800-CEO-READ Blog

Ask 8cr! - Doing What Matters

Ask 8cr! is a section of our blog used as a forum to address the kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We 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. What's your challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with doing everything that matters in order to improve your business:

"Strategic thinking -- how to get a better grasp on thinking strategically to tie PR, communications and marketing efforts to driving and achieving business results" - Sandy

Business is sort of like the game Tetris. You have to do one thing to make it conducive for the next unknown event to fit without problems. How do you plan this? In the game, it's sort of luck. In business, it's a little of that, but your chances of success can be greatly improved by reading books like James M. Kilts' Doing What Matters.

Kilts was the CEO of Gillette, and during his time there, saw every key metric of the company improve. This book details his methods for making that happen. In Sandy's challenge, she's looking to connect a number of things together in order to create that smooth Tetris scenario, where each shape magically fits nicely with the next, and allows the game (your business) to move forward without a hitch. Kilts sees these connections, and adds a ton more, in his overview of things to do that matter. Part strategy, part organizational behavior, part intuitive skill, Kilts lays out an approach to strategy beyond PR and marketing, encompassing an entire overview of how he took Gillette to levels that impressed even the likes of Warren Buffett.

Here's a very abbreviated list of his things that matter:

- Growth
- Relationships
- Loyalty
- Small moments
- Timely decisions
- Doing what you enjoy
- Life's early lessons
- Right team members
- Confronting reality

Throughout the book, he goes into great detail on each of these things, and offers examples, facts, and his own experiences to make them transferable to Sandy or anyone's situation to think strategically.

Here are just some of the things we found interesting on this Friday - take some time to browse:

1001 Interviews You Must Read Before You Die review from Blogcritics.

Jordan's new book on social change: Mudbound is the winner of the Bellwether Prize

With the movie The Other Bolelyn Sister coming out, you may be interested in finding out more of what happened in Henry VIII's court HERE.

Noted author William F. Buckley Jr. (82) has passed away this week.

Misha Defonseca's book Survivre avec les Loups was indeed partly made up, according to the author. She basically invented an alternate story to 'make up for her painful real experiences'.

Just for fun:

A clip from The Daily Show

Eminem's new book: The Way I Am.

TGIF!!!

Negotiation Thread at Signal vs Noise

There is a great thread at Signal vs Noise where they are asking readers for good negotiating stories.

The books mentioned thus far include:

• You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen
• NO: The Only Negotiating Strategy You Need for Work and Home by Jim Camp
• Humanitarian Negotiation: A handbook for securing access, assistance and protection for Civilians in Armed Conflcts by The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (free download)

Jack Nicholson's famous negotiation in Five Easy Pieces is also mentioned.

Ferris' "Then We Came To The End" Wins B&N New Writers Award

Joshua Ferris was named a winner in Barnes & Noble's 15th Annual "Discover Great New Writers Awards."

His book Then We Came To The End is a novel about a Chicago ad agency and the tumultuous 1990's. Our resident writer Todd Lazarski wrote this short piece about the book for an upcoming 800-CEO-READ project:

The next generation of the business novel, Ferris' hilarious critique of modern office life and the world of marketing acts almost as the written word companion to "Office Space" or "The Office." Addictively funny, it also belongs in the same vein of rumbling satire employed by [John Kennedy] Toole. Ferris sheds light on all of our oft-overlooked, inter-office mannerisms, inanities, and silly drama. Throughout the prose paints a portrait that, while obviously entertaining, is also sharply revealing about that 40-hour-a-week, alternative universe known as "work."

We mention it here, because some times it helps to see the business world through a different lens with someone else describing the scene we see every day.

Indexed, Farber and Charity

Three notes, not quite related.

1.
Jessica Hagy's book Indexed is out today.




She shares stories via index cards. This past month, we published her ChangeThis manifesto. You can follow her on a regular basis at her blog.

2.
As I've mentioned before, Steve Farber who wrote two fables, The Radical Leap and The Radical Edge, is back to the writing board. His next book is due out in January of 2009 (seems like eons away). There's an unedited prologue over at his blog.

3.
More than 160 people have taken part in our Mystery Box offer with the money going to Room to Read. That's over $3000 that will be donated to help children around the world learn to read. Thank you for all your help! If you'd like your own Mystery Box (three books, all a surprise), read on.

The 8cr Author Blog

Are you a business author? Do you plan on writing a book someday?

Head over to the 8cr Author Blog for posts written specifically for authors and future authors. I'll post there regularly on common issues authors have, surprises in the publishing world, what's expected from authors, and the gigantic world that gets opened to you once you publish a book. Using a variety of internal and external knowledge, we hope this blog becomes a useful resource for those taking business thought to the next level.

Ask 8cr! - Senior Leadership Teams

Ask 8cr! is a section of our blog used as a forum to address the kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We 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. What's your challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with managing poor decisions from above:

"How does a senior level person working in a small corporation keep the owners from making mistakes? In other words, how do you manage one level up in the organization? Often, experience is overlooked and sales are made that should not be made. After all, some deals are too good to be true!"- Gary

Walking into your boss' office and telling them that they've made a mistake or should do things differently might put you in a worse off situation than the mistake is. There are, of course, diplomatic ways of communicating such things, but even then, it might just be viewed as an opinion and overlooked in the end.

