800-CEO-READ Blog

We are leaving town.

The whole blogging crew is heading to New York City today. Book Expo America, the annual booksellers convention, is taking place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

If we see or hear something interesting, we will drop a post here. Otherwise, expect some reflections from each of us next week.

Title for A New Book

Richard Florida of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class is looking for some help on the title for his next book. Some of the ideas include:

• The Wealth of Place
• Who's Your City?
• Where
• Location Factor
• Why Place Matters
• Geography is Destiny
• What's Your LQ (Location Quotient)

I suggest in the comments that they keep working on it. I don't think they have found the right title yet.

links for 2007-05-30

• BusinessWeek | The Working-Mom Quandary
  "Out now are four books that deconstruct the underlying causes of stopping out and formulate some smart solutions beyond HR pablum."
  (tags: businessbooks organizational_development personaldevelopment)
• The BusinessWeek Best-Seller List
  April 2007 bestsellers
  (tags: businessbooks lists)
• BusinessWeek Bestsellers - Slideshow
  "...7 of the 15 top-selling hardcover books during the month of April are new titles, never before on BusinessWeek's best-seller list."
  (tags: businessbooks lists)
• The Real Toy Story >> The Economist | The tale of Barbie and Li Mei
  Everyone makes good, often fabulous, money, except “Li Mei�, his composite assembly-line toymaker. [ book link]
  (tags: businessbooks industry)

Bridging the Generational Divide

The author of Motivating The "What's In It For Me?" Workforce, Cam Marston, offered us the essay below for our web site.

(It reminds me of this essay by Anna Quindlen and this blog entry by our very own Kate.)

* * * * * * *

Retaining Youth

You’ve hired them. Now how can you keep them around?

By Cam Marston
Author of Motivating the "What's in it For Me?" Workforce

Things aren’t always what they seem. If I could give you one bit of advice on dealing with the latest generation of employees to come under your management, it would be to remember those words…things aren’t always what they seem.

If you are like most business leaders, you’ve no doubt noticed a trend in the way employees behave in recent years. Most likely you consider it a negative trend – too much entitlement, not enough loyalty, no work ethic, only interested in themselves, and on and on. But I challenge you to consider that perhaps these are not negative trends, just different ones. Things aren’t always what they seem.

To better understand who your employees are and what drives them to succeed, perhaps it’s easiest to understand who they are not. You. That’s right. They may even be your offspring but in the workplace they bear little resemblance to the "you" of yesteryear. Gen Xers (born 1965-1979) and Millenials (born after 1980) are operating in this world with a completely different perspective. Their definitions of loyalty, time and success are often quite different from yours. Rest assured they do recognize all of these concepts and value them in very important ways. The key to your organization’s future success is understanding how the Millenials view the world and using that knowledge to motivate them in a way that works. Here’s a hint: meet them where they are and they will achieve your underlying goals; try to force them to fit your definitions and they will run for the door every time.

So let’s take a look at some of the pervasive myths about our youngest generation in the workforce and discuss why these changes are happening and how you can tailor your workplace to meet the needs of you, your employees and the company.

Myth: Younger generations have no work ethic.

Reality: Younger generations have a self-centered work ethic. This is not necessarily the negative that it may seem at first. Millenials are dedicated to completing their task well. They have not been raised in a way that demands them to look around and see what should be done next. Instead they ask "what is my job" and go about figuring the best, fastest way to complete that task. Then they consider themselves done. This is a key differentiator between your employees and yourself.

The younger they are, the more your employees view their jobs as "something to do between the weekends." For most, early employment has nothing to do with a career path; it is a way to earn money to have fun in their free time. And that is okay. When you understand what motivates your employees you are better able to set mutual expectations for success. Instead of being frustrated that your youngest employees are not interested in climbing your corporate ladder, embrace their true motivation – reliable spending money – and use it to your advantage. When you tell an employee, "I understand this is not your lifelong career, but to earn the paycheck every week, here is what I expect …" they are much more likely to respond than if you try to motivate with promises of promotions and titles down the road.

Understanding that being at the job isn’t as important to Millenials as completing the assigned task also opens up new opportunities for motivation and reward. Younger employees are very likely to respond to offers of paid time off. A leading retail organization has recognized this new way of thinking with its Working Hard Card: When managers witness an employee rising to a challenge, exceeding expectations or otherwise giving 110% they can hand the employee a Working Hard Card on the spot. Each card is worth a set amount of paid time off to be used at the employee’s discretion. It is a simple strategy that rewards employees in the currency they value most – their time.

