800-CEO-READ Blog

We Are Smarter Than Me on Morning Edition

Tomorrow, Thursday, morning, Barry Libert and Jon Spector will be on NPR's Morning Edition to talk about We Are Smarter Than Me. It starts at 8:50 ET.

Tune in tomorrow. If you miss it, it will be archived on the website: www.npr.org

Our turn to yodel.

We're yodeling back to The Inside Flap. For all of the literary buffs out there, The Inside Flap is all about books -- fiction, non-fiction, anything that catches the eye of the crew at our sister company. If you're not familiar with them, their Milwaukee's own independent string of bookstores. A lot of great finds are over on their blog.

And related to business books, they're bringing in Sarah Miller Caldicott, co-author of Innovate Like Edison into Milwaukee on Tuesday, November 27th for a free book event. Find an excerpt of the book here. And if you're in town, we'd love to see you there.

And, thanks to Richard for linking to our podcasts! Over at eContent you'll find more links to podcasts with business authors. Including Richard Ogle author of Smart World, C.K. Prahalad of Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Charles Fishman of the Wal-Mart Effect and lots more.

On Strategy: Paralyzing Fear

One trend that has come up in various conversations I've had lately has been the barriers to productivity. There are, of course, the literal barriers of corporate red tape, financing and other practical matters. I also had an invigorating conversation earlier this week about weaknesses as barriers with Dave over at The Freak Factor. Dave's a champion for acknowledging weaknesses and finding the right context to use them to foster productivity.

Another barrier to productivity is fear. I think one of the things we fear is innovation. And I'm not speaking of the changes that come with it. More so the literal shaking in your boots over the decision of what step to take next.

We live in an innovative world. Millions of ideas are accessible at our fingertips. It's easy to become overwhelmed by the influx of new ideas (think 6,000 business books are published each year). Sometimes too many ideas can become paralyzing.

Paralysis is Dan and Chip's message in their latest Fast Company piece [side note: I highly recommend checking out the Heath brothers' book if you haven't already].

A simple strategy can breath life into a paralytic state, making decisions relatively easy to make. Simplicity allows people to act, say Dan and Chip. Take an Australian Credit Union:

Even a one-liner can ease paralysis. The scrappy Savings & Loans Credit Union in Adelaide, Australia, has an internal strategic motto: "We don't want to be first but we sure as hell don't want to be third." The strategy is to stand back and let the first mover take the risk and grab the glory of innovation, then come in right behind and make a copy that's crisper than the original. The lessons for employees are clear. Constantly scan the environment for good ideas. Don't be first, be best. Look for new employees who are good, quick executors, not creative pioneers. And reserve the incentives for people who are improvers, not inventors.

Paralysis is caused by fear. A simple strategy can help reduce some of the fear and ambiguity associated with any decision. One spot to go for helping define strategy is the book Purpose. From Todd:

Nikos' thesis is four types of purpose matter for the business/competitive world. There are the discoverers who thrive finding the new. There are the helpers who are believe the world is a better place when those around them are happy. The strivers believe in excellence above all else. Heroes are the larger than life companies change the course of history, for better or worse.

For us, it's about being helpful. Everything we do is built around being helpful to authors, publishers, readers and businesses. That's built into our strategy and everything we do runs past that litmus test.

For Costco, it's about saving people money. For Apple, it's about being innovative. What's your strategy?

[As a side note here, a friend of mine sent me a post from Kathy Sierra on fear the other day. It's an older post as Kathy stopped writing awhile back. It's on understanding fear and overcoming it. Worth a look.]

Save your money, forget school...Here is what business is

From The HP Way, is the best description of what "Business" is:

At Hewlett-Packard (and other companies as well), people, materials, facilities, money, and time are the resources available to us for conducting our business. By applying our skills, we turn these resources into useful products and services. If we do a good job, customers pay us more for our products than the sum of our costs in producing and distributing them. This difference, our profit, represents the value we add to the resources we utilize.

Now you know how its done!

links for 2007-10-31

• From Higher Aims to Hired Hands >> BusinessWeek | "Are B-Schools a Blight on the Land?"
  Khurana's From Higher Aims to Hired Hands is an important and surprisingly disparaging look at business-school education in the U.S. from the late 19th century to the present.
  (tags: businessbooks current_affairs education)

Essay from the author of The Taboos of Leadership

Today we're happy to host an essay by Dr. Anthony F. Smith, author of The Taboos of Leadership, a book that "reveals the rarely discussed realities of leadership--the secrets that leaders just cannot admit to publicly for fear of losing power, self-respect, or even their jobs."

Thank you, Anthony!

Leadership - The One and Only Path to Becoming a Leader

People have paid me a lot of money over the years to answer the following
question for them: How do I become a great Leader? I will often answer them
with the following questions:

Q: How do you become a great parent?

A: Do great parenting, day in, day out, over a sustained period of time.

Q: How do you become a great consultant?

A: Do great consulting, day in, day out, etc.

So, how do you become a great Leader? You guessed it, do great Leadership, day in, day out, over a sustained period of time!

