$22.99
Customize It
Hardcover
188 pages
ISBN 9780132357777 Published Feb. 2008
FT Press
See all formats
Tweet
Posted April 2, 2010 5:14 a.m. by the-roy
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
I knew you all were waiting for this post!
You are sitting at home or at office ready for the long weekend ahead and thinking to yourself.... 'Gosh, I wonder what book I should start reading?' Well look no further than this listing of 800CEOREADs best sellers that were read across the globe last month!! Folks from Australia to Turkey were busy reading away last month and here's a little look into what they're interested in:
1 - Turkey
New Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By
(by Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood and Kate Sweetman)
2 - United Kingdom
Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion
(by Gary Vaynerchuk)
3 - Australia
It's Not Who You Know - It's Who Knows You!
(by David Avrin and Joe Calloway)
4 - China
Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't
(by Jim Champy)
5 - Switzerland
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
(by Chip Heath and Dan Heath)
Enjoy reading and have a safe weekend!
2008 Best Sellers
Posted Jan. 20, 2009 2:00 a.m. by tom-ehrenfeld
In The Company - 800 CEO Read Blog
Below are our 2008 Best Sellers (links open in new windows/tabs)
1. How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business and in Life
2. It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy
3. The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
5. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
6. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
7. What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
8. Creating Success from the Inside Out: Develop the Focus and Strategy to Uncover the Life You Want
9. Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want
10. Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
12. True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
13. We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business
15. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
16. How We Lead Matters: Reflections on a Life of Leadership
17. Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything
19. The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It
20. The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation
21. Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't
22. Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace With Today's Nontraditional Workforce
23. Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism
24. Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower
25. Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive
Article from Jim Champy, author of Outsmart!
Posted Sept. 15, 2008 4:05 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In Leadership - 800 CEO Read Blog
Thanks to Jim Champy, author of Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't. The article below describes some shared characteristics of great companies.
WHERE ARE THE GREAT COMPANIES?
By Jim Champy
For years I have been searching for great companies. What I have found is that there are none. Greatness is an aspiration - a very honorable one. But no company is perfect, even if it performs well year after year.
Greatness, like, many objectives, is in the eye of the beholder. One simple test for greatness is how a company is experienced by its constituents - its customers, its associates, its owners, and business partners. In my most recent research, I looked at over a thousand high-growth companies and found many companies that are very good. They treat all of their constituents well and, in their own unique ways, aspire to greatness.
My search was driven by a desire to find companies that have new business models, delivering new products and services to customers and executing in new ways. I have written about my discoveries in OUTSMART!, my latest book. Although I could find no single formula for what creates a good - or great - company, I did find some shared characteristics.
Ambition: The leadership team of every good company has a great ambition for the company - usually one that addresses an unmet customer need. The ambition is not one of personal greed; it's about building a company that delivers on its promise and does it with a unique quality. My experience over the years is that it takes a great ambition to create even a good company. I was inspired in my research by a company called Minute Clinic, whose ambition is to change how healthcare is delivered, for the benefit of everyone involved in the healthcare system.
Customer: Every good company begins by meeting a customer need. That need is often deeply understood by the company's founder because they, themselves, experienced the need - and saw how that need was not being well met. Sometimes the founder hands off the leadership of the company to someone else who operationalizes the idea. But that wasn't the case in the example of Sonicbids, a company that saw the unmet needs of thousands of independent musicians and performers and whose founder has led the company to a unique position in the music business. This music business for independent performers is a 13 billion dollar a year market, that no one saw or had the appetite to organize until Sonic bids came along.
Focus: Good companies stay focused on what they know and can do well. When companies search for new ideas, they often drift into unknown territory and get in trouble. Good companies just keep growing and expanding into familiar territory. Shutterfly is a wonderful example of a company that's growing, but it grows by expanding within the social expressions business, helping communities of people share photographs in hundreds of ways. Niches can be very large markets.
Execution: Satisfying a customer requires relentless attention to execution. Building a company's capability to deliver makes the difference between turning a great idea into a business or failure. But execution is not just about delivering a product. It's also about service. Over the years, I have observed that technology companies are particularly bad at recognizing and responding to the service needs of their customers. Counter intuitively, high-tech requires a lot of high-touch. Partsearch is a company that knows what it's doing with customer service, helping customers find what they need in an ocean of millions of parts and accessories for consumer electronic products. Partsearch has tamed chaos in its industry.
Inspiration: Smart companies engage all of their associates in building the business, from idea creation though delivery. Ideas don't just come tops-down; they also come bottoms-up and from every other direction. Everyone in the company feels that they own a piece of the action and are accountable for how the company performs. The inspiration for a company starts at the top, but good leadership drives that inspiration deep into the company by engaging people broadly in decision-making. People are more than mechanical parts of the enterprise, and the more they are allowed to see customers, the better their business sensibilities.
These are some of the behaviors that I have found in the good companies I have studied. My ultimate test of the quality of a company is whether I would like to work there. The good news: I see many high growth companies where I would work. They are smart companies, in multiple industries, that are operating quite brilliantly.
Author Bio
Jim Champy is one of the leading thinkers in business. His first book, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, helped transform the corporate world. For more information, please visit www.jimchampy.com.
Check out Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't!
Outsmart!
Posted June 25, 2008 8:28 a.m. by dylan
In Book Reviews - 800 CEO Read Blog
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.
