800-CEO-READ Blog

More From The Elegant Solution

I just like The Elegant Solution alot. You are going to see a Jack Covert Selects on it this month. This morning, I posted a podcast that I did with Matt a couple of weeks ago.

Here is another story I had not heard before:

According to neuroscientist Dr. William Calvin, author of Ascent of Mind, we're hardwired with a natural ballistic ability--the innate and uniquely human ability to throw an object and hit a moving target. Only humans have the genetic ability to think ahead, to project ourselves into the future, and to launch a plan of attack that hits the objective.

Tom Peters Is Crazy

In a good way of course. In this great post titled Henry Mintzberg Is Crazy, Peters lauds Mintzberg’s The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning as “probably my favorite management book of the past 25 years.� In a rambling (Tom Peters? No!) post, Peters touches upon James Bond, Peter Drucker, Herbert Simon, and more. Great quote:

“The point of all this, relative to the German reporter's comment about Mintzberg, and implication about me, is that we are not "nutters." We come from a clear academic lineage—and are simply recent manifestations thereof. We both have contempt for the rationalists among us. (Mintzberg, amazingly, may be a more vociferous critic of Biz Schools than I am.) Our "advice," such as it is, comes from the premise of the ineluctable mess with which we (and our institutions) are permanently surrounded.�

Jack, Todd and I all enjoyed this post. Personally, I love the way that Peters uses his rich knowledge of business ideas to cite entire books as a form of managerial shorthand. He can dig deep through a trove of managerial know-how and point to a few key works, such as Mintzberg’s book, as a way of sharing key information in more than a simple sound bite. He is a master at riffing on business books, extracting the core ideas and weaving them into a cool short piece, in this case about the merits of mess versus the benefits of policies.

However, on a personal level, I felt the attached pdf of a Peters presentation weakened the power of his argument. I am a huge Tom Peters fan—but I’m not sure that I want to slog through what writer Annie Lamott calls a “shitty first draft� of his thinking. After citing the importance of chaos and looseness, Peters then undermines his point by presenting a sloppy and unedited powerpoint meant to amplify this point. Even the most powerful ideas about the power of spontaneity benefit from a second draft.

Local Coverage for Carly Event

Here is the story that ran Saturday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about Carly Fiorina and her talk.

Michael Lewis Channels The Wisdom of Bill Purcells

For folks like me who still consider Michael Lewis’s Moneyball one of the top five books ever written on developing talent, his new book screams for my reading time. And in the meantime, how about this great quote taken from Lewis’s article What Keeps Bill Parcells Awake At Night (This appeared yesterday in the new New York Times Sunday sports magazine, titled Play):

At halftime there’s no chance for a speech — several of the Cowboys reappear on the field four minutes after they left — but Parcells has taken precautions. This morning, before the game, he called a meeting of the players without the assistant coaches. “I don’t want to talk with the coaches around,� he told me beforehand. “I want the players to know that I am trying to make a point.� This morning, he broke into his personal binder, took out the story of Vito Antuofermo and read it to his players. All week long it wasn’t strategy that occupied him; it was character. There’s a tendency to believe that, to be successful, a pro football coach must have a gift for the chessboard aspect of the game. But strategy isn’t what chiefly interests Parcells. His success depends on his ability to demand, and to receive, higher levels of performance from his players. He doesn’t say so explicitly, but his actions speak for him: he spends much more time thinking about getting inside his players’ heads, and their skins, than about anything else. He tries to make them uncomfortable. On a baseball team or a golf team, this sort of pressurized approach might lead to a team-wide nervous breakdown. In football — at least for him — it works magic.

Carly Talks About Tough Choices

I just wanted to thank everyone who attended our morning event with Carly Fiorina. She gave a great talk on change, management, and leadership. After the speech, Carly signed books of all the attendees.

I want to thank all of the folks at Portfolio allowing us to be a part of the tour.

Stay tuned for our 2007 plans...

China Shakes The World wins Book Award

China Shakes The World by James Kynge is the 2006 winner of the Financial Times & Goldman Sachs Book of The Year Award. Read the coverage here.

Carly Fiorina in MKE tomorrow

Here is our one last mention that Carly Fiorina will be at the Midwest Airlines Center in Milwaukee tomorrow. The breakfast starts at 7:30am tomorrow. Tickets are available at the door for $45.

Bill Taylor Interview from OnMilwaukee.com

I wanted to repost the great interview that our friends at OnMilwaukee.com did with Bill Taylor. They wrote this leading up to the live event we had two weeks ago.

On Thursday, Bill Taylor, one of the co-founders of the cutting-edge business and lifestyle magazine, Fast Company, is in town talking about his new book "Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds in Business Win." He collaborated with former Fast Company colleague Polly Lebarre on the project.

OnMilwaukee.com is a media sponsor of Thursday's event, and took a few minutes to get Taylor's take on media, business and his book.

OMC: Define success.

Taylor: I'd never suggest that my definition of success should be anyone else's definition, but here's how I think about it: Can I make use of my natural talents to do work that means something to me, that makes even a little bit of a positive impact in the world, and that creates something of value in the marketplace? I firmly believe that there is an iron-clad connection between the values you believe in and fight for -- as a company or as an individual -- and the economic value your create. That's how you do your best work -- and how material success also feels like "real" success.

OMC: What two albums do you need on your iPod for a long trip?

