800-CEO-READ Blog

Is it still possible to build a company that lasts?

In 1994, Jim Collins co-authored the landmark title Built to Last followed by Good to Great in 2001. This month's special edition of Fortune magazine features a piece by Collins.

A technology pundit told Collins that, "'We live in an era when nothing can be built to last. Everything is in flux; nothing can sustain.'"

When looking at the Fortune 500 facts presented in the piece, that seems to be true:

* Of the 500 companies that appeared on the first list, in 1955, only 71 have a place on the list today. (The 1955 list included industrial companies only, whereas today's list also includes service companies.)

* Some of the most powerful companies on today's list--businesses like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Google--grew from zero to great upon entirely new technologies, bumping venerable old companies off the list. Robert Noyce invented the integrated circuit in 1958, three years after the first Fortune 500. Dozens of companies on this year's list did not even exist in 1955.

* Some of the most celebrated companies in history no longer even appear on the 500, having fallen from great to good to gone from the list--companies like Scott Paper, Zenith, Rubbermaid, Chrysler, Teledyne, Warner Lambert, and Bethlehem Steel--most often because they gave up their independence, and sometimes because they outright died.

Jim counters those points with proof of endurance: P&G, started before the American Civil War, continues to succeed; as does Johnson & Johnson whose roots were planted back in 1886 and GE which has been around for over 100 years. Then there's Nucor Steel who rose from near bankruptcy to the 151 spot on the Fortune 500 list (its story can be found in the out-of-print book, American Steel). Or Xerox which turned over profits of over $1 billion in 2007, a mere seven years after suffering losses of over $300 million.

Jim's underlying message is that the environment is not responsible for a company's success or failure. He points out that success or failure "depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you."

The full article is available here.

United Nations

On one of my recent pilgrimages to New York City, I re-discovered the art of tourism and decided to visit places I have not been to in a while. One of these was the United Nations. Upon entering the perimeters after the extensive security screening, you cannot help but be in awe over the countless number of conference rooms, offices, and works of art that the many countries have donated. India's masterpiece in one the great hallways stands out in my memory, but all of the works represent not only the country involved in the U.N. but their people and culture as well. We are but one part of a great picture in more way than one, and visiting the U.N. puts it in perspective a hundred fold. The many rows upon rows of delegates that serve there are a reminder that one person can make a difference sometimes, no matter how big or massive their country is - everyone has a voice.

Upon leaving the U.N. I stumbled upon... (OK, I looked for it because I'm a book nerd) its massive bookstore. The United Nations has among part of its strengths, a great publishing company. Here are some highlights from their library that may be of interest to you.

World Statistics Pocketbook 2007

Global Environment Outlook GEO 4

Yearbook of the United Nations 60th Anniversary Ediiton

The State of the World's Children 2008 in French and Spanish too

UNEP Year Book 2008: An Overview of Our Changing Environment

Global Outlook for Ice and Snow

The Universe of the Largest Transnational Corporations

You can also visit the U.N. publishing company HERE

Gladwell 3

Following in the wake of The Tipping Point and Blink, Little, Brown and Company has announced Malcolm Gladwell's third book. Entitled Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't, it is set to be released in November of this year. I haven't been able to track down much information about it online, but the publisher catalog reads:

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

OUTLIERS is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In OUTLIERS, we're going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We're going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world's greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don't. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us--the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual--I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.

November can't come soon enough.

Andrea Learned reviews "What Men Don't Tell Women About Business"

Exposed: The Alpha Businessman's Non-Feminine Ways by Andrea Learned

I'm not sure I've ever come across a guy as "alpha" as Christopher V. Flett, the author of What Men Don't Tell Women About Business. He just doesn't seem like the type of guy who'd be capable of casually enjoying a happy hour beer. Still, his book definitely shed some light toward my better understanding of male-female interactions in the business world.

What caught my attention first was Flett's discussion of how men measure other men in business. It was like reading an anthropological case study--I really had no idea men might seriously be thinking this way. (And, I did unscientific research with some male friends who confirmed it.) His measurements list includes three things--visibility, credibility and profitability--all of which fit right into the research of sociolinguist Deborah Tannen, who found that men communicate asymmetrically around status or positioning as opposed to the more symmetrical, common ground-finding communication style of women (see her classic book, You Just Don't Understand, for more).

This drive for apparent comparative success derives from the fact that men still, as he puts it: "are judged by society by our ability to generate wealth." Depressing as that may sound, isn't it true? Wishing men were judged by their good citizen/husband/father attributes in our culture is akin to wishing women were judged by their brains and management (household and business) savvy, first and foremost.

I could see how such a founding point of view (subconscious as it may be) might affect male-female workplace inter-personal relationships. Picture this scenario: A man's female colleague wants to chat about her kid's soccer game. Meanwhile, his thought balloon reads like this: "No time for this! Must - make - money to stay visible, credible and profitable!"

Now, women are certainly plenty focused on making money in this day and age, but they have been socialized to go about it differently and often tend up settling for less. Something Flett would seem to think that a lot of men just wouldn't do. All told, he seems to believe that alpha male motivation and molding in the workplace is pretty diametrically opposed to a typically female (or even "beta" male) perspective. Given this, it is actually a bit of a wonder that so much business has been conducted successfully over the years.