The field of Leadership Development, with its plethora of books, seminars, courses, videos, and executive coaches, has become a billion dollar industry. Unfortunately, I believe that much of what is embodied within the industry is simply misleading and deceptive. Books such as 'Leadership for Dummies', 'The Idiots Guide to Leading', and 'Leadership Made Easy', all capitalize on the fact that many want to be a leader, but few are actually able, or want to put forth the effort required to really become one. (How would you feel about a book entitled "Brain Surgery for Dummies"?) At one
point, we need to get real about leadership. Like diet programs that claim you can eat all you want and still lose 20 pounds in a week, leadership "products", make similar claims, and therefore resort to oversimplified theories and falsehoods that invite leader want-to-be's to consume anything that looks like a magic pill to Leadership.

Well, unfortunately, there are no magic pills to becoming a Leader, just like there are no magic pills to losing weight, getting fit, making a million dollars, or shaving 10 strokes off your handicap in golf. Simply stated, becoming a Leader occurs when one
exercises the arduous process of effective Leadership, day after day, week after week, and year after year.

Q: So, what is Leadership you ask?

A: Leadership is a process (not a position) whereby an individual works through a series of iterative stages by;

Stage 1

* creating a vision,
* establishing an objective and set of goals,
* setting direction,

Stage 2

* and following through by intentionally seeking to influence followers (both established and potential),
* to perform the various tasks needed to realize the vision,
* to their full potential,
* for as long as possible,

Stage 3

* until the vision and goals are realized.

One can look at this definition as a "check-list" to Leadership; Do I have a vision; a picture of a desired end state that is compelling to others? Are people performing to their full potential? Who do I need to help me realize this vision? Am I intentionally seeking to influence people to perform their best? What else needs to be done, and who should do it?

Now, I realize individuals may find themselves at various points in a given stage, before they choose to engage in the process of leadership. For instance, one may be working in a division, or an organization, that already has a clearly established vision, set goals, etc. In such a case, assuming that the individual agrees with the vision, the leadership process begins at Stage 2. We all must realize that part of the difficulty of leadership is that some people are great visionaries, but lack the competence and EQ to influence others to rally around their vision. Others, may not be great visionaries, but are very influential and inspirational to those around them.

What I have observed in my years of studying leaders, is that very few have all the gifts and talents themselves; what many of the great ones do have, is a self awareness of what talents they do have, and the self confidence and security to surround themselves with others who can compliment them, and compensate for their own lack of skills.

In closing, let me make one point clear; it is my intent to encourage as many people as possible to exercise leadership as often as they possibly can, for as long as they can!

When people are lost because they lack a "vision", and you happen to "see" an end goal that they can not see, then at least exercise Stage 1 of leadership. By doing so, it doesn't necessarily mean you will emerge as their "leader", but you will have engaged in "leadership." If one of your colleagues is not performing to their "full potential", intervene and intentionally try to influence them to raise their performance. Remember, human performance is nothing more than the function of one's skill and will to perform a task; therefore, if one is not performing to their potential, it is either because they lack the skill, or the will, to do their job. Figure out what is impeding their performance and try to either coach them to build their skills, or inspire, challenge, and motivate them to raise their will to perform. Let's be clear;

Everyone can not become a leader, but every one can engage in a lot more leadership!

When I wrote my book, The Taboos of Leadership; The Ten Secrets That No One Will Tell You About Leaders and What They Really Think (Jossey Bass, 2007), I was accused by some that by "revealing" the un-savory aspects of leadership, I was discouraging many from wanting to lead. Unfortunately, they missed my message. As I state in my book, if we are serious about trying to build the Skill and Will of future leaders, we owe it to them to disclose the truth, as difficult as they may be, so that they may be better prepared to engage in leadership, day in, and day out, over a sustained period of time, thus increasing the probability that one day they will indeed become great leaders themselves.

Leadership is the one and only path to becoming a leader.

Hudson Booksellers Best Books of 2007

With 66 bookstores in airports all over North America, you may know Hudson Booksellers from your travels. They have now decided that it is time to help busy travelers select the books they sell, announcing their picks of the best books of 2007. It's a pretty long list, with selections in the fields of fiction, non-fiction, children's, and--aha!--business! The business titles selected are:

* Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner
* Microtrends by Mark Penn
* The No Asshole Rule by Robb Sutton
* The Black Swan by Nasim Nicholas Taleb
* Wikinomics by Don Tapscott

You'll notice two of the books, Wikinomics and The Black Swan, were also on the FT/Goldman Sachs Award shortlist, and The No Asshole Rule won The Quill Award in the business category. I think it's a great idea to put this list out, and the categories here should cater well to different kinds of travelers. They even offer two additional categories to extend the list for more voracious readers. One is called "Books We Love", and the other is "Newsworthy/Noteworthy". If you'd like to see the titles in the other categories, you can find it on their website. You should also begin seeing the list posted in their stores beginning December 1st.

