s your choice.

[If you missed last week's blog, read it here.]

[UPDATE: The next step of the tour can be found here.]

At SXSW

I am out of the office for the next couple of days attending SXSW Interactive. It is pretty tech oriented, and if you are interested you can follow along on apennyfor.com.

The one business book entry I have for you is a summary of the James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds) talk from Saturday. It is short and a stream of consciousness piece from while I was sitting there.

Is Advertising Dead or Just Evolving?

Even though Superbowl commercials are at an all-time high price, some people say it's the end of the 30-second spot.

Is it the end of advertising or just the beginning of advertising's evolution?

Today, a Fast Company writer interviewed old-timer Phil Dusenberry and a relatively new-comer, David Lubars -- both from BBDO and both similarly creative. (David's the one responsible for the clever Amazon movies).

They talk about where advertising is going, how TiVo is affecting their business, and their management styles.

Takeaway:

I want people to challenge me. I want them to feel they can step up and bring ideas. I insist on not being the smartest guy in the room. But if I hear everything, then I can help craft the smartest idea in the room. Here's the thing: Phil was a genius. I'm not a genius, so I need other people to help me do genius things.
-- Lubars

P.S. you can read an excerpt from Phil's book here.

More Wal-Mart and Fishman

I just wanted to point you towards the Fast Company blog. This week they asked Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect, to host the blog. You can check out his entries here.

The Art of Building Relationships

I believe the statistic is that it costs five times as much to obtain a new customer as it does to keep a current one (sometimes I've heard that it's seven times as much). It shows that building relationships with current customers is extremely important.

You could call it Playing Defense (rather than offensively seeking out new customers and stealing them from competitors). In Inc.'s March '06 issue, they give the example of Datastreem Systems who's approach is to "go deep" not wide. They build better relationships with current customers rather than focus on acquiring new customers.

Four tactics given to build relationships are to:

1. Leverage your strengths.
2. Keep rivals guessing.
3. Know when to retreat.
4. Make customer satisfaction a priority.

The question of the day is: how do you build relationships wtih your customers?

Trapped in a cubicle?

A friend of mine forwarded me a CNNMoney article this morning about the roots of the cubicle. It explains that the office layout that is so readily adapted by numerous companies was denounced even by its creator. I thought you might find the article intreresting; if you get a chance, check it out. It also gives a visual idea of the progression of the cubicle's life cycle.

Happy Friday!

Qualities of Leaders

What's your definition of a leader? What qualities do they embody?

We can all name at least three qualities that a leader possesses. Authors, Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria have a book due out next month on the commonality between some of the world's best leaders. They found that successful leaders "had an innate ability to read the forces that shaped the times in which they lived -- and to seize on the resulting opportunities."

They started by listing 1000 executives and then polling 7000 executives about the 1000 executives. Out of the data they created a list of the top 100 business leaders. They found that there are three typical types of leaders: "the entrepreneurial leader, the leader as manager, and the charismatic leader."

What's great about the potential of their book is that they identify the different ways people have succeeded. Just as no one person is the same, no path to leadership success is the same. This being true, it's important to understand what makes different leaders successful in order to understand your own leadership style.

Read more about the upcoming book here.

ChangeThis: Submit your ideas and read other ideas

Good Afternoon!

It's the time of the month again to tell you about ChangeThis. The new manifestos are up and ready to be read. This month you can learn about networking from Bob Allard, problem solving from Valarie Washington, Selling from Tom Peters and team building from Kevin Eikenberry.

Hang on, there's a bit more.

We'd love for you to submit those ideas rambling around in your heads. Submit them here.

To get examples and vote on current proposals, click here.

Happy reading, submitting and voting!

Bill and Bo on Small Giants

I would love Small Giants even if I didn't know the author, Bo Burlingham. After all, Burlingham has been the co-author of several of the best business books of the past two decades, The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome, not to mention the force behind the editing and writing of literally hundreds of important articles for Inc. magazine.

As Burlingham said at a recent reading/discussion for Small Giants, "This book challenges people to think about what makes a great company." How? He focuses on 14 dynamic companies that all made conscious decisions not to grow—but rather to control their size so as to concentrate on more important matters such as the soul of the company, the ties to the community, the community of employees, the quality of the work. In so doing the companies retained that quality of charisma that makes them so attractive—and which in turn drives so many great companies to make bad choices when faced with the tradeoffs from growth.

The huge crowd included Fast Company Founding Editor Bill Taylor, who posed Bo a provocative question. Bill (who recently completed a book of his own that will be published later this year) kindly shared his question, which follows. And Bo has been good enough to reply.

Here's Bill Taylor's question: It's easy to understand what your small giants gain by choosing not to grow as fast as they might. But did many of the entrepreneurs you chronicle--or did you yourself--think about what these companies give up by staying small? I'm not thinking about money, I'm thinking about impact--the chance to have a big effect on the world. Imagine if Herb Kelleher of Southwest had decided to stick to flying routes within the southwest. Or if John Mackey, the cofounder of Whole Foods Market, had decided to stop at a couple of stores in Austin, rather than spread across the country--and, in so doing, raise the bar for nutritional standards, the treatment of animals, the future of organics. Isn't it almost selfish, in a sense, or at least a missed opportunity, if you're a passionate company-builder who believes in what you're doing and thinks it's important, to do less than what's possible, to have less of an impact than you might have otherwise?

Bo Burlingham replies: First, let me be clear about one thing: In no way do I mean to suggest that a company can’t be great if it grows fast, gets big, goes public, does acquisitions, and so forth. The two companies you cite are prime examples of great, publicly traded companies, although it’s worth noting that they are striking exceptions to the rule. They have been able to resist the pressures to compromise their values only because they have so far managed to deliver consistently great returns to shareholders, who have thus been willing to let the company’s management teams operate as they see fit. Most other companies that have started out with similar values—The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry’s, and People Express come to mind—have eventually been forced to make compromises that have utterly transformed their cultures and ways of doing business.

It’s also important to recognize that there are always trade-offs. Although Southwest and Whole Foods are both great corporate citizens, neither one is rooted in a community anymore, and they’ve both lost some of the workplace intimacy they had when they were smaller, not to mention the intense relationships with customers and suppliers. My point is simply that there are sacrifices—lost opportunities—no matter what you decide to do. Company owners have to choose which opportunities they want to focus on and which pressures they want to deal with.

That said, it may be true that a couple of the Small Giants’ owners/leaders have given up an opportunity to have a greater impact on the world by choosing to remain private and closely held and by staying (relatively) small. I say “a couple� because extremely few people are capable of building a Whole Foods Market or a Southwest Airlines without losing control of the company along the way. In any case, I certainly wouldn’t describe the decision to remain small and private as selfish. For one thing, most of these people work extremely hard to make the greatest contribution they can to their employees, their customers, their communities, and the world.. Saying their decision is selfish implies that people who try to get their companies as big as possible, as fast as possible, are somehow being selfless, or at least less selfish. We both know that the motivations of company-builders, even the greatest ones, are far more complicated than that, and that altruism or selflessness seldom enters into the equation.