800-CEO-READ Blog

Working with the government

The U.S. Government is "the largest buying entity in the history of the world" and yet, many companies don't consider it as a possible customer.

Mark Amtower is experienced in just that. He created a company dedicated to helping companies earn the government as a customer. July's Entrepreneur magazine asked him how entrepreneurs can take part in this opportunity.

Mark's response:
Cehck out the Procurement Technical Assistance Program which has "97 centers designed to help [entrepeneurs] understand the mechanics of coming into the government--what kinds of contracts are available, what a GSA schedule is, how the government buys and to whom you should talk." (Find out more here under Resources.)

His concluding tips are to research in advance and make sure you're pursuing the right client. What can your company do to help them?

Concluding notes: trailblazers from all walks

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second , third , fourth , fifth and sixth entries.

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There are a whole bunch of innovators out there, that’s for sure. What I tried to do was give a good cross-section of the trailblazers from all walks of business and success: a winning NFL football coach, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, a CIA analyst, a guy who builds roller-coasters, plenty of consultants, some top business professors, a few designers, The Human Victory cigar Dr. Doug Newburg, many others. What I tried to do was stay away from people who are always in the news and whose insights you can read about any day of the week in any number of publications. The Google founders are certainly innovators and are very successful but if you want to know about them you can pick up any business magazine or newspaper. Not so for Frances Hesselbein, Former CEO of the Girl Scouts of America and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I felt that she has some very insightful things to say that you couldn’t read anywhere else. In the best of all possible worlds, I’m hopeful that the insights in The Success Effect with emerge and resonate with avid business book readers. Thanks for having me. It’s been a blast.

What you learned early on matters.

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second , third , fourth and fifth entries.

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Probably the most important factor for the success effect has nothing to do with business and everything to do with business. I think it all starts in the crib. Loving parents in a stable household creates people who tend to be nurturers. Ask Kenneth W. Lowe or basket mogul Tami Longaberger about their favorite meals and they’ll answer their mother’s fried chicken. Longaberger and Lowe are not being cloying in their answers but instead offer an honest window into what makes them tick. People who were loved and nurtured at an early age in turn develop loving and nurturing capabilities among people or employees within an organization. Those traits will then be directed by the employees and managers toward their job, clients, and back to the company. Deepak Chopra insists that investor, client, and employee satisfaction are irrevocably linked. But that unless your employees have cause to care, that is, are happy and willing to do a good job, revenues and profits will assuredly suffer. By nurturing and showing concern for people in a company, an executive is practicing what he was taught at a very early age and those are usually lessons he or she learned from a parent.

A little on baseball and a lot on performance

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second , third and fourth entries.

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I’ve been fascinated, too, by the topic of performance, particularly in sports and probably because I live in Cincinnati where baseball is still accessible and affordable. At each game I go to I experiment with praise and criticism, that is, I always heckle one guy throughout the game but only when that guy steps into the on-deck circle or when he’s not looking in the field. I want to plant a seed of failure in the opposing team’s best player and a seed of success among one or two of the Reds’ best players. Professional athletes - and professionals in business, I think - will usually respond in one of two ways: they excel or they fold. One evening I told Albert Puljols that “It’s an accident that I’m sitting here in late August and you’re hitting .340 because you are not a .340 hitter, pal.� Best hitter in baseball. Send him to the plate with a negative thought. Guy goes 0-4 that night with me counting down all the way.

But criticism can also focus achieving individuals.

One game I asked Yankees left fielder Floyd what he was gonna do with the ball because I knew that Freel, on first at the time, was for sure gonna run on his weak arm. Next inning Floyd comes up – homer. Back out on the field, I told him it was good he watched that for a long time because he wasn’t going to see another one for about 30 days. I try to say these things when their backs are turned for full Everyman impact. And, after all, heckling a pro leftfielder at a baseball game in Cincinnati is a tradition that dates to the Civil War. Next at bat – Floyd hits another one out. Back to back dingers! I bet he’s never done it before or since. My friends beg me not to heckle at the games – though I am never profane, just sort of sneery – because they’ve seen opposing players go three for four with about three RBIs. I have an endless list of stories like those. These days I tend not to criticize the opposing team because it can make individuals angry and they almost single-handedly blow out the Reds.

I’ve always believed that performance in athletics was not much different than performance at work - back in the office for these thousands in the stands. People achieve through diligence, practice of good habits, personal goal-setting and praise and/or criticism is a large part of it all. If performance was the common thread between baseball and, say, the factory floor then why not create a book that look to those who have achieved to talk about how they did it. So I interviewed experts on work and approaches to work.

All achieving companies, groups, teams, divisions and individuals at some point have to deal with outside influences. And though managers’ praise and criticism work on individuals and groups, it’s better to offer regular and genuine praise because criticism can backfire – as Floyd the left fielder for the Yankees proved on one sticky afternoon in Cincinnati.

Journalizing my professional life

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second and third entries.

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It takes only one or two cocktail parties for a reporter to realize that he or she has an incredibly interesting job: You interviewed the CEO of Procter & Gamble? You talked with P. Diddy? What’s Donald Trump like? Business reporters and business columnists speak with hundreds of executives or consultants every year and the topics can be wide-ranging or intensely focused on just one or two areas of commerce. There’s an Everyman aspect to the job, too: interviews with owners of small but extremely successful companies are sometimes the best way to get to the essence of entrepreneurship: how did Dead Butler dream up Eyeglasses-in-An-Hour? What was the board of directors of E.W. Scripps thinking as its new Scripps Networks division piled up tens of millions in losses quarter after quarter after quarter – before turning the corner on blank ink and now generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profit year after year after year. Why did David Pelz walk away from NASA to start his own golf school? Births of companies are almost always the most interesting part of my job. Also, an interview is a fleeting and capricious thing. Reporters are usually going for one or two insights, at best, to fill out a story on one topic or another. Other interviews occur in crowded press conferences. As the interviews in my life began to pile up with the years, one day it came to me – I’m a journalist, why not journalize my professional life? Show the breadth and depth of American commerce and let any insights about achievement, excellence, entrepreneurship or ambition emerge from those conversations. That’s what I’ve tried to do.