Ask 8cr! - Momentum

Ask 8cr! - Momentum

Welcome to "Ask 8cr!" - a new section of our blog where we've created a forum to find out what kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We then take these issues and apply a business book we feel offers a viable solution. Others then chime in via the comments section. The person with the selected challenge gets a free copy of the book, but everyone who reads these posts, wins. Do you have a challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with getting momentum back. Here's a note from one of our readers:

My biggest challenge right now is staying motivated now that I've crushed all my professional and personal objectives. Work has lost its zest. I find myself going though the motions and I gotta ask...how long before I lose my edge? How long before I go from the golden boy to the has-been? What can I do to keep it interesting now that I'm on top (and actually have the time and resources to try something new)? - Curt

This note from Curt really struck me. His questions almost imply a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are a ton of books in both the business and self-help categories that address staying inspired and focused, but one came across my desk recently that I feel is timely, and is co-authored by someone who surely has found ways to keep going, stay in the limelight, and exude an intense amount of momentum.

Donald Trump and Bill Zanker have written a book called, Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life. Now, despite what you think of Trump, the guy's done a lot, and just keeps on going. In this book, Trump and Zanker pen a chapter that addresses Curt's challenge: "Big Mo!" "Big Mo" is momentum, and Trump begins by telling a story of one-time real estate guru William Levitt - a man who literally had it all and lost everything, simply because he lost his momentum. When Trump met him (post-momentum), he learned the big lesson that losing your momentum means losing everything; for without it, you're done. He states, "The funny thing about momentum: when you stop, it stops" and, addressing his own moment of questions similar to Curt, "All I ever saw were the good times. I thought it would always be that way. Over those sixteen booming years I had always been intent on one thing: building bigger and bigger momentum. Then I stopped." Trump's work lost its zest; he was going through the motions. Did he lose his edge? The answer, we all know, is no. But, what did he do?

"One way to keep your momentum going is to keep giving yourself greater and greater challenges. It is also important to give your knowledge and insight freely to anyone who asks. I believe people absorb more efficiently and faster when they learn by doing, and I am intent on giving people the knowledge they need to succeed. I give two hour speeches at The Learning Annex Wealth Expos for the same purpose, and I donate a large portion of my speaking fees to charity. To keep your momentum going you must have intrinsic values as well as monetary values, and you must recognize when it is time to start giving back." - Donald Trump

Co-author Bill Zanker adds: "Latch onto a business trend that has great momentum. Then partner with others to set big goals and let the momentum lead you to higher and higher levels."

This is merely one chapter of a kick-in-the-pants book to get all of us fired up about our business. The rest of the book is filled with equally blunt, yet insightful experiences of the man who's recently become best known for his "accountability" (a nice way to coin his "You're Fired!"). The book also features an appendix filled with a variety of resources: best of Q&A, true stories from others, must reads, and more. Give this book to any entrepreneur and watch them explode. I'm sending a copy to Curt, and am excited to hear about how it changes his perspective, and gives him back the passion to create new challenges for himself.

Jack Covert Selects - Life's a Pitch

Life's a Pitch: How to Be Businesslike With Your Emotional Life and Emotional With Your Business Life by Stephen Bayley & Roger Mavity, Bantam Press, 256 pages, £14.99, Paperback, March 2007, ISBN 9780593056431

Most of us tend to think of our business and personal lives as two separate lives, and to a large extent, this is true. We all strive for a sense of fulfillment at home and in the workplace, and most of us want some separation and balance between the two worlds. Regardless of how successfully we keep our personal and professional lives separate, some of the skills we use in each are the same. Life's a Pitch addresses these similarities. It is actually two separate books bound together and written by two authors. Both books are about presentation, or how to make a pitch, but they approach the subject from different angles.

Roger Mavity wrote the first book, a more traditional business book. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to organize yourself and your team, set the message you want to deliver, and how to present that message most effectively. He argues that people respond more to emotion than logic, and that how you pitch yourself is more important than what you're pitching. To put it simply, a pitch is theatre, not information. Stephen Bayley's book, the second part of Life's a Pitch, is far more provocative. He writes about how to present--or "pitch"--yourself in your personal life. He sees life itself as theatre, and writes on how to "design your personality" to be a better actor in it.

They both approach the subject bluntly, some may even say ruthlessly (they dedicate the book to Niccolò Machiavelli, and write that his "ruthless understanding of personal ambition has inspired us both") but they deal with it honestly. They deal openly with topics most of us would prefer to keep at arms length. Bayley references Gandhi and Patton as good examples of presentation in two consecutive sentences, which is bound to make people of all temperaments wince. Similarly, Mavity talks about how the Mafia calls itself a "family" while the British royal family refers to itself as "the firm." This book is more interested in broadening our view of presentation than playing to our prejudices of it. Pacifist and warrior are treated on equal footing here. All that matters is the pitch.

Most of all, this book is well-written and intelligent. Everybody who reads it is bound to get something out of it, whether it is how to make a presentation in a boardroom or how to present yourself at lunch. This book is what it preaches: a great pitch.

Friday Links

And now for our third installment of Friday Links!

*Rob at Business Pundit has written an introverts guide to selling.

*Robert Austin at Harvard Business School discusses the business of classical music with Martha Lagace.

*Do you work at home and miss the creative impetus of working around like-minded people? Co-Working may be the perfect solution.

*Check out this slideshow of how Trek is re-inventing the wheel (well, the entire bicycle, actually).

