800-CEO-READ Blog

Give it away already...

Would you keep your nicely designed business card for yourself? No, probably not. Your goal is to get it eyeballed as much as possible. You want people to know about you, what you do, where you do it and your digits. The people that are curious will call, drop you a line and see what you're up to.

The same could be said for your idea--your book. Yesterday we had a few talented media folks come in and videotape each of the 8cr crew on the company, publishing and business books. Both Jack and Todd kept reiterating how important it is to share your idea in other ways beyond the book. Blog it. E-book it. Podcast it. Vlog it. Do what it takes to get it into the hands of the people who care. Take Cory Doctorow, he published a novel and put it all online in an e-book.

Within a day, there were 30,000 downloads from my site (and those downloaders were in turn free to make more copies). Three years and six printings later, more than 700,000 copies of the book have been downloaded from my site. The book's been translated into more languages than I can keep track of, key concepts from it have been adopted for software projects and there are two competing fan audio adaptations online.

There's a parallel to music here, musicians have long been giving away their stuff on blogs and MySpace. As a consumer, if I get a free taste of something, I'm more likely to buy something. I may just become a lifelong fan. And I may just attend a concert or two or ten.

Concerts, like speaking and consulting gigs, are where musicians make their money. Giving your idea away (granted it must be good) will make people hungry to experience your ideas in other spots.

Don't keep it for yourself. Share the love.

Interactive chat with Dan Heath

Visit the web site Milwaukee's daily newspaper, the Journal Sentinel, to post questions for Dan Heath. He's leading an online chat tomorrow--Wednesday, January 31 at 12:00 noon.

Here are a few suggestions to get the conversation started:

* Why is the story of Subway's weightloss celebrity, Jared, so sticky?

* How can an elementary school teacher cure racial prejudice in a daring simulation?

* What is the Curse of Knowledge?

* What's it like writing a book with your brother?

Links From My Inbox - 1/29/07

• Joel Spolsky reviews Dreaming In Code
• The Los Angeles Times ran the Financial Times' review of Purpose over the weekend.
• WSJ's Carol Hymowitz has a Q&A with The Three Tensions author Ken Favaro [sub. needed].

Time to re-position?

Jack asked me to post this brief excerpt from Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't by Ram Charan.

Early-warning signals that the positioning of your business may need to take advantage of emerging opportunities:

• Nascent industries emerge.
• Nontraditional competitors start to appear.
• The positioning of a key competitor changes.
• The rise of new customers.
• Consumption patterns are being influenced by affordable new offerings from new technologies (think iPod).
• Customers are defecting.
• Loss of market share in select key segments.
• Emergence of new business models and new management models.
• Pressure on profit margins.
• Unexpected decline in cash flow from operations.
• Decline in customer satisfaction.

Nobody says it like Suze.

Our sister company, Schwartz Bookshops, wanted to let you know that they're bringing Suze Orman to Alverno College on March 9. She has a new book out, Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny, about the personal finance concerns women face. (Or, you can reserve an autographed copy here. Schwartz Bookshops has a great selection of autographed books from all types of authors.)

This event will take place at the Pitman Theatre at Alverno College—3400 S. 43rd St., Milwaukee. Visit the Schwartz site for more details.

BusinessWeek reviews 800ceoread Blog

We were a little excited yesterday when we found out BusinessWeek wrote about this blog in their Blogspotting column. I figured we wouldn't get into too much trouble if we showed all 102 words in its original form.

Word to The Wise: Whenever I talk to people about the blogging world, I always say to start by listening to what others are saying. I received a Google Alert yesterday that I have set for "800ceoread". The email highlighted a post on a discussion board, which referenced someone seeing a piece in BusinessWeek about "an interesting blog to keep an eye on". That is how we found out about the mention. It pays to keep your ears open.

There _is_ such a thing as a free lunch.

Remember that special offer I mentioned?

It's up at inBubbleWrap.com.

[Note: This offer expired at 9 am this morning. However, you can still make your reservation for LeaveSmarter at www.800ceoread.com/events]

Speaking of the State of the Union...

I found this interesting and fitting, seeing as Tuesday was the State of the Union address; it explains the beginning of pulse testing (a way to gauge the public opinion on specific parts of political speeches).

Tuesday, I ran across a review in the WSJ [paid subscription required] of Dr. Frank Luntz's Words that Work. The reviewer, Clark Judge was part of the speechwriting staff under President Reagan.

Reagan's State of the Union address was the first to be polled by pulse testing (a.k.a. dial testing). Here's what happened:

Forty or 50 randomly selected voters had been assembled to watch the State of the Union address. Each was given an electronic response device. Twisting the dial to zero meant that the listener hated what was being said and 10 that he couldn't get enough of it, with the numbers in between registering gradations of response. Results were averaged and appeared as a temperature chart line over a linear printout of the text.

That's now a regular practice. When a part of any speech receives a "twist" of 10, that piece is used over and over again in a number of marketing campaigns. Author Frank Luntz deemed these parts as "words that work." He's the man renowned for giving the Republican party a number of key terms (from "estate tax" to his "death tax"). You may also know him in his role as an adviser to Ross Perot during the 1992 election and Newt Gingrich's success in House in the 1994 elections.

: : :
If you're curious for more, check out an excerpt.

Like rubber on glue

We know you want to meet these guys.

Just a reminder that Dan Heath and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick, will be in Milwaukee in just two weeks, on February 6.

These guys are drumming up a lot of media and support. They were on the Today Show on January 3. Their book was reviewed in Time magazine. Fast Company magazine thinks it could be this year's Freakonomics. There's a reason Made to Stick is getting a lot of attention. It's a really important book.