Myth: They don’t want to put in the hours to get ahead.

Reality: They are willing to put in the time to do the job, however they are uninterested in "face time." Gen Xers and Millenials view time as a currency. While Baby Boomers tend to see time as something to invest, the younger generations view it as a valuable currency not to be wasted. These are the generations that demand work-life balance and paid time off. They want to get the job done, then put it behind them and enjoy life.

Boomer managers have a tendency to lose the interest of their Millenial employees by looking too far into the future. Millenials live in timeframe based on right now. Their world has proven that nothing is a guarantee – from nationwide layoffs to war to soaring divorce rates, they have decided that there’s not a lot you can count on. As a result they are not interested in promotion plans for five years from now. They don’t even want to know what will happen at the end of the summer. Life is uncertain. To reach the Millenial employee and reduce turnover, make it certain.

Tell your employee that you have a plan. Take pains to ensure it is in a timeframe short enough for them to envision. Be prepared to fulfill your promise – once fooled, forever jaded. This approach feeds into their reality, while simultaneously building trust and buying you more time. Reward small successes along the way, string these milestones together and you will soon realize longer tenures among your staff.

Myth: They have no respect for authority.

Reality: They have great respect for leaders and loyalty. But no, as a rule they don’t respect authority "just because." For the younger generations, every ounce of loyalty and respect must be earned. But when it is earned, it is given fiercely.

In fact, loyalty to the individual is the number one reason Xers and Millennials stay in the job, especially during the first three, tenuous years. Dissatisfaction with the boss is the number one reason they quit. So in order to increase retention, managers must take a flipped view on leadership – it is no longer enough to hire the right people and show them the way, now you must BE the right person to win their affection. Sounds a little touchy-feely for the workforce, yet the faster leaders understand this new relationship, the sooner you will see the reward in the way of increased retention.

There is one big caveat to the "be the person they want you to be" approach to leadership, however. Millenials have a tendency to seek tight bonds – they want a boss who is close, caring and aware. And you can be all that. It is very easy to cross the line between "boss as advocate" to "boss as friend." That is a slippery slope. It can be especially tempting in situations where managers and employees are close in age. When activities outside of the office become too regular, too casual or largely social in nature, it is time to examine how this will affect your role as a leader. What Millennial need most out of a boss is a guide, not a social life.

Myth: They don’t want to grow up.

Reality: They really don’t know how. The youngest generations in today’s workforce are facing a delayed adulthood. They are getting married later, having children later and just generally facing the "real world" later. This isn’t the result of a mutated maturity gene, it just is. And if we are being completely honest, Boomers had a lot to do with why it’s happening. First, as parents, Boomers had a tendency to coddle their children and use their own good fortune to make sure their children didn’t experience adversity. Second, as career models, Boomers demonstrated the toll of working long hours and "paying one’s dues" in a way that made their children less likely to follow in their footsteps. Millenials today look at the corporate ladder and think, "there must be another way."

My advice to you – don’t waste time wishing they were different. Don’t spend your energy comparing today’s youth to the desires and drive you had at age 18. These employees are not a reflection of you, nor are they an earlier version of you. And again, that is okay. Your task is to take this new understanding and use it to reposition how you interact with, motivate and reward your staff.

Take attire for instance. Your 18-year-old self would have gladly donned whatever uniform was necessary to fit the company mold. Be it pressed khakis and a tie or a specific corporate uniform, fitting in was part of the package. Today’s youth wants to stand out. They want their individuality to shine through even when required to provide a consistent standard of service and performance. Balancing corporate needs with individual desires takes some creative thinking.

Home Depot is one company that has addressed this dilemma at a very basic level – company uniforms. They simply require that all employees wear a standard Home Depot apron. Be yourself underneath (within reason) and show the customer that you are on the Home Depot team with this bright orange apron. Is there a standard that you can adopt to accommodate individual preferences? Something to think about.

Not all change is bad.

As we’ve discussed, the myths surrounding today’s young employees are not always what they seem. Attitudes toward work, life, loyalty and respect have all changed, but each is still considered valuable. In fact, some of the demands made by today’s youth are creating positive benefits for employees in every generation. Flexibilty and respect for the individual, as well as the organization, are good for everyone. Loyalty from younger employees, once earned, is long-lasting. The adjustments you make to accommodate the changing attitudes of today’s youth will be returned to you tenfold with decreased turnover, improved morale, and measurable business results.

