800-CEO-READ Blog

The Woman's Advantage Contest starts Monday

For the women out there, there's an interesting contest that starts Monday in conjunction with the release of Mary Cantando's book The Woman's Advantage. The book is based on lessons learned from 20 women entrepreneurs (hear them here).

What's interesting about the contest is that it's not merely a enter your name and there's a random winner. It's a read and apply the lessons in the book. Then write 500 words about how you successfully used a lesson in the book to change your business.

The prize:
One year of consulting by Mary Cantando and other "business-building" prizes.

Click here for more info.

Steve Farber on Business Fables

I just posted my interview with Steve Farber, author of The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change The World. He likes writing business fables and I asked him why:

This may sound strange to say. I am not a big fan of the genre in general, but I think there are some people out there that do it very very well. I prefer to think of this as a novella, as opposed to a fable.

The reason I write in this way is because it is entertaining. If it is done well, the story will bring the reader in in such a way that they get involved in the characters, they get involved in the storyline, and they get personally involved in the principles that are coming out. And the real power of the parable, the fable, or the novel is not the story for the sake of story. It's a story for the sake of the message and a story for the sake of the lesson. And when it is done well, it is not just an intellectual undertaking, in trying to understand the principles. It really becomes an experiential thing.

The interview runs 41 minutes.

Does one size really fit all?

I've never really understood the t-shirts or caps that say one size fits all. Because does it ever really fit everyone? I mean no one is the same shape or height so where did the idea come from?

Chip Conley had this in mind when he founded Joie de Vivre ("joy of life" in French)--a hotel business with an understanding that, "People are different so one size doesn't fit all." This is how he grew JDV into the "one of the largest, if not the largest, hoteliers in the Bay area" by 2001.

Employee training consists of asking employees about their experiences as customers--when they had a great customer experience and when they had a negative experience. As he says, "What that gets (employees) to very quickly is that we have a big impact on how customers feel about themselves."

He also expresses the importance of "celebrating individuality". It reminds me of the old Apple ad titled "Think Different:

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels...The ones who see things differently...About the only thing that you can't do is ignore them...Because they change things... Because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So he left us with three tips in his
The Rebel Guide to Diversity (and Creating a Cool Company)

• Once a month create a "Rebel for a Day" program
  Have someone go against the rules for one whole day. See what happens.


• Let every employee in your department pick a celebration day.
  Whatever day your employee picks (May Day, Groundhog's Day, etc.), have them choose how to celebrate their favorite day.


• Let them tell you how they'll succeed.
  "Ask them to finish the sentence, 'I am going to succeed because...'"

*From the April/May edition of Worthwhile magazine
*For more Chip Conley, check out his book published in 2001, The Rebel Rules

Word of the Day

From The Dictionary of Corporate Bulls**t: an A to Z Lexicon of Empty, Enraging, and Just Plain Stupid Office Talk:

hate 1. intense animosity 2. a feeling you thought you had given up a long time ago, as it's an unsophisticated and juvenile emotion more suited to a grammar school--"hate is a strong word"--and beneath a rational and fully realized adult such as yourself 3. something you feeling with deep, unmitigated, unwavering, and uncomplicated conviction toward whoever tortures you at work (your boss, a particularly evil coworker, etc.) or toward your job or company in general, as it places you in an environment of injustice, petty power plays, and humiliation on a daily basis. WIll make you say extremely venomous and strikingly inspired things about people that in the past you might have felt guilty about saying, but now celebrate and take great pleasure in expressing. Feels so good.

What's Next For Books?

Arun asked me in the comments of Books Have To Change to give my opinion on what was going to happen. It is a great question. It was the cover story of U.S. News and World Report on March 13th.

This has had me thinking for the last two weeks. I am not sure I know, but I have gathered a couple of examples of what people are trying.

Bruce Judson and HaperCollins have published Go It Alone online. They have set it up with each web page giving you the text you would find on the page of the book. They are experimenting with Google Ads next to the copy as a revenue stream for this method of publishing. In the U.S. News article, HarperCollins thinks this may be a fourth format after hardcover, paperback, and audio. I think this is interesting, but it is taking one format and forcing it into another.

Robert Frenay and Farrar, Straus and Giroux have also released Pulse online. There are doing it in a more trendy manner. There are posting the whole book through a series of blog posts that started early this month and will run through November. You'll find links in the text to the original sources. You can also see a tag cloud for the entries that have been posted, the most views entries, and an index from the book. I think this is pretty clever, but I am still not sure if the format conversion works. Do you want to wait six months read the whole book? The obvious ploy here is to get people interested in the book and hope that they buy.

I think these examples show other ways to deliver content to audiences and these will surely evolve with time. I'll give you some other thoughts next week.

Long Tail Cover

Chris Anderson put the cover art to The Long Tail up on his blog last week.

We have galleys now and are reading it. The book comes out July 11th.

If you are still not on the Long Tail bandwagon, start with Chris' original piece in Wired and then get caught up on his blog.

Twelve Books That Changed the World

Madeleine McGrath wrote a piece last week on the Tom Peters blog about a British TV "programme" that will feature twelve books that changed the world (Wealth of Nations is the only things close to a business book).

She then poses the question as to if there are any business books that belong in the company of Origin of Species and Principia Mathematica. There is a lively discussion going on about that very question.

This correct answer is the final one in the thread, posted by onehandclapping:

YA GOTA B KIDIN!!!.. business books life changing?... now don't get me wrong, i am a consultant to big business dealing with big issues, and have been for last 15 years, but business books life changing?... indeed, i've read a large number of books mentioned here and, in my opinion, some are very good... BUT, c'mon guys, get a life!!!

Some eye candy.

Just wanted to let you know that the new ChangeThis manifestos are up. Here's some info:

Manifesto 1
The Simplicity Cycle
By Dan Ward

Dan Ward succinctly shows us that increased complexity does not inherently equal increased goodness and instructs us on how to walk that fine line while still innovating.

Check it out.
Click here to download the PDF.