Have confidence?

Side note: If you missed John's first two entries of the day, check them out here and here.

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I think any growing organization or career-achiever will have an inherent advantage, but they did not necessarily start off with it—though they may have developed it along the way as one success leads to another. Clearly, aggressive opportunists will find an edge on the competition. And smart leaders attract smart subordinates, if only out of curiosity to see where this guy is headed. Make no small plans, advises real estate mogul Sam Zell, a billionaire who typifies the aggressive opportunist and has owned or controlled companies across a broad variety of sectors. But I would say almost all achievers have this advantage: they believe in themselves and in what they’re doing. The fact is that most people aren’t going to wake up some day and be the chief executive of an international company or own millions of square feet of real estate in 20 American cities. But we can all pursue our goals with confidence, and confidence is something that these people all have in abundance. You don’t always need a ton of money to get things done—though usually it helps—and you don’t have to have established connections or an Ivy League education or flowing locks of silver hair. But if you have the confidence in yourself and what you’re doing and where you’re headed, you can and will succeed. WE can all work on our confidence, so several interviews explore how that can happen.

Do it right the first time

If you didn't see John's first post of the day, check it out.

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One of the pertinent points that Bengals Coach Marvin Lewis made in an interview that looked at leadership but soon spread to other topics was this: it’s too hard to be successful in the NFL—or in any business—if you’re always putting good money after bad. To him, that’s what do-overs, screw ups, are about and plenty of sayings come to mind, like “my mistake,� for instance. Well, all that is, is people allowing mediocrity to happen, he said. In business the shelf life, the window of opportunity is too short and you have to focus your people on that. There’s not an opportunity to get many chances back. If you don’t do it right the first time, you don’t really have time to do it again.

And when asked what trait most annoyed him as a leader, his answer was swift: jealousy. Not lack of effort, not unpreparedness, not alibis - but jealousy. I would not have guessed that answer in a thousand years.

Introduction to success

Shout out and thanks to Jack and Todd for this opportunity. As a business reporter for about a decade at a major American newspaper, I’ve heard and told a lot of stories. After a while, it becomes clear that certain strategies toward life, work and the challenges of the journey to and through a career would be more likely to lead to success than other approaches. Let’s face it. Newspaper business sections do not dwell on failure. Stories almost always try to get at the essence of profit, that timeless gauge of excellence, and the best stories do it, too. Why not, then, a book about work, careers, company creation and customer satisfaction in the words of people who had been there and done it?

Welcome to John Eckberg

Good morning!

Today John Eckberg author of The Success Effect will be hosting our blog.

Keep reading throughout the day as more posts go up and feel free to shoot some questions his way.

Have a great Thursday!

Notice a Trend?

As a person who writes reviews, I am always nervous about whether I am crazy when I like a book. Awhile ago I reviewed Steve Farber's latest The Radical Edge. I liked it a ton.

Every once in a while we look to our community to do some book reviews. Check out what other people thought about the book. Here, here, here, here. here.

I think this is a book you need to check out.

Review of The Radical Edge by Marianne Powers

Have you ever had a WUP upside your head?

In The Radical Edge, Steve Farber gets hit with a WUP (Wake-Up Pad) by his friend Smitty, a hyperactive beach bum and successful CIO (Clear Insight Officer) with red dreadlocks, a giant, red mustache, and round, lemon-yellow sunglasses perched on top of his wide, prominent nose. He also consults with a tall, slightly plump African-American woman named Agnes, at least 90 years old, with gray, luminous eyes, who tells Steve’s leadership trainee that she’ll kick his ass from here to Hialeah if she thinks it will help him but then explains that it all starts with the heart. Agnes runs the Wake-Up Call, a cafe where she practices her philosophy of “doing what you love in the service of people you love, who in turn, love what you do for them.�

In his introduction, Steve says, “The characters you are about to meet represent people (or combinations of people) who’ve inspired me over the years. The same goes for the places and events. In other words, I’ve jumbled the made-up stuff with the “real� to the point that I’m not even sure where the facts end and the fiction begins.� Steve must have had a weird and wonderful group of mentors! But it’s all good for us, because it makes for a riotously funny and fast-paced story about his trials and tribulations trying to coach a 26-year-old super-salesman. Steve has been hired because Cam is failing in his new job as senior vice president of the sales team. Although Cam has been amazingly successful in sales himself, he doesn’t know anything about motivating and rewarding other people so that they can succeed. In the alternate reality that we find ourselves in, the most surreal part is that Steve, who seems relatively normal himself, is constantly trying to convince Cam, a “cocky CQ wannabe�, that he needs to learn from these crazy people. It is the juxtaposition of extreme opposites that make the story so entertaining.

After Cam has taken all he can stand and stormed off (to have a epiphany later and end up well), Steve joins Agnes in a meeting of “extraordinary people who get together once a month to encourage, inspire, and cajole each other to keep on keepin on�. Their common goal is to change the world, each in his or her own way, and they explain exactly how they are doing that to their new friend Steve.