Flett seems to get a teensy bit more personal (or maybe that's just my female opinion?) when he comments on how women don't support one another in down times, while men do tend to support other men when in their down times. I'm not so sure that's a fair generalization. However, when he discusses the way women tend to give up power, it seemed dead on to me. He shares the way his wife once called in sick to her boss and rather than just saying, "I'll be in at 11 am," she went into major detail about how she hadn't been feeling well all morning etc... As Flett points out--women are known to be better communicators than men, but sometimes their sharing is so process-focused that the goal gets lost. The Alpha male, on the other hand, never loses sight of that goal.

Another apparent self-sabotage mechanism for women is the way they tend to compare failures more than they compare successes (as men are so much more likely to do). Flett writes: "When one talks about how bad her life is, the rest of her support group jumps in to talk about how their experience is worse." Perhaps, just as positioning and status games can seem like obstacles to getting anything done, a woman's tendency to seek common ground in all situations may also get in the way.

At one point, Flett discusses men's discomfort with, or fear of, women in the workplace. A litigious society will do that. Men realize that bawdy humor or "I can beat that" stories make some women feel uncomfortable, but men are uncomfortable with what they think are more typically "female" topics too. What to do? As he writes about men, "When we are acting weird, it is because our default switch is now set to clam up when there is a situation that could be misconstrued." Thus the sudden end of many a conversation (about anything) when a woman comes within earshot of a gathering of men. Eggshells abound.

There's a chapter in What Men Don't Tell Women About Business that very thoroughly outlines what men consider to be currency and what the various levels are, including salary ranges (freshmen level - <$50,00/year, to graduate level- $100,000/month), watches and cars. I really just skimmed over those details, and then, a few weeks later happened to be in a roomful of men in a very male-dominated industry. I couldn't help but notice the "levels" of watches and smart phone gadgets displayed. Fascinating.

Later in the book, Flett offers up specific examples of questions women may have (from a database he's compiled from his years coaching them, I assume) and how he'd suggest the situations be handled. The questions vary in their seriousness (from whether or not to go drinking with the gang all the time to what to do if a male counterpart takes credit for your work) While I don't doubt that he's had women ask him about such things, I am still astounded to think that "in this day and age" they still need to be addressed. Sigh.

It is worth noting: In What Men Don't Tell Women About Business, Flett seems to be writing about an intensely and somewhat old-fashioned sounding (to me) corporate environment. Much of what he covers may not be relevant to the many of us who no longer work within such structures, or who mainly correspond with colleagues via email with only the occasional on-site meeting. There may also be cultural (Flett is Canadian) and generational differences to consider in the mix.

And, while what Flett covers may well be true in a number of corporations today, I have to believe that the younger men I've seen coming up in the business ranks will be better able to communicate with/work among female associates (and vice versa) than the Alpha male he represents. Call me Pollyanna.

There is something to be said for calling a spade a spade, and whether or not we love his approach or agree with everything he writes--Flett did that with this book. We have seen the enemy and it is actually ourselves. Men and women alike continue to perpetuate the workplace gender roles and stereotypes we've lazily gotten used to over the years.

The hope would be that What Men Don't Tell Women About Business will raise the awareness of female readers who will then decide for themselves how to use his insights and impressions, or not. If women would then also talk about this with their male colleagues, that would be the bonus--but then Flett wouldn't have needed to write it.

Andrea Learned is the co-author of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy-and How to Increase Your Share of the Market, and sole author of 9 Minds on Marketing, a free eBook in which she took on the task of reading nine marketing books, interviewing the authors, and writing an essay on each to elucidate the points that she found most provocative.

Dan Kennedy's Rock On

As Roy pointed out last week, work can be a bit much sometimes, overwhelming us with unexpected demands and stress. The book he suggested offers very sound and sensible advice that will probably help get you back to a positive state of mind. The book I suggest today to alleviate that same stress, and provide fresh perspective, offers no sound advice or any real strategy at all. The only thing it offers is a large dose of humor. It is not a business book, even, but a memoir, a "power ballad to office-life."

In Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, Dan Kennedy skewers the absurdities of the corporate music industry, and the life he briefly led in it's belly. Kennedy landed what he thought was a dream job at one of the industry's major labels. Instead, he found himself quickly launched into a series of humiliating events: trying to find, and write in, the voice of women "forty to fifty-plus years of age" for a Phil Collins' ad campaign; getting caught trying to act cool in front of a young female punk band; and awkwardly navigating office politics the entire time, most hilariously the politics involved in deciding how best to speak to his boss's lap dog.

So what does this offer us? Well, first of all, a good laugh... often at his expense, but also at ourselves. Kennedy's self-deprecating humor reminds us that we're not the only ones straddling work and life, trying to balance who we are and where we work with who we once imagined we would be, and who we want to be.

