800-CEO-READ Blog

Evolutionary Economics

Found this today. A Fast Company article on evolutionary economics from Michael Shermer, author of The Mind of the Market.

If the fruit of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 hasn't landed in your bank account yet, it's likely just a matter of time before you're throwing $600 on the bed just to see what it feels like to roll around in that much cash. The government, of course, hopes that we won't just pay bills or sock it away in savings but that we'll circulate the money back into the marketplace and thereby jump-start our sagging economy. As I write, the government is also engaged in another kind of largesse, literally printing money and offering it to banks and government-backed mortgage players Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stave off the continuing ripple effects of the credit crisis. Leaving aside whether those moves will reverse the current economic slump, the question is: Why do we think they might?

The answer may be found in a new science called evolutionary economics. This discipline looks at the economy as an ever-changing, complex adaptive system -- not unlike that of biological evolution. Immune systems, language, the law, and the Internet are all examples of other complex adaptive systems. They learn and grow from the bottom up. Individual elements (organisms in evolution, people in economics) interact and adapt to changing conditions. These systems are so intricate that they often look as though they've been designed from the top down. So our minds naturally infer the existence of an intelligent designer for complex life and a government designer for complex economies. This is why we instinctually look to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, or Congress and the President to fix the economy.

But there's more to it than that...

Keep reading on evolutionary economics over at Fast Company.

Consumer or Consumed? BusinessWeek reviews two books about brands

Yesterday Dylan did a nice job of summing up the latest reviews and discussions about business books in business magazines. Sometimes it's hard for us to keep up with everything, so here's one from a few weeks ago.

In the June 19 issue of BusinessWeek, writer Susan Berfield reviewed two books that "explore the question of whether brands control us, or vice versa": Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker, and Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion by Lucas Conley. (Image source=BusinessWeek.com)

Here's a snippet from the article:

My girl's request [for a Go-Gurt in her lunch]--fleeting, trivial, and unrepeated--nonetheless says something profound about our high-impact, omni-consuming culture. But what? Is she--are we all--just easy marks? Or is there a more complex dynamic between the marketer and the mark? Rob Walker, the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, argues for the latter view. Walker, who writes the "Consumed" column in The New York Times Magazine, offers a sophisticated and sometimes lighthearted take on how consumers interact with brands, defining and controlling them as companies struggle to keep up. By contrast, Lucas Conley, a contributing writer for Fast Company, takes a grimmer view. His book, Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and The Business of Illusion, is a bleak assessment of how defenseless we are against ad creep, as he calls it.

Check out the BusinessWeek article to see which perspective Berfield tends to agree with more.

Friday Tidbits

Here's an offering of some random, yet interesting things from the Internet this week!

Book Review: The Office from Hell Cure by Jeffrey A. Landers. For everyone that works from home, here's a brighter side of the mundane atmosphere at your personal HQ. Order it here!

Here's just a little more about the book I blogged about: First Stop in the New World by David Lida. It's about Mexico and how it may be a huge player in the next century - order it HERE

I also came across an interesting book from Walter Nugent called Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion - in it it tells how America got to be a 'great empire' by going into our different wars, treaties and negotiations with other countries. A must read for any historical enthusiast.

By the way, did you hear about Salman Rushdie getting knighted by Queen Elizabeth II ? Says Rushdie : "At this stage, you know, it's certainly not a day to talk about controversy, it's a day for myself and my family to celebrate this."

Here's an audio concerning Thomas Jefferson's Library that's finally complete. Turns out the Library of Congress has managed to get together with a bunch of rare-book dealers and get the missing library to its full glory. Check it Out HERE!

One more thing - Albert Camus book Notebooks (1951-1959) is currently available. In it, he goes into both the good (his Nobel Prize) and the bad (his depression). "The most interesting aspect of the "Notebooks" is not politics but its personal substratum." Order the book HERE

Have a terrific weekend, everyone!

Magazines Reviewing Books

There's another round of book reviews from some of the big business magazines. My personal favorite is from Business Week and Christopher Farrell. In an article entitled "The Squeeze on the American Worker," Farrell takes a look at two books with similar themes, Peter Gosselin's High Wire and Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze. This paragraph sums the books' importance nicely:

Gosselin and Greenhouse are award-winning journalists with the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, respectively. Not surprisingly, both books are well-written with clear themes and telling anecdotes. Neither book is a revelation, of course, since much has already been said in recent years about America's shredded social safety net, middle-class families' ever-more-vexing economic circumstances, and the distressing working conditions faced by low-income employees. Instead, what makes the two volumes timely and important is their powerful, authoritative evidence that a lot of people are rightly anxious about their economic prospects--worries exacerbated by an election season and ongoing economic woes.