Taylor: I am the world's most passionate Bruce Springsteen fan -- I have a bootleg of the famous 1975 Milwaukee "bomb scare" show at the Uptown Theater. So my first choice has to be a Bruce album, probably "Darkness on the Edge of Town." Second album has to be Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." I know, I'm showing my age. Hey, the truth hurts.

OMC: Does a "rise in tides lift all boats?"

Taylor: The answer is no, both in business and society, I'm afraid to say. The story of our times is the "disappearing middle." Everywhere I look, whether it's in the computer business or the auto business, or whether it's in society itself, there seem to be big winners, big losers and not a lot of companies or people just moving along in the middle. That's why the stakes are so high -- and why it's so important to think hard about how you compete as a company and work as an individual.

OMC: How do companies turn ideas into money?

Taylor: Actually, the only way to win big in the marketplace today is to stand for something distinctive and disruptive -- to stand for a powerful set of ideas. Every industry in the world is plagued by overcapacity, oversupply and utter sensory overload. We already have too much of everything -- cars, computers, cell phones, banks, you name it. In this kind of hyper-competitive environment, the companies that thrive are the ones with a distinctive point of view.

Think Southwest Airlines, Pixar Animation Studios, Starbucks Coffee Company. As one of our maverick CEOs said, "Every great company has reinvented the business that it's in." That's why ideas matter. The only sustainable form of business leadership is thought leadership -- generating better ideas and making smarter adjustments than the competition.

OMC: What's next for media?

Taylor: More choices, more grassroots participation, more variety in every way imaginable. That said, I am not one of the blog-crazed cheerleaders for the demise of the so-called mainstream media. For the life of me, I can't figure out why the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times can't figure out how to become incredibly prosperous businesses -- Google and Craigslist notwithstanding. But whether or not they succeed as businesses, as a society we can't afford them to become shadows of their former selves. No other institution has the brainpower, the time, and the resources to figure out what's really going on in the world. To all those bloggers out there who like to dance on the grave of the mainstream media I say, be careful what you wish for...you might just get it.

OMC: Any suggestions for the owners of OnMilwaukee.com?

Taylor: I learned a long time ago not to offer detailed advice on other people's businesses -- they quickly realize how little you really know. So I'd suggest that you keep asking yourself a small number of questions that I believe are at the heart of being a maverick:


Is there a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose behind everything you do?
If you went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
Why would great people want to be part of your organization?
Do you work as distinctively as you compete?

OMC: How has competition changed?

Taylor: Competition is both more intense and more lackluster than ever before. Intense in the sense that in every industry, there are more rivals, from more parts of the world, offering better products, at lower prices, with better quality than at any point in human history. Think about how much computing power you can buy for two thousand bucks. Think about how cheap it is to make a cell phone call or send an e-mail. And yet, competition is lackluster in the sense that most big companies in most industries seem to compete in identical ways. How is it that all cars look so alike, or that all airline service is so lousy, or that every TV network copies from every other TV network? That's why this hyper-competition opens up so much room for mavericks. If you do something truly different, people notice.

OMC: Who is your pick to win the World Series?

Taylor: I am lifelong New Englander, which means I'm a die-hard Red Sox fan. So my only must-have in the Series chase is for the Yankees to lose. That said, I am both picking and rooting for the Oakland A's. They've got the "maverick" approach to building a team -- they can't outspend the competition, so they out-think the competition. Plus, Billy Beane, the general manager of the A's, did a great blurb for our book -- so rooting for his team is the least I can do. Go A's!

OMC: Finally, why should I buy your book?

Taylor: Because it offers new and exciting and compelling answers to some of the most basic questions in business -- questions that are center stage for entrepreneurs, executives in big companies, even people running a business on the Internet or out of their house. What does it mean to have an effective strategy -- how do you create value in the marketplace? How do you forge enduring connections with customers -- how do you stand out from the crowd when the crowd gets bigger, better, and louder every year? How do you unleash innovation -- where do ideas come from? How do you win the battle for talent--how do you attract more than your fair share of the best people in your field.



This is both a how-to book and a what-if book. It is meant to persuade people of the power of business at its best -- and we think the companies and characters we discovered in the course of research deliver on that promise.

Method's Pop up Shop

Eric and Ammo erected a temporary “pop-up shop� for Method in a vacant storefront in the Union Square shopping area of San Francisco. This unique store concept became a living lab where ambassadors from the company (who weren’t primarily focused on sales) could educate customers about the dual benefits of Method’s modern design and safe ingredients. They created smelling stations where customers could suggest their favorite scents for products. Word-of-mouth and free editorial print media about this odd little shop spread fast and eventually the likes of Robin Williams were dropping in. Conversion rates on customers were 80 percent, and the average purchase was twenty dollars—pretty good for a shop exclusively focused on basic household cleaning products.

From Marketing That Matters

There's more...

What We Heard In NYC...

• Seth has a new book coming in the spring.
• Ram Charan has three books coming out in the next 12 months.
• Currency is releasing The Unwritten Laws of Management in February, an updated version of The Unwritten Laws of Engineering. This book, originally published in 1944, became popular when it was discovered the Bill Swanson, the CEO of Raytheon, lifted many the laws for his book and gave no attribution.
• Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican pollster, has a January book titled Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. It looks interesting.