The book ends with a chapter entitled, “Getting Your Radical Edge�, a most detailed and practical plan for changing the world:

1. Set Up Your WUP – scan and eavesdrop, ponder, talk it over with a team of extreme leaders that you have recruited, and do something bold
2. Stoke Your Business – do what you love in the service of people you love, who in turn, love what you do
3. Amp Your Life – tune into your frequency, the values or principles that are most important to you in the way you live your life, and turn it up
4. Change the World – define what you want to do, give it steps, write it down, create a community for change

The only part of The Radical Edge that I didn’t enjoy was the depressingly accurate description of a typical businessperson’s reaction to a question that Steve apparently asked in real life, “How are we going to change the world?� You guessed it, I’ve asked that question, too. But, if these are the people that Steve hopes to inspire to seek The Radical Edge, I think he should have been a little more compassionate in his description of them (the Jims), especially for the sake of anyone whose name really is Jim! And I think he could have left the description of the Michigan countrywide as covered in “a downy soft blanket of white� instead of characterizing it as “a blinding, frozen wasteland.�

Otherwise, I highly recommend this book. It is entertaining, informative, and inspirational!

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Review by Marianne Powers

Asset Based Thinking

Jack reviewed Change The Way You See Everything in February. The basis for the book is the idea of Asset-Based Thinking. I think of it as another version of Positive Mental Attitude and the power that can have over your life. Here was the passage that struck me as I was looking through it:

"Remember: Everything that happens in your day is an exchange between the external and your internal world. Think of it as raw material replenishing itself everyday. Every situation, every encounter, every person (including you) possesses valuable assets--they are always there in some form and magnitude."

I like this thought. I started to think about technology. The power of personalization is becoming stronger and more realized every day. I think it gives you a lot more power to choose the messages you want (or need) to hear.

Personal Finance Advice: It's All The Same

You don't see us do much with personal finance books here on the blog. The advice is always the same.

The Wall Street Journal attempted to talk about the category on their Weekend Edition. This is the most important part of the article:

[J.D. Roth's Getting Rich Slowly], rated highly by Technorati, a search engine for blogs, includes advice about choosing books like this: "Many books -- especially the good ones -- give similar advice: pay yourself first, establish an emergency fund, don't spend more than you earn, diversify, etc. Sound personal finance is basic stuff."

It is an opinion seconded by academics even more grounded in the field. "Any book that suggests it has a new way to riches should probably be a little suspect," says Prof. Kenneth Froewiss, a finance professor at New York University Stern School of Business. A good book about personal finance, he says, always elaborates on three simple themes: Save early, know your risk tolerance and diversify.

I think I proved my point.

Recent WSJ Reviews of Business Books

The Wall Street Journal has been picking up the pace a bit with their reviews of business books. You will rarely see them cover the genre, opting for politics, current events, and history. My understanding is that it has to do with where in the paper the reviews show up [The Personal Journal] and the editors that run the section.

In the last month, they have reviewed three books though. We mentioned the More Than You Know review a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to make sure we pointed you to the other two reviews.

On May 3rd (I know more old news, in this case I was clearing my desk this morning), WSJ wrote a review of Jeffery Gitomer's Little Red Book of Selling and Little Red Books of Answers. The first book now has 500,000 copies in print and appeared on WSJ's nonfiction and business best-seller lists a total of 71 times. The guest reviewer David Dorsey (author of The Force) writes:

...[W]hen Mr. Gitomer gets into details, his thinking is fresh and amusing. He offers five pages on crafting a good voicemail greeting. My favorite, though its facetiousness could wear thin after a few hearings: "Hi, this is Jeffery Gitomer. I wish I could talk to you but I can't. Please leave your American Express number with expiration date and I'll get right back to you." He claims three people dutifully recite the information and then hang up.

I think the piece is positive, but Dorsey takes a couple of digs for the simplicity of Gitomer's advice. He says that there really is nothing new in either of the books and that Gitomer is "useless" on some subjects. I can't argue with that.

Michael Silverstein and John Butman's Treasure Hunt was the book review that ran last Thursday. Laura Landro, a managing editor for the Journal, writes a lukewarm review. She feels it "occasionally reads like a brochure for BCG's services" and "uses somewhat glib pop psychology" to examine the featured consumers and households. Landro does like the authors take on growing gaps between luxury and cheap and how marketers can straddle the divide (for another take you can check out Jack's review from May).

Wall Street Journal - If you are listening, we would love to see the string continue.

Lost in My Computer - HBR's Book List for 2006

I found this entry I started writing in February and thought it might still be relevant.

In the February issue, Harvard Business Review put together their 2006 Reading List.

• The Elephant In The Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life by Eviatar Zerubavel (Oxford University Press, March)
• Working With Your Is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself From Emotional Traps In Work by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster (Warner Business Books, March)
• Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels, Falcks, and the Continental European Model by Harold James (Harvard University Press, March)
• Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, March); a March Jack Covert Selects
• The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy by AnnaLee Saxenian (Harvard University Press, April)
• Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature by Joseph Badaracco (Harvard Business School Press, April)
• Guanxi (The Art of Relationships): Microsoft , China, and Bill Gates' Plan to Win the Road Ahead by Robert Buderi and Gregory Huang (Simon and Schuster, May)
• Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Difference into Opportunities by Mark Gerzon (Harvard Business School Press, May)
• The Managerial Moment of Truth: The Essential Step in Helping People Improve Performance by Bruce Bodaken and Robert Fritz (Free Press, May)
• Treasure Hunt by Michael Silverstein and John Butman (Portfolio, May); a May Jack Covert Selects
• Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn by Tojo Thatchenkery and Carol Metzker (Berrett-Koehler, May)
• The G-Quotient: How Gay Men Are Changing the Face of Leadership by Kirk Snyder (Jossey-Bass, June)
• Untapped: Creating Value in Underserved Markets by John Weiser et al. (Berrett-Koehler, June)
• Shopportunity! A Manifesto for Retail Revolution by Kate Newlin (Collins Business, August)
• CEO Pay and What to Do About It: Restoring Integrity to Both Executive Compensation and Capital Market Relations by Michael Jensen and Kevin Murphy (Harvard Business School Press, August)
• Applebee's America: What Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Can Learn from Each Other by Ron Fournier, DouglasSosnik, and Matthew Dowd (Simon and Schuster, September)
• The J Curve: The Shape of the World by Ian Bremmer (Simon and Schuster, September)
• The High-Purpose Company: Why It Wins, How It Grows, and What Sets It Apart from the Fakes by Christine Arena (Collins Business, September)

