800-CEO-READ Blog

The Other Side

I have officially come over to the Other Side. That’s right, the newest member of the 800-CEO-READ team has just been beamed up and set down running. I’m Rebecca, and I come to you from 8cr’s sister company (and office neighbor), Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, Milwaukee’s oldest and largest independent bookseller.

The first week in 8cr has felt like a whirlwind, a flurry of ideas and book orders and industry communications swirling around me. I spent almost two years on the other side of the door, only 20 feet due east, and yet this concept of 8cr being “in the business of moving ideas��? smacks fresh each time I talk with my new colleagues.

A book to ease the transition? How about David Nasaw’s biography of Andrew Carnegie, reviewed in this week’s BusinessWeek and mentioned in Todd’s post on Big Business Biographies.

Last week I was promoting this to the neighborhood bookshop customers in the holiday gift guide, and this week I’m selling it to business people around the world. Andrew Carnegie is a cross-genre event, much like the man himself. While Carnegie’s lifelong philanthropy is a major thread in the story, Nasaw also focuses on his early scoot up the corporate ladder and aggressive business practices. An advocate for disarmament, a champion of free and public libraries, a writer and a visionary, Carnegie towers—in spite of his small build—as one of the most fascinating characters in U.S. history.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you have a relaxing long weekend and find something good to read.

The Wal-Mart Effect

Sometimes it is good to wait. In my years of doing this, I have always thought publishers went to a paperback book too soon after the hardcover and the paperback book seldom came with any value added feature.

When Charles Fishman’s publisher decided to publish one of my favorite books from this year—The Wal-Mart Effect—as a paperback, I thought they were making the same mistake. Here is my review of the hardcover from earlier. They must have heard my misgivings because Fishman has added a twenty page afterword to the paperback. It is a recap of what has gone on at Wal-Mart since the hardcover was published, which by the way, is a lot.

This is a book that really put this phenomenon that is Wal-Mart into an amazingly well written perspective. If you didn't get the hardcover, now is your chance to pick up the "New and Improved Paperback."

Oh yeah, the book is available the end of December.

Peanut Butter Manifesto

Brad Garlinghouse's Peanut Butter Manifesto depicts a unfocused and siloed Yahoo!. The manifesto was the subject of a page one article in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. Garlinghouse a senior vice president at the company, shows a way out, calling for focused vision, restored accountability, and a radical organization.

I post it here because Tom and I think it is good, focused business writing. Another example that comes directly to mind is Berkshire Hathaway's shareholder letters.

Tom's Essential Resources for Writers

Tom Ehrenfeld is hosting a writing workshop for business book authors later this month. So we asked him what books he would suggest a business author read.Here's his list:

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

I guard my copy of this little masterpiece as closely as Linus does his blanket (or, for that matter, as crazily as Mark David Chapman did with The Catcher in the Rye.) Every single person who cares about the craft of writing should keep this book within arm's reach. Last year Penguin Press published an illustrated version, which contained drawings by Maira Kalman, that were vibrant, evocative, and had nothing whatsoever to add to the core ideas of the book. Stick to the real thing.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark.

This terrific recent book breaks down its lessons into short focused chapters. Clark illustrates his smart strategies with vivid writing samples that engage and instruct. A new classic.

On Writing by Stephen King.

If only all books about writing were written as well as this one. While he indulges in material about the life of the writer, King stresses the most important fact about what writers do: they write.

52 McGs: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Writer Robert McG. Thomas.
[Editor's note: this book is out of print.]

Obits are typically a short format, yet Thomas writes with such precision and flair that his stories feel as full as a grand epic. Read these pieces as a primer on how concise writing can be animated with style and grace.

Floating Off The Page: The Best Stories from the Wall Street Journal's "Middle Column" edited by Ken Wells.

Like obits, the page one stories in the Journal must conform to formal restrictions. Yet when written by masters, as so many Journal writers seem to be, the pieces never feel formulaic. In fact, formal elements are handled so effortlessly that only upon re-reading these gems does one notice how well the articles open with a great lead, come upon a nut graf, and end with a bang.

Another Life by Michael Korda.

The most low-brow high-brow you'll read. Korda's memoir of a life in publishing is ridiculously addictive (I read it on a beach.) His tales of dealing with everyone from Jacqueline Susann to Ronald Reagan provides a terrific overview of the publishing business as it has evolved in this country.

Publishing Confidential: The Insider's Guide to What It Really Takes to Land a Nonfiction Book Deal by Paul B. Brown. [Editor's note: This is also out of print.]

Brown, a former writer and editor for several business magazines and a veteran business ghostwriter, has produced one of the smartest and funniest resources on the process of publishing. His book takes a chance by having his editor Ellen Kadin insert "snide editorial comments" into Brown's material, and it works beautifully.

Putting Your Passion Into Print by Arielle Eckstut & David Henry Sterry.

This extensive resource balances a punchy sense of humor with a wealth of useful, insider-y information on the process of getting a book published. Eckstut is an agent with one of the leading agencies, and this guide reflects a deep knowledge of what works.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

The definitive "takeaway" book for business readers. Ostensibly, this is a baseball book. Lewis writes about how one smart general manager, Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics, challenged generations of conventional wisdom about how to scout talent by implementing a fundamentally different approach to assessing the promise of young players. By capturing this approach so fully, Lewis sheds deep insights into the broader topic of organizational change, showing what happens when an individual introduces an entirely new way of judging the potential of individuals. A great read with deep resonance.

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance by Lou Gerstner.