Developing a team is a challenging process, particularly if hierarchy is involved. Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss, and J Richard Hackman have written a helpful book on this subject called Senior Leadership Teams: What it takes to make them great. In it, the authors talk about how to design a system that takes the bulk off one head (CEO) and shares it with a group of dynamic executives operating under analysis, feedback, accountability, goals, and group direction. The initial challenge is formation, as the author's identify that good leadership teams develop slowly over time - it's not about one person deciding they need a team and "making it happen." Rather, a series of discussions, gathering the right people, the conceptual thinkers, with the agenda of making hugely positive changes for the company must take place. Imagine the results.

However, the author's state:

"Expect the process to be emotionally demanding. All the leaders we worked with and studied struggled with the emotional aspects of setting direction for their leadership teams. Clarifying the team's purpose invariably uncovers discrepancies and conflicts about what members think their role is or should be, and using your authority to say, "This is what we will do" triggers anxiety for leaders and members alike. But when done persistently and well, it also energizes and inspires."

In Gary's case, this book will provide some thoughts on how to approach the owners of his company and begin to form a solid team that is involved in the issues he refers to. By creating a solid case for development and improvement, while taking burden off them, Gary will succeed at showing interest in helping the company, and also accomplish his goal of avoiding the bad deals, once he and his team have more input in the process.

More info on this book can be found in the Jack Covert Selects article published last week.

Books in the March issue of Portfolio magazine

The March issue of Condé Nast Portfolio includes a lengthy review of Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It's Under Siege by Craig Karmin, published by Crown Business. You can read the review at www.portfolio.com.

Portfolio also features a section called "Also Worth a Read..." Here are the books mentioned this month:

Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top by Nina Disesa
George Washington and the Art of Business: The Leadership Principles of America's First Commander-in-Chief by Mark McNeilly
Sneaker Wars: The Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sport by Barbara Smit

and three art books...

American Sports by Tod Papageorge
Flight Attendants by Brian Finke
Birth of the Cool edited by Elizabeth Armstrong

5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

There are countless ways to get the most out of your web site, and even more opinions about the best ways. In Zero to One Million, Ryan Allis offers an evaluation system to determine whether your business idea is viable. Then, he provides strategies and steps for optimizing your online marketing efforts. The excerpt below is from Chapter 10, Step 8: Build Your Online Marketing Strategy.

A note about the author: Ryan Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed marketing and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10 million in annual sales and 80 employees. He is also the Chairman of the web marketing firm Virante, Inc. For more info, visit www.zeromillion.com.

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5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

The majority of Web site owners have fewer than 10 incoming links to their sites. The search engines view incoming links as verification that your site has quality content. The more related links your site has from other sites (with the underlined clickable text that includes your targeted keywords), the higher your ranking in the search engines will be. Here is a step-by-step overview of this entire SEO process:

1. Select your keywords. Use tools such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, Google's Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Word tracker to determine which related keywords or key phrases it would be best to optimize your site for. Once you have a list of potential keywords, go to Google and type in those keywords. Then see how many incoming links the top few sites have. You can determine this number by typing in "link:http://www.competitordomain.com." Take a look at whether the first few sites have the targeted keyword in the domain name or in the title, or whether they appear often on their page. Use this information to estimate what it would take to get your site above the current sites in the rankings.
2. Ensure that your site has those keywords on it. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting are on your home page at least five times. Having a 5 percent to 15 percent keyword density for your targeted search term on your home page is optimal. Also ensure that your title tag and image alt tags contain your targeted keyword. Add your targeted term to an H1 header tag for added prominence.
3. Build good-quality content on your site. I call this phase the "content campaign." Either write articles yourself for the site or go through the search engines to find related content. If you find an article on another site that you'd like to publish on your site, send an e-mail to the author, site owner, and/or publisher to request permission to syndicate the article on your site. Present it as a win/win quid pro quo in which you receive good-quality content and the author/publisher receives free exposure and a link to his or her Web site in the byline of the article. I'd suggest having at least 25 quality articles on your site before going forward. Optimize your home page for the two or three most competitive target terms. Optimize your in-site pages for the more unique and less competitive terms. You can also outsource the creation of this content to copywriters, using a service such as elance.com, for about $30 per 400-word article.
4. Build links to your Web site. Without incoming links to your site, it will never have a chance at being at the top of the search engines for competitive terms. Use the research you did earlier on the number of links the sites at the top of the listings have or your targeted keywords to set a goal for how many related incoming links you want to build to your own site. To obtain links, go through the search engines and find related Web sites, then contact the owners of those sites and offer to exchange links. Add their links to your Web site and e-mail them to let them know that you've linked to their sites and would appreciate a reciprocal link. I'd suggest contacting them first via e-mail and then via phone if necessary. In your initial e-mail to site owners, include the URL and description of your site, as well as the location of where their links are and which sites of theirs you are referring to. I'd suggest creating a resources section on your site and placing your link partners in the appropriate category within. You can also build links naturally through press releases or by having great content, a useful tool, a viral video, or an interesting blog. If you have more money than time, you can also purchase relevant links from quality Web sites through a service called LinkExperts or purchase reviews with links from sites such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and Blogvertise. Ensure that whatever links you build to your Web site have your target key phrase in the anchor text, the words that are clickable and underlined. Finally, text links are much more valuable than image links, as the search engines can follow text links and associate the link text with your Web site, but they cannot do this for image links.
5. Continue building your site's reputation. Once you have built a few related incoming links, the search engines will find and index your site. If your site is new, it can take up to nine months for Google to allow it to show up for competitive search terms. During this time, continue building good-quality related content and work to build as many incoming links from related Web sites as you can.