All about the Audies

While we were at the annual book convention, another semi-major event was taking place in the book, acutally in the audio world. The event: The Audies -- "annual awards recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment."

There are around thirty categories -- some that you would guess: business, non-fiction, childrens', etc. and others that you may not guess such as package design, solo narrator (female/male), and achievement in production.

The business related winners include:

The World is Flat for the non-fiction unabridged award

Good to Great (read by Jim Collins) for the business award.

It'd be cool to be a judge; check out the rest here.

During retirement: spend lots of money and eat even more bacon

If you haven't seen 100 BS Jobs yet, you should check it out for a bit of Friday fun (click here).

Stanley Bing's name popped up in my Fortune preview last week. His subject: the glories of retirement.

In his typical Bing-way, he defines retirement as another job. He questions the practice of moving somewhere new, eating really, really sensibly and pursuing your hobbies 24/7. Since I can't claim his wit nor his humor in bullet-pointing what he said, I'll just point you over there and leave you with a quick feel for the piece. Stanley explains why older folks can be crabby:

If you do not, for some reason, eat delicious, greasy, fatty smoked meats, substitute a tempting portion of the worst food imaginable for you, and eat some of it every day. Old people are encouraged to eat reasonably. This ruins their lives and makes them irritable. I know I'm crusty when I don't get a big slab of meat when I want one.

Read some more of Stanley's retirement wisdom.

To New Hires: Sink or Swim Week 7

Ah yes! Time for another blog entry for Sink or Swim. This week we bring you a little common sense in the form of some pointers when finding that you have hmmm… What’s this best way of saying this…dropped the ball.

When you make a mistake:

1. Admit the Mistake – Don’t wait for it to be discovered nor pass the blame.
2. Provide Context - Provide reasoning behind the decision and what you might do differently in the future.
3. Apologize for making the mistake – A little humility can go a long way.
4. Identify / offer assistance in fixing the issue – You want to be a part of the solution. Identify your ideas for how to fix the problem not just an offer to help.
5. Identify the underlying cause or reasoning that led to the mistake. For example, if you made a decision based on a quick guess what steps / additional information will you look for in the future so you can make an informed decision?

We eagerly await your response or stories for when you have completely messed up and what you learned from the experience.

Future of the Book Part II

I thought this would be a good follow-up to Kate's post this morning.

I created a transcript for a portion of my interview with Pip Coburn (The Change Function, a JCS for June). I asked him what he thought the future of the book was given the upcoming release of The Sony Reader. Here is what he had to say:

When we go through the crisis side, I am not too sure there isn't anything doesn't work about the book. The length of the books is a question mark in a society that is getting more short term oriented. One of the reasons the Blackberry works really well is it answers that question of what I should do with the next 30 seconds while I am waiting for someone.

I think once we start to allow, if we do, Google to do through searches and scans of books, the amount of books people read will probably drop quite a bit across the next ten, fifteen years. The number of full books actually read will drop considerable, I suspect.

But, as far as the form factor, the form factor works pretty well. It is flexible. It doesn't break. You don't have to worry about batteries. You can scratch it. Not too many people worry about messing it up. So, I think it is actually going to be fairly slow for people to change.

There is also a nice sense of completion with a book, as you turn the pages. People use the phrase, "It's a page turner." No one every said it was a page-turner in a negative sense. Well you can mimic alot of those things.

I think Bill Gates is right that one of the elements that has to change quite a bit, and now we are getting to the total perceived pain of adoption side, is the form factor and your ability to read off of it.

Now score one for the people who say we are going to change. Alot of people are getting use to getting their news flows and information off of laptops and desktops. So, the society is changing in a parallel way as to how people changed from writing everything to using a keyboard. So, I think that is one element.

The second thing is how easy can they make the form factor so you can easily download what you want. Is it easy to set-up? All of those types of things. Is there a place like iTunes where there is a ubiquity of books - you can get any book that was every done on the planet, as opposed to going to the bookstore and maybe they have it or going to Amazon, and maybe they have it but you have to wait three days. I think alot of those issues are going to play into it.

I would not expect a quick conversion. I am certainly interested in it myself. With the Sony Reader, I expect my response will be not enough titles, slightly inconvenient.

I like my old book. I can take it to the beach. I can take it anywhere. It works pretty well for me.

We talked a little further. I mentioned that these reading devices have been around for some time. Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops bought some of them about fifteen years ago and they are still in the basement of one of the stores. Pip responded by saying that The Sony Reader and these old units probably won't look that much different. So, it is not the technology. What will be more important now is how the culture has changed in the last fifteen years.

You can listen to the whole interview here or buy a copy of The Change Function here. It goes on sale today.