More Eastern Influence on American Business

BusinessWeek has an interesting article on the rise of Indians in the study of management. They mention names like C.K. Prahalad (Fortune At the Bottom of the Pyramid), Ram Charan (Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business), and Vijay Govindrajan (Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators). The article suggests some common themes in their approaches:

Indian theorists, of course, have a wide range of backgrounds and philosophies. But many of the most influential acknowledge that common themes pervade their work. One is the conviction that executives should be motivated by a broader purpose than money. Another is the belief that companies should take a more holistic approach to business--one that takes into account the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, society, and the environment. Some can even foresee the development of a management theory that replaces the shareholder-driven agenda with a more stakeholder-focused approach. "The best way to describe it is inclusive capitalism," says Prahalad, a consultant and University of Michigan professor who ranked third in a recent Times of London poll about the world's most influential business thinkers. "It's the idea that corporations can simultaneously create value and social justice."

It goes on to talk about how management gurus have gone from quoting Sun Tzu's The Art of War and moved now to the ancient Indian classic Bhagavad Gita.

Also known as Song of the Divine One, the work relates a conversation between the supreme deity Krishna and Arjuna, a warrior prince struggling with a moral crisis before a crucial battle. One key message is that enlightened leaders should master any impulses or emotions that cloud sound judgment. Good leaders are selfless, take initiative, and focus on their duty rather than obsessing over outcomes or financial gain. "The key point," says Ram Charan, a coach to CEOs such as General Electric Co.'s (GE ) Jeffrey R. Immelt, "is to put purpose before self. This is absolutely applicable to corporate leadership today."

Some Citizen Marketing on Citizen Marketers

In the fall of 2003, I responded to a request put out by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. They were looking for a couple of interns to help with their expanding practice. At this point, Mr. Covert and I were "dating" and I still had some time to pursue other adventures. I submitted my "resume" and they selected me to hangout with them. We worked on ideas for a book for about four months.

So now that my disclosure is out there, let me say that I LOVE Ben and Jackie's new book Citizen Marketers: When People Are The Medium. I think it does a great job of explaining this phenomenon we are seeing with regular, everyday people becoming more involved in the world again. Ben and Jackie believe individuals are showing their passions (or hatred) like never before. These are people who are can either love or hate a company and they want the whole wide world to know. The book is chocked full of great stories about people marketing for Starbucks, Netflix, and McDonalds.

The book has a December release, but we have a box full of galleys. If you want one, send me an email (todd [at] 800ceoread [dot] com) with the subject line "Citizen Marketers". Include in the email your street address (must be street address because these will be shipping via UPS).

In exchange for receiving the book, you will need to read it and tell me what you think. It will involve a 5 question survey and you writing a 100 word review. Cool?

Let the emails begin...

We're Back...

Jack and I are back in Milwaukee and we'll probably spend the day digging out.

Jack wanted proof that we could show people we were actually in NYC.

On Wednesday, we took the three hour Circle Line Cruise around Manhattan Island. We thought it was great and would recommend it to any tourist visiting the Big Apple.

PS We also met with some publishing types. More on that as the week goes on...

To the aspiring authors...

Jonathan Kranz notes that when pitching a book to a publisher, most people highlight:

• Their topic
• Their expertise

He suggests adding one more thing (which, I think, holds especially true for business authors):

Highlight your audience.

Do you have a blog with a following? Speaking engagements? Consulting gigs? Places/people that will buy your book?

Marketing Champions

Just wanted to point you over to Todd's conversation with Roy Young, co-author of Marketing Champions.

Check it out here.

When Bill was here...

This time last week, Bill Taylor was visiting. He joined us for three events. He was great (go see him if you have a chance). His message: the two most important aspects of business are people and ideas.

Here are a few pictures from the events:

Jack presents...

Mavericks on display...

Get ready. We're presenting a maverick...

The mavericks at work...

Our friendly greeter...

That evening, maverick Dick Resch of KI joined Bill on stage...

After quite an exciting day, some of the 8cr crew reflects...

Yep, now we're really moving ideas.

---
Thanks for coming Bill!

Banker to the Poor

I used to feel a thrill at teaching my students the elegant economic theories that could supposedly cure societal problems of all types. But in 1974, I started to dread my own lectures. What good were all my complex theories when people were dying of starvation on the sidewalks and porches across from my lecture hall? My lessons were like the American movies where the good guys always win.
- Muhammad Yunus

The must-read intro to Yunus' autobiography.

Learn from Nine Minds on Marketing

There’s a lot going on in your world, certainly. But being knowledgeable about marketing is important to every position in the company. Here’s a chance to get your hands on what nine marketing thought leaders are writing about. Monday we featured it as a Boss’s Day gift and today I want to suggest it as a personal learning tool.

We worked with Andrea Learned, co-author of Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy—and How to Increase Your Share of the Market, to develop this e-book. For the project, Andrea read nine recent marketing books recommended by the brain trust here at 8CR, interviewed the author(s), and wrote nine essays. She did this so you can have an inside look into the latest marketing trends.

My sales pitch to you: It’s only $8.95 (cheaper than the nine books, even used).

Time: It’ll take you an hour to read, tops. Print it off or save it on your laptop for your next plane trip. Here’s a bit of what you’ll find.