links for 2008-02-26

• Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism >> BusinessWeek | "In Praise of Not-So-Free Trade"
  Chang argues that the policy recommendations of the "unholy trinity" of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization would have been unacceptable to the U.S., Britain, Japan, and the European powers when they were industrializ
  (tags: economics global history businessbooks)

Memo to the CEO

Harvard Business Press has begun publishing a series of 100 page books called Memos to the CEO. The Publisher's Note from the beginning of the book sums them up perfectly.

Authored by leading experts and examining issues of special urgency, the books in the Memo to the CEO series are tailored for today's time-starved executives. Concise, focused, and solutions-oriented, each book explores a critical management challenge and offers authoritative counsel, provocative points of view, and practical insight.

While these may well be "tailored for today's time-starved executives," they are relevant to everybody interested in business. HBP is doing something else rather unique with this series as well, launching a blog for the series where "the expert authors of these 100-page debriefings will help us start the conversation ... ." I've seen and read plenty of author and book blogs, but can't think of a blog covering a whole series of books before.

The first two books in the series--Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use and Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now--are available already, and two more--Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy? and High Performance with High Integrity, are being released in April and May respectively.

If you're in Milwaukee...do join us where
Design Meets Business : Business Meets Design

If you're in Milwaukee, keep reading...

Jon posted about this event once before. On Tuesday, February 26th, we're going to debunk the misconception that design is simply used to beautify ideas and make things pretty. Design is often seen as an afterthought to business; we're going to show that design actually drives dollars to the bottom line. It's not just clip-art and nice fonts; design affects every aspect of our daily lives.

We're bringing in four people to help out with this conversation:

• Mike Brenner of MARN (Milwaukee Artist Resource Network)


• Deborah Wolf, Eppstein Uhen Architects


• Amy Decker, Dig Design


• Clay Konnor, ec connection

This event is the first in what we hope will be a series of events to bring designers (of all sorts...web, print, interior, product, etc.) and business people together. Do join us.

Tickets are $20 per person, and include a brilliant book by Michael Bierut, Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, retail price $24.95. Coffee will be served.

WHEN?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 7:00 PM.
Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design
208 N. Water Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202

To register, click here. And feel free to bring along a friend, or ten.

As a nation, we must embrace innovation.

One of the runner-ups for our Innovation/Creativity award was Innovation Nation by John Kao, who, among other pursuits, is a professor at Harvard, a jazz musician and was named "Mr. Creativity" by the Economist. This quote from the Economist should tell you something about him: "If Orsen Welles and Peter Drucker were somehow to mate, the resulting progeny might resemble John Kao, a serial innovator."

John's looking to start a conversation on innovation as a nationwide pursuit. (And what better time, than with the incoming of a new president?) Innovation, he explains, needs to be built up by the nation. Schools can't do it alone. Businesses can't do it alone. Nor can the government. Each body needs to come together to spare us from becoming the "Detroit of nations."

From a Q&A with John:

As someone who has been identified with the subject of innovation for some twenty-five years, I am appalled at the denial, indifference and ignorance I see surrounding this important topic. To quote from Innovation Nation:

"I see a crisis brewing, and it makes me angry. We should be doing better than we are. We have the talent, money, track record and infrastructure necessary for continued success. But we are rapidly becoming the fat, complacent Detroit of nations. We are losing a collective sense of purpose along with our fire, ambition, and determination to achieve."

The book is certainly a conversation starter. You can learn more with a quick video with John over at bnet. And if you're interested, John is a contributor to the Huffington Post.

links for 2008-02-21

• The New Asian Hemisphere>>The Wall Street Journal | A Rising in the East
  Even so, there are lessons to be learned from "The New Asian Hemisphere" -- not least that, in a world of truly global free trade, there is no room for the petty self-dealing of protectionism. Aspiring presidential nominees and congressmen should take not
  (tags: businessbooks global)

The Thing About Life....

The Wall Street Journals own Stephen Bates' review written about the book The Thing About Life is that One Day You'll be Dead :

Coordination and strength peak at 19, IQ at around 20, bone mass at 30, Mr. Shields reports. On the down slope, the brain shrinks, the eyes go cloudy, the metabolic rate falls. You slow down, you break down. If you reach 100, odds are nine out of 10 that you're female -- testosterone makes life and then takes it. More of longevity's secrets: "People with higher education live six years longer than high school dropouts; Oscar winners outlive unsuccessful nominees by four years; CEOs outlive corporate vice presidents; religious people outlive atheists; tall people (men over 6'; women over 5'7") outlive short people by three years;... American immigrants live three years longer than natives."