Made to Stick is the first in our LeaveSmarter series. Each event is taking place at The Eisner - American Museum of Advertising and Design in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. You get lunch and a copy of Made to Stick. And what a cool space! The entire event will take place in the Museum's upper gallery (shown below).

Make your reservation at 800ceoread.com/events. Bring a guest and save $10/person. Bring 9 guests and save $20/per person. (I’ve heard there might even be a special offer up soon at inbubblewrap.com.)

Bob Sutton on Today tomorrow

I am getting this up late, but Bob blogs that he and The No Asshole Rule will be featured on the Today show tomorrow morning (Wednesday 1/24/07) at 8:32AM (I am guess Eastern Time).

Beauty and The Geek talks with Freak(onomics)

One of the keys to the success of Freakonomics is the widespread media coverage the book has gotten. Good Morning America did a series of interviews with the authors. The authors were featured on 20/20.

I am not sure where this PR hit ranks in the hierarchy of the press they have gotten. Co-author Stephen Dubner was featured on CW's Beauty and the Geek this season. The beauties were asked to prepare for an interview with a famous author and given a copy of the book. You can watch the results below:

Susan Quandt at Mequon Schwartz Bookshops

This is for the Milwaukee area residences in our audience.

Local business book author Susan Quandt is doing a talk the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop in Mequon. She is the author of Sudden Impact on the Job: Top Business Leaders Reveal The Secrets To Fast Success. I am giving you plenty of warning, so set time aside and put this on your calendar.

Date: Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, 10976 N. Port Washington Rd., Mequon, WI 53092

The Dip: A New Book Coming From Seth Godin

During our October NYC trip, we heard there was a new book coming out from book machine called Seth Godin. Since there wasn't much to say beyond "Hey, Seth has a new book coming out!", we held off. Now with Amazon acknowledging the new book, we thought it was time to share more backstory on the book.

The name of the new book is The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (and When To Stick) and the book is due out in May 2007.

It has been interesting to watch the evolution of this idea. You can see it first appear in 6/24/05 blog post about the four curves of want and get. Each curve described a pattern of adoption, but the real point Seth asks is "How do you know where you are?" He ends the post with this comment:

...how do you avoid killing something too early, or celebrating too early. And last, how do you know when to kill a dud?

Skip ahead five months and Seth posts Understanding Local Max. Here the concept has evolved. He is still asking the question about knowing where you are with the popularity of the idea. A different curve appears showing some initial success and then a waning followed by a twofold increase. He labels four points on the curve and talks about the conversation you would be have at each point on the curve.

Understanding Local Max was a popular piece for Seth. There are 45 trackbacks on the entry, which means the total number of links to the post were probably 10 times that. Seth included the piece in Small is The New Big titled The Local Max and How To Avoid It (interestingly, you won't find the four curves piece). We selected it for Polkas, Pyrotechnics and Point D's on ChangeThis.

Here is the cover art and catalog copy for The Dip:

The best business books change the way you look at something - forever. The Tipping Point, The Long Tail, and Purple Cow are simple books about simple topics...but they changed the way millions do their jobs.

Every new project (or career or relationship) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point - really hard, really not fun. At that point, you might be in a Dip (which will get better if you keep pushing) or a Cul-de-sac (which will never get better, no matter how hard you try). The hard part is knowing the difference and acting on it.

According to bestselling business author Seth Godin, what really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to give up on Cul-de-sacs while staying motivated in Dips. Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt - until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons.

This is equally true for entrepreneurs, pop singers, weightlifters, and car salesmen. Today's world rewards the people and organizations that are the best in the world at what they do. If you can be #1 in your niche, you'll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and job security. But you'll never be #1 at anything without picking your shots very carefully.

The Dip is a short, fun-to-read book in the tradition of Fish, packed with powerful ideas and a graph that changes everything. It will forever alter the way people think about quitting - and success.

I'll end with this story. Seth was the subject of a cover story in the November/December issue of Selling Power. One story from the piece shows him foreshadowing and taking the opportunity to plant the idea again:

Big innovators fail all the time -- even Godin himself. In 1986, he was selling videotapes of a log burning in a fireplace. "So, if you want a fire, you could just put it on and watch it," he says. "I traded out some ads so I could run them in magazines."

To break even, he needed to sell 60, but he only sold 40. So he stopped selling them and sent everyone their money back, with a gift and a thank-you note. In the next two weeks, however he got 40 more orders.

"So, the big lesson of that failure for me was not that a fireplace on video is stupid. Well, it is stupid, but it was fun stupid. But the lesson was understanding when to quit."

As with all of his books, we can't wait to see the new one. What had been even more interesting is watching this one evolve.

Books from The Computer Class

Sally (editor of ChangeThis) and I are taking a class on Adobe InDesign right now. We both consider ourselves computer literate, but find the Adobe products start from a different base than we are familiar with.

We got a free book with the class for future reference. C2 Graphics gives all of their pupils PeachPit Press Visual Quickstart Guide for InDesign. Our instructor Fritz also recommended Adobe InDesign CS2 Classroom In A Book for additional exercises.

File This Under: Weird Coincidences

The information technology department at 800ceoread compiled sales reports today. Scott, our chief analyst, brought to my attention some weird coincidences in our year-end sales report. He noticed as you looked down a list of our best selling books that pairs of titles seemed to go together. At #7 on our 2006 list is It's Your Ship and right below it at #8 is Blue Ocean Strategy. Isn't that a little weird? Try these on:

#14 - Treasure Hunt
#15 - Blueprint to a Billion

#25 - On Billion Customers
#26 - Small Is The New Big

#32 - The Likeability Factor
#33 - Vital Factors

#43 - Redefining Health Care
#44 - When Generations Collide

Maybe, it is just us...