*Also, thanks to Dan Heath, coauthor of one of our favorite books, for pointing us to Dave Randall's post about the upside of rejection.

* And since we're in the midst of the World Series, how about something on the economics of baseball with The Hardball Times' 2007 Net Win Shares Value.

: : : : :

Enjoy your weekends everyone!

And the Winner is...

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co.

The Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award was announced at a gala dinner last night at the British Library in London, and William D. Cohan took home the prize. That is pretty remarkable considering that this is his debut effort, and an impressive debut it is, weighing in at a hefty 742 pages. The book tells the story of Lazard Freres & Co., where Cohan worked for six years as an associate. It is not a very flattering look at the culture on Wall Street. In fact, looking at the shortlist as a whole, no one is making a case for that status quo. Both The last Tycoon and The Black Swan take on Wall Street--though The Black Swan does so on a more intellectual than cultural level. Both Zoom and Wikinomics make the case for a paradigm shift in how we do business, and in Immigrants, Philippe Legrain argues for more open immigration policies. Even Alan Greenspan, in The Age of Turbulence, heads in directions you wouldn't expect. Taken together, these six books are (borrowing Greenspan's subtitle) "adventures in a new world". Congratulations to Mr. Cohan for winning amongst such company.

Here is a good interview with him about the book, the award, and Wall Street in general.

Jack Covert Selects - The Future of Management

The Future of Management by Gary Hamel with Bill Breen, Harvard Business School Press, 288 pages, $26.95 Hardcover, September 2007, ISBN 9781422102503

Gary Hamel is a smart man. After he published his best selling book, co-authored with C.K. Prahalad, called Competing for the Future, I saw him speak to a bunch of booksellers at our annual convention, and trust me--this guy knows what he's talking about. He talked about business to a bunch of people who really dig pretty much anything but business, and he got a standing ovation after his presentation.

In the past I struggled with reading Hamel because it felt as though his books had not been written to me. I had a hard time reading and understanding them because I felt like I couldn't relate to the subject. But The Future of Management is a book about a subject I have lived with for quite awhile.

Hamel believes that along with operational and strategic and product innovation, management innovation is essential to going forward. He believes that:

What ultimately constrains the performance of your organization is not its business model, not its operating model, but its management model. Hence this book. My goal is to help you become a 21st century management pioneer, to equip you to reinvent the principles, processes and practices of management for our post-modern age. I will argue that management innovation has a unique capacity to create a long-term advantage for your company, and I will outline the steps you must take to first imagine, and then invent, the future of management.

Gary Hamel is not afraid to make bold statements. He spends a big chunk of the first half of the book showing us how bad things currently are and how everything has changed but not the way we currently manage people. Then he gets to some really interesting stuff when he profiles Whole Foods, W.L.Gore and Google, shows how they became management innovators, and points out the benefits they received from this change.

Another part of the book I found truly useful was Hamel's discussion of "learning from the fringe," where, by going out on your own, "you can find amazing feats of 'organizing' and 'managing' that don't involve 'organizations' and managers.'" On the fringe, Hamel says, "you will see the shadow of the future."

links for 2007-10-25

• The Education of the Accidental CEO>>The Wall Street Journal | Pitchman in the Corner Office
  Yum Brands Inc. chairman and chief executive David Novak isn't your typical corporate chieftain. Any doubts about that should have vanished when, in celebrating the company's initial public offering 10 years ago this month, he wore a yellow foam cheese he
  (tags: businessbooks business industry entrepreneurship)
• The Age of Turbulence >> The Economist | The Undertaker's story
  The book's first half is a memoir; the rest is essays on the main economic issues confronting governments over the next few decades [ link].
  (tags: businessbooks biography global economics)
• Microtrends and Republic.com 2.0 >> Economist | Land of the small
  But niches do not need to imply narrow-mindedness. On the contrary, as Mr Sunstein accepts, the internet holds far more promise than risk. Mr Penn, for his part, remains an optimist [link].
  (tags: businessbooks bigidea)
• The Billionaire Who Wasn't >> The Economist | The secretive do-gooder
  When [Feeney] became a philanthropist, his gifts came on condition that his name never appeared on any press release or plaque [link].
  (tags: businessbooks biography philanthropy)

If you liked A Whole New Mind...

Dan Pink's publishing a new book in April. This one's a bit different.

It's actually a manga -- a type of book started in Japan that has become widely popular throughout Europe. What is a manga, from Dan's lead piece in this month's Wired:

Published on flimsy newsprint and often as thick as a Baltimore phone book, these magazines can contain 25 different serialized stories that run about 20 pages each. The most popular series then get repackaged as paperback graphic novels. These books dominate long stretches of Japanese bookstores, and their sales figures would make American authors and publishers weep with envy. One example among many: The paperback editions of Bleach, a series about a ghost-spotting teenager that has been running in Weekly Shonen Jump for the past six years, have sold some 46 million copies (in a country of 127 million people).