And when the frustration mounts, just remember things aren’t always what they seem. Open your mind to the possibility that there is a benign, generational reason for the disconnect between what you want and what your employees are providing, and you may just find room to create a shared vision of success.

Cam Marston is a consultant who specializes in multigenerational communications and marketing, educating executives about the workplace expectations of different generations. He speaks to thousands of executives each year and leads intensive, on-site training sessions for companies.

links for 2007-05-28

• The Last Tycoons >> New York Times | Bankers Behaving Badly
  In fact, “The Last Tycoons� bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Last Tycoon.�
  (tags: businessbooks biography)

The art of telling stories

Storytelling is an art. It entertains, teaches and shares. From the time we're told the tale of the boy who cried wolf to the stories in newspapers and magazines, our lives are inundated with stories.

Research supports storytelling. People tend to remember facts more accurately if they encounter them in a story rather than in a list, studies find.

Storytelling helps authors write. It helps businesses communicate ideas. It helps parents teach children lessons.

One storyteller, who has been around since he was 19, is none other than the famed Mr. Ira Glass; now he has 1.7 million people listening to his show, This American Life. I ran into this link a few weeks ago and finally had a chance to watch it. It was worth my time. In four YouTube videos, Ira talks about his art:

(1) On the Basics
Use anecdotes. Raise questions from the beginning; build that tension (or as Dan and Chip would say, build that curiosity gap).

(2) On Finding Stories
It'd be great if every story ended up working. Chances are, they won't. Ira and his expert story-seeking team spend half the week looking for stories. In the end, they kill a half to a third of the stories they find. By killing it you will make something even better live.

(3) On Good Taste
Put in that extra effort; your stories will reflect it.

(4) Two Common Pitfalls
Faking it and a poor personality can both detract from a good story. Ira encourages you to be yourself. No one else can be you.

If you have a half hour, check out Ira on storytelling. If you run across other good storytellers, drop me a comment. And enjoy your long weekend!

Happy Birthday Mr. Zimmerman

Robert Allen Zimmerman AKA Bob Dylan is 66 today. All the best and Happy Birthday!

We really are lucky to have lived during his lifetime. At least, I feel lucky

links for 2007-05-24

• The Sushi Economy>>The Wall Street Journal | From Strange Cargo to Culinary Star
  The book is eminently readable and more anecdote-rich and quirky than its subtitle ("Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy") might suggest
  (tags: businessbooks global industry)

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Children who dine at Chick-fil-A

Doane's Blog tells us that with Stephen Covey's help Chick-fil-A is educating their youngest diners about being highly effective people. Covey's 7 Habits were split into 7 kids' books to round out Chick-fil-A's kids' menu. Find them at a Chick-fil-A near you.

: : : :

p.s. Check out Doane's paper; it's grid + lined paper. Free downloads here (if you feel so inclined, there is a place for donations, too.).

links for 2007-05-23

• Watch This, Listen This, Click Here >> Advertising Age | A look at the media world's fast-approaching future lives up to the hype.
  Good news is, the text more than lives up to the hype.
  (tags: businessbooks media)

Excerpt from Be the Elephant

The new selection on our Excerpts blog is from the Preface of Be the Elephant: Build a Bigger, Better Business by Steve Kaplan. He helps readers understand the exact nature of their business by showing how to define objectives, identify risks, and get the operation on solid footing.

Be the Elephant is the second book in a series aimed at helping solve the real issues faced by business owners, professionals, sales professionals, managers--anyone charged with growing any part of a business. The central idea of the first book, Bag the Elephant, was to provide a strategy for getting and keeping that huge customer. The book you're holding now focuses on a process and strategy you can implement to grow your business safely and efficiently--and become the Elephant yourself.

Here's a direct link to the excerpt:
http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/006920.html

links for 2007-05-22

• The Upside >> BusinessWeek | Don't Worry, Be Ready
  "'Unmanaged risk is the greatest source of waste in your business and in our economy as a whole,' he writes. At times, Slywotzky treads familiar ground—many of his subjects, including Apple, Toyota, and IBM, are hardly unknown. Yet The Upside's big poin
  (tags: businessbooks management strategy)
• Deals on the Green >> BusinessWeek | An 18-Hole Character Test
  "Adapted from Deals on the Green: Lessons on Business and Golf from America's Top Executives, by David Rynecki."
  (tags: businessbooks general_business)

Welcome to this week's Carnival of the Capitalist

Welcome! This week we're hosting Carnival of the Capitalist.