Manifesto 2
Vanished: Where has the Service Gone?
By Michael Chaffin

Michael Chaffin observes that customer transactions have lost all the remarkability that used to come with great customer service. The key to reigniting passion and excellence, he says, is to hire great people and get out of their way!

Check it out.
Click here to download the PDF.

Manifesto 3
Citizen Innovator
by Erik Von Hippel

Von Hippel shows us that across many industries, information technology especially, users are the best minds to influence change and advancement. User innovation benefits all and in his manifesto, Von Hippel shows us why.

*This manifesto was adapted from the first chapter of Democratizing Innovation.

Check it out.
Click here to download the PDF.

-------

Even more reading material:
Yesterday I posted an excerpt from Shelf Life, about the MAJERS company and how it helped Pepsi compete with Coke in retail. Check it out here.

Swanson Acknowledges Using Other's Work

William Swanson, CEO of Raytheon released a statement in response to the NYT piece that ran yesterday. Many of the rules from Unwritten Rules of Management are the same in thought and words to J.W. King's Unwritten Rules of Engineering. Here is the statement released by Swanson:

"The lessons that lie at the heart of the ‘Unwritten Rules’ were gathered over a lifetime of experience, reading and listening. The result is an unpublished work that is available free of charge to any interested reader. I sought to provide credit at the front of the ‘Unwritten Rules’ to all those unnamed sources who had, over the course of my life, contributed a thought or an idea relevant to the compiled work. While many of those sources remain anonymous, clearly, the similarity of the language between Professor King’s 1944 book and some of the rules within the ‘Unwritten Rules’ is beyond dispute.

"For me, the originality of the material was never the rules themselves, but my expression of them in terms of my experience over the years. I hope, in this regard, they continue to be helpful. I regret that over the course of the years and in the process of compiling the ‘Unwritten Rules,’ any reference to Professor King’s work was not properly credited.

"This experience has taught me a valuable lesson – new Rule #34: ‘Regarding the truisms of human behavior, there are no original rules."

I give Mr. Swanson a lot of credit for admitting to and acknowledging this. I did not expect it.

Seth in the Press

Seth Godin has been alot of places in the media lately. Here is a quick summary:

• American Way Magazine (of American Airlines) - Seth even highlighted this one on his blog. I think writer Joe Jarvis wrote a great piece on Mr. Godin and his works
• Ode Magazine - Here Seth writes a piece called "How To Tell A Great Story"
• BusinessWeek SmallBiz - This is a short Q&A with a BWOnline editor.

DHL and The One-Minute Manager

While eating my oatmeal this morning, I was paging through the May 1st issue of Fortune. About halfway through the magazine there is a DHL ad with an insert. The insert says:

Get Your Free Copy of "The One Minute Manager" When You Take Our One-Minute Survey.

The survey is a prospecting tool that asks you if you are DHL customer, the number of packages you ship, your role in shipping decisions, etc.

If you are still interested, you can call 866-475-8636 and give them the survey information over the phone. Be sure to mention the promotion code FT2BOOK.

P.S. Just to be clear: this is not an endorsement of DHL.

Unwritten Rules?

I have sung the praises of The Unwritten Rules of Management by Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. It seems that some of the rules might have already been written.

There is a book called The Unwritten Rules of Engineering that was written in 1944 by W.J. King. In an article today, New York Times reports that Rules #6 through #22 "are similar to advice in the older book, in most cases using similar or identical language". Carl Durrenberger, a chemical engineer for HP and blogger in San Diego, seems to have uncovered the similarities.

From the NYT piece:

"I'm calling him a plagiarist," Mr. Durrenberger said in an interview. "It may be a little hard. But the definition of plagiarism is taking someone else's work and putting your name on it. So I'm calling it the way I see it."

I think this is pretty weak on Swanson's part. All he needed to do was acknowledge where he got them. The trouble is that it may have been too close to what he was publishing.

Two Business Beer Books

We are coming up on the annual booksellers convention. It is huge deal for us folks. It gives us a great opportunity to talk with publishers, find out what is going on, and see what they have planned for the fall.

At last year's convention, Wiley had an event at their booth which featured two books. The first book was Beer School by Brooklyn Brewery founders Steve Hindy & Tom Potter. The second book was Brewing Up A Business by Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. The event was a hit, because they had a sampling of both breweries flagship brands.

For some reason I have hung on to these books for the past year, meaning to write a post about them. Beer School tells the tale of building the Brooklyn Brewery. Each chapter ends with lessons from the authors. Chapter Five for example is "Steve Discusses the Keys to Successfully Motivating Employees" and ends with Lesson Five: Feeling Goods Is No Substitute for Prudent Controls. These guys favor the Jack Welch style of management with annual performance appraisals and having no problem firing people if they don't work out. I particularly liked Chapter 10 and the story of them selling their distribution arm. It was complicated, emotional, and got to a point of needing lawyers.

I like Brewing Up A Business a little more though. Sam Calagione was an English major in college and knows how to spin a tale. Marketing on a Small Budget, Stalking The Killer App and Cash Is King (well sort of..) are typical chapter titles. He is also a maverick who has taken on Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I love this paragraph because he gets it:

Picasso once said, "The creative act is first and foremost an act of destruction." As a small businessperson I couldn't agree more. When you go into business for yourself, you are destroying preconceived notions. You are destroying business as usual in that it can only be created by you. For small businesspeople, our greatest challenge is gaining customers. The way you gain customers is by gaining attention. The way you gain attention is by standing out from the other businesses you compete with...If you can disrupt business as usual, you will attract positive attention while shifting the spotlight away from your biggest competitors.

Grab a cold one and kick back with one of these books to see the business behind the brew.

Red Rubber Ball's Writing Tips

This seems to be the time of the year for annual reports and updating all those marketing brochures. So while you're busy determining what to say and how to appeal to your customers, here are a few tips offered by Matt (the tips were inspired by How the Rules of the Red Rubber Ball Came to Be.