Who says business books can't be fun? Gerstner ran one of the biggest and most successful turnarounds of all time, taking IBM from a tailspin in 1993, to a leading place in the economy at the end of the decade. And just as impressively, Gerstner wrote (sans collaborator) a book about how he accomplished this feat. The writing may not be pretty. But it's good and clean and clear.

A Ghost's Memoir by John McDonald.

If Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter (of films such as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) were ever to adapt a business book, he would choose McDonald's memoir. Remember, this is a book about the making of a book. Not just any book, of course, but one of the most important business works of the past century, Alfred Sloan's My Years with General Motors. McDonald was an editor at Fortune Magazine when the recently-retired Sloan invited him to act as his ghost. Looming anti-trust challenges led the GM board to suppress the book from publication, and it took more than five years after the work was completed before Doubleday published it. McDonald captures the story of producing and eventually publishing this book with a dry intelligence that suits the story perfectly.

The Age of Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate Change by Art Kleiner. [Editor's note: This is also out of print.]

This masterpiece of business analysis proves that when you let one of the best ghostwriters of the past decade loose on his own material, he can illuminate a compelling business idea with insightful writing. Kleiner reports on how our modern managerial mindset was largely created by groups of "heretics"-revolutionary thinkers who led corporations to enact fundamental change in how they discussed and thought about their people and their purpose.

Our additions:

The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity By Lissa Warren.

One Great Insight Is Worth a Thousand Good Ideas: An Advertising Hall-of-famer Reveals the Most Powerful Secret in Business By Phil Dusenberry. This is the paperback version of Then We Set His Hair on Fire.

Eyes Wide Shut

Here’s a quick test: while you’re reading this, imagine that you’re at a restaurant and you are served an indulgent dessert. What is it? Write it down.

Now try the same exercise again, but this time close your eyes and transport yourself anywhere in the world. Imagine the smells, the sounds, and the kind of tastes that place evokes. Keep your eyes shut for at least fifteen seconds for the whole picture to come together in your mind. Let your dessert truly come from that place.

Now write down your answer. How is it different? Chances are that by closing your eyes and mentally putting yourself in another place, you gave your mind a chance to escape your physical surroundings. You were no longer relying on your brainpower, rather tapping into your memories and imagination, which is far more powerful. Furthermore, the success of the brand itself is often tied to the place that inspired it, and can spark similarly powerful images in the minds of consumers.

Where would you go to find one of the answers on your list? Is it a place? A decade? A state of mind? It’s a funny example to try with the stapler, but I’ll give it a shot. Since I know that one of my goals is to create a new and elegant design, I’m going to imagine it as if it were a sculpture in a modern art gallery. Try it, too. Really close your eyes and open your mind to what that would look like.

What was yours? Mine was black and glossy, and stood up vertically. It closed like a clamshell, so that you couldn’t tell it was a stapler until you opened it up.

Hmmm… camouflage desk art…I might be on to something.

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

Branding by the numbers.

Maybe it’s because I’m the daughter of an engineer, or maybe it’s because I actually liked my algebra teacher back in high school, but there’s something about using numbers as a source for ideas that I’ve always found particularly fascinating.

In branding and new product creation, the ability to own a particular number is invaluable. Think about the difference between a “blended vegetable drink� and “V8.� From the name, you know that there are eight vegetables, or servings of vegetables, in every bottle. Heinz 57 brags on its website that in 1896 Henry Heinz turned “more than 60 products into ’57 Varieties.’ The magic number becomes world-renowned and now is virtually synonymous with the H.J. Heinz Company.� The number has well outlasted the name, with many of the 57 varieties, such as mincemeat and pickled cauliflower, thankfully gone from the shelves. You can also use numbers as a source for new product and brand ideas. Start with the number first and see where it takes you.

Numbers can evoke any number of things, from ingredients, such as Five Alive juice drinks; time it takes to use, such as the Aussi 5-Minute Miracle; the frequency with which you use it, like One-a-Day vitamins. The best part? Numbers can also be totally made up. The Oil of Olay brand created their “7 Signs of Aging� only to have their lotions contain the ingredients that treat them all. Car companies do it all the time with their 3000, 6000, and 9000 model cars. What do they signify? Absolutely nothing. Software developers use numbers to show newer versions and editions. Razor brands use the number of blades they have to suggest efficacy, which is why we have the Mach3 from Gillette only to be outdone by the Quattro from Schick, which has been (temporarily?) trumped with the five-bladed Fusion from Gillette.

There’s a risk here: when the number means something specific, such as a sale number, an interest rate, or something that can be easily one-upped by a competitor, it’s better to look elsewhere. Also, when thinking about numbers be wary of using numbers like “2000�, especially in our post-millennium world. The Dilbert cartoon featured a product called the “Gruntmaster 6000.� You don’t need me to tell you that if your product sounds like a Dilbert cartoon, run.

In most cases, however, numbers can help formulate your product’s promise and turn what could be a parity product into something that has a clear point-of-difference. So pick a number. Any number. And see what happens when a certain number or numbers become attached with your brand. If you’re feeling indecisive, use the number “3�.

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

Branding at 65 mph.