And manga, unlike most American comics, isn't reserved for freaks, geeks, and pip-squeaks. Ride the Tokyo subway and you'll see passengers peering at their mobiles. But you'll also inevitably spot gray-haired businessmen, twentysomething hipsters, and Japanese schoolgirls alike paging through a manga weekly or a graphic novel. The city of Hiroshima even has a bustling public library devoted entirely to manga.

Dan spent two months in Japan researching mangas and their popularity (which keeps falling in Japan even while manga's following raises elsewhere). And so, Dan will use that research as he unveils the first American business manga in April. Can't wait to see it!

Chip Conley on Maslow

I have a new podcast posted where I interview Chip Conley, author of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow.

Ask 8cr! - Let's have a meeting!

Welcome to "Ask 8cr!" - a new section of our blog where we've created a forum to find out what kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We then take these issues and apply a business book we feel offers a viable solution. Others then chime in via the comments section. The person with the selected challenge gets a free copy of the book, but everyone who reads these posts, wins. Do you have a challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with the habit of unproductive meetings. Here's the brief challenge sent from one of our readers:

"Working with a team of people who have meetings that never accomplish much." - Nathan

Short and to the point, it's maybe obvious that Nathan is fed up with long, dull meetings where much is discussed, but little is accomplished. I'm sure many of us have experienced this scenario, reminding us of our least-favorite high school class: meetings as pure formality, and nothing inspiring or changed because of them.

Business fable writer Patrick Lencioni tells a similar story in his book Death by Meeting. The strong title implying not only a humorous take on boredom, but also revealing that as meetings accomplish less and less, the fate that the business will face is inevitable. If that isn't enough to scare your group into waking up and taking meetings seriously, Lencioni paints an even darker picture by portraying this story via a group of people who, by normal standards, initially would be considered to be doing a "good job."

Complacency is the key issue here. Oftentimes, employees (especially those that work for successful companies) assume that somehow things will always work out, meeting or not. And if that's true, then who really cares about the meeting? Meaning, important questions are left unasked, attendance becomes voluntary, and accountability all but disappears. Enough is contributed to "get by" and the meetings continue on and on, just for the sake of having them, with no real results attached.

In the book, the company portrayed is going through a traumatic change (I won't give the whole story away), but all seems well, outside of those in-the-know. Their meetings should be important on many levels - to address the issues within the change that's occurring, but also to keep the company culture and productivity moving forward, and remaining profitable. But as the employees show up (or not) dreadfully each week, the biggest accomplishment they produce by meeting is physically sitting in the same room together. Hopefully, Nathan's scenario isn't as severe, but as the book points out, if meetings are continuously happening, with no results attached, things for the group, and the company, won't proceed positively.

Lencioni details how this company turned their situation around via their meetings, and in doing so, lays out a clear method for changing how meetings function (comparing them to movies) and how their results can be improved by adding a crucial element: conflict. Seems strange at first, but the author identifies how conflict is exactly what draws our interest to movies. If we add conflict to meetings, in the appropriate way, at the right time, the attendees will be captivated, involved, and willing to act (something they can't do with all the emotion they get during a movie). As a fable, the book realistically presents this process, identifying the typical characteristics, the common human patterns, the everyday world of conference rooms, and shows how one company tapped into this thinking to completely transform their company. Now, how about all of us?

Jack Covert Selects - Forces for Good

"Forces For Good: The Six Practices of High Impact Non-Profits" by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, Jossey-Bass, 336 pages, $29.95, Hardcover, October 2007, ISBN 9780787986124

What industry generates more than $1 trillion in revenues, is adding more jobs than any other sector, and is ranked #3 after retail and wholesale trade? Non-profits. The social sector is gaining momentum in its ability to serve communities and influence policy, and the time has come for business leaders to pay attention. Non-profits have been looking to business for better operating practices for some time, and now companies should be looking to their counterparts for equally new insights.

In Forces For Good, authors Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant report on their three-year study to find successful non-profits and pinpoint the practices that made them stand out from the 1.5 million other U.S.-based non-profits. The authors ignored traditional measures of success like overhead ratio or annual fundraising and instead looked for non-profits that "are driven to achieve broad social change... [and] have an unstoppable desire to create deep impact as well." Six practices emerged from the twelve case study organizations: advocate and serve, make markets work, inspire evangelists, nurture non-profit networks, master the art of adaptation, and share leadership.

In the world of non-profits, organizations tend to either provide services to a community (e.g., Red Cross) or propose policies to influence public debate (e.g., Brookings Institution, a D.C.-based public policy organization), matching a traditional view from business--offering either products or services. Providing both categories better serves customers and generates greater profits, but North-Carolina-based Self-Help has had greater impact learning from the constituents they serve and advocating legislation to further their cause. This non-profit started by providing mortgages to low-income families, and found through working with clients that over 10,000 families were losing their homes due to predatory lending practices. After successfully lobbying the state legislature, Self-Help established the Center for Responsible Lending, which conducts policy research and advocates for changes to state and federal lending laws. This effort has led to 22 states enacting anti-predatory lending laws.