Business Books For January: Ego Check

Given headlines that executives like Bob Nardelli and Bill McGuire are getting, the timing of Mathew Hayward's new book Ego Check couldn't be better. Hayward believes it is hubris, what many consider the original deadly sin, to be the cuplrit for fallings of Enron, Worldcom, and Parmalat. Consider Hayward's four sources of Hubris:

If extraordinary confidence is grounded in the best available data, it is authentic, and a positive force for advancement. It is when when our confidence is false, when we are confident for the wrong reasons, that two serious problems arise. First, we are more suspectible to being overconfident than if our confidence were authentic. Second, such overconfidence is more likely to translate into actions and decisions that will damage others. Hubris refers to the damaging consequences that arise from the decisions and actions that reflect false confidence and the resulting overconfidence. As you'll learn in this book, I have determined that there are four sources of false confidence:

1. Getting too full of ourselves. Excessive pride leads to a contrived view of who we are and an inflated view of our achievements and capabilities, one which often depends on external validation.
2. Getting in our own way. Our pride can lead us to tackle singlehandedly decisions or actions that could be better addressed by or in conjunction with trusted advisors or a foil.
3. Kidding ourselves about our situation. We indulge in false confidence when we fail to see, seek, share, and use full and balanced feedback to gain a more grounded assessment of our situation. We need accurate, pertinent, timely, and clear feedback, whether positive or negative, to ground our knowledge about what's going on around us.
4. Discounting the need to manage tomorrow today. Because we may not know whether we're acting with unhealthy confidence, we need to manage the consequences of our decisions ahead of time. This is a question of playing out, rather than planning out, the consequences of our decisions. Whereas experimenting and probing allow us to see the consequences of our decisions firsthand, planning can increase our confidence without increasing our ability to complete the tasks at hand.

False confidence is to hubris what bad cholesterol is to heart disease. Just as the cure for heart disease is to reduce bad cholesterol rather than all cholesterol, the cure for hubris is to fight the sources of false confidence, rather than to reduce confidence altogether.

Happy 65th Birthday, Muhammad Ali

View a great tribute here.

Business Audio at The Cranky Middle Manager

The number of podcasts with a business angle are growing. The latest we have come across is The Cranky Middle Manager hosted by Wayne Trumel. I could give you a long drawn out explanation of what Wayne is up to, but it makes more sense to just send you to his 2007 show manifesto.

There are a couple episodes to point you to. Wayne invited our own Mr. Jack Covert onto the show in December. They talked about all that is business books. This week, Wayne had Marshall Goldsmith (What Got You Here Won't Get You There) on his show.

Today's Vocabulary Quiz

I am sure you already received your November/December issue of Selling Power. Seth is on the cover (ten times).

We tend to talk about Seth alot and thought we should take a moment to get the new folks caught up. There is a short vocabulary list of Seth-isms from the article. Take a shot at what you think the words mean and then highlight the area next to the word to see the definition.

Interruption Marketing -> Broadcasting messages people don't want to see or hear; message that "interrupt."

Permission Marketing -> Narrowly delivered message that are anticipated, personal, and relevant.

Remarkable -> Anything the consumer believes is worth remarking on.

Megaphone -> When customers choose to promote you by talking to their friends and colleagues.

Edgecraft -> The process of digging deep and being bold to come up with edgy, remarkable ideas

Marketing -> Telling authentic stories that customers want to hear and believe in.

[Hat Tip: Chris Anderson for the answer hiding idea]

Top 5 Bestselling Books of All-Time

I know I promised no more "Best of" lists, but Good Magazine (which is really good by the way) has a sidebar on the bestselling books of all time. I couldn't resist.

1. The Bible - 6,000,000,000 copies
2. Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung - 900,000,000 copies
3. American Spelling Book - 100,000,000 copies
4. Guinness World Records - 90,000,000 copies
5. The World Almanac - 73,500,000 copies

[their source: The Top Ten of Everything]

Business Books For January: Wikinomics

Don Tapscott has been writing about the intersection of business and technology for years. Wikinomics is his latest effort to explain how the networked Web is changing the relationships between companies and their customers. If you spend any time in this ideaspace, you are going to be familiar with many of the examples in Wikinomics. Second Life, Legos, and InnoCentive all make appearances.

In the chapter on The Prosumers, Tapscott and co-author Anthony Williams ask some good questions:

So here's the prosumption dilemma: A company that gives its customers free reign to hack risks cannibalizing its business model and losing control of its platform. A company that fights users soils its reputation and shuts out a potentially valuable source of innovation. Apple and Sony may feel the latter option is an acceptable risk so long as hacking remains as the fringes. After all, product hackers are still a small minority of their customers, and there is little evidence yet that product hacks and home-brew applications are leaking out into the mainstream. Any company that believes that the status quo will hold for long, however, is mistaken. Product hacking is just getting started.

Customer with the skills and inclination to hack their products may be in the minority today, but what about in five or ten years, as increasingly technology savvy kids will become the norm? Will companies choose to fight all of their customers then? How will they cope with the proliferation of tools and Web sites that enable prosumer communities to flourish? Will they unleash the lawyers and risk driving their customers to alternative platforms? Indeed, how will they compete with the inevitable rise of hacker-friendly platforms that let customers do whatever they want and in return tap unlimited pools of free innovation? The answer is they can't and won't fight their customers for long. Customer hacking will live on.

