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Posted May 26, 2011 10:32 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania made a big announcement last month, launching Wharton Digital Press. From that release:
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announces the launch of Wharton Digital Press, an innovative global all-digital publishing initiative that will publish books electronically, including ebooks, enhanced ebooks, mobile apps, and print books available through print-on-demand technology. In collaboration with Knowledge@Wharton, the School’s online journal of research and business analysis, Wharton Digital Press will take advantage of the Wharton School’s global presence to communicate relevant business knowledge from experts throughout the world to readers wherever and whenever they need it. Knowledge@Wharton reaches 1.7 million subscribers in 189 countries in five languages.
You can find more information and the full release on their website.
Their first book will be from Wharton Professor Michael Useem, the author of one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time—The Leadership Moment. It will be available June 21st, and is entitled The Leadership Checklist. According to the promotional copy, it "provides 15 guiding principles that form the core of the Leader’s Checklist, [helping] you to personalize your checklist to the unique needs and demands of your organization." For those of you (us) that can't wait until next month to get started, we have posted the introduction to the book below.
Or envision this situation: For decades, your financial services firm has sailed along. Not only have revenues soared; your company has also earned a treasured AAA credit rating while creating an extraordinary wealth engine: a little giant of a division that insures against debt defaults, including subprime mortgages. Continuing prosperity seems predictable, but suddenly the market implodes. Subprime mortgages turn noxious. Lehman Brothers goes under. Your AAA rating slips to AA, then A-. With the downgrades, you have to post billions of dollars in collateral that you simply do not have. This boat is sailing straight toward a roaring waterfall, and you are standing at the helm.
Or this one: The enemy has surrendered after a four-year conflict that has left more than half a million dead, and your army commander has assigned you to arrange one of the war's crowning moments, the formal surrender of the enemy's most venerated army. The tone, the texture of the ceremony, the formalities of receiving the enemy -- they are entirely for you to craft.
These are not, of course, hypothetical or anonymous events. Laurence Golborne, the new mining minister for the Republic of Chile, was visiting in Ecuador on the night of August 5, 2010, when his chief of staff back in Santiago sent him a simple but urgent text message: "Mine cave-in Copiapó; 33 victims." Twenty-eight hours later, at 3:30 a.m. on August 7, Golborne arrived at the remote site of the mining disaster in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Soon, hundreds of millions of people around the globe would be witnessing one of the greatest mining rescues of all time.
Like the miners in Chile, American International Group (AIG) -- the financial services giant heading for the cataract -- was ultimately rescued through direct government intervention. The company was deemed "too big to fail," though it was almost too toxic to save. When the subprime mortgage market in which AIG was deeply invested began to collapse, top AIG executives had taken few protective measures. Their tone-deaf response to the tumultuous events that unfolded left the company vulnerable to one of the greatest corporate collapses in business history.
How different the actions taken by Union officer Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain when Ulysses S. Grant handed him the historic duty of coordinating a follow-up ceremony to Robert E. Lee's April 9, 1865, surrender at Appomattox. Instead of humiliating the Confederate army, as might have been expected after four years of civil war, Chamberlain ordered a respectful salute and launched a healing process that would help reunite a country.
Two of the leaders we have just met were well prepared when summoned to moments of crisis. The other, recent history shows us, was obviously not. To be sure, few of us are likely to have our mettle tested in such trying circumstances. But all of us can and should prepare for less- public crises in our own spheres of serving, and thus it behooves us to ask why: Why did Laurence Golborne and Joshua Chamberlain rise so effectively to the challenge? Why were the AIG executives unable to steer an effective course? Is the skill set that served Golborne and Chamberlain teachable, even transferable and applicable, to leaders who will never be called to scale the kinds of mountains these men had to face?
The animating premise of this book is that effective leadership can be learned, and indeed should be learned, by those with responsibility for the performance of their enterprises and their employees. The further premise is that leadership benefits from an approach built upon specific guiding principles that, taken together, create a clear road map for navigating any situation. That is why I advocate and in these pages lay out the Leader's Checklist, a complete set of vital leadership principles that are tried, tested, and true.
The Leader's Checklist is composed of 15 core principles applicable to most leaders, in most endeavors, in most circumstances. I provide guidance to help you customize this list to specific situations and missions. Given the vast diversity of leadership roles, one size definitely does not fit all in this endeavor. Taken collectively, the Leader's Checklist and its precepts should prepare you well for building an enterprise in good times but also for facing a worst-case leadership scenario, even if (thankfully) you are never called to face one. Finally, I offer an Owner's Manual, so you can put these principles to practice in your own domain of leadership.
