800-CEO-READ Blog

Gullible's Travels

Yes! Another CornerStone book has made it on my desk!! This one, entitled Gullible's Travels, is a leadership book that has about 100 tips/lessons for all kinds of leaders. Whether you are in a new leadership position or have been at the helm awhile, this book gives new insight to not just work but life as well. How to deal and cope in todays fast changing world.

One thing that stood out for me was when the author, Topper Long, addressed the need to find balance. He suggested using "The Four Ps".

Pulling Together ("teamwork, open communication, sharing ideas, and working together")

Perfection ("doing it right everytime, on time")

Positive Attitude ("finding the good in your particular situation...part of the solution")

Progress ("not focusing on where we've been, but working toward a successful future")

Long tells us that to achieve this we must use the 'Three Key Secrets" - balance, balance and balance. Yes, he basically says we need to find the middle ground of these perspectives and maintain what works for us. For more about this book visit CornerStone

A glaring gap in the list

There's a post up on the WSJ's Independent Street Blog pointing out that the Journal's list of the top most influential business thinkers does not include a single woman. The author, Wendy Bounds, poses these questions:

Why do you think there aren't more influential women business thinkers on today's list? How can this change? If you're a man, would you be motivated hearing a female speaker? If no, why? If yes, who? Women, what about you?

These aren't easy questions to answer, but not for lack of examples or role models. A few of the names mentioned in the comments include author Laura Ries (co-founder of Ries & Ries, with her father, Al Ries), co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy Renee Mauborgne, prominent gender and workplace issues expert Sylvia Ann Hewlett, strategic sourcing expert Mary Lacity, and others.

A question I might add is, Why does it take lots of time and a historical perspective to give women the credit they deserve? Perhaps the issue isn't that there is a lack of influential women thinkers, but that we're all--men and women alike--still uncomfortable with acknowledging their influence. We can admit that female leaders of the past made a profound impact on our society; why not the leaders of today?

In our line of work, we encounter this issue over and over again. Why aren't more women business book authors? Why don't their books hit the big-time like Gladwell, Friedman, and Hamel's books? (All made the top 5.) And, perhaps more constructively, what will it take for us to issue women the same credit we quickly hand over to male business gurus?

Who do you count among the most influential women thinkers of today?

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

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.

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.

New book out: Crucibles of Leadership

Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Become a Great Leader, by Robert J. Thomas, is out from Harvard Business School Press this month.

Thomas's premise is that what matters most is what one makes of experience--particularly, the traumatic and often unplanned crucible events that challenge one's identity as a leader. He offers self-assessments and innovative tools to develop what he deems a "Personal Learning Strategy." The book includes interviews with leaders of all stripes, and moves from narrative to application as the author offers lessons and exercises based on his major findings. Warren Bennis provides a glowing forward.


Here's an exemplary passage from Chapter 5: The Core of a Personal Learning Strategy:

Why Lead?

As a young man, John W. Gardner had no ambition to lead, much less to manage. Yet when he passed away in 2006, his accomplishments included serving as secretary of health, education, and welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson (despite being a registered Republican), presiding over the creation of the Public Broadcasting System, founding two successful public action lobbies (Common Cause and the Independent Sector), presiding over the Carnegie Corporation, and serving as a Marine Corps officer in World War II. What kindled his desire to lead?

Finding himself in a small management job at the Federal Communications Commission during World War II, he recalled, "I began to get quite impressive praise for my management skills. And it wasn't even on my map! I mean I didn't even respect managers. But apparently some qualities were there waiting for life to pull those things out of me." Gardner deeply believed that life was a tug-of-war between what "was" and what "was possible" and that the principle human challenge--his challenge--was one of continuous renewal even in the face of what might seem to be implacable opposition and constraint. As he put it, "The need for endless learning and trying is a way of living, a way of thinking, a way of being awake and ready. Life isn't a train ride where you choose your destination, pay your fare and settle back for a nap. It's a cycle ride over uncertain terrain, with you in the driver's seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress. It's difficult, sometimes profoundly painful. But it's better than napping through life."

There is no point in trying to assess people's abilities without first finding out what they care about. The same goes for trying to assess things such as "leadership potential" or "creativity" out of context. One has always to ask, in relation to what? Thus, before we address motives and skills, we start by asking, Why do you lead? Why does a person seek out, or accept, the burden of leadership? A Personal Learning Strategy begins and ends with why as the central question and with you as the central character. You alone can answer these questions. The vessel you are creating will hold your aspirations and your passions and provide a shield that defends you from the fears and inhibitions that learning inevitably summons up.

From Crucibles of Leadership by Robert J. Thomas, Harvard Business School Press, 2008.

Excerpt from Leadership Brand - 2 of 2

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

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

You can read the first excerpt here.

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

Excerpt from Leadership Brand - 1 of 2

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

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

* * * * * * * * * * *


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

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

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

Giving: Book Excerpt

Just a little thought on a gloomy day, "How can I make a difference in the world?" Surely not an easy question to get answered, but Bill Clinton's new book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World talks about his feelings on this and what we can all do to make a difference bit by bit.

What if you want to give something useful that you don't presently own or you have things of value but they have no evident charitable use? Laina Niemi, an American who followed the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative on the Internet, found a good answer to the first question. She committed to buying and donating oral rehydreaion solution packets to UNICEF to reduce diarrhea-induced death among children in developing countries. The packets cost only 6 cents each.

For people who want to give things away that have value but no charitable purpose, eBay Giving Works has provided a unique solution. You can sell the items on eBay and donate part or all of the final sale price to your chosen nonprofit organization; eBay collect and distributes the donations to the charities and issues tax receipts to the seller. You can also give in-kind contributions to one of the more that ten thousand NGOs fund-raising on eBay, and they can sell them in an eBay store. Either way, the process turns a gift of anything of value into useful support of any good endeavor.

For more information on eBay Giving Works - Click Here or visit here for The Clinton Global Initiative

Sleeping On the Job

I came across a book called The Eight Constants of Change by Stacy Aaron and Kate Nelson on my desk today and was reading a bit of it to myself during lunch and came across this little story:

A Real Life Example

A president of a mid-size company began work 18 months ago to define how his new, more complex organization needed to operate. Month after month, he stood in staff meetings and pronounced emphatically that the new, more complex organization would mean that everyone would have to play at a higher level.

Leadership demanded excellence from every single employee. For the first few months, the discussions got people excited about the future of their company and gave them pride in what they did and where they worked.

Then, this same company hired a young man as a manger in marketing. His task? To bring new ideas and energy to the group. Everyone liked him and he built strong relationships quickly. After a few months on the job, he started falling asleep at his desk on a regular basis....literally asleep!

At first, people thought it was funny and they would put hats on him or move things around on his desk while he slept to surprise him when he woke up. But after a while, the situation became a pathetic joke.

Recently, a review of all of the functions across the company was done, and leaders were surprised to find that the productivity and creativity of the entire marketing department had dropped in the last six months.

Leaders realized that the message of 'playing bigger' and 'excellence' had been lost as people walked past their sleeping new hire. Clearly, the talk of excellence was just talk if the organization was going to let a sleeping dog lie. It was a hard lesson for leadership, but they finally got it. They fired the guy and owned up to the mistake. They were also honest about the fact that they should have acted sooner and that they, too, were leaning how to take their company to the next level.

The organization recovered in time to make up for the temporary lag in productivity, and leaders built credibility and support from their staff in the process.

I entertained thoughts about what company this could have been.... hrmmmmm. Anyone have a guess? Let me know what you think.

Three Leadership Experts on Dealing With Internal Trouble

Hidden inside Fortune's 2008 Investor's Guide is a one page article titled "The Three Minute Manager: Lessons In Leadership." They interview Bill George (True North), Noel Tichy (Judgment) and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (Firing Back) and each was asked questions around the problem:

"What do you do if you discover a huge loss at your company?"

There is no link on the Fortune's site to the piece, so I can only give you the choicest words from each authority:

• Sonnenfeld on your first move: "First you want to figure out the entirety of the problem so you don't lose credibility coming out with more and more bad news. Determine how much time you have to analyze the extent of the situation before you release information to the public."
• George on taking responsibility: "Do everything you can to avoid denial. There's a tendency in many organizations to not want to hear bad news. I used to say at Medtronic, 'You will never get fired for making a mistake, but you will get fired for covering it up.'"
• Tichy on who's done it right: "Jack Welch was a master of crisis management. In the 1980's a GE engineer was caught bribing a Israeli general, and Welch himself fired 20 other GE managers because they should have smelled it. They were the ones stealing, but they got fired for it. Welch personally owned that."

Ahoy Matey!

Books come in all shapes and sizes. Some you expect great information out of and they never deliver and others may look like they wouldn't be even worth the time to open the cover. This paperback from Corner Stone press, may not win any Pulitzer prizes or teach anyone something they don't already think they know. What it will do is give you a different view on leadership tactics in a very unique way. Its name? Lead Like a Pirate! Leadership Secrets of the Pirates of St. Croix . I think it has something to bring to table in a unique and off the beaten 'treasure map' way.

You be the judge:

Again, like I mentioned, it's not astounding, groundbreaking or earth shattering. There are simple explanations of what it takes to be a good leader and tests along the way to see how you would fit in as 'captain of your own ship'. I liked this because by taking itself not so seriously, the reader can just have fun with the business world. It'd make a great stocking stuffer (especially for the CEOs that you think have everything).

Just a thought, an odd quirky thought, but a thought just the same!

Essay from the author of The Taboos of Leadership

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

Thank you, Anthony!

Leadership - The One and Only Path to Becoming a Leader

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

Q: How do you become a great parent?

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

Q: How do you become a great consultant?

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

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

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

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

Q: So, what is Leadership you ask?

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

Stage 1

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

Stage 2

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

Stage 3

* until the vision and goals are realized.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow: Bosses' Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

: : :

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

Business Books on Monday Night Football

[ESPN Monday Night Football
Baltimore Ravens vs. Cincinnati Bengals
Transcript starting at 9:10 Central Time]

Mike Tirico: Here's Michelle Tafoya.

Michelle Tafoya: Well, let's talk about captains for a minute.

During the offseason, Caron Palmer's dad gave him a copy of this book. It's called It's Your Ship and it's by a naval captain who turned a mediocre ship into one of the best crews and best ships in the Navy. Now Carson read it cover to cover and he told me he took away two lessons from this.

Number One: If the people around you believe you care about them, they will follow you into battle.

and

Number Two: The leader must be above the group but of the group.

And his teammates must believe in him. They voted him offensive team captain for the season, Mike. He said that was the single greatest honor of his career.

Mike Tirico: More important than the Heisman Trophy, he said. Kind of surprised us all when he said it.

You've seen that all kick-off weekend, those Captain C's, permanent captains, season-long captains by Roger Godell [NFL Commissioner], as part of the edict to increase the leadership and leadership awareness within each locker room. And the teams have voted for two captains. And we have seen alot of the familiar, big name players wearing those this week.

Tony Kornheiser: That was an Isman Brothers' song- It's Your Ship, Do What You Wanna Do.

[laughing]

Ron Jaworski: Where is your mind sometimes?

Kornheiser: Stuck in the 60's, pal; stuck in the 60's

A few comments:

• Congrats to Michael. He is a friend of 800-CEO-READ and it is great to see him get some love on Monday Night Football
• This PR hit follows a Peter King/Sports Illustrated piece that highlights the book as well, but only referred to it as "The Best Damn Ship in the Navy". Seems like SI could invest in a little more fact checking to get the title right.
• Kornhesier's comic relief should have reference the Isley Brothers instead of the Isman Brothers.

Five Business Book Classics - The Essay

I wrote a piece for the July/August issue of Corporate Dealmaker. The magazine did eight pages on business books and their impact on the M&A industry. Here is my contribution where I discuss books that should be on every executive's reading list:

And Don't Forget The Classics

There are M&A books, and there are business books that should be required reading for every executive. Here are five guaranteed to help you be more productive and make smarter decisions.

by Todd Sattersten

Books on mergers and acquisitions often take a distinct nuts-and-bolts approach. No mystery there: Deals are complex projects and dealmakers want practical advice on how to execute them. Even for dealmakers, though, transactions are just part of a bigger strategic picture, on where decisions of many kinds are needed. Every executive, dealmaker, or otherwise, is ultimately judged on the quality of the decisions he or she makes, and there's no shortage of books aimed at helping those managers make smart choices. Here are five that should be on every executive's reading list.

1 - "Competitive Strategy" by Michael Porter

If you boil business down to its essence, you are left with two key elements--strategy and execution. Strategy is deciding what direction to go, and execution is how to get there. Michael Porter's "Competitive Strategy" gives us the clearest view of the first element. Strategy is about competition, and prior to the book's 1980 publication, competition was defined as other companies operating in the same industry. Porter's five forces model created a much richer view, adding suppliers, buyers, substitutes, and new players to the definition. Those added dimensions made Porter's work ground-breaking. Without Porters' model, it is hard to see how PC manufacturers' margins quickly shrank in the 1990's. The cause was not competition among industry players, but the superior bargaining power of their two primary suppliers--Intel and Microsoft. In my industry of publishing, substitutes have become the primary source of competition as readers' attention is diverted to other forms of media.

2 - "Execution" by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck

But strategy is only one half of the equation. An organization must be able to carry out the plan and "Execution", released in 2002, is one of the best book out there on the topic. In their book, Bossidy, who spent 40 years running industrial conglomerates, Charan, who provides insights as a guru to Fortune 500 CEOs, and writer and editor Burck mapped out "a system for getting things done through questioning, analysis, and follow-through." Identifying and developing leadership talent lies at the core with the goal not to evaluate people for what they are doing today, but for the positions they will hold tomorrow. Leaders then lay out clear goals everyone in the organization can understand, follow-through to clear internal obstacles, and reward the doers who are producing results. Finally, organizations that understand execution inject a healthy dose of realism into their culture through open, informal dialogue to eliminate false consensus and by making needed changes today rather than waiting for tomorrow for things to get better.

3 - "In Search of Excellence" by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman

"In Search of Excellence", published in 1982 was the result of a McKinsey project started five years prior to find out what successful organizations look like. The authors found that the most effective organizations were those that recognized the irrationality of the humans that inhabited them. Those companies were clear about their beliefs and created a strong value system that acted as a compass for organizational decision-making. Inside companies like Boeing, 3M, and Hewlett-Packard, Peters and Waterman found small, passionate teams accomplishing big, game-changing feats and meetings taking place in hallways as executives exercised management by walking around.

4 - "Good to Great" by Jim Collins

Jim Collins also looked at successful companies in his 2001 best-seller. Using a methodical approach, Collins identified companies that went from average to sustained periods of growth. Walgreens, Pitney-Bowes, and Nucor were among the 11 companies that made the cut and his book's metaphors have become a lexicon for business in the 21st century-the flywheel, BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals), level 5 leadership, to name a few.

5 - "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker

Before Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits" and David Allen's "Getting Things Done", Peter Drucker det the standard for books on productivity with "The Effective Executive". Decision-making, playing to your strengths, and "first things first" are all presented with the signature clarity Drucker brought to the study of management.

Todd Sattersten is vice-president of 800-CEO-READ and author of an upcoming book from Portfolio on the 100 best business books of all time.

Fall preview: Giving Notice by Freada Kapor Klein

We've had a steady flow of advanced copies of fall books. I thought I would go through a few of them, this week, and give you a preview of what's coming. Below is part of a press release that accompanied the book Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest Leave the Workplace and HOW YOU CAN HELP THEM STAY by Freada Kapor Klein, coming out in October.

Klein focuses on the hidden causes that are destroying workplace meritocracy (a system based on rewarding ability and talent). Giving Notice is "low on jargon and filled with common sense approaches to solve the current imbalance" of minorities and women in positions of leadership. This book is one of many we're seeing on the "international war for talent." It also fits nicely into a growing group of books on the current (and ineffective) career model. Using a combination of quantitative research and anecdotal evidence, Klein addresses nation-wide and world-wide biases, unconscious ideas about stereotypes and commonly accepteed business practices, and the economic, corporate, and human capitol costs of the brain drain. From the press release:

Corporate Leavers: What My Employer Could Have Done to Help Me Stay

This revealing survey is based on the Level Playing Field's exclusive Corporate Leaver's Study conducted in January 2007. LPFI began with 19,000 potential survey subjects to yield 1,700 professionals and managers who met our criteria and completed the survey.**

People of Color: Very likely to have stayed if employer had...

• 34 percent: Offered better management which recognized your abilities


• 30 percent: Offered schedule flexibility such as flex time, alternative working hours, or telecommuting


• 29 percent: Offered to pay you more fairly


• 29 percent: Offered a more positive work environment

Gays and Lesbians: Very likely to have stayed if employer had...

• 43 percent: Offered more or better benefits


• 41: Offered to pay you more fairly


• 35 percent: Offered schedule flexibility such as flex time, alternative working hours, or telecommuting

Caucasian Women: Very likely to have stayed if employer had...

• 24 percent: Offered to pay you more fairly


• 20 percent: Offered schedule flexibility such as flex time, alternative working hours, or telecommuting


• 20 percent: Offered more or better benefits

Caucasian Men: Very likely to have stayed if employer had...

• 28 percent: Offered to pay you more fairly


• 20: Offered more or better benefits


• 18 percent: Offered better management which recognized your abilities

The survey also included results that indicated which aspects of work life each group felt more strongly about than their colleagues. It's interesting to see that people value the same things, just in different orders and strengths. Some might say, "we already know this," or "this is intuitive," to which one might respond, "so what are you doing about it?"

**Level Playing Field Institute was founded by Dr. Freada Kapor Klein in 2001. The Institute promotes innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and the workplace.

A New Season begins - August 2007 Books

I know it is only a few of days into August, but we are starting to see and think about the fall.

Jack is quoted today in a Bloomburg News story about Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. He is a little more positive about the book than might be evident from the quote. We'll be featuring it as a Jack Covert Selects this month.

I have been reading a really interesting book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. I am writing a couple of posts now about the book and we'll be reviewing it this month as well.

Here are couple other titles making an August release:

• Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent by Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra, and Ramit Sethi
• What Made Jack Welch Jack Welch: How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Leaders by Stephen H. Baum with Dave Conti
• Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill At A Time by Kevin Eikenberry

From Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines

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

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

Chicago Sun-Times reviews "Apples are Square"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being a Servant

Let me begin with our office setting:
If you haven't heard about our work environment (or have yet to stop by and say hi), here's an introduction. The building we have been in for the last 10 years is an old pantyhose and make-up factory warehouse. The space is large, wide-open, and undivided by cube walls. Eight of us sit in the large warehouse space. My desk is four feet from Rebecca's desk and six feet from inBubbleGuy's desk. Jake, our shipping manager, sits back near the freight elevator and numerous pallets of books. Jack and Todd both have their own office in the back. There aren't a lot of secrets here. Everyone knows (and can hear) what everyone else is doing.

Right now, I'm half-listening to a meeting happening on the other side of the room. The folks who are responsible for manning the phones, fulfilling orders and getting them to wherever they need to be in the world are meeting. Todd's there, too.

For some reason, it reminded me of the Inc. article on servant leaders I read as I fell asleep last night.

The phrase, servant leaders sounds quite humble and, to some, may even sound weak. These are the leaders who stop looking at "employees as a means to an end; rather [look at] employees' happiness and satisfaction is the end. A former AT&T executive named Robert Greenleaf introduced the concept in 1970 (although the authors of the New Testament had laid the foundation a bit earlier)."

When starting a leadership role, many leaders feel the need to set boundaries. As Matthew Hayward explains, "'Founders in the early days [of their position] have a profound need to establish their credentials. They may look on servant leadership as something to evolve into--later.'" That ideal seems to have been ingrained in each of us. If people see a leader as tough in the beginning, they won't step on toes or take advantage of him later when he eases off.

This doesn't have to be the case. Two entrepreneurs learned and used servant leadership in growing a $30 million company. Three reasons why they are servant leaders:

1. The higher you rise, the harder you must work for others.


2. Although you hold formal authority over employees, you must treat them like customers and, when reasonable, do their bidding.


3. When your desires and the needs of your organization conflict, your desires draw the low card.

A servant leader is one who stops asking what can you do for me and asks what can I do for you? What can I do to help you do your job better?

For me what's interesting about servant leadership is it changes the conversation. No longer is the experience merely what is on the boss' agenda. Now employees are empowered to speak openly about what's going on in their world.

Servant leadership has three (at the very least) positive outcomes:

1. Provides for open communication.
2. Makes for a better boss-employee relationship.
3. Enables the leader to see trends.

Often times problems are kept between fellow employees and team members. When you bring people from a team together and start asking what's going on, you get a better feeling for the overall atmosphere. You may hear trends in what's being said. Maybe Tom, Erik and Sally are all saying their computers are running a bit slower or that customers are asking for another way to get information. What is there to lose?

As a whole, the servant leadership idea also reminded me of Erika's book. I know you've heard us talk about it. Her goal is to make every work environment a bit better by consulting on social interaction styles and the resulting relationships.

I'll stop there. In case you missed it, here's the article link again.

A True (North) Debate

Yesterday morning, our del.icio.us links featured The New York Times' review of True North.

Reading today, I saw Fast Company ends their April 2007 issue with an email debate between author Bill George and True North example Wendy Kopp, president of Teach For America.

For one more perspective on the book, you might also refer back to the Jack Covert Selects review from March.

Leading For Growth: A Review

Authors Ray Davis and Alan Shrader did all the right things to pull me into Leading For Growth. Now, let's talk a bit about the book itself.

Davis came to Umpqua Bank from a consulting practice where he saw nothing but the same in the banking industry. The five-branch bank he took over looked like any other community bank. He decided the only way to survive what to be different. The rest of his book is his stories and beliefs.

You get the normal explicit lessons in this book. He has chapters on empowering your employees and clearing obstacles out of their way. Davis also emphasizes sweating the small stuff and protecting the brand.

It is the messages "between the lines" that are more interesting. A number of anecdotes from the book sum up his leadership style as a form of tough love. Take his reaction to plants being added to the bank's first concept store:

So, I called this VP and asked why he had put plants in the store. He said he just thought he'd warm it up a bit.

So I said, "Here's what I want done. Please call The Plant Lady and tell them to get the plants out of there."

"But Ray, we have a three-month contract on these plants."

"I don't care what we've got," I replied. "I want all those plants out of the bank by noon today."

"Well, that's pretty short notice. They probably can't get over here until later in the afternoon."

I said, "That's not a problem. Tell them the plants will all be in the parking lot." Needless to say, the company got there before noon and took the plants away. You can't protect your brand by being sloppy about details.

It sounds here like he is just being a jerk, but I think Davis is illustrating the importance of leaders protecting important aspects of company's brand and culture. Leaders often need to make big statements to show far they will go, so the stories get created and told.

The Leader "Incubator"

In college I studied entrepreneurship. Some hiring heads would occasionally rumor that companies would look down upon an entrepreneurship major; they'd see it as a threat or immediately put you into the "will-leave-quickly" category. That logic always struck me as funny and short-sighted. Why would you not want employees who, to be cliche, think outside the box and are willing to take a few risks to make something better?

Here's a company that not only challenges employees to be innovative and entrepreneurial but puts them in an Incubator to help get them started (okay, not literally). CIK Entreprises, an Indianapolis holding company, has a 12-month program geared towards building new leaders. The lucky learners are nominated by managers (no more than 10% of the companies 80 employees can participate at once). Their education = combination of reading + executive presentations + hands-on experiences.

Book choices include The E-Myth and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

**More in the March 2007 Inc. article.

Dead Kings and Queens

I watched the CNBC Business Excellence Awards the other night. I know some of you are going to say I need to find a hobby, but I would not have been able to bring you this little nugget.

Sallie Krawcheck of Citigroup was named Business Leader of The Future. During the puff piece on her, she said:

"I don't tend to look at dead kings and queens and try to draw leadership lessons from them. They aren't as real and tangible to me."

So, Elizabeth I CEO and Napoleon on Project Management would not be titles you would find on her bookshelf.

Susan Quandt at Mequon Schwartz Bookshops

This is for the Milwaukee area residences in our audience.

Local business book author Susan Quandt is doing a talk the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop in Mequon. She is the author of Sudden Impact on the Job: Top Business Leaders Reveal The Secrets To Fast Success. I am giving you plenty of warning, so set time aside and put this on your calendar.

Date: Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, 10976 N. Port Washington Rd., Mequon, WI 53092

Michael Lewis Channels The Wisdom of Bill Purcells

For folks like me who still consider Michael Lewis’s Moneyball one of the top five books ever written on developing talent, his new book screams for my reading time. And in the meantime, how about this great quote taken from Lewis’s article What Keeps Bill Parcells Awake At Night (This appeared yesterday in the new New York Times Sunday sports magazine, titled Play):

At halftime there’s no chance for a speech — several of the Cowboys reappear on the field four minutes after they left — but Parcells has taken precautions. This morning, before the game, he called a meeting of the players without the assistant coaches. “I don’t want to talk with the coaches around,� he told me beforehand. “I want the players to know that I am trying to make a point.� This morning, he broke into his personal binder, took out the story of Vito Antuofermo and read it to his players. All week long it wasn’t strategy that occupied him; it was character. There’s a tendency to believe that, to be successful, a pro football coach must have a gift for the chessboard aspect of the game. But strategy isn’t what chiefly interests Parcells. His success depends on his ability to demand, and to receive, higher levels of performance from his players. He doesn’t say so explicitly, but his actions speak for him: he spends much more time thinking about getting inside his players’ heads, and their skins, than about anything else. He tries to make them uncomfortable. On a baseball team or a golf team, this sort of pressurized approach might lead to a team-wide nervous breakdown. In football — at least for him — it works magic.

Carly Fiorina and Tough Choices

Today’s New York Times reports that they have gotten and read Carly Fiorina’s new book called Tough Choices a little less than a week before it was to be released. The Times says that she had ordered an investigation into board leaks in January 2005.

She will be on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

She will be in Milwaukee on 10-27. Check out the event here

Lead on

There are many good and valid ways to lead; three people, given the same job, can certainly succeed even if they have differing management styles and philosophies. Natural tendencies can also be influenced and accentuated, revealed or hidden—a degree here, two degrees there—depending on the circumstances. But when you plan viable legacies, your goal is to align your intent with your instincts as closely as possible.

--From Your Leadership Legacy

Get started on your legacy...

Patrick Lencioni and the NFL

From September 14, 2006 Milwaukee Journal Sentinal:

"Packers coach Mike McCarthy and New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton have at least two things in common.

They are the same age (42) and until this season have never been a head football coach on any level.

McCarthy enjoyed a successful run as the offensive coordinator of the Saints from 2000-'04, after leaving Green Bay after one season as quarterbacks coach in 1999.

In the NFL Kickoff guide for 2006, Payton is one of the eight head coaches in the league who provided answers to a questionnaire about his background.

Payton said the last book he read was "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni. He may want to lend his copy to McCarthy, whose team may have more than just five dysfunctions.

Payton says the "greatest overachiever" he ever coached was quarterback Ty Detmer, who was drafted in the ninth round by Green Bay in 1992.

Payton also says his favorite stadium in the NFL other than his own, is Lambeau because of the "tradition" and the "setting."

Also check out an article USA Today wrote about the book last year.

Business Books: Fall 2006 Preview

I am starting to get asked what the big books for the fall are, so I thought I should get a list up here. As always, there is something for everyone.

September

• A Leader's Legacy by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (Jossey-Bass) - This is a follow-on to the best-seller The Leadership Challenge; alot of people like Kouzes and Posner's take on leadership.
• Hoopla by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Powerhouse) - Powerhouse has been doing the Lovemarks/Kevin Roberts books and I have been looking forward to seeing what they do with another ad agency.
• Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That Matters by Jerry Porras et al. (Wharton School Publishing) - Built to Last author Porras this time asks what people rather than companies need to do to find success.
• Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech Upstart WIPRO is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition by Steve Hamm (McGraw-Hill) - The senior writer goes inside this Indian phenom to find out what has brought all the success.

October

• Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds In Business Win by Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre (William Morrow) - Bill and Polly created business conversation in the 90's at writing Fast Company magazine. If you have missed that passion and energy, you'll love the book.
• Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina (Portfolio) - This is going to be a big book. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard tells her rise to the top and what happened when she got there.
• L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon by Leon Gorman (Harvard Business School Press) - Word has it that HBSP has been bugging the folks at L.L. Bean for years to do a book; it finally here and expect to see lots of cross-promotion in other L.L. Bean communications.
• Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston (Yale) - This title shows how companies can use green issues as a competitive weapon.
• The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom (Portfolio) - What do Alcoholics Anonymous, Napster, and al Queda all have in common? No one runs them. I love this book and highly recommend you check it out.
• Setting the Table: The Power of Hospitality in Restaurants, Business, and Life by Danny Meyer (HarperCollins) - Meyer knows something about delivering service. His restaurants occupy four of the top twenty spots on Zagat's.
• Tailgating, Sacks, and Salary Caps: How The NFL Became the Most Successful Sports Franchise in History by Mark Yost (Kaplan, Nov.) - This is about the business of football in all its glory.

Watching the Bestseller Lists

It is very interesting to look at this week's Wall Street Journal bestseller list [sub. needed]. There are three entries on the business list outside of the regulars. This is really unusual. The list is dominated week and week out by books like Freakonomics, Blink, and Who Moved My Cheese. It makes it very difficult for new books to get on the list. So, let's look at the three new entrants and I'll give you my thoughts on why they are there.

Debuting at #2 last week and moving to #1 this week is Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? by Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg. This is the second effort for these two. You might remember Call to Action. In this book, they are selling an idea called Persuasion Architecture. It is a customer profiling technique that is reminiscent of Meyer-Briggs Personality testing. I would attribute the location of this book on the list to Mike Drew at Promote A Book. He gets books on bestseller lists and has been involved with this one.

At number #6 is Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. We have been talking about this book for awhile and everyone in the industry expected this to be a big book. It will be interesting to see if it takes one of those semi-permanent positions on the list. You can read Jack's review here.

#15 is the interesting one this week. 48 Laws of Power is a book that has been out since 1998. Author Robert Greene writes a Machiavellian take on how to get ahead. Among the laws, "Discover Each Man's Thumbscrew" and "Strike the Shepherd and The Sheep Will Scatter." The LA Times ran a story last week on how the book is finding a strong audience in the hip-hop community. It is a fascinating article and a probable explanation for 48 Laws' visit to the bestseller list.

The only other odd item about the list (and I usually don't look this close) is seeing The World Is Flat on the general non-fcition list, but not on the business list. That discrepancy might have created the spot for 48 Laws.

Concluding notes: trailblazers from all walks

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second , third , fourth , fifth and sixth entries.

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There are a whole bunch of innovators out there, that’s for sure. What I tried to do was give a good cross-section of the trailblazers from all walks of business and success: a winning NFL football coach, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, a CIA analyst, a guy who builds roller-coasters, plenty of consultants, some top business professors, a few designers, The Human Victory cigar Dr. Doug Newburg, many others. What I tried to do was stay away from people who are always in the news and whose insights you can read about any day of the week in any number of publications. The Google founders are certainly innovators and are very successful but if you want to know about them you can pick up any business magazine or newspaper. Not so for Frances Hesselbein, Former CEO of the Girl Scouts of America and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I felt that she has some very insightful things to say that you couldn’t read anywhere else. In the best of all possible worlds, I’m hopeful that the insights in The Success Effect with emerge and resonate with avid business book readers. Thanks for having me. It’s been a blast.

What you learned early on matters.

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second , third , fourth and fifth entries.

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Probably the most important factor for the success effect has nothing to do with business and everything to do with business. I think it all starts in the crib. Loving parents in a stable household creates people who tend to be nurturers. Ask Kenneth W. Lowe or basket mogul Tami Longaberger about their favorite meals and they’ll answer their mother’s fried chicken. Longaberger and Lowe are not being cloying in their answers but instead offer an honest window into what makes them tick. People who were loved and nurtured at an early age in turn develop loving and nurturing capabilities among people or employees within an organization. Those traits will then be directed by the employees and managers toward their job, clients, and back to the company. Deepak Chopra insists that investor, client, and employee satisfaction are irrevocably linked. But that unless your employees have cause to care, that is, are happy and willing to do a good job, revenues and profits will assuredly suffer. By nurturing and showing concern for people in a company, an executive is practicing what he was taught at a very early age and those are usually lessons he or she learned from a parent.

A little on baseball and a lot on performance

Side note: click here if you missed John's first, second , third and fourth entries.

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I’ve been fascinated, too, by the topic of performance, particularly in sports and probably because I live in Cincinnati where baseball is still accessible and affordable. At each game I go to I experiment with praise and criticism, that is, I always heckle one guy throughout the game but only when that guy steps into the on-deck circle or when he’s not looking in the field. I want to plant a seed of failure in the opposing team’s best player and a seed of success among one or two of the Reds’ best players. Professional athlete