The e-book generation is next

Allen Weiss believes e-books will never hit the mainstream audience -- or at least not for a long time. And while there are a number of "e-vangelists" for the e-book, there is an equal number of critics.

With the Sony reader due out late this summer, I'm sure we'll know sooner or later. The "early adopters" will no doubt try it out. And some hint that the next generation of readers will be e-readers. I think there will be a future for both types of books. I'm not about to take a digital reader to the beach while I'd prefer not to fill my suitcase with books. In my ideal world (and yes, ideal is key here), I'd prefer to have all three outputs (audio, e-book and traditional books) interchangeable. Wouldn't it be great if you could read your e-book with your morning coffee and then pop in the book's CD in your car on the way to work with it starting at exactly the same point? Then taking the paperback out before bed?

Okay, again ideal. I am, however, interested in the ability to search books digitally. That'd be a great resource function that's not always easily available.

Where do you fall: would you pick up an e-book or do you prefer the traditional paper and ink?

Review of Values-Driven Business by Maryann Devine

Values-Driven Business is essentially a how-to book. Since one of the authors is Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, I expected something a little tastier than this plain vanilla account of the various ways that owners of businesses big and small can incorporate their values into their practices. While the authors praise companies like Cohen’s for their outspokenness, they play it safe themselves in descriptions of missions and initiatives in dull prose that is anything but inspiring. A quick scan of Ben & Jerry’s Double Dip: How to Run a Values-Led Business and Make Money Too by Cohen and cofounder Jerry Greenfield shows that Cohen can ably add flavor to the subject. Values-Driven Business is the first in a series of books in the Social Venture Network Series, with Warwick as series editor. I hope this initial offering doesn’t set the tone for the rest.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot of solid information here, checklists (including one titled “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished�) at the end of each chapter to start you thinking, and a resource list at the end. Cohen and Warwick take a chapter to discuss each possible component of the value-driven business: employees, suppliers, customers, community, and environment, both local and global. For instance, even a small business owner has to decide where to buy her office supplies, which accounting firm to hire, whether to locate near public transportation. Each of these choices, say the authors, has both a social and environmental impact to be considered.

While they acknowledge that there are many ways of injecting social consciousness into a company including traditional philanthropy, they gently advocate for a holistic approach, including the entire staff in the process for instance, rather than handing down policies from a president with a pet cause in mind. Cohen and Warwick profile businesses that run the gamut from Shore Bank, whose mission is to help underserved communities, to the White Dog Café whose every move seems imbued with the mission to support local farmers and foster social justice. Unfortunately, difficulties in implementing these admirable programs are barely given a nod. The tough time had by Juniper Communities, a chain of assisted-living facilities, in convincing contractors to meet green standards is the only story in which obstacles are really fleshed out.

For those who worry that social consciousness and profits are mutually exclusive, Cohen and Warwick point to research that shows just the opposite: that “the relationship between corporate financial performance and corporate social performance across industries found a statistically significant correlation between the two.� The authors believe that this effect can be explained in part because it’s the better managers who are likely to integrate shared values into their businesses, and have a more global view of their impact. They also believe that consumers are more and more interested in patronizing companies they perceive to share their beliefs.

And yet, Values-Driven Business is such a bland read that I probably would not have taken it in cover to cover if I hadn’t committed to writing this review. I wouldn’t have scrapped it either, though. It’s a good reference for the business owner who is considering changing his approach to reflect his world view, and I’m sure it’ll come in handy for me as I start my own business. But I’ll look elsewhere for real inspiration.

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Reviewed by Review by Maryann Devine, smArts & Culture

100-Mile Walk in BW

BusinessWeek profiled Sander and Jonathan Flaum, authors of The 100-Mile Walk.

I interviewed these two in January and it is one of my favorites. These two have such different perspective on the world of business, but come to a common place on what leadership is.

I am glad to see one of the big business publications writing their story.

[There is also an extensive list of books from their recommending reading that is worth a look.]

Change Function Links

We are featuring The Change Function over on inBubbleWrap today. Here are some links for more info on the book.

I just posted an interview I did with Pip last week.

Pip led the May issue of Fast Company with a essay based on the book.

Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change has written a review endorsing the book. Shawn Lea also has a review. Marta Salij as a 10-second revu.

Dealing with Darwin reviewed by Heather Gazdik

Geoffrey Moore has written an excellent narrative about how companies can improve their innovation processes. In my opinion, it is one of the biggest challenges that businesses have faced, now face, and will face. Many don't get it right. He examines three factors in detail on how companies can make better innovation decisions:

1. Core competence: different organizations have different assets to exploit

2. Competitive analysis: different sets of competitors leave different openings to exploit

3. Category maturity: Different stages of the category-maturity life cycle reward different forms of innovation

I found the most important section of the book to be Part Three where he describes managing the inertia of innovation. I feel it is often at this point where innovation falls apart.

This is an important read for any person who is involved with taking a business idea to the next level and actually acheiving successful execution.

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Reviewed by Heather Gazdik

D.I.Y. (Design It Yourself)

Ellen Lupton and the students at the Maryland Institute College of Art wrote and designed a great book called D.I.Y. (Design It Yourself). The book's purpose is to make the idea of designing something less intimidating.

They start the book with a series of essays on designs and do-it-yourself design. It eases you into the idea that it is possible for you to design and that it is not just for the cool, hip kids who went to art school.

The rest of the book lays out 27 different products you can get your hands dirty with. They ranging from t-shirts to stickers to books. There is an overview and a series of projects in each chapter. The projects are rated by cost and difficulty so you know what you are getting yourself into. And there are LOTS of pictures.