From The Leader's Checklist, by Michael Useem, © 2011 by Michael Useem.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Useem is Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management and William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Leadership Moment, Investor Capitalism, and The Go Point, among other books. The Leadership Moment was included in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, written by the business book experts at 800-CEO-READ, and listed as one of the 10 best leadership books on the Washington Post's "Leadership Playlist." Useem's articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Fast Company, Financial Times, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.
Useem has presented programs and seminars on leadership development with American Express, China Minsheng Banking Corporation, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Eli Lilly, Estée Lauder, Fidelity Investments, GlaxoSmithKline, Goldman Sachs, Google, Grupo Santander, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, National Football League, New York Fire Department, The New York Times, Nokia, Pew Charitable Trusts, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Samsung, U.N. Development Programme, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Military Academy, World Economic Forum, and other organizations.
For more information please visit wdp.wharton.upenn.edu, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
In the Books - Off to the Printers XII
Posted Jan. 11, 2011 7:53 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
In another installment from the annual review of business books we produced last year, we have an article from friend and former president of the company, Todd Sattersten. In it, he discusses the meta-themes in business thought that he and Jack uncovered as they spent 18 months compiling, reading, choosing and writing The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.
The Five Universal Themes in Business BY TODD SATTERSTEN
What happens when you spend 18 months reading the best in business literature? In our case, two things happened—one expected, the other quite unexpected.
The expected was the creation of a list of the 100 best business books of all time, which led to a book by the same name. The unexpected came as we uncovered a number of meta-themes the books share that exist beyond any predictable grouping by subject matter. For example, Michael Useem’s The Leadership Moment has surprising connections with as Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System and Gary Klein’s The Power of Intuition. Ultimately, we found five persistent meta-themes across our selection of the 100 best business books. Each meta-theme appears horizontally across traditional publishing categories, bridging such divisions as sales, management, narrative, and finance. Each meta-theme also scales in a vertical sense, applying to individuals, teams and organizations equally. So profound are these meta-themes, we argue, that these five universal insights act as the foundation for a leader dealing with any aspect of business, whether starting a new job or developing the next year’s corporate strategy.
1. Clarity of Purpose
Purpose provides direction and brings clarity to all work. For the individual in pursuit of purpose, author Po Bronson asks the ultimate question in his book, What Should I Do with My Life? Organizations struggle with the same kind of question when they craft their mission statements and massage their marketing slogans.
2. Wisdom in Decision Making
The process of making decisions is often overly deliberate or completely unconscious. In both cases, we base our decisions on past experience and judge the success of those decisions only on the success rate of the outcomes. In Influence, Robert Cialdini alerts us to how we use unconscious routine to make even the smallest decision, while in The Power of Intuition, Gary Klein provides a map to some of that scripting and shows how we can improve our gut instinct.
3. Bias for Action
Tom Peters and Bob Waterman pointed out in In Search of Excellence that a quality of excellent companies was “the bias for action.” This assertion that action trumps all appears in many great books, so what keeps us from taking action? Author David Allen (Getting Things Done) would say a person’s focus is misplaced on time and priority, rather than action. Authors Jeffery Pfeffer and Bob Sutton (The Knowing-Doing Gap) would say organizations suffer from a gap between knowing and doing.
4. Openness to Change
Understanding change is essential because change affects individuals and organizations constantly. Sales is about change. Marketing is about change. Corporate strategy about is about change. Lou Gerstner says it was changing IBM’s entitlement culture that was his biggest challenge. In The First 90 Days, new job guru Michael Watkins describes the waves of change that new managers must instigate. In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffery Moore shows how products are adopted and what different constituents need to accept change.
5. Giving and Getting
Feedback Imagine throwing a baseball in a dark room. You would miss seeing the trajectory the ball took or where it landed. Our success depends on feed-back. Did we make the right choice? Did the action have the intended effect? Are things changing? Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) says self-reflection is a form of feedback and an essential piece of emotional intelligence. Engineering professor Henry Petroski, author of To Engineer is Human, says failure is a critical part of learning. And in Secrets of Closing the Sale, Zig Ziglar says listening is the most important part of selling.
These themes are likely to persist as business and business literature evolves further, because companies continually fail to absorb the simple lessons: Find a clear purpose. Be aware that past experience and a mass of information can interfere with wise decisions. Maintain a bias toward action. Be open to change. Seek feedback. These behaviors link together: Clarity of purpose provides wisdom in decision making, which informs action, which in turn, creates change, while feedback informs them all.