If this is your first time visiting, here's our shameless self-promotion. We are in the business of moving ideas. We've been in the bookselling business for the past 23 years. You're here today because business books are our specialty. Two of our family idea movers are the provocative ChangeThis and quirky inBubbleWrap. Again, welcome; we're glad to have you!

Now, on to the carnival:

On People:
Are employees seen as parts rather than people?

John explains why his brother stopped wearing a watch.

Paid vacation is a perk for working and not legally required in the US (making the US the only
developed country that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation or holidays).

John Wesley invites us to be experts.

Here are seven tips on resolving conflict in the workplace.

On Marketing:

Chris gives a few ideas on how to make your site more helpful for customers.

Matt suggests a replacement for the 4Ps of marketing basics; his suggestion: the 4Cs -- Create, Connect, Change, Cancel.

Rob brings up the story of SteakHouse owner Jeff Ruby refusing service to OJ Simpson. He then asks if businesses can be selective with their customers?

On the subject of money:
Learn how the worldwide demand for Whirlpool and Mastercard is helping to balance the US GDP.

On May 10th, Nasdaq plummeted to -1731; Trader's Narrative points out that a similar day happened in late 2006 only to be followed by a better Nasdaq. It begs the question...does May 10th foreshadow a good future for Nasdaq?

The Digerati Life summarizes what's involved in the different types of start-up funding.

When you're done with that, head over to Business Fund to learn about how to give the VC/Angel pitch.

There's a question of insider trading in the medical arena -- what consititutes as insider training vs. necessary information for doing the job right?

The e-commerce business may change if eBay and Amazon sellers are required to pay taxes.

If you're self-employed, here are some ways to avoid being audited.

: : : : :

Thanks for visiting! Next week CotC will be visiting Marketing Whore.

Best Business Books via U.S. News and World Report

U.S. News and World Report has a huge special report on the Best Business Books. Their opening says:

Hundreds of business books are published each year. Chances are at least one has the answers you're looking for. But how to find it? U.S. News spoke with 14 leaders from all walks of business life—from academics to entrepreneurs to corporate execs—about the five books they consider indispensable reading for managers.

When magazines do these lists we always create a summary so people can see the picks in one quick view. The commentary that each leader gives is always interesting, so make sure you click through on the author's name if you see something that interests you.

Good To Great made four appearances on the list and Collins is one of leaders providing reading recommendations. Porter's Competitive Strategy appears twice. Otherwise, the picks are unique. I personally like Jeff Pfeffer's picks and reasons the best.

Best Business Books

Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired, author of The Long Tail)

• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2001)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger (2000)
• Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World by Kevin Kelly (1995)
• Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology by George Gilder (1989)
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Jack Brennan (CEO of Vanguard)

• Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company by Andrew S. Grove (1996)
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)
• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter (1980)
• Economics by Paul Samuelson (1948)
• Leadership Is an Art by Max DePree (1989)

Robert Bruner (Dean of Darden School of Business, University of Virginia)

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt (2005)
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)
• Leading Change by John Kotter (1996)
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker (1967)

Jim Buckmaster (CEO of craigslist)

• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)
• The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (2005)
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988)
• The Discourses by Epictetus (second century B.C.)
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric Raymond (1999)

Jim Collins (author of Good to Great)

• In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years by Jim and Sybil Stockdale (1984, out of print, ISBN 0870213083)
• The Second World War (six volumes) by Winston Churchill (1948–1953)
• Personal History by Katharine Graham (1997)
• Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers (1962)
• The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History by Stephen J. Gould (1980)

Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks)

• The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie (1889)
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
• The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen (1997)
• The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need by Andrew Tobias (1978)
• Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!) by Stephan Schiffman (1987)

Thomas Donaldson (professor at Wharton School of Business)

• The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (fifth century B.C.)
• Concept of the Corporation by Peter Drucker (1946)
• Modern Corporation and Private Property by Adolf Berle and Gardinar Means (1932)
• Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter (1942)
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)

Carly Fiorina (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard)

• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (2002)
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman (2005)
• Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise by Alfred Chandler (1962)
• Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age by Tom Peters (2003)

Jackie Fouse (CFO of Alcon)

• Blindness by José Saramago (1995)
• The Quest for Value by G. Bennett Stewart III (1991)
• Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald (2005)
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas Friedman (1999)
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (1994)

Robert Joss (dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981)
• The Practice of Management by Peter Drucker (1954)
• My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (1963)
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins (1994)
• Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society by John Gardner (1964)