The authors and books featured in the essays are:

1. The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling
   by Annette Simmons
   
2. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Customer
   by Michael J. Silverstein
   
3. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
   by Donald A. Norman
   
4. The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business is a Stage
   by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore
   
5. The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next
   by Robyn Waters
   
6. The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market
   by John Zagula
   
7. Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage
   by Fred Senn
   
8. PyroMarketing: The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life
   by Greg Stielstra
   
9. Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Saavy to Sell Just Causes
   by Katya Andresen

With each essay, Andrea distills the book’s main ideas and methods for application and shares how her interviews with the authors better informed their written work. Her essays are reflective, inspiring and just plain fun to read.

-----

Here is an excerpt from Andrea’s essay, “Make Marketing Superfluous�, inspired by reading The Experience Economy and talking with the authors, Pine and Gilmore, founders of Strategic Horizons, LLP.

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Here’s another tidbit from “Zen and Countertrends�, written after Andrea read The Trendmaster’s Guide and spoke with Robyn Waters, former Vice President of Trend, Design and Development for Target.

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Check it out.

The Winner is announced....

Quill announced their 2006 book awards winners this week.

The business winner:

The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch): Valuable Lessons, Smart Suggestions, and True Stories for Succeeding as the Chick-in-Charge
by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio/Broadway Books

If you're curious, here's a bit about the awards.

Our NYC Hotel Recommendation

Jack and I are in New York City this week. We do a trip each year to see what is going on in the publishing community.

We are staying at a great place on 41st and Madison called The Library Hotel. You can see how the hotel might play to our sensibilities. Each floor is a section of the Dewey Decimal System. I am staying on the Languages floor in the Romantics room. Jack is on the History and Geography floor and staying in the Oceanography room. Each room is stocked with books from the genre.

The rooms themselves are cozy but well appointed. They have a great breakfast. It is also reasonable given the incredible rise in hotel prices over the last couple of years. We recommend The Library Hotel.

P.S. You'll need to request the sixth floor if you want to find business books. Room 600.001 is devoted to advertising and 600.003 will get you management.

P.P.S. Expect more stories from our trip to NYC...

Boss's Day Special E-Book Offer: Nine Minds on Marketing by Andrea Learned

Happy Boss's Day!

If you are busy (as most of us are) trying to find that balance between work, family and play, it is often hard to find time to read. There are so many books available on any given business topic that the choices can be overwhelming. Well, that's what we're here for! Last year, we featured a Boss's Day e-book titled, 9 Lives of Leadership by Lisa Haneberg, a management specialist, to offer a look at nine great books to help you become the leader you strive to be. The response was outstanding.

So this year, we teamed with Andrea Learned, co-author of Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy—and How to Increase Your Share of the Market to introduce you to a myriad of marketing perspectives from some of the best business minds writing today.

Why marketing? No matter what industry you are in, or even if you just enjoy business as a by-stander and not a professional practitioner, marketing plays a role in our lives every day. Whether it is your job to approve the new budget for the marketing department, or you simply are faced with the decision of one kitchen gadget over another…marketing matters.

To buy your boss a copy of 9 Minds on Marketing, or to buy one for yourself, click here. Remember to include your boss's email or your own in order to have the URL from which to download the e-book sent directly.

Enjoy!

Resisting Relevance

Here’s a terrific interview with Stanford University professor emeritus James March from the current issue of Harvard Business Review (this article is free online.) March is somewhat of the guru’s guru, an intellectual whose work may be little-known but is deeply felt (i.e. he may not be “famous� but the key thinkers are influenced by him.)

In a fascinating interview concerning the applicability of models to work, the nature of trust, the need for foolishness, and other thoughts on how people think and learn, March shares a range of terrific morsels. He opens his classes by telling his students, “I am not now, nor have I ever been, relevant,� as a way of signaling them not to seek immediate usefulness from his ideas. “If a manager asks an academic consultant what to do and that consultant answers, then the consultant should be fired,� he explains. And then he shares thoughts that clearly have lasting impact.

For example, March discusses the hot-stove effect—whereby a cat that jumps on a hot stove will never repeat that mistake, yet will also avoid jumping on all stoves in the future.

“The hot-stove effect is a fundamental problem of learning,� he says. “Learning reduces your likelihood of repeating things that got you in trouble, as you hope it will. But that means you know less about the domains where you’ve done poorly than about the domains where you’ve done well. You might say, ‘Well, why should that cause problems?’ It causes problems whenever your early experience with an alternative is, for whatever reason, not characteristic of what subsequent experience would be. It clearly causes problems in domains where practice makes a difference. For example, you are likely to abandon an approach or technology prematurely.�

There's much much more here. Recommended reading!

Nobel Reading: Books on Muhammad Yunus

Today's Wall Street Journal has a nice series of articles about Muhammad Yunus, who has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on microlending, through the Grameen Bank. Tom Peters has an exuberant post on this news which is worth reading. Peters also notes that there are two excellent books worth noting: Banker to the Poor, written by Yunus; and David Bornstein's The Price of A Dream, which was just issued in paperback by Oxford University Press. I haven't read the first, but heartily recommend The Price of A Dream, which is wonderfully reported and gracefully written.