Next, we have Roger Lowenstein's review of Steve Miller's The Turnaround Kid for Conde Naste Portfolio. Oddly enough, there's a line about the author in this review that relates to the theme of the books in Inc.:

Though a down-to-earth guy--one who never outgrew his lumberjack plaids--Miller cannot help sounding preachy when he talks about the great things he did for America by driving factory wages down near the level of those of Wal-Mart employees.

That sounds like quite a knock, but Lowenstein does go on to state that "Still, this is a highly engrossing memoir" and that "No one executive can fix all of corporate America's problems, but Miller came close." Kate wrote a post about the book upon its release. You can read that here.

The Economist has a tale of two Arvinds--Panagariya and Subramanian--and their respective books, India: The Emerging Giant and India's Turn. I don't believe India's Turn is available yet in the U.S., but according to all reviews I've read, we're not missing much (Subramanian is known to be a great thinker, but every review I've read bemoans the poor editing). India: The Emerging Giant, on the other hand, looks fascinating. From The Economist:

Mr Panagariya's book is the capstone of a career, a sustained work of scholarship. It demands a lot of its readers, and amply repays the investment. The author's father told him: "Take your time, but write a definite book on India." The son did not disappoint.

Finally, we have Inc. Magazine's skimmer's guide to the latest business books, this month featuring Tuned In by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott.

Happy Reading!

Globality

Hopefully, some of you remember my blog listing about Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation. Well, Harold L. Sirkin, along with 2 other of his colleagues from the Boston Consulting Group have put there minds together in the new book: Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything. In the book, Sirkin, Bhattacharya and Hemerling talk about countries such as China, India and Brazil and how they are changing the face of business on a global scale in various ways.

Here's how the book starts:

"Globality is not a new and different term for globalization, it's the name for a new and different global reality in which we'll all be competing with everyone, from everywhere, for everything.
We three, management consultants turned authors, are partners....and have been studying the change in the global business environment - and working with companies involved in it - for more than twenty years. The extensive research that we....have conducted over the past five years set us on a path that led to this book.
When we started out in our international travels, globalization was just getting under way. It was a cavalcade that traveled from West to East - big multinational companies center in Europe, Japan and the United States marching out from their corporate fortresses to foreign lands in search of low-cost manufacturing and low-end markets."

Outsmart!

Jim Champy is coauthor of the business classic Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, which is, without a doubt, one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (we love manifestos). He also wrote the follow-ups Reengineering Management and X-Engineering the Corporation, and just released a new book, Outsmart!, in March.

Outsmart!, as Champy puts it in the introduction, is:

...The first in a planned series comprising four compact volumes on the key topics of strategy, marketing, leadership, and operations. Taken together, the books aim to deliver the most current intelligence available on how to succeed in today's brave new world of business. An ambitious project? Yes. But what I see a host of companies accomplishing today has me both excited and encouraged.

With the current state of the economy, we can all use a little more encouragement. Maybe Jim Champy can help.

You can read a review from the Boston Globe here.

You can read an interview of Mr. Champy from Management Consulting News here.

The Pixar Touch review in the New York Times Book Review

The Pixar Touch, which was a Jack Covert Selects in May, was reviewed in this past Sunday's New York Times Book Review.

Read the review here.

Seinfeld on Carlin

Jerry Seinfeld talks about George Carlin's death here.

Books Available in Spanish

Hey!! Here's a mish-mash of titles that are now currently available in Spanish! Take time this summer and try a new language out, or get them for your friends at work that are bi-lingual!
Check them out:

Esta Lleno Su Cubo? (How Full is Your Bucket) - by Donald O. Clifton and Tom Rath

La Buena Suerte (Good Luck) - by Fernando Trias de Bes and Alex Rovira

Un Naufrago En La Bolsa (Castaway in the Stock Market) - by Carlos Torres Blanquez

Organizarse Para Alcanzar El Exito (Organized for Success) - by Stephanie Wilson

Las Cinco Difunciones de un Equipo (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) - by Patrick Lencioni

El desafio de Darwin (Dealing with Darwin) - by Geoffrey A. Moore

Conversaciones Cruciales (Crucial Conversations) - by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler

Retratos de Familia: Lo Que Quiso Saber Y No Se Atrevio a Preguntar Sobre la Empressa Familiar (Family Business) - by Inma Puig

Fish! - by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Mallory Kasdan and Stephen Ludin

El Poder de Fish! (Fish! Sticks) - byJohn Christensen, Harry Paul and Stephen Ludin

And....check out my posting on a new book about the future of Mexico and business HERE

Robyn Meredith on NOW... and Other Resources

In our first annual business book awards last year, the prize in the Globalization category went to Robyn Meredith's The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us.