Jeffery Pfeffer (professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad (1994)
• The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor (1960)
• Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things by Robert Cialdini (1984)
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946)
• Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets by Robert Kuttner (1997)

John W. Rogers Jr. (chairman and CEO of Ariel Capital Management)

• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro (1974)
• Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 by Taylor Branch (1988)
• Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein (1995)
• Succeeding Against the Odds by John H. Johnson with Lerone Bennett Jr. (1989, out of print, ISBN 1567430023)
• The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert A. Caro (1982)

Hector Ruiz (chairman and CEO of AMD)

• A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard (1899)
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C. K. Prahalad (2005)
• Dilbert by Scott Adams (ongoing)

Deborah Wright (CEO of Carver Bancorp)

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)
• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter (1980)
• I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother by Allison Pearson (2002)
• Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman (1953)

links for 2007-05-18

• China: Fragile Superpower>>The Wall Street Journal | Pursuing Power -- and Trying to Keep It
  Susan Shirk argues that China's Communist leaders are a lot more insecure than they let on.
  (tags: businessbooks global)

On Depicting Data.

From powerpoints to pie charts or bar graphs, depicting data doesn't always come easy. It often has to be boiled down to the main points. Take the NYC subway map, for example; Eddie Jabbour is attempting to redesin it to be more user friendly. If you asked a certain Tufte, he'd suggest the London Tube map as a good reference point and the Mr Beck's Underground Map book for more on the philosophy behind the map's design. I'm going to see if I can find the book and will let you know what happens. I imagine it'd be a reference for business design, too. Has anyone ever seen it?

links for 2007-05-17

• Way of the Turtle>>The Wall Street Journal | The Tortoise and the Harried Trader
  The book conveys the highs and lows that a trader goes through as he works through various systems. It shows, above all, how a trader must believe in his system even when it is going against him.
  (tags: businessbooks finance)

Number of Books and Number of Readers

According to the Mexican critic Gabriel Zaid, writing in So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, the human race publishes a book every 30 seconds. If current trends continue, by 2052 the number of people writing and publishing a book in a given year will exceed the number of people who will read one. (Quote from Design Observer.)

Wow.

Jack Covert Selects - Unstoppable

Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth by Chris Zook, Harvard Business School Press, 208 pages, $29.95 Hardcover, May 2007, ISBN 9781422103661.

You expect to find trilogies in fantasy or science fiction literature. What if I told you there was one in business books and it could capture your attention like an Indiana Jones expedition?

Chris Zook has been leading readers on a business strategy adventure since 2001. His first book, Profit from the Core, summarized ten years worth of Bain research showing that successful growth comes from focusing on the essence, or “core,� of the existing business. In Beyond the Core, Zook argues for how companies can make adjacent strategic moves leveraging that core. His third book, Unstoppable, asserts that two-thirds of companies will have to redefine their cores in the next ten years and offers recommendations for how to make that transition successfully.

Zook starts his concluding volume with a description of the ever-increasing turbulence business faces today:

“[W]e found that 153 of the top 500 companies in 1994 did not even survive the following decade intact. They either ended up in bankruptcy or were acquired and integrated into a larger company. Of the 347 companies that survived and maintained independence, we judged that 130 had undergone a fundamental shift in their core business strategy and its key parameters. In other words, nearly six out of ten companies faced threats to their survival or independence, and only about half were able to meet those threats by redefining their strategies.�

Zook has always stressed looking at the industry profit pool rather than the market size. He suggests it is changes in the profit pool that signal the need for redefining a company's core. Your company could be losing your share of the pool (U.S. vs. Japanese automakers) but the market has not changed; the profit pool could have shifted to a different point in the value chain (Intel and Microsoft in PCs); new technology could completely change the economics of an industry (Amazon in books).

The core is where companies must find strength to withstand industry turbulence, Zook argues. But he also suggests that all companies have hidden assets that can be utilized when a company must redefine its core. Like any good consultant, Zook has classified them into three broad categories. The first is undervalued business platforms ranging from adjacencies into new geographies to support services to non-core businesses. The second is untapped customer insights, a familiar idea often hard to act on. Finally, underutilized capabilities are the most abstract of the three and were the least often used in the companies Zook examined.

Zook concludes his trilogy with a discussion about the challenges leaders face given the options and uncertainties in the business world. He recommends focusing on the external, and what is going on in business in general, but ends with this: “[M]y overwhelming feeling from seven years of studying success and failure among companies searching for profitable growth is that, ironically, many of the most challenging demons are internal and our most difficult foes are often ourselves.�

If you haven’t read any of Zook’s work, go back and read this series from the start. I always find myself energized by the possibilities after reading Zook's work, and I think you will too.