My friend hates—really hates—the old Michelin tire ads, you know, the ones with the cute babies rolling around the tires? “It’s absurd,� he tells me. “Babies don’t drive cars! What’s worse, I actually understand why it works. The message is clear: if you don’t buy our tires, your kid may die in a car crash. I resent that ploy.�

What’s he talking about? Most of the time, I have some of the same hesitations with this visual image as my friend does. However, marketing is rarely, if ever, based solely on logic. It relies on the emotion—the visceral reaction—that instant connection with an audience that only the illogical can create. That’s why thinking visually can be so important. It’s not that a picture says a thousand words. It’s that your picture can trigger an emotion inside the brain of a consumer that is so powerful no amount of words would be able to express it. Michelin created a simple visual icon of their brand message: safety. They did it without crash-test dummies or statistics or technical specifications; just a few diaper-clad toddlers and everyone got it, like it or not. As for my friend, the agency that created the ad would say that it was effective. Even though he hated the ad, he remembered the product, many years after the campaign ended.

So here’s your billboard. Which hypothesis from your list would you choose to make the perfect billboard exercise? And how would you fill it in?

Asking people to create this kind of quick, distinct visual imagery around a certain hypothesis can be very productive. Even though I present my finished branding concpets as if they were two-page introductory ads, in truth I’m always striving for the billboard. With the billboard, the disciplines of the print ad become magnified. You may be forced to convey your message using just one word or one visual cue to get your brand message across.

Putting something on a billboard demands a strategic point of focus. For example, I would choose to put on the billboard the fact that this stapler could be a one-touch solution. Think about that: if you had to create a picture with only a visual that said you could staple papers with just one touch, what would it be?

Maybe you would put the stapler balancing on one person’s finger, or maybe you would show other “one-touch� things like an elevator button or doorbell and feature the stapler in the line-up. Or maybe just a visual of someone who is snapping his or her fingers in that “it’s a snap� kind of way. Each idea might get you thinking not only of potential product attributes (activating a stapler with a button being one of them), but also of names (a stapler called “Snap�, perhaps) and visually enduring themes (such as the balancing act.)

There’s a second exercise here if you’re looking for words instead, or in addition to the visual. Imagine that you’re driving down the highway and you see the same billboard from the other direction. The message is the same, but this time there was no visual, just one, two, or three words that were equally as powerful. What were they?

For the Michelin tires, maybe the words would have been “Protect what matters.� For my stapler, maybe they would have been “Just add finger� or “One touch wonderful.� What did you come up with?

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

Finish This _______________.

I’m sure some of you will disagree with me on this one, but I firmly believe that consumer focus groups are not a good place to create ideas, and furthermore consumers cannot react to an idea presented to them in sterile, concept-board fashion. Asking opinions at the conceptual stage of the game is inviting in the marketing equivalent of Pandora’s pandemic. How do I know? Ask ten people about anything: having wisdom teeth removed, how they feel about flying, what they thought about the latest Adam Sandler movie—and everyone will tell you something different. Opinions are not great creative fodder, however you might want to bring in ideas that are based on your own—or others’—personal experiences and knowledge.

That’s where our imaginary friend, Janie, comes in. “Janie� says the beginning of an idea and it’s up to us to figure out the rest of it. Sometimes, the missing element is a name, i.e. Janie says “I love this new soft drink because it is so fresh-tasting. No wonder they call it _______.� Other times, it is an emotion, i.e. Janie says, “I love this new credit card because it makes me feel _______.�

Using this technique is a great trick and a no-lose proposition. First of all, we avoid the ignorant, knee-jerk (opinion-laden) responses that come had I put the word “you� in Janie’s place.

In fact, Janie called us this morning from her cell phone and told us that she loves the new feature on her new stapler that tells her when she’s about to run out of staples. Her cell phone signal ran out, so we had to just guess what that signal was. Can you think of at least one? Good, then Janie’s done her job.

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

Prop It Up

A friend of mine has a wry, insightful blog called “Anthropologist for Corporate America|: Multitasking My Way To Inner Peace.� From her subtitle, you might gather the tongue-in-cheek-yet-sadly-true idiosyncrasies of today’s corporate environment that she writes about. She works for one of the major computer network companies and we were talking about how every brainstorming meeting she endures starts with a clear set of goals (think our Best Wish List) but it is only a matter of time before people lose sight of the agenda because each person brings his or her own real agenda with them. These agendas come complete with favorite ideas, personal priorities, egos, and lots of baggage to boot. Before you know it, there are so many tangents going on, it’s three hours later and precious little has been accomplished.

An essential part of successful single-minded brainstorming—on your own or in a group—is the ability to concentrate on one area at a time. Every meeting needs an anchor, a focal point, and something that will help put tangents to the side, where they (by definition) belong. One way to do that is use a prop, a picture, or a page from a magazine that represents the idea and literally keeps everyone on the same page. (The most important thing is that that the item has to work with the proposition, or else you’ll spend time focusing in on the wrong idea.)

For example, if I go back to one of yesterday’s hypotheses, I wanted to borrow from the success of iMac or iPod. So I would actually hunt out an iMac or iPod advertisement (there’s plenty of them out there) and think how I would create a similar visual communication for my line of funky staplers.

Another way to use props and pictures is the “I Spy� approach. Look around wherever you are right now and ask yourself: is there something around you that might bring you one step closer to the answer you are looking for?

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

You are now entering the Hypothesis Zone

The Hypothesis Zone gives you a chance to look around and see all the different possibilities that exist for any challenge without having to worry exactly how they will play out. The most important element of successful hypothesizing is to be free from negatives. We’re not judging ourselves, we’re not looking for the precise answer—we’re just trolling for the clues.

I find it quite liberating to come up with ideas with the pressure off. There could be a name I like and I don’t know what to do with it, or an area I’d like to explore, or simply a question that I like to have answered. Actually, I write a lot of mine as questions because they are still guesses to me.