Happy Hump Day!

Jack Covert Selects - Senior Leadership Teams

Senior Leadership Teams: What it Takes to Make Them Great by Ruth Wageman, Debra A. Nunes, James A Burruss, J. Richard Hackman, Harvard Business School Press, 256 pages, $29.95, Hardcover, February 2008, ISBN 9781422103364

One need only to look at the business headlines over the past decade telling tales of misguided CEOs to know that our concept of leadership needs to change. Today's business world is much too complicated to expect any one person to lead a large company. Leadership expert, Warren Bennis, clarifies: "we cling to the myth of the Lone Ranger, the romantic idea that great things are usually accomplished by a larger-than-life individual working alone. Despite evidence to the contrary...we still tend to think of achievement in terms of the Great Man, or the Great Woman, instead of the Great Group." Reading Senior Leadership Teams is a first step to changing this mythology. Teams ease the feelings of isolation associated with being at the top while providing a well-rounded sense of knowledge.

Building a smoothly operating senior team takes skill, time and planning, a process that is often overlooked. The four authors are on a mission to guide leaders in the creation of great senior leadership teams. Over 100 teams around the world were researched, some at well-known organizations like Unilever and AeroMexico, others at smaller organizations. Their findings: six conditions for successful senior leadership teams. Three of which are essential: compelling direction, right people, real team. Three of which enable the team to be more efficient: solid structure, team coaching, supportive context. One chapter is dedicated to each condition, peppered by real-life examples.

The CEO of AeroMexico, Arturo Barahona, faced the challenge of presenting and selling a compelling direction to his senior leadership team. The airline, previously owned by the
state, was in the process of moving to private ownership. However, each team member interpreted the direction of the company differently and was so focused on their department goals, that they couldn't see the larger picture. In this case, the authors point out, the "chief executives must articulate to their teams a purpose that is consequential, challenging, and clear."

The authors emphasize that "you cannot make your leadership team great. But you can put in place the conditions that increase the chances that it will become great." Senior Leadership Teams will help you identify and institute those conditions.

Excerpt from Leadership Brand - 2 of 2

The following is the second of two excerpts from the book Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.

Leadership Brand details the authors' six-step process to leadership brand--"a shared identity among your organization's leaders that differentiates what they can do from what your rivals' leaders can do." This second excerpt focuses on the process of training.

You can read the first excerpt here.

* * * * * * * * * *

Process. How to make sure the training experience delivers what you intend. A number of process choices are required to make sure that the training experience furthers a leadership brand.

• Faculty. Faculty should embody the brand they are communicating. One executive dictated that his direct reports all engage others in their organization and share decision making with them -- even though that was just one of many arbitrary demands that he made in the absence of any shared decision making on his part. His hypocrisy in demanding that others be participative led to cynicism. Those who address leaders in training sessions should embody and live the message they are communicating. With this generic caveat, four categories of faculty can be enlisted to help make the most of training: inside experts, outside experts, line managers, and external stakeholders (customers or investors, or both).
• Inside experts. Training departments often have people who prepare and deliver excellent training modules. These individuals need to be credible both for how they present and for what they have done earlier in their careers. It is especially useful to present internal instructors who have had experience in line management positions where they were successful, and who can focus on technical areas in which they have deep expertise. They may also be certified in the program at hand (such as Six Sigma black belts) and thus able to help others become certified. Often, as internal experts move into an instructional mode, they receive coaching in presentation skills to increase their impact on an audience. They know the company and culture and they can talk with confidence and experience about how to turn ideas into action in the trainees' own environment.
• Outside experts. External instructors bring new ideas and knowledge. They transmit practices that have worked in other settings . However, to make knowledge productive, they should also know enough about the immediate business to see how their knowledge will help further the firm leadership brand. They should adapt their ideas to the specific requirements of the organization. They can be paired with internal managers and instructors so that their ideas will have maximum impact.
• Line Managers. In recent years, line managers have been increasingly used to design and deliver training. One colleague responsible for developing leadership told us that the best thing he could do was to have the senior leaders of the company train other leaders, if only because that forced those doing the training to model the behavior they advocate and teach. EDA found that 75 percent of leading companies used senior executives as presenters for at least part of the training. PepsiCo has been one of the leaders in this area. Its senior leaders do many things to make the training relevant to PepsiCo's situation, including individual coaching of future leaders. This mentoring role goes beyond the confines of the classroom to being accessible to learning leaders once they return to their day-to-day work. They focus their instruction on how to make things happen -- for real, at PepsiCo -- through leadership action. They have informal conversations over meals or in the evening where they communicate PepsiCo values through stories. They share their own personal journey of leadership at the company and encourage learning leaders to craft their own. They work to be consistent in their day-to-day leadership with what they are teaching future leaders to do. All these ideas help participants in a training experience learn the leadership brand by observing it firsthand. Depending too much on line managers has the limitations of not sourcing ideas from outside the company and becoming insular, training future leaders on what present leaders have done without focusing on what could be, and not having quite as innovative a pedagogy or teaching style (line managers are expected to be gifted teachers).
• Customers or investors. For an organization to shift leader training to building leadership brand, it is critical to involve outside stakeholders in the design, delivery, or presentation of the training experience. Customers and investors may participate in each of these steps through their presence (bringing them into the room in person or on video) or their essence (making sure that their concerns are being addressed). Customers can be present at instructional design meetings and voice opinions about what should be taught, or the design team can research customer expectations and make sure that they are infused throughout the design. Customers and investors can help deliver a program as expert faculty, participants in a live case study focused on their own needs, or members of a panel sharing their encounters with the company. Customers can also join a program as participants, working to make sure that their expectations (which are at the heart of firm brand) are understood and translated into action through leadership investments while they also derive the personal benefits of the program itself. Including customers and/or investors in training experiences increases the likelihood that participants will be more than tourists, will not only understand what their leadership brand needs to be but find ways to actually do it.