I like the office I work in, and I'm lucky in that I truly love the people I work with, but honestly, looking back, did I really see myself working in an office at this point in my life? Hell no. I was going to be a great artist--or maybe a writer--and, you know, probably starting at shortstop for some major league baseball team (preferably in the National League). Dan Kennedy was going to be a rock star. Most of us were going to be something else, and most of us aren't. Most have other people's deadlines and expectations to meet. And, it's alright, especially if we can laugh at ourselves every once in a while. Dan Kennedy helped me do that a little more with this book.

"Q: How many record executives does it take to change a light bulb?"

A: Here

You can read a far more eloquent review of this book from our sister company here.

Friday Links

Here are some of the things that caught my attention on the interwebs this week. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did, and have a great weekend!

The USA Today review of Leander Kahney's Inside Steve Brain.
"Ultimately, Jobs' unconventional ways and management practices serve their purpose. Perhaps no other company has been as good at giving customers what they want before they know they want it, Kahney writes."

The author of The Baseball Economist takes a look at whether the Blue Jays dumping Frank Thomas was a good business decision.
"One lesson from principles of microeconomics is that just because you are earning a loss doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea to shut down production. ... Shutting down increases your losses. If a player is producing more on the field than he costs to keep on the roster, then you should keep him on the roster."

Do you make a living being creative? Or, are you looking for creative talent for an upcoming project? If so, the folks at Behance offer a free service, the Creative Index.
From Cool Hunting: "The service makes it near effortless and far more efficient to find photographers, designers, dancers and even confectionery artists. ... Clean, attractive and with an easy-to-use design, the site is the first to aggregate both portfolios and websites in one place and it's simple to join--just enter the addresses for your various websites and portfolios."

The Carbon Catalog blog interviews the founders of CLIMACT, a Belgian-based company, about the business of carbon offsets. (found via treehugger).
"Carbon offsets management is not core for most companies. They need to outsource that competence to specialists. Most company do not know where to start to initiate a carbon strategy."

And finally, David Rendall at The Freak Factor follows his recent ChangeThis manifesto around the World Wide Web.

New Excerpts

We have two new excerpts up on the blog devoted to excerpts, the excerpts blog. (Aaron, Kate and I, by the way, have decided that "excerpts blog" is one of the most uncomfortable things to say in the English language.)

The first excerpt is from How to Negotiate Anything with Anyone Anywhere Around the World by Frank Acuff. More specifically, it is the "Fast Facts" summary of Hong Kong, where you will learn things such as the most common toast to give at a dinner banquet.

The second excerpt is from Job Spa by Milo and Thuy Sindell. It is the entire first chapter of the book. The authors describe their book as a "twelve-week guide to build professional skills, get refreshed, and explore new paths." The excerpt is the first week of that twelve-week course.

The links are below. Happy excerpt reading everybody!

How to Negotiate Anything...:
800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007910.html
Job Spa:
800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007908.html

The Lorax

Major collaboration to help save trees between Random House Publishers, Dr. Seuss and Conservation International:

Dr. Seuss' Lorax's Plea: Stop Cutting Trees!

By Daniel Horgan, Special for USA TODAY

As the world's rain forests disappear, one of Dr. Seuss' most powerful and controversial characters has been summoned back into action to issue a post-millennium warning.

The Lorax, the story of a furry-cheeked little creature who fights to save the environment from the greedy Once-ler, has been a perennial favorite of kids and parents since it was published in 1971.

Now, Dr. Seuss Enterprises is teaming with Conservation International and Random House to use The Lorax to help save the forests.

The book is being reprinted with a special environmental message that describes "The Lorax Project," which is being launched today in honor of Earth Day. Ten percent to 15% of profits from the book and from Earth-friendly consumer products featuring the Lorax's image will be used to stop deforestation in Madagascar, Brazil and China.

Read the rest HERE!

Order the book HERE!

It's done.

We seem to have skipped the news that the manuscript is done.

The likely cause of that lack of reporting is everyone left town (physically or mentally). Jack hopped on a plane catch some Florida sun. Sally is spending time this week reading something (anything) besides reviews of business books. Others are taking days here and there.

I got on a plane this morning and have landed in Austin. I am spending a few days decompressing and hanging out with the various members of Austin Book Posse.

This just taken photo is me relaxing at the lovely Hotel San Jose.

And notice--the smile and no beard.

PW 2007 Bestsellers

Publishers Weekly released its bestseller list late last month. A Thousand Splendid Suns topped the fiction category, while The Secret took the top nonfiction spot. But, those books get enough love, so we thought we would list the business titles that show up on the list (they list all books that sold over 100,000 copies in calender year 2007). I will briefly note, however, that The Secret sold more than twice as many copies as A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The first business book on the list, The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, shows up at number 35. Listed below are all the business titles sold more than 100,000 copies in 2007.

• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Crown, (332,272 copies sold)
• Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca. Scribner (310,000 copies sold)
• Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Morrow (275,000 copies sold)
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. Free Press (239,966 copies sold)
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Random House (199,784 copies sold)
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House (161,053 copies sold)
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham. Free Press (140,574 copies sold)
• Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work by Cathie Black. Crown Business (139,806 copies sold)
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. Hyperion (123,732 copies sold)
• The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Robert I. Sutton. Business Plus (115,954 copies sold)
• Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent by John C. Maxwell. Thomas Nelson (104,971 copies sold)

I'd like to mention one other book from the list for all you fiction lovers out there as well. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao comes highly recommended from Mr. Jason Kennedy, the book-buyer at our sister company, and a man who knows his fiction. It's good to see a book by a debut novelist make the list, which it barely did at 101,164 copies sold.

Pecha Kucha: 20x20

Similar to The Idea Book and Creativity Today, we've taken on another title available only through us: Pecha Kucha Night: A Celebration.

Things are a bit different this time around though. While we're excited about this extremely cool book, which shows a pictorial overview of many Pecha Kucha presentations from around the world, we're even more excited that we've become the Milwaukee franchise for Pecha Kucha Night. If you're in our neighborhood, stay posted on our upcoming PK events. Regardless, pick up this book -- a printed view into what happens when ideas, communities, design, business, and individuals come together. Amazing!

"But, hold on," you say. "What the heck IS Pecha Kucha anyway???" Pecha Kucha (which means chit chat in Japanese) started in Tokyo as a way for designers to present their ideas over 20 slides x 20 seconds each slide. The momentum grew, and now PK is held in over 100 cities around the world, featuring presentations from mayors, moms, musicians, mailmen, and many others. Check out the book, come to an event, and as they say, Join the Conversation!

Beard or Book: Day 16

It's Day 16.

The book and beard are both longer. The book currently weighs in at 87,126 words spread out over 429 manuscript pages.

It is leaving our hands tomorrow.

Can you see the joy on my face?

George Washington on Leadership

George Washington on Leadership by Richard Brookhiser showed up on my desk the other day and it looked like a very timely read, what with the debates going on and the United States searching for a new president. So, what about the first leader anyway? Why would anything he did be relevant now? Well, from a business standpoint, he did have two ominous startup companies - the government for the colonies and the first militia. It is amazing how much leadership and drive it took Washington to commit to our little country. We probably take for granted what men like him did, so it's definitely worth taking a second, or even third look back to see what we, in this current age of technology and mass media, can do to be better leaders. Here's a little bit from the book that I found interesting:

People

John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation takes its title from the belief that anyone can be linked to anyone else by a chain of acquaintance consisting of only five intervening people. How many degrees of separation lay between anyone in the late-eighteenth-century America and George Washington? Fewer than six. True, it was a smaller country, but travel was harder, which made it large again. Even so, Washington got around, fighting in five states during the Revolution, visiting all thirteen during his presidency. When he wasn't on the move, people came to him. One evening he noted in his diary, with some surprise, that he and Martha had dined alone for the first time in twenty years. From the masses he met he picked (or Congress picked for him) his assistants and associates, the men he led most intimately.
Problems, and a leader's solutions to them, consist of ideas, forces, facts of life. But they are always accompanied by, or incarnated in, people. Judging people accurately and managing them well can make the different between success and failure.

George Washington on Leadership is coming out mid-May and you can pre-order a copy today! By the by, April is National Poetry Month - so, if you have time, check out these books on American poetry:

Early American Poetry by Oscar Wegelin

A Preface to Colonial American Poetry by Wisam Khalid Abdul Jabbar

The Poems of Philip Freneau: Poet of the American Revolution by Philip Freneau

Songs of the South: Choice Selections from Southern Poets from Colonial Times to the Present Day by Joel Chandlers Harris and Jennie Thronley Clarke

links for 2008-04-17

• The Turnaround Kid >>The Wall Street Journal | To The Rescure
  When corporate executives sit down to write a book, the result is often a bland recitation of accomplishments, a few charmingly self-deprecating admissions of mistakes, and a handful of business formulas that might help you, the reader, achieve similar su
  (tags: businessbooks general_business history)

A book that predicts the future of Delphi?

There's a lot of controversy surrounding yesterday's release of Steve Miller's book, The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America's Most Troubled Companies. Miller is the former CEO of Delphi Corp., the auto-parts supplier; he was called in to help bail out the company. Miller was also the man Lee Iaccoca called to help with Chrysler's downturn. And Miller worked for Bethlehem Steel while they went bankrupt.

Miller began writing back in 2005 long before Delphi's fate had been determined. From the WSJ: "The book was intended to outline the wisdom he has gained over the years as a turnaround artist, and to tell the inside story of how he rushed into Delphi, used Chapter 11 to force tough medicine on its unions and whipped the giant auto supplier into shape."

The somewhat ironic and, imaginably, awkward situation is The Turnaround Kid was written from the perspective that Miller had already turned Delphi around. As it turns out, that prediction (and the book release) is a bit premature as presently Delphi is still fighting it's way through bankruptcy court.

Nonetheless, yesterday the 40,000 printed copies went out into the world for the public to buy.

New Excerpt up - from The Breakthrough Imperative

Head over to our Excerpts Blog to find an excerpt from the book The Breakthrough Imperative: The Strategies That Drive the World's Best Managers by Mark Gottfredson and Steve Schaubert.