Jack Covert Selects - Off-Ramps and On-Ramps

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Harvard Business School Press, 320 pages, $29.95 Hardcover, May 2007, ISBN 9781422101025.

I admit it: I take great pride in the fact that our small company has, over the years, made modifications to the standard work week in order to keep talented people working for us. Several of my employees work from home for family and productivity reasons. Another takes a day off once a week to work on a home business. I believe the best way to keep the best employees is to treat them like people. And sometimes that means taking into account the demands their personal lives put on their work lives. But my little company is an anomaly. Most companies have a policy manual written in the '80s and expect all of their employees to fit their performance to the set policies...and anyone who doesn't can go work at the coffee shop around the corner. This is particularly true for women whose lives often demand a more flexible work situation. Off-Ramps and On-Ramps is a much-needed look into a critical problem in our business world: the current career model and its lack of flexibility for talented women.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett shows that it is becoming increasingly evident that the "level playing field" vision for gender equality in the workplace was an inadequate solution. The idea that, by removing barriers to success, companies could create equal opportunities for men and women was a progressive one--but in many ways it implied that women are just "men in skirts." The existing career model leaves out an important consideration: women take on different responsibilities than men outside the workplace. They bear children, care for aging parents and are responsible for other household demands. And those responsibilities, needs and wants cause women to take career breaks or delay advancement.

Hewlett discusses the problem in terms of off-ramps--reasons to leave or delay a career--and on-ramps--reentering the workforce. As she points out, once women take an off-ramp, it's hard to find an on-ramp--and very rare to find an on-ramp that puts them on the same track they were traveling before. "Once a woman has taken one, opportunities to reenter a career are few and far between...[and] a great many talented women find the on-ramping struggle a humiliating experience--baffling, unfair, and replete with rejection." So, many highly-skilled, ambitious women are simply giving up on the rat race altogether. And that has serious implications for employers.

Great changes are looming on the business horizon: the job market heating up, a growing talent void, baby boomers leaving the workforce, higher demand for knowledge workers. And many companies such as Time Warner, GE, Johnson & Johnson and Cisco Systems are rewriting policies to accommodate the needs of professional women. They're developing flexible work-week options, opportunities for community involvement, continuing education and mentoring programs and more. They're harnessing the power of talented, nontraditional workers. Off-Ramps and On-Ramps makes a strong case for why this is necessary and offers strategies for implementing such modifications in your own business.

Books From The Pile - May 2007

We get a lot of books here at 800-CEO-READ. I would bet it is about 100 titles a month. They all end up in Jack's office and about once a month we have to clean the place up. It is always interesting to see what is being published and what titles are competing with each other.

Based on what we see, there is a solution for every problem imaginable. Here is a sample of self-help from the pile:

• Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research That Proves The Link Between Doing Good and Living A Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by Stephen Post and Jill Neimark
• Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves by James Hollis
• You're Addicted To You: Why It's So Hard to Change—and What You Can Do About It by Noah Blumenthal
• The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong, A History of What Really Makes Us Happy by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Jack Covert Selects - The Dip

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), by Seth Godin, Portfolio, 92 pages, $12.95 Hardcover, May 2007, ISBN 9781591841661

I have been reviewing Seth Godin books since Purple Cow came out in 2003. What I respect most about Seth is his ability to practice what he preaches. He has published and marketed his books in ways that represent his philosophy of success. The Dip, his fifth book in four years, again provides the one thing they all have in common--a great insight, concisely wrought. Seth always finds a way to capture a set of ideas and deliver them in one simple, eye-catching package. The Dip is no different.

This new insight goes something like this:

A. Your goal should be to be the best in the world.
B. Being the best makes you a scarce resource. That means more attention, more fans, and more money.
C. There is a steep curve to getting to be the best.
D. Decide what you are going to quit doing.

"The dip" is the flat spot of the effort curve after the initial excitement wears off and when you see the steep upward incline. It is why most give up on snowboarding after the first day. It is why getting your product into Wal-Mart trumps selling on the web. It is why most small businesses are limited by the control the founder keeps.

Seth examines "the dip" from many anecdotal angles--something you'll recognize from his other books. The Space Shuttle, bodybuilders, and ultra-marathoners all typify "the dip" and their stories help the reader internalize the challenges of being the best.