Jack Covert Selects: Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer, HarperCollins Publishers, 300 Pages, $25.95 Hardcover, October 2006, ISBN 0060742755

I love looking at publisher’s catalogs of forthcoming books. The size of the space given to a book is often predictive of the publisher’s plans for the success of the book. When I saw Setting the Table splashed out in the HarperCollins catalog, my cynical self thought, “Now there’s a New York-centric book that’s not going to do much west of the Hudson River, though the editor and staff are going to get some fine meals.� Well, as happens on more than one occasion, I was wrong. Sure, this book is about a famous New York restaurateur who has created eleven great restaurants, but even more it is a look into the life of a very successful businessman.

In the early 80s, he was a success as a salesperson, but the day before taking the LSAT, he was having dinner with his family and he realized he didn’t want to be a lawyer. His love was food. He spent time learning the food business and searching for his first restaurant, the Union Square Café. In an industry with a high failure rate, Meyer has created places that have not only survived, but thrived.

This book lays out some of his unorthodox business ideas. For example, he believes in putting the staff first. “The customer isn’t always right. You can only earn repeat business if employees feel jazzed about coming to work.�

The book is loaded with management ideas that apply anywhere, even to your situation.
“We aim to people who possess an emotional skill that chef Michael Romano calls the Excellence Reflex. People duck as a natural reflex when something is hurled at them. Similarly, the excellence reflex is a natural reaction to fix something that isn’t right, or to improve something that could be better. The excellence reflex is rooted in instinct and upbringing, and then constantly honed through awareness, caring and practice. The overarching concern to do the right thing well is something we can’t train for. Either it’s there or it isn’t. so we need to train how to hire for it.�

Any business that looks for repeat customers can benefit from this enjoyable book. We all are looking for insights in customer retention, whether we are a three star restaurant or a bookseller.

Jack Covert Selects: L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Legend

L.L.Bean: The Making of an American Icon by Leon Gorman, Harvard Business School Press, 280 Pages, $26.95 Hardcover, October 2006, ISBN 1578511836

There are few true icons in the business world, and one that has maintained the integrity of its brand is L.L. Bean. Leon Gorman, the founder’s grandson who ran the business for many years, is the author, and he writes well and has a fascinating story to tell. The book is laid out in an unusual way. As Gorman tells his story, paragraphs appear with a supporting or challenging statement from a Bean employee. This can sometimes make for some challenging reading, but these additions do add another perspective to the story.

This book is a story of a company that grew with leaps and bounds and how hard it was to do that and keep the small town, personal part of the company. `

L.L. Bean started selling his leather top/rubber bottom hunting boots in 1912. They were a success, but with one slight problem. 90 of the first 100 pairs sold came back as defective. The uppers tore away from the bottoms. Determined, Bean borrowed another $400 from his brother and started over. The author says of this:
“L.L. learned four lessons from this experience (in addition to staying out of debt in the future)….To sell fully-tested high-quality products of the best functional value; To provide superior and personal customer service backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee; To write honest, straightforward catalog and advertising copy that builds trust and mutual respect with customers; To sell through the catalog channel that can reach a national market from Maine and its outdoor heritage.�

During Gorman’s time at the helm the aforementioned growth created some significant management issues and brand identity problems. But he also confronted a business slowdown in the late 80s. To give you an idea of Gorman’s self analysis, check out this paragraph:

“I remember sitting down at the time and reviewing all our 1990 catalogs, page by page….I liked them. Maybe that was indicative of the problem. Maybe I wasn’t the merchant I thought I was. Maybe my intuition wasn’t as informed or up-to-date as it should have been. In any event our customers weren’t buying from our catalogs. There was a disconnect that we needed to understand. According to our research, customers liked us but we didn’t seem to have the products they wanted. The theory of our customers being people like us was no longer working.�

He goes on to talk about the fact that they weren’t connecting with the women customer and the need to get into retail outlets.

While the point/counterpoint style of including other voices makes for some flow problems, I value this book for Gorman’s honesty and the opportunity to learn about an American icon.

Jack Covert Selects: The Go Point

The Go Point: When it’s Time to Decide—Knowing What to Do and When to Do It by Michael Useem, Crown Business, 250 Pages, $25.00 Hardcover, ISBN 1400082986

Michael Useem is the William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at Wharton and the director of its Center for Leadership and Change Management. He is the author of some of the best books ever written on leading, particularly Leadership Moment from the late 90s, a book which uses examples of people leading while confronted with real world situations. Yes, his credentials are impressive, and his view on leadership above par, but what also sets him apart from the pack of business book authors is his storytelling ability. Michael Useem is a damn fine writer.

The Go Point continues his look at leadership, but focuses on that crucial decision-making point where we have to “go� and move forward. He describes it here: “Ultimately, every decision comes down to a go point—that decisive moment when the essential information has been gathered, the pros and cons are weighed, and the time has come to get off the fence.�

I found the story about the Colorado forest fire to be intense and riveting. To understand what the firefighters went through and to understand the decisions that were made, Useem walked the landscape with one of the survivors. He tells the tale and then points out the decisions and the errors that were made with too little information. He describes the tremendous stress of battling a raging forest fire and how that affects decision-making.

You may have heard of this story as well: He looks at soccer team plane that crashed in the Andes in 1972 (remember the crash where the survivors at the dead?) through his ‘go point’ lenses. And also, he even breaks down the decisions involved in accepting the surrender of the Confederate Army. The contemporary section I enjoyed was about Kozlowski and Lay and the rest of those bozos who came to a “go point� and looked for personal profit instead of the larger good.

Michael Useem has written another quality book about leadership in the real world that you will simply enjoy reading.