1. Put your name on it.
   Claiming ownership means you care about what you're saying. It's not just a corporate message, it's what you believe.


2. Write a story, not copy.
   Stories are interesting and inviting.


3. Start with an evocative hook.
   Catch readers' attention in the first line.


4. Overcome writer’s block by starting with small bits.
   You don't have to sit down and tell the whole story at once. Sometimes the best pieces come in just that -- pieces.


5. PR starts with you.
   Talk about what you're doing. Spread your message.


6. Sticky points are sometimes tiny/hidden.
   Sometimes what's big too you is not what other people notice. It truly can be the little things that make a big difference to people.

This Week - 4/24/06

Welcome to a new week. Like most other weeks, we have all sorts of things to keep you full up on what is going on in business books.

We have the final installment of the Prepared Mind World Tour. Bill and Jean have been great. We will be completing the Tour with a couple of final events in May. Stay Tuned...

We will also have a new podcast going up with Steve Farber, author of Radical Edge.

There will be lots more. as always.

Have a great week.

Forbes' 20 Most Influential Business Books

In the Forbes' article that Tom referred to yesterday, the writer Dan Ackman pointed to a list of business books the magazine put together in 2002. Forbes calls these The 20 Most Influential Business Books. As you look down the panel experts, you'll notice our own Jack Covert was among those called to contribute. Since this was put together before the blog was born, I thought we should get it put up here.

• In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman (1982)
• Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras (1994)
• Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and Jim Champy (1993)
• Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (1993)
• Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter (1998)
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Galdwell (2000)
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore (1999)
• The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow (1990)
• The Six Sigma Way by Peter Pande et al (2000)
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey(1990)
• Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (1989)
• The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (1997)
• Japan Inc. by Shotaro Ishinomori (1988)
• Den of Thieves by James Stewart (1991)
• The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker (2001)
• Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (1994)
• The Warren Buffet Way by Robert Hagestrom (1991)
• Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch with John Bryne (2001)
• Good to Great by Jim Collins (2001)
• The New New Thing by Michael Lewis (2000)

They also organized the books and you will find some good commentary under the topics of management, narrative, biography and investing.

A-Ha!

Tom Peters wrote a terrific post called Ha! commenting on a Financial Times column citing the poor track record of companies that Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad cited in their book Competing for the Future. Here’s a great quote from Tom:

"I guess my perverse pleasure comes because almost every "big" management book seems to need to devote a paragraph to trashing the companies Bob and I picked. None cites even a dollop of data to support their point...which doesn't slow them down in the least. We did indeed make our share of mistakes—but the bunch-as-a-whole have been remarkably resilient.
Ah, well."

Not only is his short post excellent, but, as is often the case on his blog, so are the comments. One person cited an excellent Forbes piece on what's happened to the companies cited in Excellence.

Speaking of this financial smell test, I’d love to see portfolios of model companies cited in the top 25 business books of the past 20 years. Hold up the performance of Good to Great versus Execution, or, say, Lean Thinking versus Innovator’s Dilemma?

Saccharine and Bandages

Every week the mailman delivers one of my favorite magazines -- The Week. It basically takes all the information in U.S. and international newspapers and combines them into one 40-page weekly magazine. It covers both sides of every issue with support from various newspapers.

Last week's edition reviewed two business-y books:

1. Sweet and Low
   Rich Cohen tells the unofficial story of the famous sweetener's inventor--Rich is his disinherited grandson.As he says, "Sweet'N'Low was a dream come true, until the fortune tore the family apart." The Wall Street Journal quipped, "'What Moby-Dick did for whaling, what The Jungle did for meatpacking,' Cohen has done for the saccharine industry." The New York Times said that the book is "'part tragedy, part farce,' and surely will be regarded as 'a small classic of familial triumph, travail, and strife.'" Just check out the comic book-esque cover.
2. Apex Hides the Hurt
   It's the story of "a marketing consultant [that] ...is best known for rebranding." The consultant is hired to renname the town. According to the Chicago Tribune, the author is a "brilliant guide to our culture" and ventures into whether "names are most effectively used to 'reflect some underlying truth' or as 'vehicles for unlimited reinvention.'"

Does This Post Plug John Bogle's New Book?

There are certain books that suffer from extreme author self-promotion. Contrary to recent published reports, John Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism is not one of them. On Saturday the Wall Street Journal ran a snarky item headlined “Man of Letters: Bogle Joins Campaign Urging SEC to Act on Executive Pay—And cites His New Book.�

The article describes the efforts of a number of financial executives and experts who have submitted letters weighing in on proposed changes to the policy on executive pay disclosure. The fifth paragraph of this story reports, “Before taking his stance calling for more ‘sunlight’ on compensation matters, Mr. Bogle opened his four-page letter dated April 10 with a plug for his new book ‘The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.’ The book focuses intensely on what Mr. Bogle calls ‘grossly excessive’ executive compensation.�

Here’s the letter Bogle wrote. Note how on the first page he cites the book once, in passing, not in the “opening,� describing his credentials to write the subsequent analysis of this not-so-simple financial issue. Gee, that’s guerilla marketing for you. Clearly the man who helped invent the mutual fund industry, whose previous books have sold literally hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of copies, felt the desperate need to boost sales of his latest book by coming up with a marketing plan that could only be called “innovative�: write a complex and well-argued 1000-word critique of “executive compensation and related party disclosure� as a means of encouraging that vast book-buying market, comprised of the SEC, to buy his book. If successful, he could generate sales of at least five copies.

I can’t wait to read from his upcoming media blitz capitalizing on this cool new strategy. I hear he’s moved the mention of his book to the first sentence of his comments on the pending FASB policy regarding “Accounting for the Conversion of an Instrument That Became Convertible upon the Issuer’s Exercise of a Call Option�. Moreover, word has it that he’s planning to mention the book twice in his paper on measuring and interpreting oscillators and clock performance at the 31st Annual NIST Time and Frequency Metrology Seminar. There must be at least eight metrologists who have yet to buy his book.