I was a big fan of the book personally, and was pleasantly surprised to see her recently on NOW, a weekly program on PBS. NOW turned to Meredith for her perspective during the episode "India Rising"--their look at the meteoric rise of India (and China) on Friday evening. Some of her thoughts:

The last time we saw such a big transformation was really when the United States itself came onto the global stage.

and

All of us are going to have to share. There's only so much on the planet... there's only so much energy. We're either going to have to pay a lot more for the privilege of using it, or we're going to have to decrease our use, or both. We're now in a competition, not just for jobs, but also for resources. We've been lucky, but the game's over.

The resources she's talking about aren't just oil and steel and concrete. Now a part of a global supply chain, food availability (and its cost) is also being increasingly affected as people in India and China can afford to eat better, creating more demand for more food--particularly more meat.

Gurchuran Das, former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India and author of India Unbound, was also interviewed for the program. (I haven't read any of his work, but after seeing how insightful and well-spoken he is on these issues, I look forward to it.) Das estimates that 50% of the Indian population will earn enough to be considered middle class by 2020. That's around 580 million people, or roughly twice the size of the entire United States. That's roughly twice the size of the entire United States driving cars, buying microwaves, heating and cooling ever bigger homes, eating better, all the while consuming the resources that those activities entail. And... that's not including China.

Click here to get the video of the program, or here to download the audio.

If you're looking for more on India, check out In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India. It was also a winner in our book awards, getting the nod in the New Perspectives category.

If you'd like another (and alarming) look at the competition for resources, look no further than Richard Behar's epic, six part article for Fast Company on China's expanding influence in Africa.

Sad Day

It was very sad for me to wake up this morning and hear the news. George Carlin is dead.

He was my generation's comedian. Before Steve Martin and after Lenny Bruce, George Carlin was there.

Another local connection was that he was busted for disorderly conduct in Milwaukee for expressing his "Seven Words" on stage and was hauled off to the poky. Not one of our city's better days.

Just check out youtube to see why he will be missed.

Open Position: Customer Service Representative

Customer Service Representative

We are looking for an individual to join our operations group as a customer service representative.

Your job will be to take care of our customers, managing their orders from the time they are taken until the time the shipment arrives. This will involve obtaining all the pertinent information for the order, placing the purchase order with our suppliers, and tracking the order during shipment.

Some important things to keep in mind:

• The job involves an enormous amount of communication over the phone, through email, and with other members of the office.
• The position requires patience and empathy as you work with expected and unexpected situations constantly that can impact the customers you work with.
• You will be working in an open office with 12 other people. This works for us. It may not work for you.
• We sell and promote books. Liking books will help you like the job.

800-CEO-READ is a division of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops and specializes in selling business books to corporations, universities, and individuals. The company was started in 1984 and located in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. In the last five years, we have experienced double-digit growth each year and tripled the size of the business.

We have a lot of fun things planned. Come join us!

Location: Milwaukee, WI

Salary Range: $30,000 to $35,000 per year

Benefits: Health, Dental, 401K, and profit sharing

Please respond to by sending a resume and cover letter to todd a t 800ceoread d o t com.

New excerpt up - from Divide or Conquer

There's a new excerpt up on our Excerpts Blog. The excerpt is taken from Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength by Diana McLain Smith. This chapter examines the the Steve Jobs/John Sculley breakup at Apple in the 1980s, a conflict that nearly destroyed the company.

The story begins:

More than 20 years have passed since Steve Jobs and John Sculley's much-publicized breakup at Apple. Yet it still serves as a cautionary tale. In two short years, their celebrated camaraderie turned into an antagonism so great it escalated hostilities between divisions, put the firm at risk of a takeover, and sent Steve Jobs into a 12-year exile, from which the firm has only recently recovered. How these leaders went from soul mates to adversaries in such a short time shows how relationships, even those touted as a perfect match, can self-destruct under pressure, leaving a firm to pay the formidable price of a failed relationship.

This case study is one of many found in Divide or Conquer. From the publisher: "Smith shows us how to build work relationships that are flexible and strong enough to survive the toughest challenges... This book will break the myth that relationships are too mysterious to decode and too difficult to change. It offers powerful tools that can help anyone, from new recruits to CEOs."

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/008261.html

The Future of the Internet

You guessed it! Another book was brought to my attention the other day when someone called and placed a mass quantity order for their employees to read, the other day. The book was: The Future of the Internet....And How to Stop It. The title alone made my ears tingle, which urged me to find out more about this book and what Zittrain could possibly mean by this ominous title. Well, turns out, he suggests in this book that the internet has set itself up for 'a complete meltdown'. With all the 'wiki'-stuff, 'I"-stuff, etc., the web is getting increasingly muddled.