Moving on from yesterday’s list, try thinking of some hypotheses to your project. I’ll do the same with my stapler:

Hipper than the standard Swingline black-armed version.
Borrow from success of iMac or iPod?
Explore colors- maybe translucent?
Colored staples?
Create cool extra feature- mini Polaroids? Digital camera?

Charge more for a nicer design.
Make designer or designer inspired?
Make shape more elegant or funky.
What materials besides metal or plastic?
Make match desk or office décor.

Easier to load staples and actually use.
Create the “one-touch� stapler.
Borrow some functionality of electric stapler?
Motion sensor?
Create signal before you run out of staples.
Replace whole “staple cartridge� at once.

Don’t hold back on writing the amount of ways to solve your idea. Think now, judge later. Your list will naturally cull down. You’ll see repeat thoughts and ideas, and ones that don’t seem as interesting or promising as others. And because a lot of these ideas are questions, a good rule of thumb in reviewing your list is if you can’t imagine at least one answer, then you might skip that hypothesis.

If good branding and new product invention was solely about thinking of some good ideas, a list of twenty or so hypotheses would be a pretty good jumping off point for creating concepts and potential strategic areas to explore. Most companies will write some standardized concepts and run a few focus groups to test the waters. But why walk away from creative momentum? Strategic hypothesizing identifies where you want to go, gives you a few ways of getting there, and puts you in the perfect state-of-mind to begin solution hunting, which we’ll get to next.

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

Make A Wish… Or Three

Imagine that you had a magic lamp and a genie came out of it and granted you three wishes for your brand or new product. This is not “I want it to be a billion dollar business� or “I wish for all of my competition to disappear.� This is, “If your brand could accomplish any three things, what would they be?� By asking this, you understant the expectations of a project right at the beginning of it.

If you happen to have a real brand challenge in mind, this might be a good time to write down your own Three Wishes. If you don’t have a specific product in mind, use something on your desk or within your eyesight for right now. It could be a cell pjpme, your favorite pair of jeans, a paper clip, your chair, your cat, the HVAC system in your home—anything. Me? I’ll choose a stapler. Now once you’ve chosen your product, go ahead and give it Three Wishes. How about a new brand name? Maybe you want to create new line extensions of the brand or product you selected? Are you looking for the new form, design, package or shape for your object? Write it down and write your wish list for your product.

Here are the Three Wishes for my stapler:

1. I want to make it hipper than the standard Swingline black-armed version.
2. I want to be able to charge more for a nicer design.
3. It should be easier to load staples and to actually use than the current fare.

Although this may seem like a pedantic and limiting step to take, approaching brands creatively requires discipline and focus above all else. So if you start with a clear understanding of what you are looking for and work within the tight restraints of your promise or idea, you will not be overwhelmed by all the possibilities, and you’ll have a much better chance at arriving at a great brand solution.

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By Lynn Altman

Think Big, Start Small

After a few years of working in branding, I had an assignment with a cereal company that was a definite milestone in my career. It wasn’t the project output that was so remarkable, rather the briefing for it. Up until that point, project kick-off meetings were at least two hours long, involved stacks upon stacks of background information, and outlined specific branding or new product areas for us to explore. Instead of the big conference room kind of meeting to which I had become accustomed, I found myself in a small office with the entire briefing document handed to me on one single sheet. The client said, “People are busier than ever and do not have time to eat hearty and satisfying breakfasts. Create new products that are either ‘grab and go’ or ‘heat and eat’ that solve this need.� All this with one parameter: “No bagels.� Less than thirty minutes later I was on my way back to the airport waiting to fly back to New York.

My head was overflowing because for once it did seem like the sky was the limit in terms of flavors, forms, ingredients and all the combinations thereof. With such a big task at hand, I did what anyone else would do: I got stuck. Days went by and this paralysis-by-possibilities did not subside. Suddenly, I realized that I had to narrow my probing or I’d never move forward. I went back to the three main points on that one-page document: “people are busy for breakfast,� “they want a something more hearty and satisfying,� and “can be grab-and-go or heat-and-eat.� Once I looked at the paramaters instead of the possibilities, I was up and running.

Making a list of the three key messages or key objectives for your new product or branding project is a great way to narrow your thinking and focus in on what matters most before you forge ahead. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t look far and wide to explore new physical, functional, and emotional territories for your brand to live in. Rather, the less you get caught up in infinite choice, the easier it is to explore a range of usable ideas.

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By Lynn Altman

Today's visitor: Lynn Altman author of Brand It Yourself

Good morning!

Today Lynn Altman, author of Brand It Yourself: The Fast Focused Way to Marketplace Magic, will be hosting our blog. Learn more about her and the book here.

Feel free to give her a nice welcome and add any comments as the day progresses. If you have a question, Lynn will respond.

Enjoy your day!

[Update]
p.s. Check out an excerpt of Brand It Yourself, here.

Cuban military reads Tom Peters

Today's Cuban generals are "in search of excellence" -- business excellence, that is. To move through the ranks, they're expected to have a certain business savvy.

Fidel's future successor Raul Castro believes that a business-educated military can help get Cuba's economy back into gear.The military runs tourist hot-spots and uses their know-how for nickel mining, oil exploration and acquiring foreign capital. "The University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies estimates that soldiers control more than 60% of the island's economy" (subscription required; today's WSJ article Cuba's Military Puts Business On Front Lines).

Where is this business knowledge gained?

A mixture of international education and business books. "For a time, business books such as In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman became required reading for ambitious officers looking to advance in the ranks."