But seriously, folks…Here’s what Jack Bogle said yesterday when I asked him the simple question “Did you write and submit the SEC letter to promote your book?�

“Please. I wrote the letter because I wanted to focus on the big problems. I was trying to call the SEC’s attention to a great big gaping hole in their compensation release policy—a gaping hole that’s big enough to drive several tanks through. And in fact several tanks are driving through it now.

“I just pointed out that the mutual fund industry doesn’t get the same kind of disclosure that corporate America gets. There’s a huge body of investors that is getting no information. I was trying to open their eyes to a real need for compensation disclosure.�

Bogle’s thoughts are timely, given the news this week of CEO Lee Raymond’s nearly $400 million parting compensation package from ExxonMobil. Bogle has two big problems with this news:

“This sends the message that the CEO makes the company, which is absurd,� he says. “You have several hundred thousand people doing hard work in companies like this, and the CEO gets rewarded. The other problem is that people shouldn’t get rewarded for exogenous factors. If you are in a commodity business and the business goes up you shouldn’t get the reward for it. And that’s what has happened here.�

Prepared Mind World Tour #7 -- Enabling

When Bill and I first conceived of the Prepared Mind skills, we called this skill teaching. Feedback from executives steered us away from using the word "teaching," telling us it sounded too didactic, too one-way in helping others advance and develop their own Prepared Minds. So, we developed our thinking and observations along the lines of "enabling" others. In fact, many definitions of leadership focus on enabling others to contribute.

As we continue to work with leaders cultivating their own and others' Prepared Minds, I am beginning to believe that the most effective and transformational impact we can have in enabling others is when we work with them to discover and uncover potential, talent, even goals that have been left latent, often for many years in their careers.

Recently, I worked with a man who made it a point to tell me that as good as he was technically, he was not a leader. He thought leadership meant being assertive, speaking up in groups, rallying people around an idea, following him. He told me that being a non-native speaker of English also did not help. He did not feel he used the language well to expect people to listen to him. To tell you the truth, most of his colleagues would have not pegged him a leader either. However, after a few days of hearing how his colleagues went about doing their own technical work and involving others, he realized he was missing opportunities, even the responsibility, of helping others come to see things through the superb set of scientific eyes he uses to make him one of the strongest technical experts in his company. He began considering the other skills of the Prepared Mind and how he already uses them or, with minor tweaks, could use them more in his day to day work, and engage others in using them. His proclamation (and it did sound like a proclamation) at the end of three days was, "I a leader!" He told me it was there all along and that he just did not realize that what he did quietly could be such a strong foundation to leadership.

A month later, I followed up with this man and his colleagues. I heard stories of him standing in the middle of a circle during meetings and asking deep, insightful questions that no one else had thought of to ask. He has made it a point to include other non-native speakers from all around the world in meetings and getting them to speak up with their input. Instead of waiting for people to come to him, he asks people if they want to see how he does the analysis of a complex data set. I was even told that he has gone through The Prepared Mind of a Leader and checked off each idea and action he does do or wants to do in his daily work.

The point is that enabling others often just means helping them discover and uncover what they have been doing all along and help them see the value. This is also a powerful motivation tool that sparks them to do more of a good thing and stretch to develop new talents.

What are ways to discover and uncover potential and talent in ourselves and others?

[If you missed the first six Prepared Mind stops, here they are: Observing, Reasoning, Imagining, Challenging, Deciding and Learning]

Innovation in BusinessWeek SmallBiz

I don't know if your parents are like this, but my mom always sends a bag of stuff home with me whenever I visit. Most of the time, it is magazines she has finished reading (when I was in college, she would fill out all of those offers where you send in three proofs of purchase to get some free t-shirt and put my dorm address as the send-to).

In this week's bag was the Spring 2006 edition of BusinessWeek SmallBiz. The cover story is "ideas that BLOOM". The article profiles Numi Tea, Benjamin Obdyke, and Bravado Designs. It talks about their efforts to be more innovative.

Kathryn From, CEO of Bravado, uses books with her management team to foster innovation. She says in the article: "We recently read Good To Great by Jim Collins and spent half a day talking about how we can use it."

On the same page is an outstanding list of books on innovation (kudos to writer Diane Brady):

• The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
• Orbiting The Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
• 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble
• The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley
• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
• The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
• Harvard Business Review on Innovation by Clayton Christensen et al.

Q&A with Rick Yancey--Taxes, Drama, and Honor

Today being the last day to turn in your taxes (I live in Massachusetts, where we get special dispensation today for Patriot’s Day), here’s an interview with Rick Yancey, the multitalented writer who has penned one of the best books on the IRS, Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Mans Tour of Duty. As noted in December, he followed that up with a terrific kid’s book, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp. He took a few moments to explain how the two books are related.

Q) Can you talk about whether your experience learning about “a world of practically limitless power, nectar of the gods to the ineffectual dreamer, for whom life was not a pursuit of happiness, but a struggle for recognition and control� (i.e. the IRS) colored the world of Alfred Kropp?
A) Maybe the “code� Alfred discovers is the flip-side of unspoken “code� I learned while working at the IRS. Which is that Power (as embodied by the Sword) is not something to be used to dominate and control, but a trust to guard and use only for good. Perhaps high on the corny meter, but a verity nevertheless.

Q) Along those lines, can you discuss the notion of duty as they apply to each of the two books?
A) Alfred's duty is informed and guided by conscience. We were taught early on in the IRS that our duty was first to the government; we were Uncle Sam's zealous advocates, and our duty did not arise from any sort of solemn vow, as Alfred takes in the book.

Q) In Confessions, the protagonist eventually realizes an “explosive ecstatic epiphany� where moral ambiguities suddenly vanish and he revels in the purity of mission. Henceforth the protagonist becomes a bit scary. The question here is: which Richard Yancey wrote Alfred Kropp? The conflicted individual at the beginning of Confessions, or the ruthless individual who finds deep satisfaction when he seizes a shiny Chevette beloved by a tax delinquent?
A) The guy who seized the cars is also the guy who forced himself at great cost to face who he really was --- to face what he had become. The same happens to Alfred at the end. Embracing our identity is a big part of growing up.