Like any good business book, the authors offer some good answers:

Prosumption is becoming one of the most powerful engines of change and innovation that the business world has ever seen. Cocreating with customers is like tapping the most uniquely qualified pool of intellectual capital ever assembled. A reservior of talent that is as keenly and uniquely enthusiatic about creating a great product or service as you are. But it comes with new rules of engagment and tough challenges to existing business models. Anyone who tells you different has not fully grasped the implications of the impending prosumer revolution.

More than customization
Just as prosumption is more than marketing disguised as customer advocacy, it goes way beyond product customization. Customization occurs when a customer gets an off-the-shelf product adjusted to his or her specification. There is nothing wrong with mass customization: Customers get to tailor products to specific uses while companies get to maintain the economies of large-scale production.

The problem is that mass customization generally entails mixing and matching prespecified components, which significantly limits flexibility and innovation for users. When you order a Dell computer, for instance, you can slot in any DVD drive you want, but it's still a DVD drive. True prosumption entails deeper and earlier engagement in design processes (ie Lego's next-generation Mindstorms) and products that facilitate customer hacking and remixing (iPod, PSP, and mashups)

Losing control
Customers will increasingly treat your product as a platform for their own innovation, whether you grant them permission to or not. As both the iPod and PSP cases illustrate, they invent new ways to create extra value by collaborating and sharing information. Over time, value migrates from your product or service to what customers do with the information. If you do not stay current with customers, they invent around you, creating opportunities for competitors. Inevitably, it is preferable to sacrifice some control than it is to cede the game completely to a more adept, prosumer-friendly competitor.

Customer tool kits and context
Forget about static, immovable products. If your customers are going to treat products as platforms anyway, then you may as well be ahead of the game. Make your products modular, reconfigurable, and editable. Set the context for customer innovation and collaboration. Provide venues. Build user-friendly customer tool kits. Supply the raw materials that customers need to add value to your product. Make it easy to remix and share. We call this designing for prosumption.

Becoming a Peer
After gaining some experience with this new world of prosumption you'll realize that your real business is not creating finishing products but innovation ecosystems. Companies will participate in these ecosystems in the same way that IBM participates in open source--it harvests value from Linux, but it does not own or control the Linux ecosystem. Similarly, Second Life creates an environment in which customers do 99 percent of the value creation. As prosumption matures, expect to treat customers like peers, not patrons.

Sharing the fruits
Customers will expect to share in the ownership and fruits of their creations. If you make it profitable for customers to get involved, you will always be able to count on a dynamic and fertile ecosystem for growth and innovation.

Don't think communism. Think of the eBay microeconomy instead. Hundreds of thousands of eBay's customers make their living there, while eBay takes a cut of their transactions. Indeed, with Second Life's customers creating so much of the game's content, it only seems right that they should own all of the IP rights to their creations and make real money by selling in-game assets. IP rights spur prolific rates of customer cocreation and make Second Life's thriving virtual economy a source of real-world income for customers. Why couldn't your products and services support similar kinds of value-added activities?

Breakthrough Questions

In a new book called "Simple Solution" are a few questions that the authors suggest will help middle managers make an impact and stand out. They state:

"Here are some examples to practice asking breakthrough questions. After reading them, formulate at least three breakthrough questions that would initiate radical change in your department.

What would have to be true for us to lower production costs for this product by 50 percent?

What would have to be true for us to sign up 5,000 new customers next year?

What would have to be true for employee turnover to be zero?

What would have to be true to produce accurate financial statements within two days of month's end?

What would have to be true for customer service to respond to each customer call within three second?

Those are some great questions that I know I will use. You can use them for free.

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac Part 6

Today's Dose from The Executive Almanac:

"JPMorgan Chase, the third largest bank in the United States, has a lot of ancestors--and now it's making amends for two of them.

Between 1831 and 1865, two predecessor banks, Citizens Bank and Canal Bank, both operating in Louisiana, apparently made loans with some 13,000 slaves as collateral. When planation owners defaulted on the loans, the banks took possession of 1,250 slaves. When this history came to light, JPMorgan Chase apologized on its Web site and established a $5 million scholarship fund for African-American college students.

The information orginally surfaced as a result of a regulation established in 2002 by the Chicago City Council requiring companies doing business with the city to disclose whether they profited from slavery. After looking at records stored at Tulane University, 12 historians spent more than 3,500 hours researching property and bank records in 39 Louisiana parishes, where the incriminating evidence was discovered."

Fast Company stuck on Made to Stick

The February issue of Fast Company magazine is calling Made to Stick a candidate for this year's Freakonomics. It also mentions Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg and Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart.

That reminds me, have I mentioned lately that Dan Heath and Chip Heath (authors of Made to Stick) will be in Milwaukee on February 6? Check it out.

NYT Book Review on Setting The Table

I picked the Sunday New York Times yesterday and saw Setting The Table (written by Danny Meyer) was reviewed by Sara Dickerman. Her review shows she likes the book, but Dickerman thinks Meyer gets a little cutesy:

But Meyer is not giving advice to would-be restauranteurs: his book aims for a broader business audience. Whether his model of "hospitalitocracy" can expand beyond the service industry is hard to say, but Meyer certainly tries hard. This book wants to be a business parable of sorts--the kind populated by metaphorical parachutes, cheese, and sharks. Meyer apparently can't resist the genre: he thinks of staff members "not as servers, but as surfers"; he imagines businesses as moth-attracting light bulbs; and he refers to the press, somewhat predictably, as a shark.

Meyer is more persuasive and interesting, both as a storyteller and as a business adviser, when he sticks to concrete examples from his working life instead of spinning them into catchphrases that might work in PowerPoint presentations...When Meyers slips into generic business-speak, that all-important narrative gets lost.