At 92 pages, The Dip is an airplane or afternoon read. Some are going to say it is light and just Godin's attempt at self-help. But isn't that the power of an insight? It is compact...and designed to impact your perspective on the world.

links for 2007-05-15

• Prophet of Innovation >> Economist.com | Joseph Schumpeter : In praise of entrepreneurs
  He succeeds in getting inside the economist's head, explaining not just what he thought but why he thought it [book link].
  (tags: businessbooks economics innovation biography entrepreneurship)
• Where Have All The Leaders Gone? >> FORTUNE | "They're throwing us to the curb."
  A Q&A with Iacocca on his new book [ book link].
  (tags: biography businessbooks leadership)

Chandler, Our Historian

Business historian Alfred Chandler passed away last week. The Wall Street Journal ran a thorough piece on his life and work in their Weekend Edition.

Strategy and Structure is a title most look to as a hallmark in the study of business management. Here is Peters and Waterman's concise description from In Search of Excellence:

Quite simply, Chandler observed that organizational structures in great companies like Du Pont, Sears, General Motors, and General Electric are all driven by changing pressures in the marketplace. For example, Chandler traces the market-driven proliferation of product lines in both Du Pont and General Motors. He shows how that proliferation led to a needed shift away from a functional monolithic organizational form toward a more loosely coupled divisional structural form.

Chandler won a Pulitzer Prize for The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. He makes the case that business managers have a far greater influence than market forces of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.

Here is an incomplete bibliography of his work:

• Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2005) coedited with Bruce Mazlish
• Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2005)
• Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free Press 2001)
• A Nation Transformed By Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2000) coedited with James Cortada—incisive essays about publishing, telecommunications, management structures, productivity and economic growth
• The Dynamic Firm - The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organization and Regions (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1998) coedited with Peter Hagström & Örjan Sölvell
• Big Business & the Wealth of Nations (New York: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) coedited with Franco Amatori & Takashi Hikino—a collection of papers on corporate organisation, markets and government, notable for international comparisons and skepticism about dogma such as the Wiener thesis
• Scale & Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1994)—a continuation of Strategy & Structure, including UK and German enterprises
• The Essential Alfred Chandler: Essays Toward a Historical Theory of Big Business (Boston: Harvard Business School Press 1988), edited by Thomas McCraw (out of print, ISBN 0071033173).
• Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1980) coedited with Herman Daems (out of print, ISBN 0674547411)
• Managerial Innovation at General Motors (New York: Arno Press 1979)—editor
• The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1977)—the landmark study of communications, management processes and institutional structures
• Pierre S. Du Pont and The Making of the Modern Corporation (New York: Harper & Row 1971) with Stephen Salsbury—a deservedly influential study of corporate organisation and management styles
• The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1970-80) coedited with Stephen Ambrose, Louis Galambos and others—the 11 volume official edition of the papers of the US President
• Railroads, the Nation's First Big Business (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1965)
• Strategy & Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge: MIT Press 1962)
• Henry Varnum Poor - Business Editor, Analyst & Reformer (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1956)—the definitive biography of the early US business analyst, progenitor of Standard & Poor's rating service
• The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1951-54) coedited with Elting Morison & John Morton Blum—the four volume authorised edition of the correspondence of the big game hunter, conservationist and President.

source : Calston Analytics

How to peel a banana

How do you peel a banana? If you're like me, you peel it the "wrong" way. That's the way we're taught. Pinching a banana from the other end is actually easier as we've learned from gorillas.

Seth, too, admits to the crime of knowing the "right" way to peel a banana but still insists on peeling it the "wrong" way.

Why? It's hard to execute change whether in peeling bananas or reorganizing companies. According to Jim Collins, "fewer than 1% of companies ever make the leap" (from the May 2007 Business 2.0 article, Changing Minds).

And, while we're on the topic of bananas, did you know they are easily split into thirds?

An excerpt from The Black Swan

Visit our Excerpts Blog to read an excerpt from The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Here are a few of the media hits Taleb has received:

• Wired Magazine


• The Wall Street Journal


• Financial Times

And here's what we've written about it on our site:

• My Review of Portfolio's Book Reviews


• The Black Swan - Few and Far Between

From the book:

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability.* (* The highly expected not happening is also a Black Swan. Note that, by symmetry the occurrence of a highly improbable event is the equivalent of the nonoccurrence of a highly probable one.) A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives...

The central idea of this book concerns our blindness with respect to randomness, particularly the large deviations: Why do we, scientists or nonscientists, hotshots or regular Joes, tend to see the pennies instead of the dollars? Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence?