Q) After years of dealing with Form 668-Bs and IBIAs, was it satisfying to write about worldlier topics such as the sword Excalibur and teenage crushes?
A) Every book I write expresses something important enough to me to sustain an effort resulting in a book-length manuscript. The satisfaction with every book is knowing I've told a story I had to tell, for whatever reason.

Q) Kropp ends, in many ways, where Confessions begins. The protagonist stands ready to do battle and enforce an ancient code. Where do you see Alfred going?
A) I see the Alfred series as continuing indefinitely. Book Two deals with two things very important to teens (or at least they were important to me as a teen): love and fear. Let's just say the next book, given those huge themes, is bigger, faster and (I hope) funnier than the original.

A Question from the Questions of Character Podcast

I just posted my interview with Joe Badaracco. I really like his new book Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature. The audio interview lasts almost 38 minutes and during it I asked him how he came up with the Questions for his book. Here is what Joe said:

These are questions...that occur in each one [of the stories] and also have strong parallels for businesspeople.

If you take the question that I write about with Death of A Salesman -- "Do I Have A Good Dream?", that's a way of asking what the basic hopes and aspirations of a person or literature of a character really are. And that is a question you can ask of almost any book and almost any person. I had a very clear sense of the question of what somebody really cares about and is hoping to build for themselves and their families in the longer run has to be a fundamental question to address in a book like this and it is a very central part of character.

So is a question of what is a moral code and what's a good moral code. This is another sort of universal question that you could take to The Odyssey or you could take it to a John Grisham story. It gets to sort of a fundamental feature of human personality and something we really care about in our leaders, what their moral codes are.

So, that was sort of the ultimate test--whether the question seemed to resonate through a number of books and more importantly whether it seemed to resonate with the kinds of things we want to know about leaders.

You listen to the whole Badaracco interview and/or read the Jack Covert Selects.

This Week - 4/17/06

Welcome to a new week. Spring has definitely sprung here in Wisconsin. My lawn is greening up and can hear the birds chirping away outside my window.

I have a huge stack of stuff to get you all caught up on. So, I am going to just start writing today and hopefully we will get through all of it by the end of the week.

There will be new stuff on the audio blog and excerpt blog this week as well as check those out.

Tell Us What You Think

I will also take this opportunity on our birthday to ask you what you think.

Do you like the blog?

Is there something else you would like to see us write about?

What can we do to make things more useful for you?

We would love to hear from you!

Leave your comments here or drop me a line (todd [@] 800ceoread [dot] com).

We Are Two Years Old Today

The 800ceoread blog is two years old today.

This is where it all started for me. I had been doing the Business Blog Book Tour and Tom Ehrenfeld thought Jack and I should meet. It was a little weird that we only lived about 30 miles from each other. I actually interviewed for a job which Jack and I both agreed wasn't a good fit. I came back to Jack about a month later and said we should start a blog. He agreed. I was getting paid to be a blogger before people were even asking if companies would pay people to blog.

Well, one blog lead to three blogs. And that led to our caring for ChangeThis. And that led to the monster we call inBubbleWrap.

I now have a fulltime job telling you about what is cool in business ideas and figuring out what this little company of ours should do next. It is the most fun I have ever had.

So, I hope you aren't surprised if I tell you there are some cool things on the drawing board.

Stay Tuned....and here is to many more...

Books Have to Change

I picked up a copy of Never Bet The Farm last night. It is a book about entrepreneurship. It had great cover art and I have been liking the stuff Jossey-Bass has been putting out lately. I came away disappointed for the most part.

The main reason was their 80 page resource section. 60 pages of the resource section was devoted listing university centers that can help entrepreneurs. This sort of thing does not belong in books anymore. Readers are going to look for the one address that applies to them and never look at it again. This information should be available as an extra online. Don't even get me started on their website.

Note to Publishers: The Internet has changed the ability for people to access information. Books are still really good at doing a lot of things. Take some time and figure out what that is.

The Box

Last month we posted a Jack Covert Selects review on a new book called The Box. You can check the review here. The Economist also reviewed the book last month and loved it.

Today's Wall Street Journal reviewed it with a review that liked the book but took the author to task for being a little "slow going." I thoroughly enjoyed the book but everybody is entitled to their opinion.

If you subscribed to my reviews, you would have been the "first on your block" to know about this book and other books that I pick as being especially worthy. If you are interested in getting the reviews, you can email me at jack at 800ceoread [dot] com and I'll make sure you can be the first on your block to know or subscribe in the Newsletters portion of our website.

Prepared Mind World Tour #6 -- Learning

Remember the old song recorded by such diverse performers as the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbinson and Nazareth entitled "Love Hurts"? I bet each of us has experienced multiple instances when loving has, as the lyrics go, felt like a flame, has caused a lot of pain and even made us blue. Yet we keep going back for more! What's up with that?!

My hunch is that learning -- deep, serious learning -- is pretty much the same phenomenon. Yes, "Learning hurts." Why? None of us likes to have to change our minds and our hearts and set our actions on a different course, especially when we are surviving in our current mode. But that is what deep learning requires – internal transformation resulting in external transformational behaviors. The fact that learning hurts is why, for instance, organizational and personal change are so hard – change tells us we have to give up thinking, feeling, believing, doing something that was our reality. Is it any wonder that most companies and individuals tend to wait until there is some crisis or forced change to do deep learning rather than taking on the task of learning and changing and creating a new reality when the old one seemed to be "good enough?" After all, it got us to where we are now.

Prepared Mind leaders are not sadists seeking pain. However, they believe that the energy, sacrifice and pain invested in learning today will pay off in a broadened horizon, an extended life cycle, and new opportunities tomorrow. Like athletes that train and stretch and push themselves to and beyond a pain threshold that would make most of us throw in the towel, Prepared Mind leaders train and push themselves to engage in continuous learning so they can go the extra mile when the deepest kind of learning is required. Research I have done with turnaround companies reveals that, in each case, the top leaders were regarded as “learners� by those who worked for them. They modeled learning more things and learning different things and got their workforce to engage in deeper learning as well. What does this learning look like?