As a general manager, your job is to devise a strategy for performance improvement. Insight into your customers' preferences and behaviors, and into how those preferences and behaviors might change over time, is essential. It can help you take full advantage of your competitive position. It may even give you the ability to counteract the advantages of leaders who are farther down the experience curve and thus move up (or over) the ROA/RMS band.

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007896.html

And, if you missed it, here's a link to the excerpt Dylan put up yesterday, from The Quest for Global Dominance:
http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007892.html

New Excerpt - The Quest for Global Domination

You find Chapter 1 of the 2nd Edition of The Quest for Global Dominance over on our excerpts blog. Even if you've read the first edition, you may want to consider updating your thinking on the global economy with this new offering which includes three new chapters: Lessons from the Globalization of Wal-Mart; Globalizing the Young Venture; and Leveraging China and India for Global Dominance. Jeffrey E. Garten, former dean of the Yale School of Management (among many other things) writes in the forward that:

The Quest for Global Dominance remains the best by far in its arena--The most comprehensive, the most insightful, the most readable, and simply the most important in the growing genre of what companies need to know as they expand their international horizons.

You may recognize co-author Vijay Govindarajan as the co-author of Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution, which regularly shows up on our bestseller lists.

Is Paradise Lost?

It's that time of year again.... no vacation in sight for awhile, the kids are in school waiting for summer, the hours at work may seem endless, the book you're writing is an uphill battle, reports need attention and you may be a little stressed out. Rightfully so, but how do you manage during awkward times like a Spring slump, the Winter doldrums or even the long days of Summer? How do you find 'Paradise' that you once had?

Vicki Hess is the author of a neat little book called SHIFT to Professional Paradise: 5 Steps to Less Stress, More Energy and Remarkable Results at Work. In the book she helps guide those that may have lost focus and drive in their current position in life and work. She offers up the 5 steps:

Stop and breath

Harness harmful knee-jerk reactions

Identify and manage negative emotions

Find new options

Take one positive action

Get it? Yep, they all spell SHIFT and hopefully Hess' words of wisdom will help those in need of some Paradise! We don't have to love our job, but we should at least like it!

Check out the book for yourself HERE!!

An essay from John Hammergren on health care reform

Thanks to John Hammergren, author of Skin in the Game: How Putting Yourself First Today Will Revolutionize Health Care Tomorrow, for offering us this article on his views about the role of business in health care reform. Hammergren is a leader at McKesson Corporation, a 175-year-old heath care company. He writes passionately about the need for corporations to consider and take seriously their role in the health care issues this country is facing.

In This Political Season, Health Care Reform is a Business Issue

It would be easy, in this long run of important presidential primaries, to be convinced that the problems we have with our health care system can only be resolved through government action and the political process. After all, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain have each made health care reform a central issue of their campaigns. Political races are all about emphasizing stark differences between positions. But I am encouraged by how much today's political leaders recognize that our health care crisis -- despite that word "care" -- is fundamentally a business problem.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of those politicians who understands the urgency for reform. The health care company I lead, McKesson Corporation, turned 175 years old this year. To help us celebrate that proud milestone, Governor Schwarzenegger spoke passionately and convincingly about the opportunities we have before us to bring the health care industry to another level of excellence.

I believe he's right. Historically, every twenty years or so, we have a debate in this country about health care reform. So what's different now? We've enjoyed incredible advances in medical practice and technology over the last few decades. That's one reason why overall costs have risen but it's also why American health care, despite the criticism currently in vogue, is the envy of the world. On the other hand, with the best of intentions, the political solutions traditionally put forward to make health care cheaper and more accessible -- like artificially capping costs, regulating the services providers offer and restricting consumer choice -- have had the opposite effect. Nobody who runs a business is surprised about that. What computer maker or car dealer would worry about price, access or quality if there was no competition for the customer and no reward for distinctive service?

Business leaders across the country are keenly aware of these issues. I am a member of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform, a group of more than 50 companies advocating solutions to the health care crisis. In regular conversations with top executives, I hear the same concerns frequently. First, because health care costs are soaring, our employer-based health insurance system is hurting American businesses and the economy. Every product or service an American company offers is more expensive than it should be because employee health care costs are added to the mix. In a global economy, this is making it harder to compete with companies abroad. Second, business leaders, with their background in competitive markets and customer service, look at our health care system and think, "What other industry could operate like this and survive?"

In most industries, top performing businesses excel by being the low cost producer, putting out the best product, and meeting or beating customer expectations. The market works because consumers are able to choose the services that meet their needs best. In the health care industry, costs are distorted by government interference in the market and quality differences are disguised by a lack of consumer information and choice. Moreover, while we can argue that "customer" is another word for patient, would the customer in any other market make critical decisions without concern for cost or quality and put up with the inconveniences, inefficiencies and high error rates of health care?

The three remaining presidential candidates understand that effective health care reform means preserving our enviable ability to innovate while making the health care industry more market-oriented and customer friendly. The stump speech talking points about access and cost containment don't always highlight this. But if you view the details of their proposals, a different picture emerges. Each candidate's agenda emphasizes business fundamentals like quality, transparency, and paying for outcomes. They also understand that the current health care information technology boom is about to revolutionize the way care is delivered, reducing medical errors and administrative waste while making efficiency, informed choice, lifelong care and customer-orientation the new paradigm.