In just a few years, how we perceive the net is going to be quite dramatically different. It's already started to morph. Zittrain offers solutions in how we can maintain or even keep ahead of this great change. He also, which was very interesting to me, tells of how this happened (and still is happening) in the first place. Then, he even goes on to tell us about the 'next best thing' and how this is going to further breakdown the net. It's call the XO laptop, and well, you'll have to read the book to find out more about that. It's just in several countries right now, but what it can do will (and should) astound you.

Here's what some people said about this book:

"Jonathan Zittrain does what no one has before - he eloquently and subtly pinpoints the magic that makes Wikipedia, and the Internet was a whole, work. The best way to save the Internet is to turn off your laptop until you've read this book." - Jimbo Wales, Founder, Wikipedia

"Zittrain provides a compelling account of the changes that have shaped the Internet and where it is heading. His assessment of the future of communications, collaboration, and privacy provides important food for thought for everyone who will shape - or be shaped by - the future of this thechnology." - Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft Corp.

Moneyball Author Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair

If you are a baseball fan, or even just a fan of great writing, I highly recommend you check out Michael Lewis's recent article for Vanity Fair about sports agent Gus Dominguez, who has been convicted (wrongly, Lewis believes) of smuggling Cuban baseball players to the United States. In it, he follows the story back to Cuba and paints a fascinating portrait of baseball there. Peter Gammons recently stated on Baseball Tonight that the most exciting baseball experience of his life was watching a game in Havana, and you can almost taste that kind of excitement in this piece by Lewis.

Other than the incomparable Bill James, Lewis may be the man most responsible for popularizing the sabermetric approach to analyzing baseball. His seminal book Moneyball, in which he profiled the work of Billy Beane--GM of the Oakland Athletics--led many baseball fans to a better appreciation of just how valuable walks and On Base Percentage are. Joe Posnanski, of the Kansas City Star and author of The Soul of Baseball, described that phenomenon recently on his blog.

One of the reasons the book Moneyball was such a success, I think, is that it gave us a fascinating glimpse at how the magic trick worked. Yes, there was a lot of stuff in there about the draft, a lot of stuff about finding pitchers who throw funny, a lot of stuff about not selling jeans. But it seems to me the epiphany was that the Oakland A's just walked a whole helluva lot. [...] They walked and walked and freaking walked, And those walks turned a fat, limited, defensively challenged, John Jaha, Matt Stairs, Giambi Brothers bunch into a good enough offensive team to back up the Big 3 pitchers and win 87, 91 and 102 games.

With walks playing a starring role in Moneyball, many people just then started to realize how valuable and under-appreciated walks have been through the years. Not only does the walker get to go to first base, but he he uses up some of the pitchers valuable pitch count, he creates frustration, he has a chilling effect on the stadium atmosphere. I'm not suggesting that an increase in walks is good for baseball ... it is not, nothing in the game is more boring than a walk. But years ago, Pat Riley discovered that his New York Knicks could win basketball games by bullying and clawing and shoving and making basketball boring beyond pain. Sure, walks are boring. But they work.

Although you'll find it in the Sports and Recreation section of your local bookstore, Moneyball will be one of the books featured in Jack and Todd's 100 Best Business Books of All Time (which now has an ISBN and amazon page!) because it is essentially about managing an organization and changing an entire field of business with fresh thinking and new approaches. Jack contends that Michael Lewis is in the class of Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion as a contemporary non-fiction writer. The Vanity Fair story certainly has me convinced.

VF Daily also interviewed Lewis about this recent article, and you can read that here.

First Stop in the New World

I've commented before on how small the world is getting and how business attitudes have and must change to comply this fact. Many places around the globe are either losing their stance with the global economy because they may have not recognized the need for change or they just lost the "IT" factor; while other countries are picking up the flack, so to speak. First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century gives such a locale as an example that many people have either not thought about being in a power position or just written off because they don't know much about the city.

According to David Lida, Mexico City is such a place that may be a viable place for business of the future to take a stronghold in. He has worked in the city for many years and his book reads like a sharp-witted, David Sedaris type memoir, making it accessible to just about everyone. Lida projects Mexico City as a key player in the twenty-first century and gives graphic details of its culture, sex, politics, economics, corruption, and "the brutal interactions of everyday commerce".

Think of it: Paris in the nineteenth century. New York in the twentieth. Mexico City in the twenty-first?

Pecha Kucha Night - Slideshow - June 17, 2008

Our first Pecha Kucha Night was a great success! We had a ton of fun--check out the pictures--and were impressed with each of the presenters. I'm sure we'll share more thoughts this week, but for now we invite you to enjoy Pecha Kucha Night as we experienced it. You can also view the show over at our Flickr site.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The next Pecha Kucha Night is August 26 at the Hi Hat Garage.