PREVIOUS POSTS FROM IN THE BOOKS
- I: Financial Markets: Their Promise and Failure (and Promise) BY DYLAN SCHLEICHER
- II: When Ecology and Economy Meet BY KATE MYTTY
- III: Why We Love Business Books More Than Ever BY ERIKA ANDERSEN
- IV: Odd Intersections: Fiction Captures the Complexities of Business BY REBECCA SCHLEI HARTMAN
- V: Explorations Into the Human Psyche BY ROBBIE HARTMAN
- VI: For Women Only? A Look at Trends in Business Books Written by Women BY SALLY HALDORSON
- VII: Real-World Lessons in Leadership BY ROBERT MORRIS
- VIII: We the Internet BY DYLAN SCHLEICHER
- IX: The Shifting Landscape of Moving Ideas: The Art of Publishing in a Socially Empowered World BY JON MUELLER
- X: The Information Age
- XI: Finding Opportunities: Re-examining Personal and Organizational Strength in Challenging Times BY JON MUELLER
Being Prepared: It's not only for Boy Scouts
Posted Jan. 24, 2010 6:04 p.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
In light of the earthquakes in Haiti, Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response, the new book edited by Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem and published by Wharton School Publishing, has even more relevance. The authors, both chairpersons of the Council on the Mitigation of Natural Disasters, have gathered the writings of the world’s leading experts in risk management and disaster recovery to help council people and organizations on how best to predict, prepare and respond to natural and man-made disasters, from the devastation caused by earthquakes and tsunamis to the overwhelming challenges presented by terrorism and economic upheaval. In their introduction, the editors call these “low-probability but high-consequence events” and caution against the human tendency to dismiss preparation efforts due to “underprediction” or, more clearly, the belief that low risk equals no risk. After all, they explain, think how the devastation from Hurricane Katrina could have been reduced had the city of New Orleans invested in such things as improving their levees and buildings, or how the impact of the jumbled housing market could have been softened by some well-placed regulations.
But how do you plan for something you can’t imagine actually happening? Learning from Catastrophes offers ample advice to reduce and/or manage risk, loss, and recovery. Because the material is based on current events and all-too-relevant conundrums, the book is surprisingly readable despite its academic bent. For example, in a chapter that tries to answers the question: “Can Poor Countries Afford to Prepare for Low-Probability Risks?”, written by Michele McNabb of Freeplay Energy, and Kristine Pearson of Freeplay Foundation, I found it quite easy to apply the information to what I know of Haiti’s situation and it made the case more immediate.
The chapter titled, “A Financial Malignancy,” by Suzanne Nora Johnson, former Vice President of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., describes the causes of the current financial crisis as a cancer. Certainly many people had diagnosed a number of symptoms in the financial system, she writes, “[h]owever, no commentator actually understood how immunocompromised the entire global financial system had become, what the ultimate carcinogen would be, and when exactly it would metastasize.” In that chapter, and throughout all of the essays, the title of this book is well represented: it is imperative that we learn from crisis, and not play either a blame game or put our heads in the sand.
The sobering fact is that there are more disasters of all sorts on the horizon, not just those similar to what we have dealt with before, like weather events and economic depressions but other possible disasters that we have yet to really have to confront in modern times, such as a major pandemic. The H1N1 flu alert highlights just how able (or unable) we are able to respond globally to such a threat. Jiah-Shin Teh and Harvey Rubin’s manifesto on “Dealing with Pandemics: Global Security, Risk Analysis, and Science Policy” shows just how such biological events could affect every aspect of life.
But before you think that this entire book is filled with doomsday scenarios, it responds to all of these scenarios with methods of action and windows of opportunity. The writers here, while acknowledging the eternal truth that bad things happen, are more interested in showing just how we can think and act our way through them, emerging on the other side more knowledgeable and perhaps even safely. The concluding chapter, “Developing Leadership to Avert and Mitigate Disasters,” written by Michael Useem, author of Leadership Moment and other excellent leadership books, tells two stories that highlight just how good leadership can make a difference in preventing or surviving catastrophes. Useem encourages: “The art of leadership includes preparing for the unexpected, and the value of leadership thus becomes more important when the world becomes more unpredictable.”
All together, Kunreuther, Useem, and Wharton School Publishing have put together a fascinating, alarming, motivating and educational book that has instant applicability and a palpable urgency. While watching CNN or another news station relay the events and the aftermath of such disasters as the Haiti earthquakes or continuing job losses can give us a minute-by-minute look at what is happening in and to the world, also spend some time reading Learning from Catastrophes so perhaps in the future the devastation is not quite so significant or the stories so horrific.