Business Books for January: Intro

January is a big month for business books. There are at least a dozen books that have come out in January (or late December) that are worthy of consideration. The list below is a starting point. Which ones you will end up reading will clearly depend on your time and preferences. We have covered some of these titles in Jack Covert Selects and I plan to write about others as the month progresses.

Business books for January 2007:

• Running With The Bulls Without Getting Trampled by Tim Irwin
• The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform Without Compromise by Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd and James Harter
• Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don't by Ram Charan
• Payback: Reaping The Reward of Innovation by James Andrew and Harold Sirkin
• Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear by Frank Lutz
• Accelerants: 12 Strategies to Sell Faster, Close Deals and Grow Your Business Faster by Michael Boylan
• Ego Check: Why Executives Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How To Avoid The Trap by Matthew Hayward
• Greating Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People Into Extraordinary Performers by Erika Andersen
• Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise, America's #1 Car Rental Company, Can Teach You About Creating Lifetime Customers by Kirk Kazanjian
• A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman
• The Mormon Way of Doing Business: Leadership and Success Through Faith and Family by Jeff Benedict
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith
• Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams

P.S. You can keep up with stuff like this on the 800ceoread New Releases Blog.

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac Part 5

Today's Dose of The Executive Almanac:

How to Deal with White-Collar Crime

"In September 2004, the Chinese government executed four bank executives for fraud totaling $15 million. The two banks involved were state-owned entities. Wang Liming, an accounting officer at China Construction Bank, was put to death, along with an accomplice, Miao Ping, for stealing 20 million yuan (about $2.4 million) from the bank. Another employee at China Construction, Wang Xiag, was executed for stealing another 20 million yuan in an unrelated case. The fourth man executed was Liang Shihan, an official at Bank of China's branch in the southern city of Zhuhai. He was accused of stealing $10.3 million.

China executes more criminals than the rest of the world combined."

800ceoread Blogs Now Available Through Email

I got a request this week to make our blogs available to people through email. Since we use Feedburner to host our RSS feeds, adding Feedburner Email was a snap.

So, if you have friends and neighbors who might enjoy what we do and don't use RSS yet, let them know we now welcome everyone.

Books for 20-Somethings: Part 1

This is the first in a series of blog posts I plan to write about books for new recruits and fresh-out-of-college employees. I think these books can be beneficial to both 20-somethings and the people who employ them. It discusses the issues new recruits face and provides strategies for high, quality performance.

Here I extract a few key messages from New Recruit to High Flyer by simply going through the Table of Contents and finding something that stands out in each chapter.

I guess I'm the "New Recruit" over here at 8cr. Lucky Employee #13. I've had a few professional jobs before, but I know there's always something new to learn. What I provide below are the tidbits that really stuck out to me in each chapter.

1. Attitude

"Adopt a genuinely proactive and can-do approach"
[The author goes into detail about what this means. He translates the phrases like "Be more proactive" and "Make it happen" by explaining exactly what managers mean (but sometimes find difficult to express).]

2. Adopt a systematic approach

"Methodically save and file electronic documents"
[Amen. I have gone into positions where the previous employee systematically and consistently labeled files, and boy was it easy to locate stuff.]

3. Develop into an excellent research analyst

"The essential quantitative methods"
[I love this; Karseras provides a crash course in the most important things to know about quantitative analysis and research reporting. I'll admit that I have no idea how to compound average growth rates--but if I ever need to, I'll know just where to find a step-by-step guide.]

4. Learn business communication skills 1: Speaking and writing effectively

"Proof everything"
[Amen again. I might be overly sensitive this (I was a technical writing major), but nothing is more frustrating than receiving a professional document with errors. While it's really not enough to simply run spell check, please, at least do that!]

5. Learn business communication skills 2: The 10 key areas

"4 -- Speaking over the telephone"
[Why is this still so hard for so many young people? Is our online identity hindering our ability to have successful face-to-face or voice-to-voice relationships? Perhaps…]

6. Becoming a great project and people manager

"Understand your boss"
[Knowing your boss's priorities, preferences, and personal stressors can help you line up your efforts.]

7. Build your network

"Building broad networks"
[Try working with someone outside your comfort zone. Complacency and staleness happen when we get stuck in a rut of working with the same people and services. Whether inside or outside your organization, the author recommends broadening the group of people you regularly have contact with.]

8. Find your mentors

"Do you have professional respect?"
[I think it's easy to latch onto a person because you like his or her style, personality, or interests outside of work. But do you have professional respect for that person? If you were in his or her position, would you do the job the same way?]

9. Become politically savvy

"Organizational mission and values"
[This is what I look for whenever I start a new job or project. While they're sometimes corny and often ill-crafted, mission or value statements can act as a compass for an organization. It's something to go back to and ask, are we doing that? Should we be doing that? If not, how can we describe what we should be doing? If new recruits demonstrate understanding of an organization's mission, they appear to be a better fit for the position and are more likely to impress their bosses.]

My only criticism of the book is its subtitle; I think the advice provided here is valuable for more than fast-tracking a career. Every college graduate should receive one of these on their way out the door. This is common-sense advice on how to become a better employee, and we could all use a reminder--whether we're the new recruit or the person working with one.

Must-Read: Made To Stick

My friend Bob Sutton told me in March 2006 that I needed to watch out for the Heath brothers. Bob said they had a great book coming out and that Dan and Chip were going to be stars.

I saw a galley for Made To Stick the next month and I fell in love with it. This book is about how ideas stick with people. Dan and Chip have studied urban myths, public health scares, parables, and political speeches to see what these ideas have in common. What they found were six concepts:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

Dan and Chip say a big problem is The Curse of Knowledge - if people think they already know something, then there is no incentive to pay attention to your idea. For example, many of you think you don't need to read this book.