Jack Covert Selects: Purpose

Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
By Nikos Mourkogiannis, Palgrave Macmillan, 272 Pages, $27.95, Hardcover, October 2006, ISBN 1403975817

I have a confession to make: I don't select all of the “Jack Covert Selects�. I’ve got a lot of smart people on my staff, and they often help out. It is impossible to keep up with the ten to fifteen books that come in each week, so there are three of us who go through the inventory. Of course, we each have our likes and dislikes, but this process insures that I don't miss any good ones.

My second-in-command, Todd, walked into my office a couple weeks ago and started talking non-stop about Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies. His enthusiasm convinced me to move the book to the top of my stack and I am grateful for his prompting. Author Nikos Mourkogiannis makes the case that all great companies need a purpose. He defines purpose as "the reason for doing something that appeals to our ideas about what is right and what is worthwhile.� Pretty heady stuff.

Nikos says there are four possible sources of energy for purpose. First is "the new"— companies like Sony and 3M who exist to discover. Second is "the excellent"—companies like The Economist and Berkshire Hathaway that believe that excellence in their field is the highest pursuit. Third is "the helpful"—Disney's and Marriot's missions are to increase happiness. The final is "the effective"—ambition and daring fuel goals like Bill Gates' obsession with getting the Microsoft operating system into every desktop computer. The author relates each of these energy sources back to a branch of human philosophy (Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Hume, and Nietzsche). Challenging? Sure. Fascinating? Absolutely.

Mourkogiannis then applies various aspects of business back to the idea of purpose. There are profiles of business leaders, like Henry Ford and Sam Walton, and descriptions of their respective sense of purpose. He also addresses issues like morale, innovation, competitive advantage, and leadership, and how purpose reinforces or expands the possibilities within these issues.

So much good stuff, but truly the powerful message for me was the idea of purpose. I have always felt 800-CEO-READ's purpose was to serve (i.e., be helpful). That conviction influences our hiring, how we treat our customers, and the time we take choosing the books we review. Pick this one up. You won't be disappointed.

Jack Covert Selects: Follow the Other Hand

Follow the Other Hand: A Remarkable Fable that Will Energize Your Business, Profits, and Life by Andy Cohen, St. Martin’s Press, 150 Pages, $22.95, Hardcover, October 2006, ISBN 0312357931

In case you haven’t noticed, I like fables. I seem to learn better when lessons are in context and presented in story form. I think that I am not unusual in that. The popularity of fables lately supports my assumption. The stories usually involve a troubled business person and a sage/guru/seer who will lead the businessperson to see how to fix a problem. The journey to that realization is the story. The key to a successful fable is great writing. Your involvement in the story drives the book. This book accomplishes all these things.

Follow the Other Hand is the story of Jonathan West who runs a family business selling olive oil. He is being hammered by big box retailers and the disappearance of his core customers, the mom and pop stores. A successful friend tells him to meet a guy that helped him turn around his business. What makes this story unique is that the guru is a magician (hence the name of the book) aptly named Merlin. Merlin explains that “Misdirection� is essential in magic.

“Mis-di-rec-tion� exclaimed Merlin, “is not only a method for achieving magic. It is a reminder of a simple question that we must constantly ask ourselves, or else be willing to accept the consequences if we don’t. Which hand do we choose to follow? Do we follow what everyone else is thinking or do we challenge their assumptions and look in the other hand for new ideas?
This is a surprisingly simple metaphor for thinking outside the box or looking at a problem differently.

The author is a consultant and an expert magician. He explains the process that a magic trick needs to go through to be…well…magic. It starts with the “effect� which is what you want to do—make an elephant disappear, for example. Followed by the “method� which is how you do it. Then finally the performance which is how you present the trick. It doesn’t take much to see how all these various parts can be introduced in a business environment to begin a conversation about new product development, a new strategic plan or any business problem.

Follow the Other Hand is readable and illustrated with diagrams of magic tricks; the perfect book to use to begin change within your organization.

The BIG break...

People are looking for their big break; they enjoy being big fish in small ponds. They feel ready to be known, and ready to have their dreams and experiences acknowledged and legitimized. Hand over the microphone and start the cameras rolling. Give them the backstage pass and the insider treatment. These folks are itching to stand out, stand up, and be celebrated with their names in lights (or print, or pixels).
-Lisa Johnson

...click here for more...

Business Ideas for Your Ears

I think business audio on the net is exploding. Here is a sampling of what I found this week

• Lisa Haneberg has been doing her Fireside Chats for some time. Her latest two are with Peter Georgescu(The Source of Success) and Lee Froschheiser (Vital Factors).
• HBSP Working Knowledge has started an audio series. Their first interview is with Richard Tedlow, author of Andy Grove: The Life and Times of An American.
• IT Conversations has the occasional business person. Dr. Moria Gunn interviews Mark Thompson, author of Success Built To Last (September Jack Covert Selects).

We also have a new interview up on our Podcasts Blog. I talked with Jonathon Flaum, author of How The Paper Fish Learned To Swim.

Pachter on the Author Tribulations

Richard Pachter writes business book reviews for the Miami Herald and today has a great article on the trials and tribulations of authors and their books. This is required reading for anyone who is thinking about getting a book published.

Here is Seth Godin's reality check from the article:

"The unspoken truth is that except for perhaps 250 giant books every year [out of 75,000 published], the publisher is expecting the author to do 100 percent of the sales and promotion. Because authors don't understand that, they end up bitter, angry and perhaps destitute."

Let me also direct you to the great post Seth wrote back in August on the subject of being an author.