Marty Neumeier (and Other 100 Best Authors) on ChangeThis
Posted Jan. 15, 2009 8:31 a.m. by dylan
In ChangeThis - 800 CEO Read Blog
You may have noticed that we released a new issue of ChangeThis yesterday. What you may not have realized is that Marty Neumeier, the author of The Aesthetics of Management, is also the author of Zag: The #1 Strategy of High Performance Brands, one of The 100 Best Business Books of All TIme. The manifesto is a "look at a few of the principles that artists have used successfully, [to] see how they might apply to management." If you're looking for a new and refreshing view of management, I would definitely recommend it. And when you're done with that, I'd highly recommend his new book, The Designful Company.
In no particular order, here are other 100 Best authors who have published manifestos:
Whew... when I started this list, I didn't remember all of these manifestos. I guess I have some reading to catch up on this weekend.
- Seth Godin, founder of ChangeThis and author of Purple Cow, has written many, including How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea), Marketing Mismatch: When New Won't Work With Old, Do Less, Pushing Past the Dip: How to Become the Best in the World, Polkas, Pyrotechnics and Point D's and The Bootstrapper's Bible.
- Kevin Kelly, author of Out of Control, published Better Than Free just last month.
- Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, wrote The Talent Myth.
- Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, wrote A Creative Manifesto: Why the Place You Choose to Live is the Most Important Decision of Your Life to partner with his latest book, Who's Your City.
- Michael Useem, coauthor of The Leadership Moment, wrote Going for the Go Point to partner with his book The Go Point, which will be out in paperback in March.
- Chip Heath & Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, wrote Talking Strategy: Three Straightforward Ways to Make Your Strategy Stick for ChangeThis.
- John Kotter, author of Leading Change, wrote It All Starts With A Sense of Urgency.
- Bob Sutton, coauthor of The Knowing-Doing Gap, has written two manifestos: Management Advice: Which 90% is Crap? and The Upside of Assholes: Is there Virtue in Bad Workplace Behavior?, which went with his book The No Asshole Rule.
- Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing, wrote a manifesto of the same name, Guerrilla Marketing.
- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start, also wrote a manifesto of the same name, The Art of the Start.
- Michael Mauboussin, author of More Than You Know, wrote Getting Out of Embed: The Role of Social Context in Decision Making.
Jack Covert Selects - High Altitude Leadership
Posted Nov. 11, 2008 7:42 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
High Altitude Leadership: What the World's Most Forbidding Peaks Teach Us About Success by Chris Warner and Don Schmincke, Jossey-Bass, 210 pages, $27.95, Hardcover, October 2008, ISBN 9780470345030
Don Schmincke, author of The Code of the Executive, has once again put his unique experiences on paper. For his new book, his co-author is world-renowned mountaineer, Chris Warner. The collaboration between a scientist and engineer--one who has become one of the most respected management gurus in the world--and an expeditionist who started his own company (Earth Treks) with just $592.00 was unexpected. Just how did this project between two seemingly polar opposites come to life? On a mountaineering expedition in the Andes, Schmincke--himself a mountain climber who had been pursuing expeditions in remote regions to advance his leadership research--met Warner. Don says of that meeting:
... I noticed something about Chris and his team. They were tight, focused, and professional. [...] He shared with me his experience of high performance teams tackling the world's most forbidding mountains. He also told me of dysfunctional teams collapsing under the strain of the challenge. [...] After hearing him analyze these leadership experiences, I knew I found the "laboratory" for my next book.
As they climbed together, they discovered links between biological leadership insights and death-zone mountaineering experiences, and decided to share these insights with a larger audience.
High Altitude Leadership offers a surprisingly candid outlook on leadership, epitomized by the first sentence in the introduction: "Leadership often sucks!" In studying leadership in one of the most dangerous, unforgiving environments—the Death-Zone, an altitude above 26,000 feet where it is impossible to survive for an extended time period due to lack of oxygen--they discovered that the dynamics of mountaineering can act as metaphors for urgent business challenges.
When you are in the Death-Zone, you can't grab a book to look for new theories, you can't dial a consultant, and motivational speakers are finally short of breath. Up here the best teams emulate behaviors only seen in the highest-performing organizations--and the worst teams wallow in their dysfunction.
Each chapter starts with a documented journal entry from an expedition. Then the authors look at one crucial lesson--or "danger" as the chapters are titled--that can occur and discuss that danger in three ways: how the danger affects an organization; survival tips; and how to instill the opposite view of that danger into an organization. In the chapter, Danger #4: Arrogance, Chris tells the story of a climb gone wrong from over-confidence. In applying this danger to business, they offer insights to detect arrogance in organizations by simply looking at the symptoms of the employees.
High Altitude Leadership reminded me of Leadership Moment, Michael Useem's excellent book that relays nine leadership principles through stories about real people in tight real life situations who experience a leadership moment. Here, the authors present crucial leadership principles learned from a dangerous expedition and bring these lessons back to the world of business with details and examples from their experiences.