One answer they say is to create curiosity gaps. Their sub-title is a curiosity gap, "Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die".

Let me give you another one - "What do Fortune 500 executives and PTA presidents have in common?" The answer is they are both selling ideas to their organizations and Made To Stick can help both improve the chances their ideas will stick. I know it isn't the strongest curiosity gap (you probably came up with many things they have in common), but the point I was trying to make is that a diverse set of people can benefit from this book.

***

At the beginning of Made To Stick, there is a story about Israeli researchers who wanted to see if there were common elements to successful advertising campaigns. They found successful ads were easily sorted and fell into one of six categories. Other ads from the same magazines where these award winners appeared could not be sorted the same way.

The researchers felt they were onto something. They took the six categories, turned them into concepts, and develop a course. The researchers wanted to see if the concepts could be taught. A random group of people were brought to the lab and split into three groups. The group were given varying levels of training and asked to produce ads for fictitious products. The group given the most training with the six concepts scored 50% better on their ads with creative directors than the other groups.

My point and the Heath brothers' point is that it is possible for a framework or recipe to improve what you do. They have got a pretty good one for making ideas stick. For all the authors, publishers, agents, publicists, and sales folks out there, this is required reading. For everyone else, Made To Stick is my first must-read for 2007.

Jack Covert Selects: The Three Tensions

The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform Without Compromise by Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro, Jossey-Bass, January 2007, $27.95, Hardcover, 256 Pages, ISBN 0787987794

800-CEO-READ has experienced considerable growth over the last four years. We are very fortunate, but our success has presented us with options we have never had to consider before. Many of our strategy discussions end with trade-offs after struggling to decide between one thing or another. A new book that studies these tensions that many companies deal with caught my attention.

How often have you been in a meeting and heard this kind of comment, "We really need to invest in the long-term, but we'll never make our quarterly earnings." Or maybe the statement was, "Growth is our primary focus, but we can't sacrifice profitability." Or how about, "We are going centralize all appropriate functions, but continue to give divisions autonomy in decision making." Do you hear all the "buts" in those statements? These types of contradictory statements, these three tensions, confuse people and create harmful cycles of alternating emphasis. The focus of this book is to change the conversation on business strategy from "but" to "and".

Authors Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro have found a common bond (the "and") for each pair of competing forces. When companies want both growth and profitability, they should focus on rewards customers get from them. The bond between short-term and long-term is the earnings created without taking from next quarter or next year. If a company wants to take actions that benefit the whole as well as the individual parts, the development of synergic resources and capabilities is essential.

I can't do justice to the book in such a little space. I didn't get into the measurement aspect to their philosophy or how management fads seem to move back and forth between these same tensions. You need to read the whole book to appreciate the depth of the material. There is something new here and worthy of a spot in your 2007 reading list.

iRapture

Mea culpa: I am one of the pod people, an invadee of the body snatchers, when it comes to the mass hysteria surrounding the iPhone. To me this is not a story about an insanely great $500 cel phone cum music player; Jobs’s landmark keynote signaled an event of huge business consequence.

More than a shiny new toy, more than the buzziest product of the decade, more than a business tool with ginormous cultural cachet; this iPhone blows me away in the following ways. First of all, Apple has done what few other companies ever achieve, which is to introduce a product that is so far beyond any other existing comparables that it literally redefines the category. I can’t think of any other product that so completely defies an existing industry mindset by proving to the incumbents that it can win customer love, when the prevailing attitude is tolerance at best and pure hatred as the norm.

Second, this new product isn’t one new thing. It’s a good two dozen. The touch-screen technology, the way the music fades when the phone rings, the accelerometer which turns the screen from portrait to landscape when you rotate the device, the ability to manipulate data with your fingertips, and so very much more. The shiny salivation/salvation of this product resides in the cumulative genius of all these elements working in concert. More than any one awesome trick, they create a user experience that promises to be as delightful as it is simple and intuitive.

Third, the sheer organizational fortitude required to actually deliver that tiny tool into Jobs’ hands is massive. For Apple to be able to come up with the innovations, commercialize them with this product, while keeping the process and product a secret, are all awesome feats. To do all of them is awesome to the nth.

Why gush on this blog? Because we are all about business ideas, and an event of this significance just can’t be ignored. It got me wondering what business books are the most relevant. And, to be honest, the event serves as somewhat of a humbling experience. When you look at the list of business books we’ve touted over the past months, very few come to mind that have deep relevance to this story. And, well, just as the genius of Apple has always been the way that it presents brilliant technology as a simple intuitive interface, I believe that one huge takeaway from yesterday’s event was the way that so many important business lessons served as underlying technology for the event.

I can’t think of one single reference to a business book that Steve Jobs has read (unlike, say Bill Gates, who has written his own, and famously touted Alfred Sloan’s My Years With General Motors in the past.) So here’s a simple exercise. Imagine that you are competing with Steve Jobs. Where would you go for the best wisdom? Here are a few books that seem relevant to me in terms of capturing some of the principles that led up to the iPhone:

Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things for insights into the way that elegant design wordlessly and effortlessly focuses the user on the best experience.

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution for insights and affirmation about the primacy of execution; and Scott Berkun’s excellent (and, by the way, worthy of much more love and attention!) The Art of Project Management for, well, the art of project management.

William Manchester’s three-volume The Last Lion biography of Winston Churchill for insights on charismatic leadership and big goals.

My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams with John Underwood: another great biography about the rewards which accrue to a stubborn passion for nothing less than being the very best one can be.