When the four faculty groups form an integrated team, the training will have innovative content (led by outside experts), adapted to the organization (led by internal experts), with relevance to the organization's success (because of customer or investor participation, or both), and with accountability for its application (because of line manager participation).

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Excerpted from Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value. Copyright 2007 Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.

Excerpt from Leadership Brand - 1 of 2

The following is an excerpt from the book Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.

Leadership Brand was published last September and has been on our best seller list several times. The book is the authors' six-step process to leadership brand--"a shared identity among your organization's leaders that differentiates what they can do from what your rivals' leaders can do." This first of two excerpts deals with training design and methods, and the second, to come, focuses on the process of training.

* * * * * * * * * * *


Training Design and Methods: Enormous research has been done on how to train with impact. Here are some specific tips that will increase the impact of your investment in building leadership brand, as opposed to developing leaders:

• Offer an integrated model for the experience. We continue to see many training events as parades of stars, with each day or module taught by a thoughtful presenter (either outside faculty, line manager, or customer), then another module from another face, and then another. With little integration, each training module is an isolated event. Branded training requires an integrated message (what our leaders need to know and do to demonstrate a leadership brand consistent with a firm brand) that has distinct modules woven around the brand theme.
• Use a host of training pedagogies. Since adults learn differently from another, different methodologies can and should be used. A mix of lecture, small group discussion, written case studies, live case studies, action learning projects, team presentation, video snippets, technology-based learning, simulations, assessment tools, and so forth can be woven into the training experience to ensure that regardless of each participant's learning style, all will find some methods that work well. Bear in mind that with adult learners, the faculty should be talking about 60 or 70 percent of the time. If faculty allow their participation to fall below 50 percent of the talking time, participants are in a problem-solving session and wonder what the faculty add; if faculty do 85 percent or more of the talking, participants are more likely to be listening than internalizing what is taught.
• Design modules to follow the concept-illustration-action (C-I-A) rational. During a training experience, a host of modules may be woven around the integrated C-I-A theme. Each module should have a clear set of concepts. Concepts represent the research-based theory and principles that frame an issue, or just the commonsense ideas that clearly apply without rich theory and research. These concepts should align specifically with the firm's brand and how it relates to leadership brand. But with content, there must also be illustration, or examples of what others have done with the principles taught. The illustrations may be written case studies of successful (or unsuccessful) firms, live case studies (as when customers attend and share problems), or video cases. Whatever the choice, participants learn by seeing how ideas were actually implemented. Then application follows. Application generally reinforces ideas with personal impact as participants adapt the concepts and illustrations to their personal situation. With the use of C-I-A logic in each module, a personal understanding of the leadership brand begins to emerge that participants can understand, observe, and practice.
• Build recursive lessons (self-reflective and self-learning) into the training. The half-life of knowledge is getting increasingly shorter, so all concepts taught in training need to be analyzed and updated consistently. For example, when IBM CEO Lou Gerstner wanted to increase organization capabilities of speed and collaboration, he sponsored a training experience called Accelerating Change Together (ACT). The ACT process was designed to achieve a fast and collaborative approach to leading the business, with a focus on team-based action learning projects. Each team identified eight-, ten-, and twelve-week problems to solve, and then worked collaboratively to identify the right people in the world to solve each problem (and then give them eight, ten, or twelve weeks to solve it). As the teams went through this training experience, they continually unlearned and learned how to improve their projects. Getting an individual leader to understand and adapt a leadership brand may require that the leader be knowledgeable about what the brand requires and reflective about how well he currently lives the brand. Leadership brand is less likely to take hold when forced on individual leaders and more likely to take root when individual leaders experience it through both training and work experiences.

Copyright (c) 2006 Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Excerpted from Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value. Copyright 2007 Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.

Jack Covert Selects - The Logic of Life

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford, Random House, 272 pages, $25.00, Hardcover, January 2008, ISBN 9781400066421

A number of economists have crossed over from academic publishing into popular literature recently. The most successful was Steven Levitt's Freakonomics--a book co-authored by New York Times columnist Steven J. Dubner. Other successes include Robert Frank's Economic Naturalist and Tim Harford's Undercover Economist. The latter two economists wrote their books without the aid of a partnering journalist, and the books are still completely accessible and easy-to-read.

