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272 pages
ISBN 9781591840015 Published Nov. 2002
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Posted May 10, 2012 11:43 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
The once vital Main Streets of America are all but out of business, boarded up or filled with antique stores shopping the delights and detritus of another era. Jason Jennings visits the main street of his own abandoned hometown at the beginning of The Reinventors to use it as a metaphor for “what will happen to you, your job, and your business unless you become a reinventor completely committed to constant radical change and growth.”
Jennings’ previous books, Less Is More, Think Big, Act Small, It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small … It’s the Fast that Eat the Slow, and Hit the Ground Running all made a case for business agility in one way or another. This new book does so as well, and then takes it one step further by stressing the need for business model agility. According to a 2010 IBM Global Study:
It turns out that 67 percent of worldwide leaders think their current business model is only sustainable for another three years, while another 31 percent believe their current model might have as long as five years.
So The Reinventors should find a home on many executives’ desks, as the time is now to begin the process of serially reinventing your business, to highlight companies that are good at it, and to teach other leaders how to master the skill. The history of business has always been one of churn, of quick rises and dramatic falls, and smart leaders know that they are but temporary stewards in that history and must transition their companies through that change.
Your job as you know it and your business as it is currently run will eventually change. The only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant. We must all become reinventors, and we’d better do it quickly.
If you made it though the recession with your job or business intact, everything may seem more stable now that you are on the other side of it. But remember that the world under your business is still silently shifting, and you are going to have to shift with it. Jennings is not going to give you a new business model to do that with in this book, but he will teach you how to figure it out for yourself, how to be more aggressively innovative, how to become a serial reinventor.
Vince Thompson Recommends Management Books
Posted April 30, 2007 8:39 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog
First time author Vince Thompson last month released Ignited: Managers Light Up Your Company and Career for More Power More Purpose and More Success. This afternoon, I posted a podcast I did with Vince.
After the interview, I asked him to follow-up with list of books he would recommend to middle managers:
- Love is the Killer App – Tim Sanders
- Never Eat Alone – Keith Ferrazzi
- 7 Habits To Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
- Less is More – Jason Jennings
- Think Big Act Small – Jason Jennings
- How to be CEO – Jeffrey Fox
- The Articulate Executive – Granville Toogood
- Networking with the Affluent – Thomas Stanley
- Leading at a Higher Level - Ken Blanchard
800-CEO-READ Bestsellers 2003
Posted April 23, 2004 10:02 a.m. by maryke-800ceoread
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog
Now that the blog is officially up and running, lets have a look at 800-CEO-READs Top 15 for 2003:
1. Purple Cow by Seth Godin, Portfolio.
2. The Cycle of Leadership by Noel M. Tichy, HarperBusiness.
3. Attitude is Everything by Keith Harrell, HarperBusiness.
4. Less Is More by Jason Jennings, Portfolio.
5. Authentic Leadership by Bill George, Jossey-Bass.
6. Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers, Random House.
7. Execution by Larry Bossidy, Crown Business.
8. When Generations Collide by David Stillman and Lynne Lancaster, HarperBusiness.
9. Trading up by Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske, Portfolio.
10. The Attitude of Leadership by Keith D. Harrell, John Wiley & Sons.
11. Customer Centered Selling by Robert L. Jolles, Fireside Books.
12. Ethical Challenge by Noel M. Tichy and Andrew McGill, Jossey-Bass.
13. The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers by Richard Smith and James M. Citrin, Crown Business.
14. Impending Crisis by Roger Herman, Tom Olivo and Joyce Gioia, Oakhill Press.
15. The Power of Losing Control by Joe Caruso, Gotham.
Jack Covert Selects - Less is More
Posted Nov. 22, 2002 11:01 a.m. by katie
Less is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity as a Competitive Tool in Business by Jason Jennings, Portfolio, 260 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, October 2002, ISBN 1591840015
The last time I spoke with Jason Jennings, we talked frankly about the amount of research and time it took for him to write this book. Well, the end result is definitely worth the effort he made, as this is a beautifully documented tome. Dont let the idea of documentation discourage you from buying this book, however. Jennings fine writing has a conversational tone that demands your attention and keeps you reading. On top of that, nearly every sentence has value and is loaded with content (and while this may seem like a given, try telling that to many of the business book authors out there perhaps they need a lesson in less-is-more). Folks, trust me, this is a great book that reads as easily as some of the best fiction.
Jennings first book Its Not the Big That Eat the Small, Its the Fast That Eat the Slow, co-written with Larry Haughton, appeared in the 6th edition of Jack Covert Selects and was a huge bestseller. I described that book in my review as one of the most fun, loaded with innovative thoughts and ideas that make perfect sense. Less is More follows well within the footprints of Its Not the Big and was also as difficult to synthesize not because it is too complex a book, but because it is so good, you cant help but share what you just read with someone else.
In this new book, Jennings tackles company productivitygetting more with less. First, he and a team of researchers created a set of criteria with which to judge a productive company. As the research went forward, they adjusted the guidelines to match their preliminary findings, ending up with: Revenue per Employee; Return on Equity and Return on Assets; and Operating Income per Employee. Then, they filtered the companies that made that first cut through the questions: Is this company overexposed? e.g. Southwest Airlines, Harley, Nokia, and Might this company pull an Enron?. After the companies that passed the test were determined, the CEOs were interviewed. Those interviews are incorporated into the book and offer much insight. Ultimately, Jennings concludes that productive companies have one unifying factor:
Productive companies have a different definition of the words strategy and tactics than most people in business. That difference is the foundation that allows them to stay focused and build remarkably productive companies. They have institutionalized their strategy.
What is so refreshing is that the selected companies are not the usual cast of characters. Jennings does include IKEA and Nucor, but also tells us about a discount chain in New Zealand that puts twice as much profit per sales dollar to the bottom line as Wal-Mart and nearly doubles Wal-Marts Return on Equity.
I am not saying that this book is as groundbreaking as, say, a new Michael Porter or Peter Drucker, but I am suggesting that this book is on par with the very successful Good to Great in showing you successful organizations that have implemented and applied cutting edge concepts. Jason Jennings has really done a terrific job in giving us this opportunity to learn from those companies successes and failures.