Jack Covert Selects: The Starfish and The Spider

The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
By Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, Portfolio, 240 Pages, $24.95, Hardcover, October 2006, ISBN 1591841437

I don't know many business books that start with a story about the Apache Indians in the 1600's. After the Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Incan empires, they looked north to the American Southwest. The Apaches didn't have anything of value, so the Spaniards tried to convert them into Catholic farmers. This didn't work out too well. Why? The Apaches have no central leader. There was no Montezuma or Atahuallpa to overthrow or bargain with. The Apaches were a decentralized organization that gained strength the more it was attacked.

You might be asking what this has to do with the world we live in today, business or otherwise. Have you heard of Craiglist or Skype? They are bound to do the same to newspapers and the phone as Napster and its descendants have done to the music industry. These are all organizations that are not dependent on a leader for its survival. And, of course, there is al Queda, another decentralized group that no one can seem to get a location on.

The metaphor of the starfish and the spider explains the authors’ idea so well. The spider is an eight-legged insect that, while it may survive the removal of one or two legs, it would surely die if it lost another leg or even its head. Most companies are spiders.

For a starfish, the removal of a leg means nothing. The leg grows back and another starfish grows from the removed leg. Decentralized organizations work the same way. If part of the organization is hurt or destroyed, the group fractures and grows from the broken pieces. This can also happen non-violently, like when an Alcoholics Anonymous circle forms where one is needed.

This book is more than interesting stories and cute metaphors. Like all good business book authors, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom give you a number of frameworks to think about as you read the book. They provide a list of qualities that can help you identify what a leaderless organization looks like. They give you five factors that make these organizations work (circles, a catalyst, ideology, a pre-existing network, and a champion). They also give three strategies for fighting decentralized groups.

This book is loaded; I didn't even have time here to talk about the Quakers...

Richard Florida is blogging

Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class, is blogging at The Creativity Exchange.

Jack Covert Selects: The Elegant Solution

The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation by Matthew May,
Free Press, 256 Pages, $26.00, Hardcover, October 2006, ISBN 0743290178

One million. That is the number of ideas that Toyota implements every year. Built into their culture is the insight that "Good enough never is." Now, the trouble with most Toyota books is they are written from the factory floor. There are many goods ones, but they don't seem to find an audience outside operations.

Enter The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation. Toyota University gave author Matthew May the task of translating the Toyota Production System so the knowledge worker would understand it and use it. In other words, May knows Toyota.

The key to Toyota's success is the nature of constant improvement. Innovation to them is not invention or artistry. It is gaining deep understanding of the work at hand. It is about having a strong engagement in the work you do. It is about tinkering and trying new things. It is not by chance that the tagline for Toyota's luxury brand, Lexus, is "The Pursuit of Perfection".

I’d like to share this paragraph with you because it infuses innovation with energy and makes it the stuff of dreams:

"Slaying dragons and storming castles isn't for the faint of heart. The root meaning of ingenuity means free thinker. In a world run by powerful bosses and inflexible systems, rarely if ever is creative license granted freely. It's taken. And that takes basic courage. Or at least a soldier's bravado. It's the obstacles that make the achievement so impressive. If it was easy, we wouldn't be talking about it. No challenge, no creativity."

The rise of Toyota is not just an automotive story. If you haven't spent time reading about the company and, more importantly, their management philosophy, here is your chance.

Pointing to A Podcast

I just posted an interview I did with Stephen Covey. I was honored and think it went great. Hop over to the podcast blog and take a listen.

Citizen Marketers Giveaway and Tour

We got a ton of requests for Citizen Marketers and I had about 40 books to send out. These want out today. I apologize to those who didn't end up getting one.

I also wanted to mention the offer that Ben and Jackie have going on right now. One of them will come speak to your group or organization if you cover their travel expenses and buy 200 copies of their book. They are filling 40 dates between February 5th and March 30th. Here are the details for the book tour.

Bill and Warren go to College

Jack sent me a note this morning. He saw a PBS special that had Bill Gates and Warren Buffet speaking at University of Nebraska. He thought it was way cool and wanted me to find whatever I could.

This presentation at Nebraska was actually their second college appearance. In 1998, they did a student event at the University of Washington. The event Jack is talking about took place last year. The links I am pointing you to is Fortune's coverage of both.

There is a small clip on the University of Nebraska, and you can buy a DVD of the Nebraska event from the PBS Store.

Jack Covert Selects: Tough Choices: A Memoir

Tough Choices, A Memoir by Carly Fiorina, Portfolio Publishers, $24.95 Hardcover, 300 Pages, October 2006, ISBN 159184133X

There are people you meet who are special, more alive, more commanding, just different, from you and me. The first person I remember meeting like that was Thomas “Tip� O’Neill, former Speaker of the House, whom I met at a book convention twenty years ago. Jack Welch is like that. Carly Fiorina is like that. Unless you’ve been living off the grid for the past decade, you know that Carly is the former CEO of Hewlett Packard. During her tenure, she also became a celebrity, and this book is her story.

Carly understands that readers will want to know what happened at HP, so she opens her story the day she was fired by the HP board. But this book is more than a chronicle of her years running and leaving that Fortune 20 company. She begins her second chapter with: “How a story ends has much to do with how it begins and so I must begin with my mother and father.� If this indicates to you that this book is her personal story, you are right, but she consistently drops in valuable paragraphs loaded with rewarding business insight.