Fall book preview - Relevance by Tim Manners

A crop of books about brand marketing has sprung up this past publishing season. We're starting to receive galleys of the fall books. This one just came across my desk and caught my eye: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters by Tim Manners. It was the marketing copy on the back cover that drew me in. "Branding expert Tim Manners says that marketers should give up the flashy practices and groupthink of the last fifty years--the demographics-driven strategies, fashion-obsessed things, and old-fashioned advertising. Today's customers don't care about those things. All they want to know is, "Why should I care? What's in it for me?"

This is a book we'll be keeping our eye on when it pubs in September. Here's a snippet from the working introduction:

An epidemic of irrelevance has brought once-powerful brands to their knees. The virus is an inordinate fixation on demographics-driven strategies, fashion-forward images, and media-focused communications.

The autopsy points to a lack of organic growth.

The cure is a reaffirmation of the essence of marketing, which is simply to help people solve problems and live happier lives. Interestingly, at least a few brands have managed to make comebacks after years in the wilderness.

• Levi's reasserted relevance when it created wardrobe solutions for men.
• Hasbro reasserted relevance when it reinvented board games for today's time-pressed consumers.
• Staples reasserted relevance when it stopped wasting its shoppers' time with extraneous products.

Manners goes on to describe a number of precepts that have shaped marketing practices for the past half century, and then offers a solution: six principles relevant brands understand and embrace.

Side note: Did you know that you can sign up for RSS updates on the books you're interested in? You can receive notices when we post an excerpt, blog post, interview with the author, or other news about a particular book. Relevance comes out September 18, but you can pre-order it from us or sign up for notifications from our blogs.

Pecha Kucha Night

We posted previously about stocking rare copies of the PK book, and hinted that we were also the Milwaukee franchise for their events. Well, if you're in Milwaukee, tonight's the night (June 17) - the very first Pecha Kucha Night in Milwaukee!

8:00 PM
Hi Hat Garage
1701 N. Arlington
Milwaukee
$10

What's Pecha Kucha?

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for "the sound of conversation"), devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 in Tokyo as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has now grown to involve everyone from pizza delivery drivers to executives to celebrities, and is held in over 100 cities around the world. Join us for the first in an ongoing series of Pecha Kucha Nights in Milwaukee and discover what the members of your community are involved in, meet new people during the beer break, and join the worldwide conversation!

Here's what some other folks have said about PK Night:

"I love this idea to pieces."
- Seth Godin, marketing guru, author of Purple Cow

"...combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliche into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art."
- Dan Pink, Wired magazine, author of A Whole New Mind

Local press:

MKE magazine

OnMilwaukee.com

If you're not in Milwaukee, visit the PK site to see if there's a chapter in your city - then join the conversation!

www.pecha-kucha.org

I Can't Remember The Last Time...

Jack and I have been pretty quiet on the blog over the last year. The process of writing a book took more time than I ever imagined. I have a completely new appreciation for the authors who have come before me. Seth suggests everyone write book in a post on his blog today, and I agree it is a great idea, but understand the work you are in for.

Anyway, this post is really about the first chance I have had in months to spend the morning looking through books. I promise more posts in the coming weeks, but here is what has caught my eye this morning.

• The Word of Mouth Manual Volume II - Dave's new book is worth a look. You can download it for free or buy it printed on paper.
• I am reading The Breakthrough Imperative. This is a book from Bain & Company. I have read enough of their partners' work to finally say that I like their message. I am just getting started, but I think this is a culmination work for the company combining the ideas of Fred Reichheld, Chris Zook, and others. More on that soon.
• There is a new second edition to The Age of Heretics by Art Kleiner. Too many people have told me that I have to check this out. I am going to read the book and then have Art on for a podcast.
• I am a huge fan of the Memo To the CEO series, which we post the Jack Covert Selects for on Friday. Check them out.

Enough for now. And I promise again to get back to writing more here.

The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II

Dave Balter seems to love proving people wrong. People thought he was crazy when he created one of the first word of mouth media companies, BzzAgent. But, through his work, he has proven that people are not only willing, but actually want to be involved in learning about brands and products, and helping spread the word about them, if engaged with and listened to.

Dave is being looked at askance once again, people wondering if he's finally lost it. The reason this time is the release of his new book, entitled The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II. In an rather unorthodox move, he has decided to self-publish it. He didn't have to self-publish it--his last book, The Grapevine, was published by Portfolio and did well. He also doesn't have to release a free eBook of the material, something a publisher would never let him do, but he is.