Tim Harford has recently written a new book, The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, in which he suggests that an old economic truism, that people and markets--and people in markets--behave rationally, applies more widely than we think it does, even when we specifically believe it doesn't. He provides examples we don't usually consider economically rational--speed dating, decaying inner cities and suburban sprawl, prostitution, substance abuse, gambling, segregation, teenage crime and sexuality, etc.--and explains that although decisions made in each instance may have negative, even destructive and fatal impact, they are not really irrational choices. Individual costs and benefits are weighed, and solid economic principles exist for each dangerous, destructive activity or circumstance.

As uncomfortable as it may make us to explore some of these topics, Harford lays them out in front of us, teasing them out of dark corners for examination. Speaking of faltering American cities, Harford writes:

It is not hard to see what kind of person is rationally attracted by a city with cheap houses but no good jobs...For those people, the likely alternative to a cheap house and no job is an expensive house in a more dynamic city, but still no certainty of a good job. Sixty thousand dollars wouldn't buy a broom closet in Manhattan, but highly skilled people value the opportunities provided by a dynamic city, even though the cost may be high. Hedge fund partners don't move to Detroit to save on rent.

This is a bold and provocative book, often insightful and sometimes unnerving. It is beneficial, however, to add the economist's lens to the microscope with which we look at our contemporary world. It is not to condone or excuse the shortcomings of our society, but to expose and possibly improve them.

links for 2008-02-19

• Billion of Entrepreneurs >> BusinessWeek | Just Don't Call It 'Chindia'
  Why is China so much more open to multinationals than India yet vastly less hospitable to its own private entrepreneurs? Why do Indian companies have a far deeper pool of world-class managerial talent than China?
  (tags: businessbooks global entrepreneurship)

Jack Covert Selects - Myself and Other More Important Matters

Myself and Other More Important Matters by Charles Handy, AMACOM, 213 pages, Hardcover, February 2008, ISBN 9780814401736

Charles Handy, one of today's greatest managerial thinkers, has written a memoir about his life, his loves and his ideologies. It is not a business book per se, yet it's packed from page to page with his theories about the way business and organizations are run. Reading the book feels like Handy is carrying on a personal conversation with a young protege to whom he reminisces about how he first started out, all the mistakes he made along the way, some philosophies that helped him, his own personal gurus, and even love and mortality. Myself and Other More Important Matters not only provides a portrait of this thoughtful author, it offers his unique understanding of the business of business from almost every angle.

In chapter six, Handy talks personally, and humorously, about what he thinks was wrong with the non-existent business culture in Britain:

There were once three occupations in Britain for which you required no qualification and for which no training existed: politician, parent and manager. Unfortunately, they were also three of the most important. Management, in particular, was something that, it felt, everyone could do in a pinch. Rather like making love, it was something that sensible people instinctively knew how to do, when and as the need arose.

He liked the American approach to business enough to try MIT's methods in his homeland. At times, he may seem to glorify his United States experience, but he also comments on how even the American dream has lost some of its luster. He suggests that the way things run in any culture needs to be updated and changed when necessary.

Chapter seven reflects on Handy's lingering interest with Greek and Roman philosophy. He teaches his students ways of dealing with business through the play Antigone and introduces of Plato's rhetoric and Socrates' need to ask questions into his business class. Handy explains that to proceed forward in any endeavor, one must look back and learn from the past.

Handy's memoir is for anyone interested in his personal views on management, but it also serves as a companion to his other books. If you haven't thought about reading a Handy book until now, we recommend this as the place to start. He refers to this as his memoir, but there will be, no doubt, other books to come. Or so we can hope.

Another way for Your Voice To Be Heard

The presidential election is taking center stage right, so we thought to remind you have another election going on right now.

We are looking for you to help us choose the best business books of all time. My last report on our Reader's Poll at the vote count at 500. We are now over 1400 votes, and still looking for more.

Take a moment to jump over to The Reader's Poll: see what others have voted for and place a couple votes yourself.

The 800-CEO-READ Mystery Box for charity!!!

In an effort to give back to the community, we are holding a very special book offer to benefit Room to Read, a great organization that partners with local communities throughout the developing world to establish schools, libraries, and other educational infrastructure. We recently held our very first 8CR Business Book Awards, and recieved an enormous amount of great books from publishers and authors around the globe. Our idea is to share the best books of 2007 with you, and help out a great charitable organization in the process.

So here is the deal! For $20.00 we are putting together a MYSTERY BOX of three business books. In this box you are guaranteed one title that either won, or made the shortlist for best book of 2007 in its category, and 2 other titles that were submitted for the awards. 100% of the purchace will go directly to Room to Read, and we'll cover the shipping on all orders. Get on board and help us make a difference!!!! To take part in this special offer you can call Aaron at 414-274-6406 x204, or visit The 800-CEO-READ Mystery Box product page to order.

links for 2008-02-16

• The Middle-Class Millionaire - Russ Alan Prince - Lewis Schiff - Book Review - New York Times
  So think of a driven, Machiavellian business dynamo who networks, boasts and cares desperately about propelling his or her children into schools that have names worth dropping. Then put on rose-colored glasses and think of Benjamin Franklin. Seriously.
  (tags: businessbooks marketing industry)

links for 2008-02-15

• Lessons From Private Equity Any Company Can Use>>The Wall Street Journal | Embracing Debt, Enhancing Value
  Ms. Gadiesh and Mr. MacArthur concede that private equity is a tiered system, with the best firms offering stellar returns and most of the others struggling to match the returns of the S&P. But the authors argue rightly that the very best private-equity f
  (tags: businessbooks economics finance)

Reasonable Rx

With all the talk about health care costs swirling around this election year, Stan Finkelstein and Peter Temin's Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis is a very timely book. To prove that it can bring some of the various factions on this issue together, they have blurbs on the back from a Nobel Laureate in Economics, a former senior official in the FDA, a US Congressman, and a retired president of a pharmaceutical research group.

Although they did write the book for laypeople, you really have to be interested in the topic to wade through the first 150 pages, and you'd have be a real policy wonk to read the appendix after that, which lays out their plan in detail after already giving you a general outline in the last chapter.

The book begins, however, with this:

Is it any wonder that there's such a huge outcry about prescription drugs, particularly their high cost? Consider this: If your only source of information was commercial television, no one could fault you for thinking that GERD was a public health crisis in the United States on the scale of AIDS in Africa. In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, you can reasonably assume that American TV watchers saw dozens of advertisements encouraging them to check with their doctors to make sure they don't need to treat GERD with the Purple Pill.

What's GERD? It's the acronym for gastrointestinal esophageal reflex disease, commonly known as acid reflux disease--a condition in which the stomach releases an acid back into the esophagus. Until the 1980's, physicians rarely used the term, and when they did mention GERD it was probably to describe a complication of a rare pancreatic disorder. But that was before drugs like Zantac and Nexium came onto the market.

I haven't reached all the way into the heart of this book yet, but so far it has been very balanced, in-depth, and informative. And, for someone who's not a health-care policy wonk, it's even been rather entertaining.

Ambrose Bierce, the great American author of An Occurrence at Owl Creek, is quoted at the beginning of Chapter 5--How Not to Lower Drug Prices--saying "Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table."

Entertaining indeed.

The Celebirity Experience - Part II

For some reason, this morning I recalled something I read in Donna Cutting's The Celebrity Experience. In the beginning of the book she talked about assisted living and it struck a cord with me. One of my friends works in a place for senior citizens and they implemented some things that were brought up early on in The Celebrity Experience to make the residents feel more at home. It is very hard to change ideals and thoughts on a very rigid institution like a nursing home or assisted living, but like the example in this book and in care places such as St. John's on the Lake in Milwaukee, things are changing for the better. Here's a little about it from the book:

For several years, I worked in the field of elder care with seniors who live in assisted-living communities. If you you've ever had to help a parent move into a retirement care community then you know how difficult it can be for everyone. It would break my heart watching children and their parents wrestle with the decision.

The adult children are wracked with guilt, often dealing with parents who are fighting the decision, and filled with confusion about whether they are making the right choice.

Despite what you may hear on the new or on the television ads sponsored by law firms, most elder care professionals are sensitive to this transition and bend over backward to be helpful and make it easier. However, as with many industries, they are often short on staff and are overregulated, which sometimes means that people get shortchanged as a result of the process.

Cut to the conversation I had with my friend Andrea, a marketing director at a large assisted-living company. She was telling me about an idea that she and her boss had about how they would welcome prospective and new residents to their community.

At their community, prospective residents and their family members would be welcomed by a valet at the front drive. The valet would be expecting them, and would greet them by name and with a smile as he helped them out of their car.

Another designated greeter would walk the visitors down a red carpet and into the building. Inside they would see a banner that welcomed them personally to the community.

I know this doesn't sound like a lot, but things like: offering the residents choices such as menu items, bed time and activities during the day instead of having them all do one thing at the same time are all things that can be done to encourage and promote importance and empowerment that are needed in any organization.

Take time to look into this book on how to really treat people and how to get treated like a celebrity yourself. We're offering FREE regular ground shipping until March 1st, 2008 for this book, regardless of quantity. And if you get a chance, PBS aired a special presentation of the nursing home my friend works at called Almost Home. (The show has many of the examples Cutting's book brings up and you can actually see how the very simple things in life can change a person's outlook towards life and make them seem like they are one of the most important people around.)

Click HERE for Donna's website! (And for more "celebrity experiences" check out this new book from 'two daughters of Hollywood'. It's called Celebutantes and it talks about 'that mad and magical week' of the Oscars.)

Ask 8cr! - Free Prize Inside

Ask 8cr! is a section of our blog used as a forum to address the kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We 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. What's your challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with how to champion a project so teammates become engaged without involving management:

"I am working on a Six Sigma project to earn my Green Belt. I was told what project to work on and who my team members would be. 2 of the team members are the biggest stake holders and object the most to the changes that need to happen to reach our goal; they do not have buy in to the project or the goal. I do not hold a management position so they do not feel the need or pressure to cooperate. The person who assigned the project and my team is no longer with the company so can not address this. I get the idea that they feel the project is no longer an issue and that it, and I, will just go away. How can I gain their cooperation without going to their supervisor? I feel that going that direction would only make them despise the project/changes more and they would contribute even less than they do now." - Debra

This is a difficult issue, and Debra is right about her assumption that if she involves her co-worker's supervisor, things will only get worse. So, what's a dedicated employee to do? Seth Godin's book Free Prize Inside has a chapter called "Selling the Idea" that offers great insight to this particular challenge.

To get buy-in from co-workers, Godin talks about creating a "Fulcrum of Innovation" that will change co-worker's project perception in regards to three important questions: "Is it going to be successful, is it worth doing, and is this person able to champion the project?" To answer these, Godin says the champion must exude a strong sense of confidence, and then find out what each individual involved would be looking to gain from the project. In other words, are they looking for challenges, job security, making the world a better place, making their job easier, or something else? The project champion should find out what each individual's self-interest is, and approach the project from that angle when talking to them about it.

Godin then goes through a thorough list of tactics to increase involvement, one of which fits Debra's situation nicely; "Dare Them to Improve Your Idea." By encouraging each person involved to improve the idea, they'll take more ownership in it, and by taking ownership in it, they'll start to view it as something they are apart of, not against. From there, Godin describes a variety of other tactics that will make people want to get on board. With this approach, the project won't just get done, it will turn into something even greater than what it was planned to be, and your efforts will be the reason. Godin states, "Once you know how to champion a project, you're set for life, regardless of where you happen to be working."

I'm sending Debra a copy of the book today. Beyond this chapter, she'll find even more ideas that will help turn her into a champion of this project, and many more going forward.

Update from Tools of Change Conference

Yesterday Kate and I got to hear Douglas Rushkoff, author of Get Back in the Box, talk about how content context contact is king. He explained that what people are really looking for online is social currency, the opportunities to interact with and respond to other people. The predominant marketing model has been to get people to interact with products, to take them away from other people so that, as Doug said in an example, they buy their oatmeal from Quaker, and not from Joe at the local farmer's market. That's changing as marketing is shifting from the hands of producers to the hands of consumers, whose opinions are more valuable because they can be shared without bias (for the most part) directly with other consumers.

The idea of social relationships in publishing has been a major theme at this year's conference. This morning I heard Gavin Bell from Nature Publishing Group talk about how your online services deserve the same degree of customer service your bricks and mortar business boasts. He talked about "Moderation" -- talking to people and finding out what's working and what's not, whether you're an online retailer or a blogger trying to join a broader conversation. One of the hardest parts of moderation is, Gavin explained, listening to what people say and accepting that they know what they want.

January's Top Books on Compact Disc

We know that you all have been waiting for this ALL month, so here it is!! Our Top 25 Books from last month that are available in audio format!!

# 2 - You're Broke Because You Want to Be by Larry Winget -

The "New York Times" bestselling author of Its Called Work for a Reason! and star of A&Es reality show Big Spender cleans up Americas personal-finance crisis with this straight-talking approach to prosperity. Unabridged. 4 CDs.

Here are the insights that fueled the Starbucks growth, its phenomenal success, and especially its incredible culture.

# 5 - It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff -

The former Navy commander of the USS "Benfold" reveals important management techniques he learned by shifting organizing principles from obedience to performance. 3 CDs.

# 6 - Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott -

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, "Wikinomics" challenges the most deeply rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the 21st century. Unabridged. 11 CDs.

# 8 - Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out by Marci Shimoff -

From a bestselling Chicken Soup coauthor and contributor to "The Secret," comes a fresh, new, practical program for finding and maintaining happiness. Abridged. 5 CDs.

# 10 - Think Big Act Small: How Americas Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-Up Spirit Alive by Jason Jennings -

A bestselling business author shows how the culture of a small start-up combined with the ambition of a big company produces unbeatable results, and translates what he has learned from his analysis of nine companies into powerful lessons any company can apply. Abridged. 3 CDs.

# 14 - Touch Choices: A Memoir by Carly Fiorina -

Behind the headlines, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard tells her own story. Abridged. 5

The son of the author of the famed 7 Habits books launches a new series on the defining principle of personal and economic success for the 21st century: trust. Abridged. 1 CD.

# 18 - Make the Impossible Possible: One Man's Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary by Bill Strickland -

The founder of the renowned Manchester Craftsmans Guild and the Bidwell Training Center in Pittsburgh instructs listeners how to achieve the impossible in their lives and careers. Abridged. 4 CDs.

Supplies don't last a long time in this format, so order your copy(ies) NOW!!

More Sex is Safer Sex

Two weeks ago I posted a review from a young journalist called Todd Lazarski meant for our first magazine. It was a review that, unfortunately, did not find it's way into the magazine itself, but that I really wanted to share with everyone. Today, I would like to share the second of Todd's reviews. Here he takes a look at economist Steven E. Landsburg's More Sex is Safer