Early on, as she writes that perhaps she became adaptable to change due to moving five times while in high school:

“I experienced first-hand the power of high expectations; had less been demanded, less would have been achieved. I saw my parents’ fears and feelings of inadequacy compel them forward: their example convinced me never to allow my own fears and insecurities to stop me in my tracks. I learned that change can be both difficult and exciting: with each separation and loss came a great adventure. I discovered the impact of asking a question and listening to the answer: people everywhere have something to teach and are eager to share.�

As you read about her years at school and at AT&T, you will remember those words, and understand better how she achieved such success in the face of enormous gender prejudice and organizational apathy. Each challenge helped her develop a theory of leadership that she would later apply to her job as CEO of HP. Let me give you an example. She writes:

“Sometimes, if things aren’t working, people can see that there are problems but they can’t identify the cause or, consequently, the solution. A leader’s job is to find and address the cause, just as a doctor’s job is to try and cure the disease rather that simple treat the symptoms.�

“[W]hen I arrived at the company they founded, I encountered a group of people who could not imagine their future beyond Bill and Dave and the strategy and practices they’d always followed. I saw a company that had no identity or sense of itself beyond the celebration of Bill and Dave’s legacy and the values they preached…�

I recommend Tough Choices for a variety of reasons. Carly does an excellent job of giving each organization a personality; she offers insight into her belief system and actions; she admits to mistakes and takes credit when credit is due; and she also names names, just as everyone wanted her to. But the true gift of the book is to get to know this exceptional person; you won’t regret the time you spend in her company

Business Book to Use Wisdom of Crowds Approach

Shared Insights is working with folks from Wharton and MIT to create a business book that will be written by thousands of people. The project is called We Are Smarter Than Me. They are using wiki technology to let The Crowd contribute their ideas and writings to the project. They have a working table of contents and some content in each of the chapters. A number of people sent me a link to the Publisher's Weekly article that ran yesterday.

Here are some things that caught my attention:

• In signing up to join the project, you have to given them everything short of your social security number. The required fields included address, phone number, company type, position, and size of employer. Much too hard. They don't need any of that information and I would have walked away had I not been writing this post.
• If you read their privacy policy, they say they are collecting this information to "optimize" their ability to serve to community. This is what they mean by that:

  The Personal Information you provide will be kept confidential and used to support your relationship with We Are Smarter Than Me. Except as discussed in this policy, we will not sell or otherwise disclose your Personal and Business Information to any outside parties.
  
  We may, however, provide our corporate members with your name, title, company, address, phone number and e-mail address. Corporate members are industry-leading companies who supply products and services to your industry. Corporate members are committed to our policy of maintaining an environment free of commercial pressure. We may also share personally identifiable information with law enforcement or other entities as required by law or as we reasonably determine to be necessary to protect our rights or the rights of others, to prevent harm to persons or property, to fight fraud, or to enforce our web site terms of use.

  
  So, they are saying they won't share it with anyone, except businesses that give them a bunch of money.
  
• If you read the terms of service, you find a number of things. The community manager (We Are Smarter Than Me, LLC) owns the all rights to all the content submitted to the site. In exchange for joining the community, members are granted an attribution, non-commerical Creative Commons license. So, here the company can make money and contributors cannot.
• Profits that are made on the WAS project are going to be contributed to charity. Here is the exact verbage:

  We recognize your contribution to this Community and we want you to help us direct any financial rewards that result from the fruits of our collective efforts. At the end of calendar year 2007, we will ask all Members who have contributed to the WAS Book wiki project (“Contributing Members�) to help us select one or more charities to which the Community Manager will contribute the profit from royalties from the WAS Book. As such, if royalties are earned from the WAS Book, then all proceeds from such royalties, net of costs for the creation of the Community, the writing and editing of the WAS Book and any other out of pocket expenses of the Community Manager in connection with the Community and the WAS Book, will be allocated to the charity voted on by a majority of the Contributing Members at the end of calendar year 2007.

  
  These statements about net costs and out of pocket expenses always scare me. The costs of writing and editing the book? I thought that is why you are bringing in The Crowd.

Beyond the Terms and Conditions problems I have with this, I am not sure this is going to work. James Surowiecki's collective intelligence model rests on a number of ideas:

(a) that there are some things that crowds can't do (they need to be given a problem with a discrete or quantifiable set of possible answers from which to choose), (b) that care must be taken in the 'qualification' of the crowd to meet Surowiecki's conditions of nonbias (they must understand the problem, be diverse in their perspectives, independent of groupthink tendencies and each able to bring a bit of unique knowledge to the problem, and (c) that there needs to be some incentive for people to participate in the crowd (those guessing correctly the number of jelly beans in the large jar at least win the jelly beans) ...[Hat Tip: IFTF, How to Save The World]

I would direct you to Surowiecki's first point. There is no set of specific answers to this problem of writing a business book. If you want to predict elections or jelly beans in a jar, go to The Crowd. I think you read a business book for a particular perspective from an expert on a given problem and hope that it will help you understand better the problems that you are dealing with.

What are all your thoughts on the method We Are Smarter Than We is using to write the book as well as the conditions they have built in?

China Part 2

As I posted earlier, I am reading the brilliant winner of the FT/Goldman Sachs business book of the year China Shakes the World. In the chapter on piracy I found a fun story.

“Similarly, a series of how-to business books written by Paul Thomas, a Harvard Business School professor, became a mini publishing sensation in Beijing in 2004. As Thomas’s fame grew, he lent his reputation to other books by writing prefaces, and everyone seemed to be winning. Then it emerged that there was no professor at Harvard that fitted his description, and the books bearing his illustrious name had been written by students paid the equivalent of one-third of a cent per word to make it up. Fake books, it turns out, are big business. Several publishers, including state-owned houses, had more than a hundred bogus titles on the market in early 2005.�

What Will Wright Reads

You are starting to see an number of outlets write profiles on Will Wright, the creator of The Sims. He is working on a new game called Spore, which looks to be his most ambitious yet.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece on him earlier this year (couldn't find the link). They mentioned some of his inspirations in the piece and I remember wanting to write a short post on them. I never got to it.