I’d like to cite three more books: one that identifies how to execute strategy that completely redefines an industry (while being based on an incremental platform of new products). And a book that explores how everything changes when the web is not merely available everywhere, but, when the iPhone arrives, finally appealing to use anywhere. And finally, a great book on the Apple corporate culture. But....the titles just don't come to mind.

What are other people’s thoughts, and nominations for this list?

Jack Covert Selects: Run with the Bulls Without Getting Trampled

Run With the Bulls Without Getting Trampled: The Qualities You Need to Stay Out of Harm’s Way and Thrive at Work by Tim Irwin, Ph.D., Nelson Business, January 2007, $24.95 Hardcover, 200 Pages, ISBN 078521951X

There is always a reason why I choose a certain book to review. Many times I pick a book because the author gave me a new perspective on a classic issue. Sometimes authors show me something new. And sometimes it’s the writing. I think what sets this book apart from the also-rans, as it were, are the stories used to illustrate the author’s points.

Let’s start with the metaphor in the title. The author (along with his son) ran with the bulls and he uses the bulls as a metaphor for the problems many of us face in our workplace. He interviewed more than 10,000 people and uses their stories throughout the book. For example, in a section about strategic mindset he talks about Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Principle—seeing what is essential and ignoring the rest—and applies that theory to this story.

“Much has been written on the importance of saying no, and I tried to get leaders of a client organization to read a few of those books. Their failing company, which attempted to invent a new loading machine for freight cars, just couldn’t seem to stay on course. The leaders were so open-minded, you thought their brains were going to fall out. Even though they had created a sound product, they were too undisciplined and opportunistic to stay with it. Every new idea that came along—on an almost daily basis—became the company’s new strategic focus. A lot of investors lost money because the company wouldn’t stay focused on its core competency and make it work. Many individuals have approached their careers with the same lack of focus, bouncing from one “opportunity� to another with no master plan to guide their decisions.�

There is a lot of good stuff in this book, though the stories I found most outstanding are those about the author’s family and their adventures and near disasters which he uses to communicate to need for planning.

The book is really a success manual for people who are unhappy and want to be better managers, or leaders, or just a better person. And there is an interactive companion website that supports the book so the experience doesn’t end after you close the cover.

Harvard Business School Press Goes Web 2.0

The publicity team at Harvard Business School Press is using del.icio.us to store and distribute PR hits they get for their books. It is a great use of the technology and something I have been pushing a number of publishers to do. Julie, Erin, Sue, and Michelle at HBSP get credit for doing it first.

Here are four reasons why I think every publicity department should be using del.icio.us:

1. You could create an internal database to do the same thing. Del.icio.us is available right now, and you could start bookmarking in under five minutes.
2. You have internal and external customers who crave this kind of information - sales, marketing, editorial, other PR groups, authors, fans of your authors, fans of your imprint. Del.icio.us is open to everyone and easy to use. We at 800ceoread have plans to stream these links onto the book pages of our ecommerce site.
3. You can see how many others in the del.icio.us audience found the media pieces interesting. In the case of HBSP, the Washington Post's Best Books of 2006 article was the most bookmarked with 22 people. This is not a definitive measurement in any way, but can act as indictator of geninue interest in the hits you do get.
4. Bookmarking PR hits can be a way for you to introduce new articles to the del.icio.us community. This idea has the potential for the most user backlash. The HBSP team handles this risk well by making clear who they are and where the links are coming from. This method also has the most upside. Most of the bookmarks for HBSP publicity are the first in the system. By tagging bookmarks with appropriate words, users who are monitoring those tags via RSS will see articles that may of interest to them. This brings a secondary audience to the hits they have already gotten (Juile-call me, we should talk about this).

Kudos again to the HBSP Publicity Team. I love this!

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac Part 4

Today's Dose of The Executive Almanac:

Whatever Happened to Borden

Founded 1857

"Once the world's largest food company--Gail Borden invented condensed milk, and the company was the first to put fresh milk into bottles--Borden lost its way in the 1980s, selling and buying companies at a rapid clip. Meanwhile, it was making more money in chemicals than in foods. In 1995 the investment firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts acquired Borden in a leveraged buyout and then sold off the food business, including Cracker Jack, Creamette and Prince pastas, Snow's Clam Chowder, Realemon, and Wise's Cheez Doodles. In 2004 the investment firm Apollo Management took control of Borden Chemical."

Jack Covert Selects: Made to Stick

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House, January 2007, $24.95 Hardcover, 288 Pages, ISBN 1400064287

One of the perks about being in the book industry is meeting some really smart people. In November, at our Author Pow-Wow, I got to meet Dan Heath, one of the authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Not only is Dan personable, interesting and cool, but he's also brilliant. You'll know that the instant you pick up Made to Stick.

Dan, a consultant at Duke, and his brother Chip, a professor at Stanford Business School, came to realize that while their professional work looked different, the core of the work was the same. They were each trying to get at what makes ideas successful once they’re out into the world. So they teamed up to write Made to Stick. Borrowing Malcolm Gladwell's concept of "sticky" ideas, the Brothers Heath examined everything from urban legends to public health scares to elementary school teaching strategies to political campaigns. Made to Stick is the kind of book that breaks out of the traditional business book market and offers solid, useful information to all types of readers.

Dan and Chip know that there's not a simple formula for making an idea stick. What they care about is identifying what's common among sticky ideas. They found six principles that apply to all sticky ideas: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. (Cleverly, they form an acronym for "success.")

"No special expertise is needed to apply these principles. There are no licensed stickologists. Moreover, many of the principles have a commonsense ring to them: Didn’t most of us already know the intuition that we should be 'simple' and 'use stories'? It’s not as though there's a powerful constituency for overcomplicated, lifeless prose."