Businesses can learn from both watching the social sector and working with it. The "advocate and serve" practice draws striking similarity to the philosophy John Bogle used in founding Vanguard with the lowest-cost indexed mutual funds in the industry, and then advocating that passionately customers purchase the product for their financial well-being. Danny Meyer's Union Square Ventures connected Share Our Strength with American Express as he looked to expand a "charge against hunger" campaign nationally. Forces for Good has the good ideas and inspirational lessons only non-profits can provide--and which the private sector can't afford to miss out on.

New Excerpt - The Engine of America

We've got a new excerpt up on the Excerpts blog, chapter 4 of The Engine of America: The Secrets to Small Business Success from Entrepreneurs Who Have Made It! by Hector V. Barreto. CEOs of 50 successful small businesses, some of which have become large corporations, share their experiences of growing their own business.

This chapter is about challenging conventional wisdom and accepted practices.
The author profiles two women who in traditionally male-dominated positions, at a time when it was an accepted belief that they would fail, became successful leaders of major corporations.

Conventional wisdom often stops people in their tracks. This is not necessarily bad. If the conventional wisdom is that a small business will not survive and grow without proper financing -- a truism that has been shown to be true countless times -- and this rightly should act as a stumbling block to the nascent small business owner who intends to start a venture on a shoestring and hope for the best.

But conventional wisdom should not stand in the way when the belief is based on outmoded facts, wrong premises, or prejudice.

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007422.html

Demystifying the Best-Seller List

The Best-Seller List is one of the most fascinating and confusing aspects of the book publishing industry. Almost every time we work with a business book author, a conversation comes up about what being on the list means, and how a book can "hit" it. Having a best-seller can really make an author's success and drive future sales of the book, and future sales of future books...while at the same time many truly wonderful books will never hit the list.

Sunday's New York Times had a great article about the its Best-Seller List: "Books for the Ages, if Not for the Best-Seller List" by Clark Hoyt. One question we're often asked is, How many books do I have to sell to make the list? It's a tough question to answer because the list is such a complicated beast. Booksellers report their sales in different ways, long-standing best-sellers might be taken off the list to give new books a chance to shine, and even books with very high sales numbers might not make the list because of timing--especially when several big books hit the shelves at the same time. Hoyt explains some of these discrepancies:

There are usually differences between the Times list and others, often, apparently, because of timing or because different lists put books in different categories. USA Today, for example, combines all books -- fiction, nonfiction, paperback and hardcover -- into a single list. No book is ever banished as an "evergreen," meaning "Night" can be found at No. 129 this week, nine spots below "The Official SAT Study Guide." But "for what The New York Times is doing," Sorensen said, "it's very accurate."

Why banish a book just because it has been around a long time? The Times wants a list "that's lively and churns and affords new authors the opportunity to be recorded," Hofmann said.

I encourage you to check out the article if you're at all interested in how certain books end up on that list in Sunday's book section of the newspaper. While the article doesn't go deep into the science of the bestseller list, it does show it has been set up to generate an interesting list that is a reflection of real sales and consumers' current interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21pubed.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Booklist's Business Top 10 for 2007

It has begun.

In a matter of weeks, we will start seeing a stream of "best of" lists. We'll report them as we see them and make a few of our own.

Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association, is the first out of the gate. As you read down through the list, understand The Business Top 10 is meant to act as a guide for what librarians should add to their permanent collections.

• Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses. By Stacy Mitchell
• Boeing versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business. By John Newhouse.
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. By Bill McKibben.
• Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge. By Jean-Noel Jeanneney.
• How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live like Everyone Else. By Michael Gates Gill.
• Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders. By James D. Scurlock.
• Mellon: An American Life. By David Cannadine.
• On the Wealth of Nations. By P. J. O'Rourke.
• Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business. By Robert B. Reich.
• Where Have All the Leaders Gone? By Lee Iacocca and Catherine Whitney.

Friday Links

Yet another Friday is here. Here goes the second set of Friday links.

* I don't think we mentioned that the latest ChangeThis manifestos are up. And today's the last day to vote on this month's proposals. [If you're new to our blog, CT is one of the sites we care for.]

* The Netherlands unveils a restaurant as a lab to better understand consumption habits.

* Wal-Mart's testing out new RFID experiments.

* RSS feeds. What are they? How do they help? Matt at MarketingProfs gives you a seven minute introduction.

* "Content is the heart of a brilliant user experience...If the words aren't beautiful and meaningful, the sleekest design in the world won't compensate for it. The body can never replace a missing heart." From a List Apart.

* Apple's opening up the iPhone to third-party programs.

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What links did you find this week?

Business Book Award entries steadily arrive

With the first deadline to 800-CEO-READ's 2007 Business Book Awards quickly approaching, we have been receiving a number of books from authors and publishers to be entered into the running of determining the best of the year. The range of titles so far is wide. From Bill Clinton's Giving to Sam Intrator and Megan Scribner's Leading From Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead, there is already a clear indication that these awards will have the opportunity to review and distinguish both well-known and non-conventional titles within the publishing industry.

Books continue to come in everyday, but 8CR would still like to encourage any author or publisher to submit their business books published in 2007 for consideration in the awards. The entry deadline is October 30. That's just 12 days away!

All other information concerning the awards, including how to submit a book, can be found at www.800ceoread.com/bookawards. Be sure to contact Katie Schutrop at kschutrop[at]800ceoread.com with any questions.