The New Yorker has written an even more extensive profile and Kottke has already written the bibliography.

China

The winner of the 2006 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year award was China Shakes the World by James Kynge. I want to give you a little taste of the book before I finish it and write a Jack Covert Selects review.

In the chapter called The Population Paradox Kynge talks about the lure of the huge population of new consumers waiting for our consumer goods. He states:

“But if foreign businessmen arrive in China transfixed by size and scale, many of them depart haunted by the concept of share. They envisage being able to sell their products to a multitude of Chinese and then watch as the hoped-for multitude is sliced and diced into morsels. Only certain sections of society are willing buyers of most products, and reaching them is made difficult by layers of local protectionism. When a market is finally found, aggressive domestic competitors have usually got there first. The fabled billion-person market is frequently reduced to a fraction in the figment of a dream.�

What is the right question?

The folks over at execuBooks spend each week talking about a book on their blog. They normally bring in a guest writer to ponder a variety of aspects about the book. This week they are talking about Fred Reichheld's book The Ultimate Question.

In a post titled There is an even better question, Phil Dourado talks about the book and suggests a different query:

Fred's ultimate question is "Would you recommend us to a friend?" And it's a great question. He recommends scrapping all your satisfaction surveys and replacing them with this one ultimate question. Enterprise Rent-a-Car has done something similar, and to great effect.

But, it's still a question about intention. And customer intentions are slippery beasts.

I heard Chris Pilling, the CEO of the UK bank First Direct (highest levels of customer satisfaction for a retail bank in the UK consistently for the past ten years, the world's first telephone-only bank, some of the highest satisfaction ratings for a bank in the world...ever), say that they ask this question instead:

"HAVE you recommended us to a friend?"

We at 800ceoread are pretty big fans of NPS and The Ultimate Question. We use it weekly to find out how we are doing with customers. Our propaganda piece (i.e. marketing brochure) has two pages devoted to it.

Given Andrew's good question we decided to go to the source: Mr. Fred Reichheld himself. This is from an email Fred wrote me today in response to the post I sent him:

I agree that it is useful to gather the number of referrals a person claims to have made--but that is looking in the past, while growth is about the present/future. Someone who made six referrals over the past year but recently had a lousy experience (or found a better supplier) is not a promoter. I think the top priority should be to focus learning on the current (or immediate past like last week) and the near future--thus, the ultimate question works best as it is formulated in my book.

This made me think about Pfeffer and Sutton's Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense. They say you should be careful of the past. It is amazing how quickly you color it with the circumstances of today. Use current data and constantly experiment rather than relying on what worked in the past.

I think that is what Fred is getting at as well.

Thoughts?

New Business Mags

While everyone seems to lament the state of newspaper and magazine publishing, there are others who see opportunity. My friend Andrea sent this post about a new London-based magazine called Monocle:

The founder of Wallpaper, Tyler Brûlé, is returning to the magazine business with a new title, Monocle, focusing on geopolitics, business, culture and design. The magazine, set to debut in February, will be published 10 times a year. Brule hopes the magazine will entice readers of more staid publications with slick visual content and a slightly futuristic sensibility. Given this hip aura, the choice of title is a bit curious, summoning images of riding crops and spiked Prussian helmets. But the technical definition of "monocle" as a simple lens works quite nicely: "a device used to converge or diverge transmitted light and to form images."

It seems that Brûlé is tired of the talk as well.

"I'm so tired of hearing from all corners of the media that print is dead," proclaimed Brûlé. "Well, it's not. It's a time when magazines should be pulling up their socks and turning out more fabulous, more confident, more robust products." [WWD]

It also reminded me of Condé Nast's entry into the business segment. Coming in May is Portfolio. This is their description from the news release:

Condé Nast Portfolio will feature the high caliber of writing, photography, and design that readers of Condé Nast magazines have come to expect. Early circulation efforts will capitalize on the company’s newsstand authority, and will also take advantage of Condé Nast’s existing relationship with millions of top management readers, as well as the database of American City Business Journals, a unit of Advance Publications.

I wouldn't bet against them. They make beautiful publications. They own properties such as Wired, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, and Vanity Fair. I wonder what would have happened had bought Fast Company...

Pat Lencioni News

A solid WSJ story about Pat Lencioni last week combined a dose of the mundane (he is “an enthusiastic 41-year-old with a toothy grin and intent hazel eyes�) and the intriguing (Lencioni’s background includes time spent as a budding screenwriting, and a consultant for Bain.)

Last week I spoke with Lencioni about his work, and he shared the news that at the moment he has plans for three more books, and that the title of his next one is “The Three Signs of A Miserable Job.� The title should, like all his books, convey what this one focuses on. Lencioni shared a few thoughts on the role of fallibility in his books: “I don’t think that life is neat and tidy, which is why I make my characters flawed. I want people to think of these characters as real people.� He says that of all the characters in all his books, the one most closely resembled on himself would be the kid from Death By Meeting. And he shared one last thought common to all writers, whether budding novelists or denizens, like him, of the best-seller lists: “I am writing my seventh book now, and with every one of them I say to myself, please don’t make this the one that sucks.�

Walt Disney

One of the many new biographies being published this season is a book that I thought would be interesting by Neal Gabler called Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. The LA Times reviews it here.