Bios Redux

As Todd noted, it's quite a busy season for business biographies. To which I'd add the following promising titles:

The Man That Time Forgot, a biography of Time magazine co-founder Briton Haddon, by Isaiah Wilner, has been generating boffo reviews. Wilner tells the story of the charismatic innovator Haddon, who pioneered Time's distinctive writing style and worldview, yet died young, enabling Henry Luce to eventually become known as the magazine¹s creator.

Andy Grove, by esteemed HBS historian Richard Tedlow, bills itself as the "definitive biography of an enigmatic business legend." And given Tedlow's gift for comprehensive research, smart writing, and a unique gift for blending managerial know-how with a historian's eye for context and culture, this book promises to be an invaluable read.

L.L. Bean: The Making of An American Icon, by Leon Gorman, the chairman and grandson of company founder, shares the story of how one of the most trusted brands grew up. As a native New Englander who has always owned a pair of Bean boots and visits the Freeport store several times annually, I'm partial to this book. And from a preliminary read, it looks as well-made as the company's gear.

Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses, represents yet another business history from a Harvard prof, this time David Landes of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. I look forward to reading this book, especially the chapters that explore families from outside the U.S., such as the Agnellis, Toyodas, and Barings.

"Oracle of Omaha"

Tuesday, October 10, 2006, Wall Street Journal had an article about a one-page memo that Warren Buffett sent to his super senior management group on September 27.

He extoles:

"The five most dangerous words in business may be “Everybody else is doing it.

My guess is that a great many of the people involved would not have behaved in the manner they did except for the fact that they felt others were doing so as well.�

So, at Berkshire, let’s start with what is legal, but always go on to what we would feel comfortable about being printed on the front page of our local newspaper, and never precede forward simply on the basis of the fact that other people are doing it.�

Jack Covert Selects: iWoz

iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. By Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith, W.W. Norton, 288 Pages, $25.95 Hardcover, September 2006, ISBN 0393061434

I have enjoyed stories about Steve Wozniak for a long time. I remember reading about the “blue box� which phone ‘phreaks’ could use to make unlimited free calls anywhere in the world. This was during the “Ma Bell� era, when ripping her off was cool. Woz and Jobs sold them for $150 each out of their trunks. Then, when that novelty wore off, they created a little company called Apple.

This book is Woz’s version of how what he is famous for happened, but it is also a story about a smart kid who had amazingly supportive parents and a real love of engineering.

He talks about his father and how his father would always answer his questions with in-depth answers and taught him the love of engineering.

“I so clearly remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you can reach in the world, that someone who could make electrical devises that do something good for people takes society to a new level. He told me that as an engineer, you can change your world and change the way of life for lots and lots of people.To this day, I still believe engineers are among the key people in the world.�

It is a sincere book, but also a funny one that reflects Woz’s lighter side. In 1962, he tricks Richard Nixon, conspiring with his mother on the joke.

“She wanted me to meet him and tell him…that I represented the Ham Radio Operators of Serra School, and that our group unanimously supported Richard Nixon’s election for governor. The joke was, I was the only sixth grade ham operator in the school and probably the whole state. But I did it. I walked up to Nixon and presented the paper, which we literally wrote with a crayon before leaving home.

I said “I have something for you.� Nixon was really gracious, I thought…..I ended up on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News for this. Me! The only ham radio operator at Serra School and probably the youngest one in the whole state, representing a club made up of nobody but me, presenting a false certificate like it was real thing. And everyone believed it. Wow!�

This is a charming book told in straightforward language; a real pleasure to read. The sweet, loving, almost innocent quality of this memoir sets it apart from most business people’s bios.

Fire The PITA Customer

We can all easily describe our Ideal Customer. The person who is curious, has money to spend, is open to new ideas, etc. Each of us has our own profile. I have actually turned my profile into criteria: I must have the expertise, the client must value my expertise, and the engagement must be fun. If a client doesn’t meet all three of these criteria, I see red flags waving furiously.

Think about what happens when you have the opposite of your Ideal Customer. Have you ever had a PITA customer? You know, Pain In The Ass. What happens? They drain you, waste your time, the time of your staff, and you don’t make any money. They are never good referrals, because PITAs hang out with other PITAs. So, fire them before you start.

Not always easy to do, because we see the dollar signs and think if we don’t take this customer, we don’t know where the next one will come from. I maintain that you are in big trouble if you take the PITA. It is a glaring Opportunity Cost—and Opportunity Lost to attract your very best customers. Say NO! It is one of the best decisions you can make.

It's All About Time

I’ve never heard anyone say they had so much time in a day that they didn’t know how to use it. We do have choices about how to spend our time. Here’s the data I’ve collected on cold calls: Make 100 dials, talk to 20 people live, set 8-10 appointments, and if you’re lucky, close one deal. Now consider referrals. To the person, no one has told me that the conversion rate of prospect to customer is less than 50 percent. It’s typically 70 to 90 percent. The time it takes to close the deal collapses, because we are pre-sold, the competition disappears, and the number of calls we make decreases. These are the kind of customers we want all the time. It’s all about time—how we spend it and what we get.

Putting in that extra effort. Look at what Sam Parker has to say about a little bit of extra effort on his blog, Just Parker. Sam is one of the founders of Just Sell. If you haven’t signed up for their daily quotes, be sure to do that right away. They’re magical!