Zoom

Posting last week about Wikinomics led me to take a renewed look at the other titles on the shortlist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs book award. First up is Zoom.

It's a very timely book. Opening the Wall Street Journal today I ran across three stories (One on the future of Chrysler, one on big oil's image, and one that warns that low gasoline prices may not last long) that this book addresses directly and in depth. The authors believe that "oil is the problem, and cars are the solution." You could call Zoom an industry book, but that doesn't really do it justice. It is also a challenge, call to arms, and ambitious look at the future of the auto industry. They lay out steps that the auto industry and government need to take to create the car of the future, but believe the impetus for it all will be what they call the "Great Awakening" of consumers demanding change.

The challenges are daunting , but the solutions are within grasp if readers mobilize and energize the political process in favor of clean energy. Indeed, there is every chance that they can turn this crisis into opportunity, transforming the grease and grime, soot and sulfur industries that built the twentieth century into the clean, sustainable building blocks of the twenty-first century.

For a good look at the history of the auto industry, read Alfred Sloan's My Years with General Motors (it's a bit of a trek, but also a fascinating look inside the mind of one of American industry's giants). For a look at its future, pick up Zoom.

Name your own Big Idea Book.

This month's issue of Wired had an activity that we, and business book authors and industry folks, got a kick out of. It was concocting a best selling book using Wired's "Patent-Pending Big Idea Book Generator."

With this patent-pending Big Idea Book GeneratorTM, we provide the title, subtitle, and premise. All you need to do is pick a random object to serve as a cryptic representation of your Big Idea on the cover (we chose a peanut) and, well, write it. Hey, that's what ghostwriters are for!

Ever wonder how people come up with titles like "Freakonomics," "The Long Tail," or "The World is Flat" ? They probably didn't use this calculator, but there is something to say about the science of the best seller title.

Your title needs to both summarize your Big Idea and introduce a new term. It sounds tough, but we've made it easy.

You can put together your main title and subtitle, and then choose a premise for the book. Using their suggestions, here's an absurd combination I came up with:

Title: Innovation and the Meme: A Transformative Measurement of Dynamic Change in Everything. Premise: How Hidden Wisdom Transforms the Power of Unconscious Thought.

Great! Now all I have to do is write the book. [smiles]

What did you come up with?

Trump gives away money.

Jack just forwarded me this link. An ad ran in Metro New York the other day proclaiming: "Donald Trump Is Giving Away Money."

And give away money he certainly did. Trump co-wrote a new book, Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life, with Bill Zanker from the Learning Annex. Yesterday they stood outside the Barnes & Noble on 5th Ave. giving out $100 bill to the first 100 folks in line, $50 to the next 200 and $10 to the next 1,000. While not all $30,000 was given away, many folks walked happily away with extra cash in their pocket.

Trump and Zanker's goal was '"to support the idea of the book...[by] giving people a start."'

Sorry to disappoint, I don't think $100 bills will be passed out with Jack and Todd's book due out in 2009.

Happy anniversary, Tom!

Happy [belated] anniversary to Tom!

25 years ago, In Search of Excellence was published.

links for 2007-10-17

• Innovation Nation >> BusinessWeek | "America's Fleeting Edge in Innovation"
  John Kao, an innovation consultant, points out in his new book, Innovation Nation: How America Is "Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back, all the key advantages once enjoyed by the U.S. are going, going, nearly gone
  (tags: businessbooks innovation global)

New Excerpt - from Recruit or Die

There's a new excerpt up over on the Excerpts Blog. It's taken from Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent by Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra and Ramit Sethi. More than money and perks, the authors say, fresh-out-of-school candidates are looking for opportunities to stand out, move around quickly, and build up a strong resume of experiences and achievements. They offer college recruiters the strategies for finding the talented people you need while at the same time--and by following good practices--building a diverse and dynamic staff.

Here's a snippet of the excerpt, wherein the authors discuss the difficulties of recruiting minorities:

Diversity is one of the most difficult, and sometimes controversial, aspects of college recruiting. Competition is fierce, and the number of quality minority candidates is disproportionately low. Consider the plight of employers in the technology sector. Of all engineering students across the country, only 6.6 percent are African American, 7 percent are Hispanic, and less than 1 percent are Native American. One recruiting manager from a medium-sized software company said, "It makes me pull my hair out."

Check out the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007418.html

Ask 8cr! - Project Management

Welcome to "Ask 8cr!" - a new section of our blog where we've created a forum to find out what kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We then take these issues and apply a business book we feel offers a viable solution. Others then chime in via the comments section. The person with the selected challenge gets a free copy of the book, but everyone who reads these posts, wins. Do you have a challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with managing projects. Here's a quick note from one of our readers:

"Here's a challenge from my desk: Project management -- Taking a project, breaking it down into tasks and assignments to delegatees, tracking said project, reeling in components from all concerned and wrapping it up." - Sandy

Aaron J. Shenhar and Dov Dvir have written Reinventing Project Management, a book that examines more than 600 projects by businesses around the world. These examinations reveal a model for successful planning, managing, and completing projects. While others have written about the topic, Shenhar and Dvir offer an updated perspective on it, explaining their Diamond Framework, and a series of models: NTCP, Adaptive, etc. to reveal a tested and productive system for taking on any variety of projects.