We have seen a myriad of continuous learning strategies practiced by individuals and companies that include: teaching a course, rotating positions, reading, professional organizations, formal courses. However, the area of deep learning that I see coming to the forefront across research and industry is the challenge of learning to be interdisciplinary. This requires not only knowing your own specialty deeply but learning, working with and applying theories, models and tools from other disciplines to complex problems that a single minded expertise alone cannot solve or even understand. For instance, we see biologists working with economists in drug discovery, supply chain experts working with sales for customer collaboration, marketers working with educators to do a more robust job of internalizing brands. The list continues to grow. These interdisciplinary undertakings will not only require a building up of new knowledge bases but also a challenge to identity for those who are known for their specialties. It will require learning new languages or new meanings for old words. It will require even learning new philosophies. This requires deep learning and this learning will not be easy. Will we be prepared to open up new areas of our minds to look at and solve important problems with more robust lenses?

[If you missed the first five Prepared Mind stops, here they are: Observing, Reasoning, Imagining, Challenging and Deciding]

Money as a Motivator?

The question of the week directed towards Jack and Suzy Welch is:

In our business, the biggest challenge we have today is motivating our people. What's the best way to do that?

*From BusinessWeek's March 27, 2006 issue

Beyond money, they have four suggestions:

1. Recognition
   
   Recognize people's achievements. Highlight them. Announce them. It lets people know their efforts are appreciated and makes them work harder for future recognition.


2. Celebration
   
   Celebrate the victories along the way. It doesn't have to be a huge, blow-out celebration. As Jack and Suzy say, it can be as simple as tickets to a ball game (and with baseball season now in gear, what could be a better idea?)
   


3. Create a mission
   
   Create something that everyone adheres to and sets their compass towards. The best creation processes incorporate everyone's input to develop a good mission.


4. Balance achievement and challenge
   
   People want to accomplish their goals while still knowing that there's room to grow. They need achievements as must as they need new challenges.

More praise for Hard Facts

Todd's already praised the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense by making it his latest "must read". He even chatted with the authors in a podcast.

The April 2006 issue of Business 2.0, reiterates the idea behind the book: it's not what you know, it's what you do with what you know that makes the difference.

As the reviewer Theodore Kinni says,

The authors attack chestnuts of business wisdom, such as the beliefs that financial incentives drive performance and that work and private lives should remain seperate, arguing that the logic behind these notions is 'incomplete, mistleading and downright wrong.'

Jack Covert Selects -- The Must-Have Customer

The Must-Have Customer: 7 Steps to Winning the Customer You Haven't Got by Robert Gordman with Armin Brott, Truman Talley Books, 290 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, April 2006, ISBN 0312351690

Disclaimer time: I picked up this book because I liked the Marcus Buckingham quote and the subject is something I personally have trouble with. Intellectually I understand the concept but putting it into action can be difficult.

The premise of the book is that there are good customers and bad customers. We need to nurture and understand the good customers and get rid of the bad ones. As a merchant for the past four plus decades, this sticks in my head.

The author has great credentials and uses his experiences to illustrate his points. One of the passages that won me over was where he said:

And over the course of all those years, I learned something remarkable: Companies don't die of natural causes; management kills them. And death doesn't come suddenly; it happens one customer at a time.

I have witnessed this time and time again. It's easy to spend tons of money to go after opportunistic, price-driven customers but it's more important to go after our core customers. (Guilty as charged!)

Another point that really rang true for me was:

First, don't bother trying to convert opportunistic customers into core customers. Opportunistic customers are almost exclusively price driven, so unless your only attribute is low price, trying to chase down opportunistic customers is a waste of time and money.

The author uses examples from mega-businesses like JC Penney and Coca-Cola, to smaller businesses. The philosophy is perfectly scalable. Finally, the real takeaway is:

Success in business is not about beating the competition; it's about serving your customers. Over the past decade Wal-Mart has been blamed for the untimely deaths of hundreds of small merchants. I disagree. In my view it's really more a question of suicide than murder. The grim reality is that most of the small retailers tried to compete directly with Wal-Mart on price (which no one can do), and killed themselves in the process. The smart retailers--and there are plenty--however, didn't see Wal-Mart as a competitor at all. Instead, they identified a must-have customer who was more interested in quality, service, reliability, or any factor other than price. They repositioned their business to serve those customers in a unique way, and they thrived. Today, retailers wait in line and pay premium rents to be next to a Wal-Mart. Next time you drive by one, see if you can find an empty store in the same shopping center.

The book is a worth a read. It helped me get over my old-fashioned way of viewing customers and may do the same for you.

----------
If you would like to receive the monthly Jack Covert Selects Newsletter, please visit the Newsletters area of our website. Then, sign in and check the boxes of the newsletters that interest you.

Jack Covert Selects -- Questions of Character

Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature
by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., Harvard Business School Press, 221 pages, $26.95 hardcover, April 2006, ISBN 1591399688

When I'm not reading a business book, you'd probably find my nose in a fiction book. There's something about the vivid pictures painted by writers that I have always loved. Plus, a side of life is depicted that is not regularly thought about.

Joseph Badaracco's new book is based on fiction; more specifically, it's based on a business course he teaches at the Harvard Business School. Each year, he assigns students works of fiction like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Love of The Last Tycoon. Students are expected to look at the characters' challenges through the lens of leadership.

Why fiction? Business case studies and media interviews with executives are (at best) a filtered version of events that occurred. Badaracco says fiction gives you an unparalleled view of what the people are truly thinking and feeling:

"...[S]erious literature offers a view from the inside. It opens doors to a world rarely seen except, on occasion, by leaders' spouses and close friends. It lets us watch leaders as they think, worry, hope, hesitate, commit, exult, regret, and reflect. We see their characters tested, reshaped, strengthened or weakened. These books draw us into leader's worlds, put us in their shoes, and at times let us share their experience."