After reading the eBook--reading how word of mouth marketing is the Grateful Dead to viral marketing's Falco ("Rock Me Amadeus") for example--you'll want to buy the physical edition. Only a few thousand are being printed, so it's sure to be a collector's item, and each book comes with an original piece of artwork by their artist in residence, Seth B. Minkin.

If you'd like more material to start you off, Dave has previously written a ChangeThis manifesto, and Todd interviewed him after the release of his first book. If you're interested in why he decided to self-publish, he has written a very well reasoned post on the topic.

Here's the direct link to the PDF edition of The Word of Mouth Manual:
http://www.800ceoread.com/wommvii

Personal Days

Just how absurd (silly, mundane, hypocritical, etc - pick one or use your own) has the workplace gotten since the introduction of new technologies and the seemingly endless barrage of office politics? In his new novel, Personal Days, Ed Park examines the culture of business like it has never been examined before. He makes up a New York company, adds a bit of George Orwell, dabbles in office romances and starts it all off with a certain employee getting a phone call on a Sunday from the office.

Sure, it's a novel about a made up office, but for anyone that does work in one of these, week in and week out, the similarities will ring true. It may start off funny, seemingly unimportant/trivial, but by the end with all the politics, conspiracies and backstabbing, one may wonder how far off the mark is this book from everyday life.

Here's what people are saying about the book:

"The funniest book I've read about the way we work now." - William Poundstone, author of Fortune's Formula

"[Park's] sardonic humor will ring true to cube monkeys everywhere." - Fast Company

"Hysterical." - Wired

"The ideal read for anyone who has ever felt possessive about a stapler, confused by their boss's behavior, or suspicious of the stranger who works two cubicles down." - Amanda Filipacchi, author of Love Creeps

Read more about the book HERE

Ram Charan: How to Kill an Idea

In addition to being in this month's Inc., Ram Charan was interviewed on innovation by Fast Company. Ram recently co-authored The Game Changer with Procter & Gamble's A.G. Lafley.

From the interview:

You contend that innovation is a social process and that innovation failure is less often a matter of bad ideas and more often a result of failing to make the right connections. What do you mean?

Let me explain some simple things. First, as Thomas Edison said, an idea is called invention. Converting an idea into revenues and profits or something a customer uses is innovation. Today, in the Internet society, you can buy ideas. You can have ideas flow to you from outside your department and outside your company. Innovation is selecting an idea and converting it to the production of a product, service, or new business model that creates growth and profit. The conversion of an idea for most companies, if not all, requires more than one person to make it happen. And that is why it is a social process.

Marshall Goldsmith on managing up

Each week an author is interviewed over at the Harvard Business School Publishing site for their IdeaCast series. This week, Marshall Goldsmith talks about how management is changing, what it takes to manage knowledge workers and explains how to manage up in your organization. Marshall is an executive coach who has authored a number of books including the bestselling What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

If you follow this link, you'll find a link on HBP's site to subscribe to the weekly IdeaCast iTunes feed.

Jack Covert Selects - The Memo to the CEO Series

The Memo to the CEO Series, Various Authors, Harvard Business School Press, $18.00, Hardcover, 2008

We recently attended Book Expo America, the national bookseller's convention, and almost every one of our meetings involved some talk of the future. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was one of the headliners, promoting his company's electronic reading device, the Kindle. Audio books look like they will follow the lead of their musical brethren and become more available digitally, and, surprisingly, will be released from at least one publisher in the popular, unprotected mp3 format. But, I wonder if there isn't something in looking at the good old paper version of books and improving it for the 21st century reader.

The "Memo to the CEO" series from Harvard Business School Press seems to be a step in that direction. Over the last few months, five books have been released under this banner, with more planned for the fall. They typically run about 120 pages and easily fit in the palm of your hand. This translates into a quick read for busy businesspeople. The topics are timely and focused, ranging from how climate change affects business strategy to what companies can learn from the private equity sector. This series occupies a unique spot between the coverage you would find in a magazine article and the significantly longer treatment you would get in a traditional book.

My favorite of the series so far is 5 Future Strategies You Need Right Now by George Stalk, who you may know from his previous books Hardball and Competing Against Time. For this book, Stalk went into his "files" to see what trends were forming on the horizon. The five strategies he talks about "began as faint signals, but the files on them are now sufficiently thick that the sources of advantage are not only abundantly clear, but undeniable" (3).

Stalk's strategies match his very nuts-and-bolts style, and each gets its own section in the book. He implores companies to avoid the huge fixed investments needed in the past for economies of scale and explore new, more flexible production techniques. He believes companies must develop dynamic pricing structures to match the second-by-second needs of the customer, and he discusses the idea of infinite bandwidth and how best to utilize it when it arrives. I'll leave the other two strategies for you to discover in the book.