The online version at designityourself.org is a wonderful compliment to the book. You will find condensed materials from the book. The resources section is alone worth the visit.

D.I.Y. is a definite How-To book, but it is really more about inspiration. I think Lupton and her students give readers the license to try their own stuff and see what happens.

They Speak!

I know we are always talking about books and what has been written, but authors really make their living speaking.

Presentation Zen has pulled together video clips of Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Tom Peters. He also gives some great commentary on each of them and what make them "work".

Freakonomics Cover Art

I ran across this great site for book cover art. I saw the Freakonomics cover and decided to pull a couple other version for your enjoyment.

10 Rules for Strategic Innovators reviewed by Paul Scott

In 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble discuss what a company needs to do to give strategic innovation the best chance for success. The authors define strategic innovation as the use of strategic experiments – high-growth potential new businesses – that test the viability of an unproven business model. One of the more recognizable examples of a strategic experiment includes GM and their business unit OnStar.

Overall, the book is very readable given the specialized information presented. The authors illustrate all of their points with practical examples from actual companies who have tried different strategic experiments. In my line of work, environmental consulting, I haven’t worked at a company that has tried strategic innovation in the manner described by the authors. In environmental consulting, the business model stays the same but the services offered change over time. However, this book was such a good read and I learned so much that I would recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in the topic of strategic innovation.

The book itself has a unique structure in that the ten rules aren’t presented until the last chapter. However, the rest of the book was structured based on the three challenges that confront a strategic experiment: forgetting the parent business’ organizational model (referred to as CoreCo in the book) and developing a unique organizational structure for the new business (referred to as NewCo in the book); borrowing from CoreCo to have an advantage in the marketplace over other startups in the same area; learning and adapting to the new market of which NewCo is a part. Each of these concepts was illustrated by at least one practical example. This structure worked well. Each challenge was presented and an example showing the solution or illustrating a failure to deal with the challenge was presented afterward. I liked this structure because it helped me remember the core ideas (forgetting, borrowing, and learning) and gave insight into each of the three challenges and possible solutions to them.

After reading the rest of the book, the ten rules were a bit of a let down and seemed contrived given the threefold structure of the rest of the book. This was especially true because each of the ten rules related back to one of the three challenges of strategic innovation outlined by the authors. As I said before, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic of strategic innovation.

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Reviewed by Paul Scott

10 Rules for Strategic Innovators reviewed by Arun Sadhashivan

I loved this book. It’s written for entrepreneurs, and mirrors what folks like me who do this every day either in our own businesses or at our clients’ organizations. I’d recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone struggling to fit strategy, innovation and execution together in their organizations.

The book focuses on the nuts and bolts of building a new business unit; one that focuses on serving new customers with new products – something they call “strategic innovation� – The 4th Quadrant of the famous Ansoff Matrix. Failing at such a program sets the whole company up for failure, since the new business unit needs tremendous amount of resources.

Success will be possible only when one balances the needs of the core business (CoreCo) with the needs of the new business (NewCo). One also needs to balance the conflicts between the two units. In particular, Vijay and Chris tell us that NewCo needs to

1. Forget the assumptions, mindsets and biases that made CoreCo so successful. They are deadly for NewCo.


2. Borrow resources from CoreCo which give NewCo the crucial edge over competitors to succeed


3. Learn by planning frequently, experimenting, evaluating outcomes with plans and adjusting the plan accordingly.

The 10 Rules

These are things to keep in mind if NewCo were to tackle the Forgetting Borrowing and Learning challenges.

Rule 1: Finding a good leader for the new business isn’t enough. NewCo needs to solve its three challenges and build its own Organizational DNA

Rule 2: Hire people from outside CoreCo to fill key positions in NewCo. Possibly even the head of NewCo should be an outsider, preferably from the markets that NewCo hopes to target.

Rule 3: NewCo needs to borrow from CoreCo to leverage the enormous capabilities and assets of the organization. This gives it unbeatable advantages over small startups.

Rule 4: There are the great unknowns. You cannot predict the future easily in NewCo. But you can build your ability to predict by conducting little experiments, learning from them and acting accordingly.

Rule 5: Redesign the NewCo organization. Make fresh choices on issues of structure, staff, systems and culture. Here is where the external hires are useful. If you need to use CoreCo’s processes, link to but don’t borrow these. Design your own processes.

Rule 6: Manage the tensions between the two organizations – personal fiefdoms, egos, self-interest, capital allocation and other sources of tension need to be identified and managed. Let both units report to one senior manager who is well respected by all. (easier said than done)

Rule 7: Use bottom up planning and create a new planning process for NewCo. Don’t schedule the planning process of CoreCo at the same time as NewCo. The needs, methods and goals of both are different.

Rule 8: Remove bottlenecks to learning. Interest, influence, internal competition and politics strongly influence learning. Take everything with a pinch of salt..

Rule 9: Hold NewCo accountable for learning and not results. Don’t judge individual performance using planned outcomes as a benchmark. Instead drive everyone to learn and share what he or she has learnt. Review plans very frequently since the plans will be crap anyway (at the beginning).

Rule 10: Build this capacity for breakthrough growth early on in the organization’s life. It’ll make your organization more flexible, and be able to handle such massive challenges easier, since the organization would have gone through a few of these in the past.

Theory Focused Planning

Reading this reminds me of planning processes in companies that I’ve worked at. It’s quick, and is guided by the principle: “You can only plan what you know best about�. So if you’re a Marcom professional, you’d be the best person to know what the investments and the trend/timing of investments need to be in Marcom if management wanted 10 times sales for e.g. But you could only come up with a guess, no matter how good you are. So you need to keep on experimenting, revising the plan, and watching how the trend “moves� until you get it right.