I love the Heaths' straightforward yet elegant writing style. And the book has substance too. As you read, you will experience tons of 'lightbulb' moments, when you instantly recognize their ideas as true and immediately applicable. Here’s an example:

"So why aren't we deluged with brilliantly designed sticky ideas? Why is our life filled with more process memos than proverbs? Sadly, there is a villain in our story. The villain is a natural psychological tendency that consistently confounds our ability to create ideas using these principles. It's called the Curse of Knowledge."

They explain that the more we know about a subject, the less we're actually able to craft it into an idea that will stick. The Heaths offer strategies for defeating the Curse of Knowledge and other roadblocks to creating sticky ideas. And you'll have fun while learning about Curiosity Gaps, the Velcro Theory of Memory, and the Sinatra Test

So, make room on your bookshelf. Much like the subject it tackles, Made to Stick is magnetic, sticky. You're going to start seeing this book everywhere.

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac Part 3

Today's dose from The Executive Almanac:

"Teach Your Son to Play First Base

Here are the average annual salaries of baseball players in 2004, according to position played

First base: $6.8 million
Outfield: $4.5 million
Third base: $3.8 million
Starting pitcher: $3.7 million
Shortstop: $3.5 million
Second base: $2.9 million
Designated hitter: $2.6 million
Relief pitcher: $1.4 million

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac Part 2

Today's dose of The Executive Almanac:

"Candy maker Frank Mars of Minneapolis, Minnesota introduced the Milky Way candy bar in 1923, followed by Snickers in 1930 and 3 Musketeers in 1937. Now the Mars company is a giant corporate, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, near the CIA, another secretive outfit. Descendants Frank Mars own the company entirely, have nothing to do with the stock market, and don't entertain inquiries from the press. Their annual sales are estimated at $20 billion, making them the third largest private company in the United States. They also have a formidable presence in Britain. They make the world's bestselling candy, M&Ms. And they also make a bunch of other products, including Uncle Ben's rice, and the pet foods Kal Kan, Pedigree, Sheba, and Waltham's.

On a personal note, one of my favorite books about business is a book about Mars and Hershey called The Emperors of Chocolate. The book is almost ten years old and I still remember some of the stories about the two companies.

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac

Today's Dose from The Executive Almanac:

"General Electric--ticker symbol GE--is the most widely held stock in the world. The company has some 5 million shareholders, 42 percet of them individuals. GE has about 10.6 billion shares outstanding.

$1,000 invested in GE stock in 1993 would have multiplied to $5,250 by the end of 2004 (assuming reinvestment of all dividends). If you bought one share of stock before 1926, you would have had 4,608 shares in 2005, after all the stock splits."

Jack Covert Selects: 12: The Elements of Great Managing

12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter, PH.D., Gallup Press, 200 Pages, $25.95 Hardcover, January 2007, ISBN 159562998X

Here are a few ways to get me to review your book: 1). Get Richard Florida—Rise of the Creative Class—to give you a blurb for the back of your book; 2). Position your book as the follow-up to First, Break All the Rules; 3) Have Gallup Press publish your book. Of course, you can do all these things and still write a piece of junk. Lucky for us, this book is brilliant. (And they are correct: it is the absolute logical follow-up to First, Break All the Rules, one of the best books ever.)

The name of the book is derived from the 12 elements revealed in that famous book and that emerged from Gallup’s research as those that best predict employee and workgroup performance. The 12 came from over 10 million employee and manager interviews. They are:

1. I know what is expected of me at work
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My superior, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the past six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
Copyright 1993 - 1998 The Gallup Organization, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved.

Now I have been in business for more than a few years and I would have a very hard time arguing with any of these points. As you read through them, did they resonate with you? I thought so.

What the authors then do is make a chapter out of each of the elements with outstanding examples to support their premise. These examples are what make the book so enjoyable to read. You learn about making fiberglass…and staffing at Best Buy. I cannot stress enough how important this book will be to managers of every ilk.

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac

Todd came into my office the other day waving a book saying “you’ll love this!� He was right. I love it so much that I am going to run a post a day during the next couple weeks. BTW the book is called The Executive Almanac. I’ll let the author explain what the book is about.

First of all, what this book is not: It’s not a guide to becoming rich. It’s not a guide on how to run a business. It’s not a guide to advancing in the company It’s not a guide to finding the best stock to buy.

This is not to say that any or all of these goals could not be achieved by reading this book. It’s possible. But those would be incidental outcomes. The thrust of this little volume is neither mercenary nor practical. It’s more in the realm of fact based entertainment.

In writing about business for 50 years, I have always been fascinated by the odd things that go on, the stories of how companies were born and how they died, pompous statements by CEOs, quirky lists, invidious comparisons, internecine quarrels, soaring—and plunging—stock prices, and attempts to introduce social responsibility into a landscape dominated by money.

This is a book, then, to be read at the beach or at bars or in the bathroom or while looking at the stock tables or watching Seinfeld reruns. It’s a combination reference book, Jeopardy! source, and trivia collection. It does not purport to be comprehensive. There are a lot of other facts out there. Send them in. We’ll try to get them in the next edition.

Today’s factoid is:

The Average Age of U.S. Car Owners

Buick 62 Years Old
Mercury 59
Lincoln 56
Cadillac 54
Jaguar 54
Lexus 51
Chrysler 49
Mercedes-Benz 48
Toyota 47
Volvo 47
Ford 45
Audi 44
BMW 44
Honda 44
Infiniti 44
Saab 44
Acura 43
Nissan 42
Volkswagen 41