What's more, all three candidates see the same critical areas that need our most urgent attention. Chronic diseases account for most of our health care expenditures and require coordinated rather than episodic care. We need to incentivize and organize providers to manage long-term illnesses better. The fear of medical malpractice suits are driving up costs by encouraging unnecessary treatment. We need sensible reform to reduce the preponderance of defensive medicine. Quality of care and outcomes need to be the new measuring sticks by which we assess, select and pay providers for their health care services. We need greater transparency to give primary care physicians and health care consumers the ability to choose the best doctors, hospitals, insurance providers and technicians, while also creating industry-wide standards for the latest in best practice.

No matter which candidate prevails in November, the popular concerns we have about health care right now are going to evolve rapidly once the next administration begins. As a business leader, I support universal access through tax incentives and individual choice (not a de facto expansion of Medicare) because I believe that having everyone in the insurance pool is fundamental to reducing costs and creating a competitive insurance market. But as Governor Schwarzenegger learned when the California Senate Health Care Panel rejected a bill mandating health care for all state residents, sweeping reform is even more difficult when economic times are tough.

The will for reform is real and the political process is critical in building and maintaining the health care industry we deserve. But as the candidates for president realize, the kinds of forces that make American business so competitive can make health care work better, too. Higher quality, lower costs, greater transparency, and better customer service are not contradictory goals, they're outcomes that go together. We don't need to control the health care market through mandates and cost containment legislation, we need to unleash it by giving people the ability to make better informed choices. After all, health care is the one product all consumers need, guaranteed.

Author
John Hammergren is CEO of McKesson Corporation, the Fortune 18 health care services leader. McKesson serves customers at every point of health care and is helping transform the industry into a modern, efficient, and quality-driven system. McKesson has seen industry-leading performance under Hammergren's leadership. During his tenure, the company has more than doubled its revenues and experienced a cultural and business renewal. Hammergren is an HP board member and the recipient of numerous awards for leadership. He is the author of Skin in the Game: How Putting Yourself First Today Will Revolutionize Health Care Tomorrow.

Another perspective on Nudge

Friday we posted a review of Nudge. Steven Levitt over at the Freakonomics blog recently posted his thoughts on the book, too. It seems he liked it:

Which is why I could not have been more surprised and delighted when I finally got to read a copy of their new book Nudge. Despite my initial misgivings, I'm halfway through it, and this is a book I love.

The main point of the book (paraphrased) is as follows:
Since people don't think very hard about the choices they make, it is a lot easier to trick them into doing what you want than to try to educate them or incentivize them to change their behavior. There are many ways to trick people, but one of the easiest is simply by giving thought to the way choices are arrayed to them, or what they call "choice architecture."

Go to Levitt's full review.

Jack Covert Selects - Nudge

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard. H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Yale University Press, 304 pages, $26.00, Hardcover, April 2008, ISBN 9780300122237

Every layout and piece of input we interact with influences the decisions we make each day. At the grocery store, product placement plays to our impressionable nature with candy stocked near the cash register. Our magazine subscriptions renew automatically because the magazine companies know busy subscribers rarely take the time to unsubscribe, even when magazines begin to pile up on our kitchen table. Our cars remind us with an annoying beep to buckle up. When it comes to what influences our decision-making, authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explain that, "A good rule of thumb is to assume that 'everything matters.'"

That's where Nudge comes into play. Thaler and Sunstein are believers in libertarian paternalism, a belief combining two seemingly disparate ideas. The libertarian aspect reflects the belief that, "in general, people should be free to do what they like--and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to." The paternalistic side seeks to influence "choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves." That is, the choices stay the same; it is the presentation of the choices that may change.

Take retirement plans, for example. One application of libertarian paternalism would be a human resource manager electing for an automatic annual renewal of employees' 401K benefits. Employees would be free to leave the plan at any point. The automatic renewal would simply remedy our tendency to be forgetful and push things off until the last minute. This nudge, Thaler and Sunstein would argue, would be in the best interest of the employees. Most of us would agree we would be better off in the long run.

There are numerous applications for nudges that can, and do, exist. As the authors point out, one of the first misconceptions is that "it is possible to avoid influencing people's choices. In many situations, some organization or agent must make a choice that will affect the behavior of some other people." They go on to imbue readers with six factors that influence our choices, hoping that with this knowledge, companies, governments and choice architects will guide people responsibly with small nudges. With Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein show that liberty and guidance can be the right combination to help people make smarter decisions.

Jack Covert Selects - Inside Steve's Brain

Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney, Portfolio, 304 pages, $23.95, Hardcover, April 2008, ISBN 9781591841982

For four decades, the word Apple has conjured up more than just keeping the doctor away. Adding the iPod, iTunes and iPhone to that mix only strengthens the long-lasting brand that shares the fruit's name. But what makes it tick? What's at the heart of this company? Leander Kahney answers those questions in this book by focusing on its sometimes controversial CEO, Steve Jobs.