The current titles in the series are:

Hero Worship

WHOO HOOO!! Check it out! You are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero!, by Bob Powers. It just sounds FUN!

It's an adult choose-your-own-adventure and it pits you as a 30-something that is unable, or afraid, to make decisions. In the book you are a waiter/actor who's date winds up being taken for hostage - what will you do? Police? Get money? Get any help? Seek revenge? Kill someone? Only you decide.

Yes, finally a book for people (whether in business or personal ) that often feel that only if they didn't have to make a certain choice, or that if they could just go back and do something over again....

Of course, NOT making a choice IS a choice!

Says Paul Feig, the creator of "Freaks and Geeks" and the author of Superstud, "You are a miserable excuse for a person if you don't buy this hilarious book. Bob Powers is some kind of comedy genius or something. Frankly I'm scared."

Whatcha Reading? - Summer 2008

Yes, it is summer. It is time to admit it. Milwaukee's Summerfest is only two weeks away!

The question is "What are you reading this summer?"

A Word From Northriding, South Africa

Friend of the company Richard Mulholland has one of the cooler companies (and company websites) that we know of. Located in South Africa, Missing Link is on a mission:

Missing Link is a specialist presentation firm, and we're angry. Seriously angry! We're angry at the forced boredom presenters are submitting their audiences to; especially as the alternative is actually easier, and takes less effort.

We've made it our mission to end this trend by working with our clients to first ensure that they know what they want to say, and then to ensure that they damn well say it (damn well!)

Richard helps keep his company fresh and focused on the basics by periodically reading Your Business Brickyard, which he has been kind enough to review for us.

Book review: Your Business Brickyard
Author: Howard Mann
Tagline: Getting back to basics to make your company more fun to run.
Pages: 64
Dog ear score: 17:64 (23%)

So I just finished reading this book for the second time. I started it and finished it on a two hour flight to Cape Town (still having time to read the paper, eat terrible airline food, and generally rock the party).

This is a good business book. It's the business book that the other business books wish they were. It's the business books that gets all the hot girls at the business book parties. It's well thought out, well written, and just about every page had a nugget of info that I scribbled down. Best of all, it's short--there's hardly a wasted word in the 64 pages.

The basic premise is that we can make running our businesses fun again if we simply go back to the basics--and that's why it works so well. It's the diary of things that made a lot of sense back then that we've sadly grown out of. When you read it, you kick yourself, and if you're anything like me, you change back.

That's why it's so handy that this is a one hour read, you'll want to read it again in a year, and the "practice drills" the author provides will keep your grey matter busy long after you put the book down.

Here's one of my favorite pull-quotes:

The ideas behind your purpose transcend your company. The truths of your idea exist whether or not a company is there to put them into practice. The ideas are universal.

Think about that for a second.

This is primarily a book for business owners of any size (your business, not your waist), however I believe senior management will get a lot out of it too.

Final word: Relevant...!

Jack Covert Selects - Buying In

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker, Random House, 291 pages, $25.00, Hardcover, June 2008, ISBN 9781400063918

Standing in the condiments aisle of the grocery store, shoppers are confronted by bottle after bottle of similar items. There is any number of considerations we mull over regarding what we ultimately place in our carts. Those of us on a diet make different choices than do those of us on a budget, for example. Do you buy the store brand mustard, the Grey Poupon or the one produced locally? In Buying In, Rob Walker shows us how, through this simple act of choosing, we reveal the irony of advertising. Most of us would say that we make our choices based on our needs, because we are capable of seeing through the hype promoted by the various companies' crack marketing teams. But, even if we choose the economical store brand, for instance, we are still making a symbolic statement about what is important to us.

Since the turn of the century, many trend watchers and marketing gurus have declared the age of the advertiser and its lockstep consumers dead. New technology does allow consumers more selectivity and the opportunity to block out advertising messages. But, based on his experience writing the "Consumed" column for The New York Times Magazine, Rob Walker thinks these pundits are quite wrong. Yes, there has been a change in marketing, but consumers are as susceptible to a company's message as ever because marketers have changed tactics as we have become less affected by their old ones.

To reveal the secret dialogue taking place between company and consumer, Walker says the first task is to crack the "Desire Code"--the reasoning behind our decisions as consumers. Then we must see through the haze created by "Murketing," Walker's "shorthand description of the practices of certain brand managers who aimed to blur the rules of the traditional sales pitch--to make marketing more murky" (78). And finally, we must become aware of just how susceptible we still are to the power of branding and the "Invisible Badges" that we wear as a result of our choices. In a society where desire has replaced need much of the time, Walker asserts that the ethics of our consumption is the new power player in this new age of marketing.