It incorporates cause and effect descriptions of the business, bottom up planning for every functional area, budgeting per area to achieve the strategic goal, rapid experimentation and good old-fashioned common sense.

You really need to read this section. Implementing it according to the authors can be done in a day!

Remarks

Once you’ve succeeded at creating a new DNA for NewCo, how do you get NewCo and CoreCo to co-exist in one organization? But that’s the subject for another book by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble

The title doesn’t do justice to the book. There is a hell of a lot more information in this book than the 10 rules. Here’s a shot at a better title:
Be a Master of the Universe – transform Innovative Ideas to Industry Shapers
In the VC world, a Master of the Universe is an all-encompassing company, like Google, Ebay and Yahoo.

The insights in this book can be used also by small businesses. The bit missing in small business is the ability to borrow from another unit in the company. There usually isn’t another unit. I’d suggest that small businesses go and look for partners who can provide those resources. These don’t necessarily need to be huge companies. The rest can be followed as it is!

Now go and buy this book. What are you waiting for?

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Reviewed by Arun Sadhashivan

More Love for More Than You Know

The Wall Street Journal shows their love for More Than You Know today. Here is a piece:

Delightful examples follow from a variety of disciplines. The short period over which the average company can sustain a competitive advantage is likened to the lifespan of a fruit fly. The fatal risks of imitation by money managers are illustrated by ants who tend to follow one another in an endless circle, marching on and on until death. Mr. Mauboussin explains how Tupperware parties, where people buy lots more stuff than they need, provide important lessons for stock-market investors; how Tiger Woods's decision to change his golf swing even when he was winning reflects the "fitness landscapes" concept in evolutionary biology; and why gambling legend Puggy Pearson can help you be a better investor ("Ain't only three things to gambling: Knowin' the 60-40 end of a proposition, money management, and knowin' yourself").

What is also great about the review is the author--Burton Malkiel. He is the author of a different book you should be familiar with--A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

Jack and I both highly recommend this book.

Product placement in books

It's started. Not in business books (yet). But product placement will be seen in a new teen book. The product: CoverGirl Lipslicks.

The publisher, Running Press, isn't being paid for the shout out (3rd article down). I imagine some sort of deal was struck as CoverGirl, a piece of the Proctor and Gamble empire, will be promoting the book on one of their websites.

It'll be interesting to see if product placement will cascade into other book categories. What could it mean for business books? Granted certain books have been approved by or recommended by their subjects so perhaps this isn't much different. Companies have hired authors to write about their organization so this can't be that different. It could simply mean more cross promotion and random mentions of companies in books.

We'll see.

To New Hires: Sink or Swim Week 6

According to Leadership consulting firm Manchester Inc., the top three pitfalls for new execs. :

1. They isolate themselves through the perception that they can demonstrate results faster on their own as opposed to focusing on quickly establishing relationships and a network of coworkers at various levels and throughout the company.
2. They fail to decipher the culture of their new company including how to tailor their communication, image and contribution in a way that it will have positive impact.
3. They fail to confirm and define what success looks like with their managers or the board. The eagerness to quickly demonstrate competence and results overshadows the critical need to clearly define success metrics and expectations.

What I find interesting of note is that these are the same issues that undermine rank and file new employees. These issues are universal. Good thing that Sink or Swim addresses these concerns and many more.

Knocking out the gatekeepers

That's what Lulu.com is doing in the publishing industry. They've cut out the gatekeepers and enabled people to self-publish with ease. Unlike traditional self-publishing which requires putting up a somewhat hefty payment for the first print run, Lulu is print-on-demand (it's amazing what the web has and continues to do for us).

What's cool is that they have design templates and handle the printing, shipping and order tracking. Lulu is unlike similar functions run by Random House (Xlibris), Barnes & Noble (iUniverse) and Amazon (BookSurge) which require authors to pay "an up-front fee of $300 to $1600, [and where] book prices are set by the services, and royalties range from 10 to 25 percent"; Lulu, on the other hand, doesn't charge anything for layout and design. Authors pay Lulu only when a book is sold and their royalties are 80% (minus Lulu's production price).

Today Lulu is doing $1 million in business every month with book sales around 36,000 - 91,000. Get this, there are a thousand new books on the site every week!

So what is the reaction in the publishing world? The founder, Bob Young says that some ask him to sell his software. And some say what Lulu publishes is not worth their time. But it leads me and the article's author to wonder what will happen if Lulu becomes a major hit? It has potential to change the publishing industry indefinitely.

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*Taken from the June '06 Business 2.0 article Freedom of the Press.

Our First Toddcast

We have been podcasting for about 18 months, but today I posted our first ever Toddcast. Todd Berman, from Harvard Business School Press, joins me in a conversation about business books.

I know. You have to be hard-core to want to listen to this.

You'll hear us talk about big books for the fall, fall-out from Bill Swanson, business book classics, and what one thing every business book author should know.

Check it out.

Authors in Moving Pictures

Anyone spending anytime online has been to YouTube. I thought I would point you to a couple of authors who are using the site to promote what they do.

Of course, you will find Customer Evangelist Jackie Huba on YouTube. You get the first five minutes of a keynote she did.

You can also find Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton talking about their book Hard Facts. I take a little credit for this one. They sent me a video link and I immediately told them to get it posted up on YouTube.

I did some searches for others like Jim Collins or Marcus Buckingham getting no results. Even Scoble only has a really poorly recorded 1:17 piece.

Are there others out there that I have missed?