Please Say Thank You

Saying thank you seems so obvious, yet many people never make the effort. If someone has referred you, they have put their reputation on the line in saying that you are a good resource. They have picked you out of the pack for one of their personal contacts and have done him or her, and you, a big favor. At a minimum, call and say thank you. Personal notes are the best. That’s always the mail we open first. One time I referred a colleague to one of my clients. About six months later, I was speaking with my client, and she thanked me for the referral and told me she was working with my colleague. I had never heard from the person I referred. Do you think I will ever refer her again? Not going to happen. Say thank you as many times and in as many ways as you want.

Why Clients Buy

Clients will buy from us because they know, like, and trust us. Period. I used to work for a company that did a competitive de-brief whether we won or lost a client. Obviously, we had the solutions or we would not have been at the table. But, the bottom line reason they chose us was because they LIKED us. Multi-million dollar decisions are being made because clients like us.

Recently I met a salesperson who was selling insurance. I thought she was terrific, but I was already covered. I went out of my way to help her and to refer her. The flip side is also true. If you don’t like a salesperson—even if she has the perfect product—you will never refer her. Take the time to make the personal connection and build the relationship.

Why Have a Sales Strategy, Anyway?

How many business plans have a well-crafted sales strategy? Very few. Most of the time it is buried in a marketing plan. If we don’t have sales, we don’t have revenue or profits, and we don’t have a company. Selling is the most important job in an entire company. Yet, I’ve been told that the average tenure of a VP of Sales is 18 months. That’s not enough time to accomplish anything. Sometimes companies hire only experienced salespeople, in the expectation that they will figure out the territory and the organization. Huge mistake. Every organization has a different approach, different products, and different clients. We must give salespeople the tools to succeed. They must know the sales strategy and the culture of the company. They need more than a boot camp about products and benefits. Knowing how to get things done in a company is one of the most powerful tools a salesperson can have.

If you’re at a headquarters office, you have the opportunity to be in direct contact with the people who influence decisions, and you begin to know who to count on and who to avoid. It’s much tougher when you’re in the field. You need to ask specific questions about who is responsible for what, and take the time to build relationships on the phone. However, there is nothing more important than a personal visit to headquarters. If you are new to a company, make sure that you have in your hiring agreement that you will travel to headquarters within 60 days of your hire.

We're Being Fooled

I get very angry when I read books that claim to be about not cold calling or about referrals (and I’m not going to refer you to them), when they actually are talking about cold calling and networking.

Networking is about connecting with people. Period. We can network one-on-one or in groups. It’s obviously important to network to build relationships which then could turn into referrals, but networking is not the same as referral selling. If you want to learn how to network, check out Susan RoAne’s books. She is the country’s expert on networking and a phenomenal speaker!

Check out opportunities to network in your city. Metropolitan Chambers of Commerce have excellent events. Check out www.bni.com. Here are some women’s groups that are excellent: www.nawbo.org, and www.nafe.com.

There is no way to make cold calling more effective.. Here is my definition of a cold call: Calling someone who does not know you and is not expecting your call. That’s it. A call is either Cold or Hot. There really is no such thing as a warm call. A Hot call is when we have an introduction, and that is the only kind of call I make. When you have an introduction, you are pre-sold, your competition fades or disappears, and you already have credibility. Your sales cycle is shortened and now you have the time to ask for and receive even more referrals!

Check out Tom Snyder’s article Prospecting: What Winners Do—and Losers Don’t and read the first paragraph.

Where’s the Money?

I’m always amazed at how much money we’re leaving on the table. We’re not asking our clients, our friends, our peers to refer us to people they know. We spend so much time on knee-jerk prospecting tactics—and they’re just that—tactics. Where’s the strategy? Most salespeople make tons of calls and “hope� someone will call back. Or, they follow-up diligently on marketing and trade show leads. (Most of which are worthless.) What if we only talked to people we wanted to talk to AND who wanted to talk to us? What a concept! There are really only two parts to the sales process: Part One is getting in front of the right people, and Part Two is everything that happens after that. If we don’t get in front of the right people, nothing else really matters, does it?

The way to get in front of the right people is to be crystal clear about the person you want to meet. Most of us begin by saying “Anyone who…� No, it is not anyone, and that is way too broad for people to think of someone to refer to you. What I am suggesting is counter-intuitive. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for a person to think of someone to refer to you. Think of yourself as an artist. The more color and lines you put into your picture, the easier it will be for someone to understand.

Recently, a young man who sold insurance, called me for advice. I asked him who his clients were. He said: “Anyone who has assets to protect.� I told him that was the universe, and it was way too broad. After several minutes of discussion, he told me he was looking for young couples starting a family and buying their first home, and dry cleaners. (His company underwrote drycleaners.) It was now much easier for me to think of someone to refer.

In my business, I ask to meet vice presidents of sales or people who run sales teams in North America. These are my clients. There is really no reason for me to talk to anyone else. Guess the people I meet?

It’s All About Referrals

Thanks to Jack and Todd for inviting me to host the blog today. I wrote No More Cold Calling: The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust from Warner Business Books, to transform the way every salesperson, sales executive, and sales organization works.

The book is about more than why cold calling doesn’t work, but it makes a catchy title. The book is really about getting more business by becoming a referral-selling organization.