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: 800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/006921.html

links for 2007-05-13

• Last Harvest >> BusinessWeek | "The Soul Of A New Suburb"
  "In Last Harvest, acclaimed architecture writer Witold Rybczynski paints a nuanced portrait of these men and others who built America, neighborhood by neighborhood...Along the way, Rybczynski offers a rich history of U.S. development, from the Founding Fa
  (tags: businessbooks realestate history entrepreneurship)

A Book of Decencies

Over the past few months, Jack and Todd have been taking each of us out for lunch. It's a chance for them to ask, "How are things going?" As they work their way around the office, they're learning about the things that are working well in our environment and the things that could be improved. More importantly, they're showing each of us that our experience at 800-CEO-READ matters, and that we can come to them with anything.

Jack and Todd are doing what Steve Harrison refers to as "decencies" in The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies. In describing his father's role as a psychiatrist, he says "My father's job was to listen--perhaps the ultimate decency of all." As most managers know, there are even more decencies a company can extend to its employees--small decencies like a coffee cart, a work-at-home day, introductions at meetings, and the freedom to choose projects that interest them. And then there are large decencies like company-wide mentoring programs, flexible schedules/shifts, defined employee rights, gestures of gratitude, and inviting employees to voice their opinions and concerns.

This book provides a list of these decencies, categorized under chapter titles like Consideration Decencies, Recognition Decencies, and Executive Humility Decencies, that can lead to workplaces where people are excited to come to work and happy to do their jobs. Harrison profiles a number of decency-extending companies like Lee Hecht Harrison, Disney, HP, Nabisco, Starbucks...the list goes on. Here's a brief excerpt on building great companies:

"Creating environments that employees describe as "a great place to work" and in which employees are free to speak their minds relies on the practice of decencies on a regular basis by everyone in the organization. It also takes leadership at the top to start the process, reinforce the efforts along the way, and communicate the long-term benefits of creating and sustaining an organization culture based on trust. These practices go beyond the leaders at the top to become common acts among people throughout the organization."

What I love about our workplace is our culture of extending decencies--of shutting up when someone's taking an important call, helping tip letters into a thousand books, toasting an important event in one of our lives, and taking the time to meet every two weeks and talk about the things we're working on. And the employee lunches haven't been half bad.

New Excerpt!

There's a new excerpt up on the Excerpts Blog. It's taken from the introduction to Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming by Paul Hawken.

This movement, however, doesn't fit the standard model. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check with. It is taking shape in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, companies, deserts, fisheries, slums--and yes, even fancy New York hotels. One of its distinctive features is that it is tentatively emerging as a global humanitarian movement arising from the bottom up. Historically social movements have arisen primarily in response to injustice, inequities, and corruption. Those woes still remain legion, joined by a new condition that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease, marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change.

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/006964.html

links for 2007-05-10

• Chasing Cool>>The Wall Street Journal | In Hot Pursuit of the Next Big Trend
  As they conduct interviews with fashion-and-media players such as Tom Ford, Clive Davis and Ms. Fuller, the former editor of US Weekly, it becomes clear that true cool is, for the authors, the passionate brainchild of "a tasteful visionary" with a "point
  (tags: businessbooks economics)

Book Videos

In a time where book reviews are disappearing from major newspapers and magazines, one of the larger publishers Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS) is trying out online videos on books. Next month is the premiere of their new website Bookvideos.tv that will aide consumers in their choices and direct them towards Simon's books.

The website will introduce books based upon "personality" rather than publication date (paid subscription to the WSJ required; article: Book Channel Bound for Internet). Videos will be two minutes in length and cover how book ideas are sparked and details on the author's life. Due to appear are bestselling S&S authors such as Mary Higgins Clark, Zane and Sandra Brown.

And, S&S is letting consumers use the video in a manner of their choice.

Audio Elsewhere

There is great business audio all over the net. Here are just a few places to supplement your media diet:

• Lisa Haneberg has been doing her Fireside Chats for some time. Some of hers include Peter Georgescu(The Source of Success), Lee Froschheiser (Vital Factors), and Marcus Buckingham (Go Put Your Strengths To Work).
• HBSP Working Knowledge has an audio series. Their first interview was with Richard Tedlow, author of Andy Grove: The Life and Times of An American.
• IT Conversations has the occasional business person. Contributor Dr. Moria Gunn has interviewed Mark Thompson, author of Success Built To Last and Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail.
• The Invisible Hand Podcast is full of great stuff. They c