Walker's writing is relaxed, and the stories entertaining and relatable. But don't let the casual dress fool you. The information Walker covers will open your eyes to the unconscious consumerism that we all participate in. There is no "good versus evil" in Walker's book, just a message that "if there is one thing we really ought to be 'in control' of, it's our own behavior" (214).

Our Boast: HR World named our blog one of the top 100 blogs for managers

We're pleased to say that HR World named our blog one of The Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark. woot! Hopefully, we also fall into the list of the top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Read.

Congrats to those who made the list!

Globalization and the power of networks

David Grewal recently wrote Network Power on the how globalization and our ever-increasing exposure to new networks affects our decisions and how we communicate. David guest-blogged about the idea over at the Freakonomics blog the other day.

The message:

Think about a measurement system. Sure, some people will claim that the metric system is intrinsically better than the Imperial because it's easier to calculate in a decimal system.

But Britain didn't switch from Imperial to metric just because the latter is base ten. It did so because of what economists call "network effects." The value of any given coordinating standard -- like a measurement system or a language -- is worth more when more other people use it. And Britain's neighbors and largest trading partners generally do. There are "economies of scale" to being part of the larger network.

Globalization has introduced a new coordination game among literally billions of people. With apologies to Thomas Friedman, the world isn't flat. But it is networked -- and we're all heading to Grand Central Station after one fashion or another.

The link to keep reading.

TIME Magazine's 10 Questions

I ran across a David Sedaris interview today over at TIME magazine and found an entire section of their website devoted to interviewing various thought leaders, authors, politicians and the like. The questions are generated by readers and then TIME sends 10 of those questions on to the spotlight person.

Featured authors of books we've talked about include:

• Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture
  I'm sure you've heard of Randy's moving lecture on following childhood dreams, teamwork and his time at Disney. If not, check it out. It was the basis for this book.
• Sir Richard Branson, Virgin founder and daredevil
• Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia

Lots more over at TIME, including one to come by The Office star Steve Carell. Enjoy!

Jack Covert Selects - The Necessary Revolution

The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World by Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Lauer & Sara Schley, Doubleday, $29.95, 406 pages, Hardcover, June 2008, ISBN 9780385519014

In our annual magazine published earlier this year, we lamented the lack of business books that tackle issues of the environment. Well, this year that has changed, as there have been numerous books on the topic published, such as Stirring It Up by Gary Hirshberg, and Go Green, Live Rich by Richard Bach. The latest is The Necessary Revolution, and it is among the finest.

The authors lay out a fundamental irony at the beginning of this book. The environmental crisis we find ourselves in today is a direct result of the successes of the Industrial Revolution, successes that greatly improved our quality of life. And, yet, it is our quality of life that is now at stake, especially for the world's poor.

Applying "systems thinking"--a concept Senge introduced in his classic The Fifth Discipline--to the environmental challenges we face, the authors conclude that we are living in an "Industrial Age Bubble," one similar to any other economic bubble. They believe "we have gotten into our predicament today because of a way of thinking that focuses on parts and neglects the whole. We have become masterful at focusing on immediate goals--such as short-term profits--and neglecting the larger systems of which quarterly profits are but one small part" (25).

This is a business book through and through, laying out a serious problem in business, relating stories of success, and giving you plans of action and tools to achieve a goal. It just so happens that the goal here is not just improving your business, but our entire future as well, by creating a more sustainable world. You'll read inspiring stories like Coca-Cola's partnership with The World Wildlife Fund addressing water management issues, and the Global Sustainable Food Lab--an effort to create sustainable food chains that includes food giants Unilever, Heinz, General Mills, Starbucks and Costco, and non-profits like Oxfam, the Rainforest Alliance, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.

For too long, many have seen business interests as antithetical to environmental causes. This book dispels that myth. "The revolution is not about giving up; it's about rediscovering what we value most. It is about making quality in living central in our communities, businesses, schools, and societies" (40).

The Good Ol' Summertime

This is just a little reminder for me to tell you to take some time for yourself this summer. Everyone gets caught up in everyday living and we worry about everything all the time. This summer, promise to do something 'cool' for you. One thing, of course, is treating yourself to a good book. Here are some ideas for you to have a 'mental margarita'.

You: The Owner's Manual - An Inside Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger - One of the best books on how to take care of yourself.

The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company and - The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service - These are great business books that are actually fun to read!

Keeping in tune with The Celebrity Experience (in time for the Tony Awards) you may want to check out Backstage Pass: Broadway Bares or even Always by My Side: A Father's Grace and a Sports Journey Unlike Any Other - just in time for Fathers' Day.

If you nothing above piqued your interest to aid in getting your mind off of day-to-day rituals, here's a spattering of titles I just finished reading: