800-CEO-READ Blog

Something Gained, Something Lost

The New York Times reported this morning that "Rupert Murdoch finally won his long-coveted prize today, tentatively gaining enough support from the deeply divided Bancroft family to buy Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal". This has huge implications.

From the Times...

For Mr. Murdoch, the Dow Jones takeover gives him not only one of the world's great media trophy properties and a larger voice in national affairs, but also a ready source of material and credibility for his newest big gamble, the Fox Business Channel he plans to launch in October.

Under a deal with CNBC, that channel has the exclusive right to use Dow Jones content and have Dow Jones reporters and editors appear on its programs until 2012. But Mr. Murdoch, whose new channel would compete with CNBC, has long been known for taking the long view, willing to wait years for his investments to pay off.

Dow Jones's centerpiece is The Journal, with domestic circulation of more than 2 million six days a week, second only to USA Today, but the company also includes many other parts, like the financial weekly Barron's, Dow Jones Newswires, the Web site MarketWatch and Factiva, an electronic news archive and information service.

Even if Mr. Murdoch is sincere in his insistence that the newsroom at the Journal will remain as independant as it always has been, this acquisition is sure to affect how we receive our business news.

I am personally saddened by all this. The Bancroft family has owned Dow Jones and the Journal since 1902, and before this episode, I had never really known they existed. Since I've learned more about them recently, I had some hope they could resist the pressure to sell to NewsCorp. That hope seems to have been dashed this morning. Again from the Times...

Dow Jones is discussing a plan to have News Corp. cover the legal fees incurred by the Bancroft family, amounting to at least $30 million, the Journal reported on Monday.

"After all the high-minded concerns about editorial interest and journalistic excellence, it gets down to who pays the legal fees for the Bancrofts," Benchmark & Co. analyst Ed Atorino said. "And some of the trustees bailed, fearing they'd get sued by some of the younger trust beneficiaries if they voted against the deal -- so much for principles."

Some members of the Bancroft family had said they opposed Murdoch's bid because they believed he would interfere with Dow Jones' news operations, while others were seeking an even richer premium than the 65 percent premium News Corp. offered.

The Bancroft family gave the paper their financial backing, but more importantly, they gave it independence. As I mentioned earlier, Murdoch insists that the paper's journalistic independence will remain, but I find it hard to believe it will be as great in their new home at NewsCorp. And this is not even mentioning what will happen to the other properties NewCorp will acquire along with the Journal.

Looking around the country, there are fewer and fewer independent voices out there. I think that has to affect the diversity of opinions in the discussion of business ideas being presented to the public. For our small part, we here at 8cr are committed to diversity in the marketplace of ideas, and we will continue to bring them to you independently.

Today's Quote

God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.

Ethel Mumford

links for 2007-07-31

• Rocketeers >> BusinessWeek | Space: The Private Frontier
  "Belfiore's book provides a worthwhile overview for readers who want to learn more about these characters and the space-tourism market they are promoting."
  (tags: businessbooks industry technology)
• The BusinessWeek Best-Seller List - June 2007
  June 2007 Bestsellers
  (tags: businessbooks lists)
• SLIDESHOW - BusinessWeek Bestsellers - June 2007
  Opens slideshow of bestsellers.
  (tags: businessbooks lists)

If They Give You Lined Paper...

I like books about writing and language. Could be the technical writer in me. Or the linguist. Either way, I'm always intrigued by the writing books that come across my desk. Once in a while they trick me, though.

Last week I received a copy of If They Give You Lined Paper - Write Sideways by Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael and Tales of Adam, among other books.

A good portion of the book is the transcript of a conversation between Quinn and an inquisitive fan. The two tackle all sorts of world issues, from poverty to religion to cultural mythology to questions of good and evil, and Quinn takes on the role of challenger--challenging his fan to tease out her ideas and reasoning.

The narrative reveals Quinn's thought process and inspires readers to take more creative approaches to life. The appendix contains two never-before-published essays, "The New Renaissance" and "Our Religions." If They Give You Lined Paper - Write Sideways will definitely intrigue readers who enjoy stimulating, intellectual conversations about solving problems.

Even though it wasn't what I expected from the title, this book offered an interesting approach to getting a point across. Which is, I guess, what has made Daniel Quinn such a successful author and visionary.

Excerpt from Profitable Marketing Communications

Check out Chapter 8 of Profitable Marketing Communication on our Excerpts blog.

'Think Different' should be the slogan of all marketers who want their marketing communications to deliver a return. There is no point in being identical to the competition and saying the same thing - only perhaps a bit louder and across more platforms. As Jason Frost, Managing Director of Publicis Blueprint, points out: 'Any successful brand has found a way of differentiating, whether it's through accident or design.'

Profitable Marketing Communications: A Guide to Marketing Return on Investment encourages businesses to view marketing not as a cost, but an investment and added value. "The book introduces investment disciplines and strategies to marketing practices and gives insight into how marketers have delivered outstanding marketing return on investment. Finally, it provides a blueprint to maximize the returns from marketing communications" (Kogan Page, publisher).

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007160.html

Today's Quote

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Mark Twain

links for 2007-07-27

• The Energy Bus >> Fast Company | Positive Thinking is Good.
  "The book, and... its now familiar message of achieving your goals with supped up optimism, confidence, and enthusiasm. Some leadership and performance coaches are already calling it the business world's new religion."
  (tags: businessbooks personaldevelopment)

An economy of ideas.

Here's another group I've been following a lot. There's a lot of innovative stuff going on over there. Get this, they run a design firm in Chicago. You'd never know.

Most design firms are paid for their work. There's a one-time payment, much like buying a CD or a business book (had to tie it back to our work here).

This group is different. They've found a way to own their ideas and circumvent the one-time payment. And they're having a fine time doing it.

Here's the explanation of how their model changed. It's from 2005 and is still relevant. They became their own client -- they build services they'd want, and content they like to read (and share a space with handy web designers). Turns out, a lot of regular people needed and enjoyed the same sorts of things.

They're getting paid for their ideas. That may not seem extraordinary; it is.

In a society where ideas can run wildly, the structure of our economy is lagging. It still pays for the product and not the idea. Here's another way of looking at it. At some point that's going to change. We just haven't quite figured how.

I think Coudal may just be the starting point for this change.

There's something here for authors, musicians, business folks, and anyone who's trying to earn a dime off their ideas.

links for 2007-07-26

• The 4-hour Workweek>>The Wall Street Journal | A Slacker's Guide to Fun and Profit
  Still, "The 4-Hour Workweek" seems rooted in the daydreams of a reluctant teenage floor-mopper.
  (tags: businessbooks)

How Freakonomics came to be.

I've been following the Freakonomics blog a lot lately (and they just suggested another economist's blog). Today, Stephen Dubner explained how Freakonomics came to be.

Back in 2003 Hugo Lindgren, an editor for New York magazine, asked Dubner to profile Steve Levitt. A reluctant Dubner accepted the assignment, met Levitt and profiled him.

Lucky for us, Dubner ignored Hugo's bit of advice on having a co-author or Freakonomics may have never existed.

Food Fight

We here at 8cr have some pretty simple rules on promoting books and ideas. Promote only the books & ideas we truly believe in, and promote them with the expertise we've developed over the last 20+ years. Inherent in doing that is approaching and introducing ourselves to new communities in an honest and forthright way.

As we've learned over the past few weeks, not everyone shares this vision of how to promote their company. I'm speaking, of course, of John Mackey. The CEO of Whole Foods has been posting to yahoo! message boards under the pseudonym Rahodeb for the last 8 years promoting his own company and trashing its opponent, Wild Oats. The discovery of this comes at an especially bad time for the company, which is facing an antitrust suit from the FTC because of their planned acquisition of (who'd have guessed) Wild Oats!

It has been written about pretty widely in the blogosphere already, but yesterday's Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) by David Kesmodel and Jonathan Eig is the best I've read. It really dives into the history of the man and his character, along with that of the company he built, that has been lacking elsewhere. So, from the Journal...

"I'm going to destroy you," the co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods Market Inc. shouted at Perry Odak, CEO of Wild Oats Markets Inc., the first time the two men met six years ago at a retailing conference in Manhattan, according to Mr. Odak.

Mr. Mackey fit in nicely among the health-food industry's scrappy entrepreneurs. He was a six-time college dropout, curly haired and casually dressed. He spoke passionately about food (the natural kind), politics (the libertarian kind) and capitalism (the aggressive kind). Colleagues who knew him as a young man say he was -- and remains today, at 53 -- a man of opposing characteristics: forthright and yet distant, compassionate and yet cutthroat, idealistic and yet capable of compromise.

And how is this very ugly situation playing out? So far, not very well.

On Tuesday, Mr. Mackey apologized and the Whole Foods board announced it will launch an internal investigation. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the chief executive's posts to see if they violated the law. Mr. Mackey's online alter ego came to light in a court filing by the Federal Trade Commission, which filed a lawsuit last month seeking to block Whole Foods's planned purchase of Wild Oats on antitrust grounds.

A Whole Foods recently opened in Milwaukee, which caused me some concern for the natural foods co-op I used to work for. When I asked an old friend in their marketing department how they were reacting to it, she was unfazed. She tells me that they feel a Whole Foods in town will educate more consumers than it takes away from them, and that it will eventually create a larger overall market here. I think that may be true, and if so, I think it's remarkable.

I've always had a great amount of respect for the foresight Mr. Mackey has shown in building his natural foods empire. I appreciate the ways in which his company has established its credibility and reached out to the community to educate them about healthier foods. I do worry that this episode will damage some of that credibility.

Alan Murray released a book in May of this year entitled Revolt in the Boardroom about the recent wave of CEO firings and resignations. It includes stories of big hitters like Carly Fiorini and Michael Eisner, along with CEOs of companies such as Merck, Pfizer, Home Depot, & Fannie Mae. If things keep going the way they're going over at Whole Foods, Mr. Murray may have to get started on a revised edition that includes Mackey.

Postscript. The stories about himself aren't the only ones in which he comes off a bit abrasively this month (at least to me). By far my favorite article so far this month was Charles Fishman's piece on bottled water for Fast Company. Mackey was interviewed for the piece. The articles pretty long, so make sure you have some down time before starting it.

Meet Jon and Dylan.

You'll probably see these two wandering around here and changing our world for the better. I thought we should properly introduce them.

Meet Dylan
Dylan has been here for nearly five years and recently moved over to our marketing side. You'll see his name pop up on blog entries (rumor has it, one will appear soon) and various other places. If you ever saw our annual report (link to a large pdf version**), he's the talent behind the illustrations. What else should you know about him? He collects books, loves baseball, is one of the three Schleicher brothers here, and rides his bicycle everywhere.

Meet Jon
Jon came to us from a media technology company just north of us. He's been here nearly a month and is already an accomplished rubber band shooter (well, almost). We're glad he's here. He's joining Aaron (another of the three Schleichers) over in our author services. In his spare time, you can probably find him over here or maybe here.

If you do run into them, feel free to say hello. They have both added a bit more magic to our crew.

**If you'd like a printed version of our annual report, drop me a note kate[at]800ceoread.com.

Today's Quote

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

Joseph Addison

Potter Phenomenon

We can't ignore the publishing highpoint that took place over the weekend. The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday at 12:01AM generated sales of 8.3 million copies in its initial day on the market. It is a record, one previously held by its immediate predecessor Harry Potter and The Half-Blooded Prince, which sold 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours.

Using an average discount of 40%, Deathly Hallows generated about $175 million in its opening day, while the top grossing movie this weekend did $34.8 million.

Today's Quote

There's goat in all of us, a stupid, stubborn goat.

R. P. Blackmur

What Books CEOs Read

Harriet Rubin wrote a piece for the Saturday New York Times titled C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.

Rubin says that people at the top read things other than business books:

If there is a C.E.O. canon, its rule is this: "Don't follow your mentors, follow your mentors' mentors," suggests David Leach, chief executive of the American Medical Association's accreditation division. Mr. Leach has stocked his cabin in the woods of North Carolina with the collected works of Aristotle.

Forget finding the business best-seller list in these libraries. "I try to vary my reading diet and ensure that I read more fiction than nonfiction," [Michael] Moritz said. "I rarely read business books, except for Andy Grove's 'Swimming Across,' which has nothing to do with business but describes the emotional foundation of a remarkable man. I re-read from time to time T. E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom,' an exquisite lyric of derring-do, the navigation of strange places and the imaginative ruses of a peculiar character. It has to be the best book ever written about leading people from atop a camel."

The libraries of Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, and Sidney Harman all make appearances.

Harriet is also a great person to write this story, having created the Currency imprint at Random House.

links for 2007-07-21

• Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy >> New York Times Book Review | Rational Exhuberence
  But the book is deeply unsatisfying. Its good ideas are underdeveloped and its history often sloppy. [ book link]
  (tags: economics businessbooks)

Who wants to run a lemonade stand with me?

Tis the time for lemonade stands -- a business venture I remember all too well. Dixie cups. Kid-sized plastic table. Large plastic pitcher. The sign with "Lemonade: 25 cents" scrawled in kids' penmanship. Charming smiles. And of course, our prime lemonade-selling real estate on the main road of the neighborhood. The customers that donated $1 to our cause were millionaires in our minds. If we earned $20 in three hours, we were rolling in the dough.

A friend and I were discussing this business the other day. It made me realize just how much it has changed in my fifteen-year absence. My friend told of running into a lemonade stand ran by a boy of about 10 years. Now most lemonaires I've run into have marker on their fingers from sign making and are running around in bathing suits to take the occasional dip in the sprinkler.

Not this little entrepreneur. He was in his best Sunday suit -- truly a Wall Street-er in the making.

The lemonade was running for the bargain price of 25 cents (apparently, inflation has yet to hit lemonade). My friend started asking the little boy a few questions about his stand and business. To which he replies, "I've only been here 2 hours today and I've made, um, about $56." Somehow, he was earning $27/hour. Perhaps it was the business suit, the fresh lemon slice in each cup, or maybe the colored straw.

Yes, the lemonade stand world is more lucrative than I thought.

Author Ray Davis is helping kids realize their lemonade stand dreams. Ray, who is the president of the infamous customer-centered Umpqua Bank, recently announced putting $830,000 towards lemonade stand kits for kids (password required; click here for help).

Kids under 13 can apply and, if accepted, will receive:

...a lemonade stand kit, which includes a booklet called "How to Become a Lemonaire: A Guide to Starting Your First Small Business,"with tips on how to share, save and spend money responsibly; a yellow, plastic tablecloth; a sign for "(fill in the name's) lemonade stand"; cups and napkins; and a $10 bill for start-up capital. (The "loan" does not have to be paid back, although at least one proprietor has done that.)

If only they'd put the $10 bill in quarters, dimes and nickels so the kids could make change. If you know a budding entrepreneur, applications can be found at Umpqua banks and in newspapers in Portland, Bend, Eugene and Medford, Oregon, and Chico, Eureka, Sacramento and Yuba City, California.

And if anyone wants to go into lemonade business with me, I'm taking applications.

Today's Quote

Rule No. 1:
Never lose money
Rule No. 2
Never forget Rule No. 1

Warren Buffett

links for 2007-07-20

• What Were They Thinking >> Financial Times | Why leaders need to take out the trash
  (tags: business businessbooks management)

links for 2007-07-19

• The Elephant and the Dragon>>The Wall Street Journal | The Boom Beyond Our Borders
  In "The Elephant and the Dragon," Robyn Meredith, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for Forbes magazine, neatly navigates between the boom and the gloom.
  (tags: businessbooks global)

WSJ Review of The Elephant and the Dragon

Here's a review from today's Wall Street Journal. The Elephant and the Dragon, by Robyn Meredith, details the rapid economic growth both China and India have experienced over the past 100 years. Meredith shows that these two emerging economic giants have important lessons the U.S. and other nations can learn about global power and competition.

"Ms. Meredith reminds us of just how far both countries have traveled in the past half-century or so. In China, 30 million to 40 million people starved to death from 1959 to 1962 because of Mao's collectivizing farm policies, and nearly all of the country's universities were shuttered for more than a decade during the Cultural Revolution. In India, the post-independence experience with socialism and central planning subjected the economy to what became known, derisively, as "the Hindu rate of growth." Cumbersome, inefficient, patronage-laden enterprises sustained poverty rather than alleviating it. Over time, the irresistible logic of capitalism coincided with a juggernaut of globalizing technology to overturn the old paradigm and usher in reform."

Here's a link to the review: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118471088635069491-search.html?KEYWORDS=robyn+meredith&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

And a link to the book: http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=9780393062366

Today's Quote

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex; you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

James Baldwin

What is it about fables?

The New York Times interviewed John Kotter yesterday and reported on his business fable Our Iceberg Is Melting. These numbers set the stage:

Since its release last September, "Iceberg" has sold some 224,000 copies in hardcover (Leading Change [his prior book] has sold more than a million copies in 10 years), and been translated into 10 languages, with 10 more foreign editions in the works.

When I reported on the Publisher Weekly best-seller numbers, Our Iceberg Is Melting was the surprise on the list. I had no idea the book was doing so well.

The idea for the fable version came from reader Holger Rathgeber. In preparing for a presentation, Rathgeber became inspired by the drawing on the cover of Leading Change. The picture shows penguins jumping from one iceberg to another, so Rathgeber had everyone create penguin masks from construction paper during the workshop. Rathgeber sent Kotter a sample of the materials and Kotter was immediately taken.

So, Kotter rewrote Leading Change as a fable with the penguins and sent a draft out to friends in 2004. Requests started to roll in for copies of the book. Kotter decided to self-publish and went on to sell 15,000 copies. Publisher St. Martin bought the rights and published it in 2006.

I have to tell you I don't understand the popularity of fables like this. They are meant to appeal to a large audience, and that is the trouble for me. The messages these book convey are too simplistic. I guess this leaves me in the minority given the success that many of these books have.

My only solace lies in the fact that since the mainstream release of "Iceberg", we have sold twice as many copies of Leading Change as we have the fable. I guess our customers want the full version as well.

From Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines

I have seen brilliant entrepreneurial strategies falter as an organization grows and matures. Obviously, you manage a $25 billion company differently than you do a $25 million company. But you change your practices, not your principles.

Herb Kelleher, "A Culture of Commitment," Leader to Leader, Spring 1997, p.22 from Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry

The business of the book business

Random House (a piece of that German giant Bertelsmann) recently crunched their publishing numbers with New York magazine. The numbers:

There are 1,500 Random House employees in New York.
Every week they unveil 67 new books (around 3500 books/year).

Annual revenue: $2.3 billion ($230 million is profit).
2/3 of which comes from paperbacks.
80% of profit is driven by their backlist of 33,000 books.

Only one of every eight books is really profitable.
Understandably so, when author advances range from $7000 to up to $10 million.

Paperback math:
Customer buys a book for $10.

Retailer gets $5.
Random House covers their space and staff with $2.
The author is paid $1.50.
Printing costs are $1.

And the remaining 50 cents is profit.

*If RH was to generate profits solely on paperbacks, they'd have to sell 460 million books to earn $230 million in income.

**Thanks to New York Magazine for giving us the breakdown.

Posted by Kate at 9:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Bet On Longer Attentions Spans

Monocle, a very cool and hip European magazine, has an video interview with Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the CEO of Lego. When asked how his company would deal with children's lack of time to play with their product, this was his response:

Playing with Lego is like reading a book,. Books, people have said books would die. We had media saying kids would only watch TV or only watch movies, but everybody needs that deep experience of getting engaged with something. I think that is what Lego provides. We need to insist that someone will read a book if it is great; we need to insist that someone will find an afternoon to build with Lego if the set is really great.

I think he is right. Mark Penn in his upcoming book Microtrends says the same thing--bet on longer attentions spans, not shorter ones.

P.S. Dan Pink and A Whole New Mind also gets a mention in the interview.

links for 2007-07-17

• High Cotton >> BusinessWeek | "Gambling On King Cotton"
  "Killebrew's experience during the tumultuous year of 2005 is the subject of High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta by Gerard Helferich. In the mode of John McPhee's recent Uncommon Carriers, which focused on such trades as long-haul trucking
  (tags: businessbooks industry organizational_development)

Jack Covert Selects Winning (again)

"Winning" by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch, HarperBusiness, 350 Pages, $27.95, Hardcover, April 2005, ISBN 9780060753948

Note: At the end of this 2005 review I wrote "Not only is this book relevant today, but I think it will be adding value for many years to come." I'm no prophet, but I do know that my prediction was right. Winning is still publishing sensation and one of our bestselling and most-often requested books.

This is really weird. I am writing that this time Jack Welch got it. Point is: I truly like his new book much more than I liked his first book. First off, this book is not an autobiography, it is a primer for all people on all levels in business on how to succeed. As he states:

"This book offers a road map. It is not, incidentally, a road map for senior level managers and CEO's. If this book helps them, terrific. I hope it does. But this book is also very much for people on the front lines: business owners, middle managers, people running factories, line workers, college graduates looking for their first jobs, MBAs considering new careers, and entrepreneurs."

The book is divided into five sections:

Underneath It All - This section revolves around mission and values, candor, differentiation, voice and dignity.
Your Company - The first topic covered in this section is Leadership. The most valuable chapter in my opinion, it has leadership rules interspersed throughout the chapter. They alone make this chapter worthwhile. Other topics include hiring, people management, and change.
Your Competition - Strategy, budgeting, etc.
Your Career - The right job, getting promoted, etc.
Tying Up Loose Ends - Speaks for itself.

As is very clear from the five sections, everything internal and external in the business environment is covered. In utmost detail, and with frankness. This gives the book that feeling of reading something true and real. Which is rare. To give you a feel of the style of the book and Jack's style consider what he says in the Leadership chapter:

"...a word on paradoxes. Leadership is full of them. The granddaddy of them all is the question I often get 'How can I manage quarterly results and still do what's right for my business five years out?' My answer is, 'Welcome to the job!' Look, anyone can manage for the short term--just keep squeezing the lemon. And anyone can manage for the long--just keep dreaming. You were made leader because someone believed you could squeeze and dream at the same time. They saw in you a person with enough insight, experience, and rigor to balance the conflicting demands of short- and long-term results. Performing balancing acts every day is leadership."

Not only is this book relevant today, but I think it will be adding value for many years to come. It's the book that business schools around the world will be using to teach students the how's and why's of how to be better business people. Written by a guy who clearly is no stranger to winning.

Jack Covert Selects Good to Great (again)

"Good to Great" by Jim Collins, HarperCollins, 320 Pages, $27.50, Hardcover, October 2001, ISBN 9780066620992

Note: This Jack Covert Selects is from October of 2001. Not only has the book Good to Great emerged as a classic and a "breakthrough," cross-genre sensation, but the phrase itself has entered business jargon.

Seven years ago, Jerry Porras and Jim Collins published the bestselling classic Built to Last, which demolished a couple of deeply entrenched myths like this one: great companies start with a great product and/or a great leader. After completing that book, Jim Collins was nagged by the lingering question that he had been pondering since before Built to Last: are there any mediocre companies that became great? Once he had established his delimiters, he set out to collect data. Jim and his research team spent over five years and studied every company that made the Fortune 500 from 1965 until now--over 1400 companies--and found only eleven companies had truly gone from mediocre to being a long-term star. Then, they looked at why. Here's where it gets really interesting.

From studying these organizations, Collins and crew came up with some really mind-stretching conclusions. One of the most interesting: every good-to-great company has a "Level 5" leader during the transitional years. However, a Level 5 leader is unlike strong leaders of our imaginings. All Level 5 leaders have a mix of personal humility and professional will. Fanatically driven to produce results, they are ambitious, first and foremost, for the company--not for themselves. Ultimately, they do whatever it takes to make the company great. A few of the other most useful findings include something called The Hedgehog Concept, which advocates breaking out of mediocrity with a single terrific product or service; and Technology Accelerators, which encourages a fundamentally diverse attitude and approach to technology.

Simply put: this book is going to be talked about for years. It is so solid in its findings, but written so superbly, that you will practically learn just by holding it in your hand. But don't stop there: I guarantee that your copy will be as marked up with notes as mine.

Could Carnegie do it today?

Back around the early 1900s, Andrew Carnegie set out to build libraries -- 2509 libraries, in fact. 1689 of which were built in the United States.

The folks over at Freakonomics point out that publishing was a completely different animal then than it is now. They ask, if Carnegie hadn't built libraries, could Bill Gates do it today? Or would book publishers fight back?

A note on July's Jack Covert Selects

In this midsummer's month we decided to run a few of the classic Jack Covert Selects. The books discussed in these reviews have emerged as staples in contemporary business thought literature. Each has been a consistent bestseller for our company, and all regularly appear on bestseller lists throughout the country.

The reviews will be posted throughout the next few days. To begin, read about Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.

Jack Covert Selects Execution (again)

"Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, CrownBusiness, 260 Pages, $27.50 Hardcover, July 2002, ISBN 9780609610572

Note: This review was first published in 2002. In a recent conversation with an editor at a major publishing house, I shared my belief that Execution is still one of the best books on strategy and execution. Five years after it was published, Execution stands its ground, and I suspect will become a classic. Here is that original review. 

I have been asked to write a column listing the fall's top three business books to appear in Midwest Express Airline's magazine. You lucky souls who have flown Midwest know what a great airline it is and I am very proud to have been asked to write this column. Execution is my first recommendation. I know it is a June title (obviously not even close to a fall release)...but tough. After Execution is recognized as one of the best books of the summer, it will still be one of the best books of the fall. My bat, my ball, my game.

Why will this book have such impact and longevity? Because its team includes a superb writer-consultant, a real legend of a CEO, and a critical, though oft- ignored subject. Ram Charan, the writer, has previously worked with Noel Tichy to write a classic book on leadership, and also wrote a little gem called What the CEO Wants You to Know. Here, he works with one of the top five CEOs of all time, Larry Bossidy-Honeywell chairman-to discuss execution, which translates into how to bring strategy from theory to reality. Bossidy was with GE forever, then went to AlliedSignal in the early nineties, transforming that company, and was named "CEO of the Year" by Chief Executive magazine in 1998. In this book,the authors discuss each of the three main parts, Why Execution is Needed, The Building Blocks of Execution, and The Three Core Processes of Execution, and then they offer personal insights and stories about the issue. I, at first, found the style somewhat off-putting, but warmed up to it quickly. The voices of these two men really stand out because of the unique structure of the book.

Despite the excellent resume of its authors, it is the subject matter that intrigues me most. It appears to be such an unromantic subject, execution, in the face of such dashing themes as strategic planning, globalization, total quality management, or e-anything. These are the bad boys of business books, the real lookers, but execution? Isn't that like telling folks to dot their "i's" and cross their "t's"? Isn't execution the ugly duckling paddling next to the regal swan, the youngest sister with no dowry? And yet, what could be more basic, more crucial to the success of any strategic or globalization plan or to any form of management or new idea for the web? Execution -- ignore it and this book at your own risk.

In my experience in the business world, I find the ability to actually finish a project a lost art. The authors agree and firmly place the blame of a company's failure to execute strategic plans on senior managers who delegate too much. They supply "building blocks" to help make execution a part of a company's core culture and avoiding "hitting the wall" when it comes to strategy. One example: a leader's most important job is the hiring and appraising of the right people. Sound like something for HR to handle? Well, Bossidy doesn't think so, and he personally makes the reference calls for key hires. The authors shore up their argument for greater focus on execution using examples from Lucent, GE, AT&T and others, to show what companies have done right and wrong in terms of executing in the past. They are not afraid to name names, and this gives a real urgency to the subject.

Chicago Sun-Times reviews "Apples are Square"

Jack sent me a link to this book review published in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday.

"Polishing up on leadership qualities: Insightful read outlines values needed to succeed today" by John A. Challenger

In Apples are Square: Thinking Differently about Leadership Susan and Thomas Kuczmarski contend that, aside from sincere efforts made some companies, we haven't learned our proverbial lesson after Enron. We continue to see scandals and departures as leaders leave positions because of unethical (or illegal) behavior.

The authors interview 25 leaders attempting to embody 6 critical values discussed in the book. Many of the corporations profiled are in or around the Chicago area, where the authors are based.

Challenger writes, "At a time when too many corporate leaders are still reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War, this book offers an important alternative approach to leadership."

Here's a link to the review: http://www.suntimes.com/business/465246,CST-FIN-Apples12.article

And the book: http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=9781419593925

Today's Quote

Luck generally comes to those who look after it; and my notion is that it taps, once in a lifetime, at everybody's door, but if industry does not open it luck goes away.

Charles H. Spurgeon

Today's Quote

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

Garrison Keillor

links for 2007-07-12

• The New Influencers>>The Wall Street Journal | Caught in a Web of Comment
  How, then, should companies deal with the world of blogs, as well as podcasts, social-network sites such as Facebook and other "social media"? That question is at the center of "The New Influencers," written by former Computerworld editor Paul Gillin.
  (tags: businessbooks public_relations information_technology technology)

Today's Quote

The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost

Andrew Carnegie

45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy

Recently I paged through 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy: And How to Avoid Them by Anita Bruzzese, author of the column "On the Job." Most of the items in this book were common sense: Telling Dirty Jokes and Cussing on the Job; Having Poor Writing and Spelling Skills; Wearing the Wrong Thing to Work; Gossiping; Failing to Learn from Mistakes.

Here are a few I wasn't expecting:

17. Losing Sleep

"While the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommends seven to nine hours of sleep a night, their survey found that American adults average seven hours on weeknights, down about two hours a night over the last fifty years. Some twenty to thirty million adults experience occasional sleep problems, but forty million others suffer from one of the eighty-four identified sleep disorders.

The chronic lack of sleep is taking a toll on our bodies and our minds. The NSF has found sleep problems can make daily life more stressful and cause you to be less productive. It weakens your ability to concentrate to the point that accomplishing tasks becomes more difficult and you are more easily irritated. Overal, sleep loss has been found to affect tasks requiring memory, learning and logical reasoning.

...So it all comes down to this: If you're not getting enough sleep, you will be cranky, forgetful, less productive, more likely to call in sick and run the risk of having a wreck on the way to or from work. See why the boss cares if you're getting enough shut-eye?"

36. Lacking Knowledge of Current Events

In today's fast-paced marketplace, bosses depend greatly on an employee's ability to grow and to change as needed, and part of this ability comes from understanding the bigger picture. If an employee can't grasp important world events and stay current on developments, the boss will worry the employee simply has limited learning capacity. ...In 1964, 81 percent of Americans read a daily newspaper while only 54 percent do today. Millions of people surf the Internet every day but the sites they visit may have absolutely nothing to do with current events--only 11 percent of young people say it's a major source of news. The three nightly news programs have seen their ratings plunge 44 percent since 1980.

Corporate leaders also are concerned about the image of "the ugly American"--the person who is ignorant of world events and has little or no interest in what goes on outside of the United States. Since many employers do business globally--or at least make money from international visitors to this country--providing an image of being educated and aware of the world is important.

...That's why when you can demonstrate to your boss that you not only know who is the chief justice of the United States but can speak intelligently about the city council's next election, then you've just risen a notch in the boss's eyes.

I'm not sure this is the type of book a company would buy for each of its employees (would you be just slightly offended by the title?), but it is the type of book that would fit nicely into a package for the new young professional. Here are a few other titles we've written about that could be included:

My Reality Check Bounced! The Twentysomething's Guide to Cashing in on Your Real-World Dreams by Jason Ryan Dorsey

Blog post: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/006758.html

From New Recruit to High Flyer: Non-nonsense Advice on How to Fast Track Your Career by Hugh Karseras

Blog post: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/006698.html

StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath

Jack Covert Selects: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/006898.html

Blog post: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/006917.html

Blog post: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/006827.html

Today's Quote

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent efforts

John Ruskin

The Internal Attack of the Ego

Yes, fighting can be a great creative tool when ego doesn't get in the way.

On that note, Josh explains that ego often gets in the way of collaboration. To this, Audrey responds that for any successful collaboration, we must let go of our false sense of control.

links for 2007-07-10

• Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism >> The Economist | "America still wears the crown"
  The possibility of change is at the heart of "Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism" ... There are no quick fixes, but over time the right policies can make a big difference, as can the wrong policies.
  (tags: businessbooks economics economist)
• Better >> The Independent | Fail again. Fail better. Save more lives.
  Diligence is fundamental in medicine, first to recognise failure and then to learn from it.
  (tags: businessbooks industry medicine)

A "Weird Idea that Works"

This brief excerpt reminded me quite a bit of the discussions we have here at 800-CEO-READ.

(From Chapter 8 of Weird Ideas that Work by Robert I. Sutton)

Find Some Happy People and Get Them to Fight (Weird Idea #5)

If you want innovation, you need happy warriors, upbeat people who know the right way to fight. A growing body of research suggests that conflict over ideas is good, especially for groups and organizations that do creative work. Constant argument can mean there is a competition to develop and test as many good ideas as possible, that there is wide variation in knowledge and perspectives. One study, for example, showed that when group members fought over conflicti