Kahney delves into Jobs' world from the very beginnings of the computer business he created with his childhood friend, Steve Wozniak. They made what would eventually be known as the first Apple computer in a garage, and then recruited other friends to help build them. Kahney illustrates Jobs' role in the progress of this new technology as more creative and intuitive than scientific. Jobs never graduated college, never took computer technology courses, and certainly never knew how to build one. What he did know is how it should perform, what it should look like and who would use it. He's basically Apple's own test market and built-in guru.

Life has not always been like this for Apple or for Jobs. One may remember the late '80s to mid '90s, when the computer company took hit after hit with slumping sales, sub-standard technology and too many products to control. It was no longer the company Jobs had helped build. At that time, Jobs was helming a company called NeXt and making movies with a little company he helped start called Pixar (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Toy Story). Needless to say, however, Jobs returned to Apple when they needed him the most.

Jobs got rid of the "bozos" at Apple. He realized that too many creative people can be a death-sentence and that Apple had its shortcomings. The company had to get humble, and quick. Before the iPod was released, Apple was just about ready to toss in the towel. But then Jobs stepped in as advisor at the request of then CEO, Gilbert Amelio. What followed was one of the most ambitious comebacks in modern business history. Jobs got rid of departments, products and workers they didn't need, achieving a streamlined business with more focus, drive, determination and ingenuity.

Apple Computer is the big story in this book, but Kahney also takes us a journey into Jobs' brain--from his childhood to adulthood, through his ups and downs--and begins to solve the riddle of Steve Jobs and his business savvy.

links for 2008-04-10

• The Adventures of Johnny Bunko >>The Wall Street Journal | Please, Johnny, Work Harder
  Now workplace strategist Daniel H. Pink, who is all of 43, has taken this pattern to outrageous, delightful extremes.
  (tags: businessbooks entrepreneurship)

ChangeThis: Issue 45

We have some interesting and counterintuitive advice this month. David Rendall advises us to flaunt our weaknesses, Barry Moltz tells us to temper our ambition, and Robert Rosen believes that we can, and should, use our anxiety to become better leaders. We also have Francis Wade weighing in on time management, suggesting we rid ourselves of the fancy PDA devices and gadgets until we have a grasp on the 7 basic skills needed to manage them. And, in the middle of it all, David Meerman Scott delivers a great tract on viral marketing, or "how word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free." More information and many links below.

Strive for Minimal Achievement, by Barry J. Moltz

"Failure is valuable only when we realize it is a normal part of the business process even when there always isn't something to learn. So it does not hold us back.

The real fear and pressure in this whole process is not brought on by our competitors or other outside people. It mostly originates within us. The biggest fear we have is that someone in our position would have done better than us, made better decisions than us and would have built it faster and more profitably than we did. We believe that that we should be in a different place than where we are right now, and that we would be, if only we had made better decisions. Nonsense.

In our business life, in order to move forward, past the fear, past the failure, yes past the success, we actually need to just let go. Letting go is the key to gaining true business confidence. Not by holding onto what people have taught you are the keys to success. Not by looking for the 7 steps. You need to let go of the idea that there is always something to learn from failure or that you can always build and duplicate your success. Get ready for your next great success by letting go and bouncing."

http://changethis.com/45.01.StriveMinimal
http://changethis.com/pdf/45.01.StriveMinimal.pdf

The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness, by David Rendall

"My experience as an individual, consultant, parent and leader indicates that efforts to fix weaknesses are ineffective. Furthermore, I believe that the goal of being well-rounded is both undesirable and impossible to attain. The purpose of this manifesto is to explain why I believe this and to offer a better alternative.

[...]

These examples from my life illustrate the three primary lessons of this manifesto.
1. There is nothing wrong with you. Weaknesses are important clues to your strengths.
2. You find success when you find the right fit. You need to match your unique characteristics to situations that reward those qualities.
3. Your weaknesses make you different. They make you a freak and it's good to be a freak."

http://changethis.com/45.02.FreakFactor
http://changethis.com/pdf/45.02.FreakFactor.pdf

The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How Word-of-Mouse Spreads Your Ideas for Free, by David Meerman Scott

"You and I are incredibly lucky.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online--content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

Word-of-mouse is the single most empowering tool available to marketers today. I wrote this e-book so you can take advantage of the power of viral marketing too. In it, I share ideas that will help you create your own viral marketing strategies and campaigns."

http://changethis.com/45.03.WordMouse
http://changethis.com/pdf/45.03.WordMouse.pdf

The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips, by Francis Wade

"As working professionals across the world, we all want the same things when it comes to time management. We want to feel a certain peace of mind that comes from knowing that our affairs are in order and that we've not forgotten something that might jump up later to give us a nasty surprise.

We also want to get as much as we can out of life, and to maximize the time we have to be alive. We share the belief that this time is limited, and we want to spend it in ways that are in line with our values and commitments.