The authors state:

"To go beyond the conventional practices of project management, we must begin by recognizing that one size does not fit all. Unlike operations, which are repetitive, each project by definition is unique. Every project represents a new experience, addressing a new problem with a new constellation of management challenges, and the management process is never a matter of repeating known steps and procedures."

Furthermore:

"When we survey a wide range of projects, we may find considerable variability -- but also quite a number of common features. Indeed, as you will see, the variability itself follows certain patterns, and this means that we can develop general methods for handling various types of projects. This characteristic variability has not been captured so far in the current project management literature and is not part of the common body of knowledge."

From there, the authors identify the bases of successful projects and detail how to put the approach to work, considering a project's purpose and how markets and industries can affect project management. Case studies feature The Denver Airport, The Sydney Opera House, The Los Angeles Metro, and other highly complex projects that utilized the methods within the book. The book finishes with an expansive Research Appendix, that describes what data and steps the authors worked with to produce their results. Again, this isn't a book about theory, but practice; something anyone managing or working on projects can learn and apply to their team for successful results.

Tomorrow: Bosses' Day

Tomorrow's Bosses' Day. The level of enthusiasm for this Hallmark holiday varies from employee to employee -- I know folks who go so far as to buy their boss custom gift baskets to those who begrudgingly buy the boss a card from the corner store.

Whatever your level of enthusiasm, the core of the day's mission is admirable -- that of showing appreciation. Much like Mothers' and Fathers' Day, it is a day set aside to remind us that it's good to demonstrate -- verbally, through gifts, or whatever -- that we appreciate what the bosses are doing.

As Mike Robbins, author of Focus on the Good Stuff tells us:

One of the challenges for the C-level execs is they don't get a lot of appreciation themselves. So very few people walk into their offices in any genuine way and let them know what they're doing well.

The perception is that whenever that happens, people are kissing up or it's some kind of phony thing. They're under so much pressure to produce the results for the organization. I think the higher up you go, the harder it becomes for people to stop and genuinely appreciate what's happening because there is so much pressure.

It's good to be appreciated -- whether you're the boss or the lowest guy on the totem poll. While appreciation can be poo-pahed as unimportant and is often, easy to overlook in day-to-day communication, it plays a surprisingly large role in employee retention. Even the U.S. Department of Labor and The Gallup Organization support [that] very simple yet important claim. According to the DOL, 64% of working Americans leave their jobs because they don't feel appreciated, while Gallup research shows that 70% of working Americans say they receive no praise or recognition on the job.

That's a lot of under appreciated and unsatisfied employees out there. No wonder Bosses' Day was created. Just as bosses can forget to appreciate we employees so can we employees forget to say good job to the bosses.

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By the way, if you're still looking for a gift for your boss, try these: The Future of Management by Gary Hamel or First Break All The Rules by Buckingham and Coffman

Authors In the Zines

Business authors make prominent appearances in a number of magazines this month.

Titled "Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency", Wired Magazine profiles the author and Getting Things Done in the greatest detail I have seen in the major media. Allen has a huge following in the tech community which plays perfectly to Wired's core audience. If you are new to the cult, this is a must read.

Gary Hamel of Competing For The Future fame has a new book out from Harvard Business School Press called The Future of Management. The premise of the book, which is summarized nicely in a Fortune Magazine piece, is that the practice of management hasn't kept up with the times, but the stand-out companies of today (Google, Whole Foods, Gore) are leading the way into a new era.

Finally, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the author of Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, wrote a piece for Portfolio Magazine. Titled Big Green Machines, the article summarizes the automotive players and the energy-reducing technologies they are betting on.

New Excerpt - The Elephant and the Dragon

There's a new excerpt up on our Excerpts blog. It's from The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us. There are many books on China and India out these days, but The Elephant and the Dragon focuses specifically on the predictions and fears about the global impacts of these emerging superpowers. Author Robyn Meredith stresses understanding these nations before anything else. Because by understanding how China and India are reshaping the global economy, the rest of the world can learn how to adjust to a new and exciting--and sometimes scary--new era.

From the introduction:

This is the story of how India and China are changing their destinies and, with that, changing the world's. As they move from the ranks of developing-world countries toward superpower status, India's slow-but-steady approach contrasts with China's rocketlike rise.

Check out the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007376.html

Friday links.

Welcome to Friday links! We're trying something new. Normally, we link to business book reviews in our daily set of del.icio.us links.

Each Friday, we're going to link to articles we found interesting that week. It's a mix of everything -- from business articles to news tidbits to interesting websites. If something sparked your interest, do leave a link in the comments. We'd love to see what you're following.

And now, onto round 1:

* Inc. on the founding of Pandora and the value of getting right back up after failing time and time again.

* Wal-Mart's pushing its suppliers to step on the green train.

* Are your fans as dedicated as Volkswagens?

* There's something inspiring about a soon-to-be 88-year-old woman without a high school degree becoming the 11th woman to win a