While other books have tried to using fiction as a basis for business lessons, "Questions of Character" is by far the best and most serious study thus far. Go check it out.

----------
If you would like to receive the monthly Jack Covert Selects Newsletter, please visit the Newsletters area of our website. Then, sign in and check the boxes of the newsletters that interest you.

Jack Covert Selects -- The Butterfly Hunter

The Butterfly Hunter: Adventures of People Who Found Their True Calling Off the Beaten Path by Chris Ballard, Broadway Books, 280 Pages, $23.95 Hardcover, April 2006, ISBN 0767918681

My favorite business books are really well-written, perceptive and enjoyable. This book is all of the above. It's written by more than an author; it's written by a writer. Writers are the Malcolm Gladwells of the world. Chris Ballard is that good of a writer.

The book is about ten people--ranging from Spiderman Mulholland (his real name) who makes a living climbing tall buildings to fix busted flag poles to Doug Blevins who has cerebral palsy and coaches football kickers and punters--who have found happiness and fulfillment on the margins of today's work world. Like Richard Florida states in his classic The Rise of the Creative Class, “Everything interesting happens at the margins.�

Digging into these margins, Ballard said,

I was continually surprised by what I found, and not just because I was venturing into some pretty strange subcultures. I uncovered passion in the unlikeliest of places and wisdom where I never would have expected it. I was astonished at the candor and compassion of many of my subjects. They let me into their lives, and I took the opportunity--metaphorical visitor tag attached to my chest--to see what drove them, what inspired them, and what they hoped to achieve. Not all the stories are inspirational; some are cautionary, others complex. In the end, despite their diverse careers and at times peculiar worldviews, there were a handful of common themes that tied them together.

One common theme was that each character thoroughly enjoyed their job. As Ballard says,

The poet W. H. Arden once wrote, 'A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office every day. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.' The characters I met had a different story: they couldn’t think of anything else they'd want to do. What I wanted to know was, in so many words, how did they pull that off?

Written in a fun, lyrical style, this book is another example of the "new" business book where the message is in the story.

----------
If you would like to receive the monthly Jack Covert Selects Newsletter, please visit the Newsletters area of our website. Then, sign in and check the boxes of the newsletters that interest you.

Jack Covert Selects -- hackoff.com

hackoff.com: An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble by Tom Evslin, dotHill Press, 633 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, March 2006, ISBN 0977464601

For the past three months, a galley of this self-published book has been within my reach at home and at the office. That's unusual because (A) I seldom wait that long to decide whether I am going to do a JCS on a book and (B) the book features a murder, swear words and a few bedroom scenes. Plus, at 500 plus pages, it tips the scales at over two pounds (yes, I weighed it).

Author Tom Evslin actually created a faux company website. He has used the blogosphere so extensively that he calls the book a blook—as in blog and book.

What's the blook about? As Evslin states on his website:

Fictional CEO Larry Lazard served time in prison for hacking through bank security systems and liberating credit card numbers. He parleyed this conviction into an online security consulting business which became hackoff.com.
Larry takes his company public. Its stock price soars and collapses. Following a hostile takeover attempt, Lazard is found dead in his office.

Larry Lazard is like many of the high-profile CEOs always depicted in the media--self-absorbed, sure of himself and more than a little crazy. The supporting players are drawn out of people we either know or have read about in the papers.

If you read Evslin's bio, you'll discover that this truly is an insider's look into the Internet bubble; Evslin really has "been there and done that". My favorite parts of the book were the descriptions of the IPO road show and the interviews with investment bankers. Real “fly on the wall� stuff.

If you're still not sure whether you'll enjoy this book, check it out online. Evslin literally gives away the book as a web version of a test drive. Read it before you buy it.

----------
If you would like to receive the monthly Jack Covert Selects Newsletter, please visit the Newsletters area of our website. Then, sign in and check the boxes of the newsletters that interest you.

Jack Covert Selects -- The Radical Edge

The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change the World
by Steve Farber, Kaplan Publishing, 176 Pages, $16.95 Hardcover, March 2006, ISBN 1419511319

Steve Farber is the ultimate raconteur. His knack for storytelling was demonstrated in his first book and reaffirmed with The Radical Edge (side note: each book stands alone). His attention to detail paints each scene in your head while teaching extremely important and relevant lessons.

This book is deemed "another personal lesson in extreme leadership" but it's more than a leadership book. It's a book for anyone who's interested in learning how to make their business and life more fulfilling and successful--not an easy task.

It details Steve's experience consulting Cam, a young and wildly successful salesman who lacks in leadership skills. Together, Steve and Cam meet with a few of Steve's friends to gain new lessons. There are too many to list so here are two: 1) Good lessons are everywhere if you're "alert enough to notice and care enough to ask yourself the right questions"; 2) To be successful, you must do "what you love in the service of the people you love, who in turn, love what you do for them."

What is the radical edge? It's that "zone of total value, total significance to one's self and to others." It means being fulfilled with "your business, your personal life, and your effect on the world." That's quite a combination.

Check it out. It's an easy read with a great message. It may take you to The Radical Edge.

----------
If you would like to receive the monthly Jack Covert Selects Newsletter, please visit the Newsletters area of our website. Then, sign in and check the boxes of the newsletters that interest you.

Three Books We Haven't Talked About

The April 2006 issue of Fast Company highlights three books we haven't said a word about. Shame on us and thanks to Lucas Conley.

His big book is Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead. It is about a man who is an expert at naming products and is asked to help a town rename itself. Conley says, "In addition to exploring the crisis of identity, Whitehead tackles broader business concerns such as branding and corporate power."

His second book is from Henry Petroski, of The Evolution of Useful Things fame. In Success Through Failure, he examines mistakes and the pushes the idea that failure leads to better things (and products).