And we all face the same problem of having only 24 hours in the day."

http://changethis.com/45.04.NewTime
http://changethis.com/pdf/45.04.NewTime.pdf

It's Time to Evolve: Leading with Just Enough Anxiety in the 21st Century, by Robert Rosen

"In Prehistoric times, saber-toothed tigers and other wild animals tried to make primitive man their meal, before he made a meal out of them. Out of this anxiety-ridden society, a built-in coping mechanism was burned into our genes--the fight or flight response. In today's business world, leaders face a modern-day breed of saber-toothed tigers; burnout, corporate takeovers, diminishing finances, and other anxiety-producing events threaten our well-being and the survival of our companies every day.

[...]

When it comes to managing our anxiety, it's time to evolve. Anxiety is as much a fact of life today as it was for our ancestors. How we use it makes all the difference. If we let it overwhelm us, it will turn to panic. If we deny or run from it, we will become complacent. But if we use anxiety in a positive way, we will turn it into a powerful force in our lives. We will uncover the hidden driver of business success."

http://changethis.com/45.05.EvolveAnxiety
http://changethis.com/pdf/45.05.EvolveAnxiety.pdf

Jack Covert Selects - Creating a World Without Poverty

Creating a World Without Poverty: How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives by Mohammad Yunus, PublicAffairs, 261 pages, $26.00, Hardcover, January 2008, ISBN 9781586484934

Economist and banker Muhammad Yunus has often been described as a visionary. His work with microcredit lending earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006; the only other recipient that year was the micro lending company he founded, Grameen Bank.

Much of Creating a World Without Poverty focuses on the "Grameen Experiment," documenting the financial practicality of a social business. You may be asking, "What is a social business anyway?" Well, Yunus believes that "to make the structure of capitalism complete" a new kind of business needs to emerge "not to achieve limited personal gain but to pursue broad social goals." Tackling concerns usually associated with aide groups, social businesses differ from non-profits and NGOs in that they don't rely on charitable donations and grants to pursue their mission.

Yunus believes global markets can alleviate poverty, writing that "Globalization, as a general business principle, can bring more benefits to the poor than any alternative," but tempers that enthusiasm with statements like, "Unfettered markets in their current form are not meant to solve social problems and instead may actually exacerbate poverty, disease, pollution, corruption, crime, and inequality." This is what he believes social business can address. He sums up his feelings, writing "I am in favor of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market."

Yunus continues to broaden the concept of business. One example is Grameen's entering a joint venture in Bangladesh with Group Danone (Dannon) to help address the serious malnutrition that exists there. Grameen Danone is a social business, producing fortified yogurt to shore up the diet of rural Bangladeshi--primarily children--and selling it at a price that keeps the venture self-sustaining, but no more than that. The business pays no financial dividends to its investors--it exists solely to address a need and if they turn a profit, it will be used to expand its capacity to affect human lives.

We all know the business model works, and that it drives innovation and progress. Yunus is working in that tradition, suggesting and that alongside our profit-driven businesses, it would serve us well to build businesses driven by social concerns--and he is proving it can work. If enough people get on board, we may some day realize Yunus's vision of putting poverty in a museum.

Beard Or Book

Facial hair is a popular accessory at 800ceoread. We have folks who sport both beards and mustaches in the office.

It was recently suggested that I should join the crowd; do what all the cool kids are doing. In a short moment of weakness, I decided to jump on the bandwagon...for a limited time.

Under the banner "Beard or Book", I am growing out my beard until we get our book manuscript turned in to our publisher.

Of course, it is silly and of no real consequence, but seems give people the impression that we are working really hard and lack time to do simple things like shave. We have been coming in early to work on edits and have a few people convinced we stayed all night given my new appearance.

We'll keep you updated on both the book and the beard. Both will be gone by next Friday.

Meet Alltop: the Aggregator Site

Guy Kawasaki launched the aggregator site called Alltop last week. What they do:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from "all the top" sites on the web. We've grouped these collections -- "aggregations" -- into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page -- we call this "single-page aggregation."

You can think of an Alltop site as a "dashboard," "table of contents," or even a "digital magazine rack" of the Internet.

From 1994: Tom Peters in Milwaukee

Jon interviewed Tom Peters the other day and it reminded me to share photos from when Tom visited us in Milwaukee in 1994 on his tour for The Pursuit of Wow.

Tom and David Schwartz. David's father, Harry W. Schwartz, founded the independent bookshop chain which gave us our roots.

When Jack actually did back of the room sales at speaking gigs.

A group shot of the team. Both Roy and Jack are still here.

Atlas Shrugged as a business book

A reader suggested an addition of Atlas Shrugged to the best business book of all time vote we're running. Interestingly a few weeks back the weekly edition of The Week had a quip about Ayn Rand's famous book:

It was revealed that at least 17 universities had accepted $1 million from a wealthy donor under the condition that they make Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged required reading in a course on capitalism from a moral perspective.

If you're a Rand fan, Atlas Shrugged is now up on the book vote site.

Double or Nothing's Debut!: March's Top 25 Books Available in Audio

Off of our current top 25 books of March, here is what is available now in audio format:

1) Double or Nothing by Cal Fussman

2) Made to Stick by Chip Heath

4) Hug Your Pe