Malcolm on "The Answer"

In the May 29, 2006 The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell reviews a new book from Stanford University Press called "The Wages of Wins." The subtitle will give you a hint of the content "Taking Measure of the Many Myths of Modern Sport." I have not seen the book but will get a copy shortly and do a review on it. Malcolm points out the similarity to Michael Lewis's brilliant "Moneyball." The last paragraph of the review is great.

"It's hard not to wonder, after reading "The Wages of Wins," about other instances in which we defer to the evaluations of experts. Boards of directors vote to pay CEOs tens of millions of dollars, ostensibly because we believe--on the basis of what they have learned over the years watching other C.E.O.s--that they are worth is. But so what? We see Allen Iverson, over and over again, charge toward the basket, twisting and turning and writhing through a thicket of arms and legs of much taller and heavier men--and all we learn is to appreciate twisting turning and writhing. We become dance critics, blind to Iverson's dismal shooting percentage and his excessive turnovers, blind to the reality that the Philadelphia 76ers would be better off without him. "One can play basketball," the authors conclude. "One can watch basketball. One can watch basketball for a thousand years. If you do not systematically track what players do, then uncover that statistcal relationship between these actions and wins, you will never know why teams win and why they lose."

Sounds like fun. BTW, other athletes mentioned are: Michael, Brett and Steinbrenner.

Paid Book Placement in the UK

The Sunday Times (UK) ran a piece on May 28th that started:

BRITAIN’S biggest bookseller is demanding payments of £50,000 a week from publishers to get books on its supposedly impartial list of “recommended� reads in the run-up to Christmas this year.

The WH Smith scheme is the most expensive in a range of confidential deals being operated by retailers to promote lists that consumers believe are based on independent assessments of a book’s quality.

No authors appear on recommended lists unless their publishers pay the fees, and those refusing to pay may not even find their titles stocked.

News Bulletin - This is not new and it happens just as much in the US. The shelves in the front of most bookstores are paid space. If you see a book front-facing on a shelf, chances are the bookstore is charging the publisher for that.

It seems this making a "recommendation list" might be taking it a little further. The "Success Library" at Barnes & Noble is a paid location, so maybe not.

My only point here is to be aware of what you are being presented in retail location. What is being recommended could be what a vendor is paying to be pushed.

[Sidenotes: Harry W. Schwartz (our retail sibling) does not take money in exchange for recommendations and the only paid location in the family of 800-CEO-READ sites is inBubbleWrap.]

Peter Who?

I have been getting on a kick lately to get people to read more classic business books. I classify these as books which are just as relevant as ever and can be read over and over.

I have been asking people lately if they have read anything by Peter Drucker and I am shocked by the number of people you have never read anything written by the Father of Modern Management. While I was getting my MBA, we were never assigned to read anything by him. I sit here shaking my head wondering how this can be.

I decided to do some more research. Last week, we asked the inBubbleWrap crowd two questions having to do with Drucker.

First, we asked if they knew who Peter Drucker was. It was hard to give you an exact answer by I would say 15% of the people did not know he is was. I don't consider that too bad considering the often reported polls showing people's lack of knowledge on current events and world geography.

The second question we asked was "Have you read any books by Drucker?". The following is a list of all the books that people listed and the number of times they were mentioned in the answers.

The Effective Executive - 52
The Essential Drucker - 45
The Daily Drucker - 28
Managing for The Future - 21
Innovation and Entrepreneurship - 18
The Practice of Management - 16
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices - 11
Managing The Non-Profit Organization - 11
Adventures of a Bystander - 6
Managing in Turbulent Times - 5
Management in the 21st Century - 4
The End of Economic Man - 4
The Age of Discontinuity - 3
Temption To Do Good - 3
Classic Drucker - 2
Drucker On The Profession of Management - 2
Concept of the Corporation - 1
Effective Executive in Action - 1
Future of Industrial Man - 1

It was good to see one of Drucker's complete works beat the two "best-of" books. For my money, I would recommend The Effective Executive and Innovation and Entrepreneurship (both of which I am going back and reading again).

We have some plans for bringing back some of the classics. Stay tuned for that...

Book Quote of the Year

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt says in Harvard Business Review this month:

"The business book that can help you has not been written yet."

He is referring to the message he sent to his managers at GE's annual Boca Raton meeting. Immelt's singular goal is growing the $150 billion company at 8% a year. He says nothing like this has been done at a company of this size.

He's right.

There is a fair amount of research to show that once a company makes the Fortune 50, growth pretty much stops.

If I were to be so bold, I would recommend Clay Christensen's The Innovator's Solution. From the book:

Growth is important because companies create shareholder value through profitable growth. Yet there is powerful evidence that once a company's core business has matured, the pursuit of new platforms enatils daunting risk. Roughly one company in ten is able to sustain an above average increase in shareholder returns over more than a few years...Consequently, most executives are in a no-win situation: equaity markets demand that they grow, but it's hard to know how to grow.

(Hat tip to Michael Mauboussin, he uses this quote on page 199 of More Than You Know).

Borders lays off 90

Borders announced yesterday they are laying off 90 people or about 6% of their corporate staff in Ann Arbor.

BookScanned

Daniel Gross wrote a piece last week in Slate on the Nielsen company BookScan. The article talks about how publishers and journalists use these numbers to make their cases. Publishers leak the numbers when there is a great story to tell. Journalists use the numbers when they can fortify a case for slashing and burning a book (and author).

I can tell you there is quite a preoccuption with Bookscan in the publishing community. Publishers use it to justify an author's second book. Buyers at the chains decide on what will get ordered and continue to get ordered.

Gross gives a good feel for the games that are played with these numbers.

The Radical Edge reviewed by Tim Milburn