Made to Break is Conley's final choice and it an interesting look at American's love to new. Author Giles Slade examines the issue of our throwaway culture from many angles. He says it is a by-product of the continual strive for progress and change.

Quote of the Day: Sales II

Sell practical, tested merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat customers like human beings--and they will always come back

-L.L. Bean

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

Footnotes

As noted yesterday, the second year of the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs business book awards was formally announced. Be sure to check out the website for the contest, which has a handful of excellent articles on business books—especially one exploring why too many current business books are so dull. See also our Q&A last year with the author of that piece, FT financial editor Andrew Hill. By the way, Simon London, who, as an FT writer was a voice of unsurpassed wit and intelligence about business books, has sadly left the salmon (pink?) pages to work for McKinsey. At a time when fewer publications cover business books with any depth, chalk this up as a real loss. But I digress. The contest is good news for business books. Not only does it really help raise awareness (and aspirations) about the range, depth, and quality of business books today, but it should also, in the words of Andrew Hill, “motivate authors to raise their game.� My wish for year two: that the winning title be lesser-known than the first year’s winner, Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat.

Speaking of contests…this week marks the conference celebrating the 2006 Shingo Prizes for Excellence in Manufacturing. Not to toot one’s horn, but two books that I worked on won in the research category. Both Lean Solutions by James Womack and Daniel Jones, and The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Transformation by Michael and Freddy Balle, were winners. Please, gentle readers, if you’re interested in lean manufacturing check out The Gold Mine. Since we published the book last summer it has sold more than 13,000 copies, and continues to chug along. Much more at the Lean Enterprise Institute web page. There you can find many oher lean resources, and an invitaion to register for a free webinar with the authors next month.

Speaking of the dwindling number of writers covering business books with respect and intelligence. Exhibit A would be Paul Brown’s coverage in the New York Times: this week a nice review of three managerial books dealing with stories. Exhibit B is certainly Richard Pachter’s terrific weekly column for the Miami Herald. And C is the sporadic though worthy columns by Michael Hopkins in Inc. (By the way, this list is NOT meant to be exclusive. Please nominate your favorites!)

Newt Gingrich continues to thump the Drucker pulpit. Go Newt, you effective executive you. He’s been touting the works of the master for many years now.

Speaking of Drucker, the new Classic Drucker, a collection of essays from HBR introduced by Tom Stewart, is excellent—proof that many great business ideas are just as potent (and possibly more so!) as rigorous articles than full-blown books.

This calls to mind another fantastic reissue: the new and very much improved (annotated to be precise) The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor. The updated version of this monumental book, which represented a real watershed in managerial thinking, contains incisive commentary by MIT’s Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. This was clearly a labor of love, for Cutcher-Gershenfeld has rounded up a good 100 extra pages of resources detailing the impact of McGregor’s ideas on managerial thinking today. The reissue is a sharp, informed explanation of what McGregor said and why it matters so very much today. Kudos to McGraw-Hill for keeping this classic not just alive, but meaningful.

And speaking of classics revisited….I’ve now had the opportunity to read some of the revised edition of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. Highly recommended, folks. Senge and his colleagues have developed terrific complementary material that provides context and implementation strategies for his big ideas. If you were one of the many book buyers who didn’t complete the book then this new version will give you more points of entry. You can read the introduction (which itself justifies the price of the new book) at the website for the Society for Organizational Learning. Here’s just one great quote from Senge. Reflecting on the lessons of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Senge concludes his introduction with the following passage:

“I believe that, the prevailing system of management is, at its core, dedicated to mediocrity. It forces people to work harder and harder to compensate for failing to tap the spirit and collective intelligence that characterizes working together at their best. Deming saw this clearly, and I believe that now, so do a growing number of leaders committed to growing organizations capable of thriving in and contributing to the extraordinary challenges and possibilities of the world we are living into.�

I’ve enjoyed the first half of Billy, Alfred, and General Motors. What is it about certain companies that makes them spawn so many great books? We’ve posted on this phenomena before, talking about IBM. In re: GM I’ll just mention one tragically unheralded title, A Ghost’s Memoir. This companion book to Alfred Sloan’s epic My Years With General Motors, written by ghostwriter John MacDonald, describes the epic 6-year struggle to publish Sloan’s book once it was written. Intriguingly, the book notes that the great Peter Drucker’s famed introduction to the reissue of Sloan’s tome contained a handful of errors. This thoroughly engaging read represents the one business book that screenwriter Charlie Kaufman would adapt if he wrote about business.

Prepared Mind World Tour #5 -- Deciding

Greetings to all you Prepared Minds from Bill and Jeanie:

This is the fifth 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 DECIDE: Why do you get paid? Let me be blunt – if it’s not because you have responsibility for making or influencing decisions at your organization, then your job is in big trouble. It’s easy to outsource “transaction stuff� (“Why yes, I’ll be happy to take your order for …�) and it’s even easy to outsource important “knowledge stuff� (Was your recent x-ray read by a radiologist in your hospital or in another country?) However, decisions and decision making stays close to home – this act of management is too important to outsource (that said, has your organization outsourced key decisions to your local band of consultants? But that’s another story.). Get it? You want to be in a position that accepts the risk (and rewards) of decision making.

So where does the Prepared Mind come into play? Well, there are plenty of books that delve into the mechanics and processes of good decision making. They are important, but not enough. If you are going to be prepared for your future, and make good decisions that will bring your organization into the future, you need to consider (as Peter Drucker put it many years ago) the “futurity of present decisions.� In other words, you need to think about the intended and unintended consequences of today’s decisions. Want a couple of examples? Try these:

• DDT (easier to say than dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was the very first modern pesticide and was widely used in crop protection and for the eradication of malaria-bearing mosquitoes in the 1940s and 1950s. The Swiss inventor was even awarded the Nobel Prize "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." Unfortunately DDT has toxic side effects and caused the death of fish and birds, so it was banned in many countries in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the banning lead to a resurgence of malaria in many tropical countries by the end of the century. Was the widesp