When I reflected on my sales career, I realized that my best business had come from referrals. When I started working with clients ten years ago—when I founded my company—it was glaringly apparent that they had fabulous relationships with not only their clients, but their peers, vendors, and associates. But, all of these relationships were underleveraged. Many of us become friends with our clients, but are we asking them to help us? No. Let’s start changing that. Here’s how to begin:

• How many clients do you have? With how many do you have excellent relationships? If you haven’t asked them for a referral, now is the time
• Make a list of 100 other people. List those you know best at the top..
• Set a goal for how many people you will contact each week. You should have a minimum of five. (That’s only one per day.)
• Tell people that you are building your business through referrals. Tell them specifically about the results you deliver and the type of client you want. Don’t forget to ask how you can help them.

You can read a sample chapter from my book on the Hachette website.

Guy K's Q&A with Poll(a)y

Guy Kawasaki has Ten Questions with Polly LaBarre, co-author of Mavericks At Work.

My favorite is:

Question: How does gender play into maverick-dom?

Answer: Some of the most powerfully inspiring and effective mavericks we know are women. What’s more, maverick-dom in general is mercifully free of the power-suited legions of Organization Men that have squeezed women out for too long. Mavericks connect and win on the basis of a deeply-felt and original sense of purpose-it doesn’t matter what package that comes in.

For example, IBM’s Jane Harper isn’t an unlikely maverick because she’s a woman, but because she’s survived-and thrived-as a relentless challenger of the status quo at IBM for a quarter-century. She has worked all over the organization, but her real specialty is creating an entirely new position by pushing the organization in new directions. She took on the role of director of Internet technology and operations after she pushed the company to launch one of the first corporate websites in 1994. She got IBM to build a website in part by announcing to Lou Gerstner—along with her boss and collaborator John Patrick—that IBM had bought a huge chunk of floor space at InternetWorld and needed to create a respectable Internet presence, fast.

In 1999, Harper asked a question nobody else wanted to address: Why would really great people-the best technical and managerial talent in the world-want to come work at IBM? In an era when every young, gifted programmer, engineer, or entrepreneur’s first instinct was to write their own business plan or head to eBay or Google, life as a foot soldier in Big Blue’s 320,000-member global army was a pretty hard sell. Harper understood that great people want to work on exciting, high-impact projects, with a small team, in a dynamic setting. So she created exactly that in a Cambridge, MA lab and launched a wholly original and powerfully effective internship program called Extreme Blue.

Since that initial experiment (for which she had no permission and no budget-hallmarks of a maverick), Extreme Blue has grown to a year-long set of programs that attract 250 top interns and hundreds of IBMers as sponsors and mentors. In the six years since the program’s founding, nearly 80% of the participants have accepted full-time positions at IBM (including many with competing offers from Google et al). What’s more, students file 100+ patent disclosures each summer and turn nearly half of the nascent ideas they start with at the beginning of an intense twelve-week summer program into actual products and service for IBM customers.

National Book Month

Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users has a great post going called The book I wish people would read... She chose The Fifth Discipline and Stardust.

There are 83 others who have left their suggestions as well...

60 Minutes and former HP Executives

60 Minutes ran back to back interviews with Patricia Dunn and Carly Fiorina. Yahoo has clips from the interviews as well as pieces that did not air.

I think the most interesting part is that both of them point the finger at Tom Perkins and George Keyworth as the cause for the trouble at HP.

We are shipping Tough Choices.

Big Business Biographies

Some are considering it a golden age for biographies and there are some HUGE biographies coming out this season.

In the continuing trend of Founding Father era biographies, Viking is publishing Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, And the Birth of Modern Nations by Craig Nelson. Paine is probably one of the lesser known figures of that era and Nelson's version draws on the latest research. I should also say this one is thin, only coming in at 378 pages. (If you want a primer on his work, I wholeheartedly recommend the Penguin Great Ideas' version of Common Sense.)

From there, we jump ahead 125 years. There are two 800+ tomes on the early capitalists/robber-barrons Carnegie and Mellon. Steve Forbes reviewed Mellon on Friday in the Wall Street Journal. He loves Andrew Mellon the man, but is not keen on David Cannadine's telling of the story. I wasn't able to find a review of Andrew Carnegie.

The final biography of note is Neal Gabler's Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. This one comes in at 880 pages. Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review. Knopf's site has great side material including an excerpt from the book, a Q&A with Gabler, and fun facts you might not know about Disney.

Honda

What does a company do when its creator leaves? Think Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump.

Many years ago the company Honda was started by two very diverse people. One was a genius engineer who never went to college—Soichiro Honda and the other was a shrewd business man who ran the show—Takeo Fujisawa. One was an extrovert and the other preferred to work behind the scenes.

Masaaki Sato, a longtime writer on the auto industry in Japan, has written an award winning book that shows how these two started one of the most recognized brands and how the transition went after they retired. It wasn’t pretty.

The Honda Myth was published a couple years ago in Japan and won the top annual Japanese nonfiction award. It has been published here in the states with a last chapter updating the book for the US market.

The book is really well written and presents the story with warts and all.

Specific Books For Specific Problems

I have a theory that people buy business books for one of two reasons:

1. They are trying to solve a problem.
2. They are looking for ideas.

We have a tendency to talk about idea books here. Those are what we are attracted to. Tom's essay this morning on the FT/Goldman Sachs Awards is case i