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Growing Great Employees
Turning Ordinary People Into Extraordinary Performers
By Erika Andersen 

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Pow Wow 2011
Posted Dec. 9, 2011 10:48 a.m. by jon
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

A few of us just returned from this year's Author Pow Wow in Austin, TX at The Driskill. As for me, I'm exhausted, but also refreshed with a sense of perspective. In support of my previous post, I do feel empowered, and I know others that attended do as well.

How are we empowered?

We heard from Erika Andersen, author of Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic about Being CEO of your book, which included great added comments by upcoming author Dick Cross. We participated in a great discussion with Nena Madonia about agencies being a hub for an author's platform, and how they act as both communicators and creative assistants to serve and develop an author's brand.

We listened to a great panel of publishers, including Ray Bard, Clint Greenleaf, and Karen Murphy discuss their different approaches to publishing, which culminated in a discussion about how publishers and authors do, and need to, view their customers to determine how to shape and develop the pool. We joined in a discussion with Tanya Hall and Erika Heilman about digital publishing, and how ideas can be distributed in different ways, and what limitations and opportunities exist in working with such a flexible medium.

Next, Will Weisser, David Hathaway, and Bill Roth talked about selling books, selling ideas, and the critical things for authors to understand and build in order to be profitable from sales of their ideas. It was a fascinating and serendipitous occasion to have Dave Hathaway present. Prior to his time at Greenleaf, Dave served as Barnes & Noble's buyer for over 10 years, and his insight into what retail looks for, how they make predictions, and the growing challenges they face, was eye-opening for all involved.

Noah Rickun and Victoria Labalme both gave compelling presentations about speaking, showing what works, and what doesn't, in smart and interesting ways. From slides to body language to content to value, they covered a lot of ground in a short time while remaining clear and entertaining. A perfect lesson. They certainly made it all look much easier than it is. And to boot, I got an official Victoria Labalme lip balm, which has me protected all winter, and a reminder of her awesomeness each time I use it.

By now, we were all nearly at mental capacity. Then Tim Sanders hit the stage and literally worked us over. Part re-energizing, part mind-boggling, and 100% amazing, Tim's insight and research into human behavior, digital practices, the publishing industry vs. similar and disparate industries was captivating, enlightening, and at this point, nearly overwhelming. Ever hear the term "drinking from a fire hose?" This was like getting blown down the street by one. It was awesome.

We celebrated Day 1 by busing miles out of town to Salt Lick BBQ, and quickly filled our stomachs to the same level as our heads. Now, completely stuffed on all levels, we headed back to the hotel to rest and prepare for Day 2.

 

Day 2 was more focused on getting to work, as

Barbara Cave Henricks, Adrienne Lang, David Hahn, Rusty Shelton, and Phil Gerbyshak discussed publicity angles, social media strategies, marketing, branding, communications, media placement, and a variety of other outreach endeavors authors are doing, and need to be doing more of, in order to spread their ideas.

Erika Andersen recapped the 'ownership' segment she began with, and everyone in the room teamed up in various groupings to talk about Doing - new ideas, project help, platform partnerships, and more. It was a great way to extend all the information and knowledge into action.

Arriving back home, I quickly set up a Pow Wow! group on LinkedIn, in order for us all to continue the conversation, and add to it moving forward.

The Pow Wow family grows further!

Thanks to Noel Weyrich, Kalina Mazur, Les McKeown, Jennifer Ferrasci-O’Malley, Paul Sliker, Alexandra Kirsch, Rajesh Setty, Kevin Kruse, Denise Lee Yohn, David Osborn, Terry Doerscher, Richard Imperiale, Richard Hunter Cross, Erika Heilman, John Moore, Richard Shapiro, Judson Laipply, David Edward, Jennifer Whitt, Dain Dunston, and David Nour for being there, listening, engaging, and helping make the event so great!

And I can't resist adding this poetic recap by attendee Judson Laipply:

Twas weeks before the Holidays

When we arrived at  PowWow

To learn about the book world

And answer the question “How?”

We mingled with each other

Then said our goodnight

Some awoke in the morning

With no power or light

We started by learning

To be CEO of your book

And we’d better be ready

For the Ipad, Kindle, and Nook.

We heard from some insiders

Who helped lay out a plan

You have to build a platform

To help drive demand

Is your book market

An ocean, well, or lake?

If it’s a bayou or puddle

Then publishing’s a mistake.

They helped us to see

That the book world is unusual

To be really, really successful

You have got to be delusional

Sales!Sales!Sales!

Supply no longer drives demand

You have to give content away

And create book-buying fans.

Then it was Noah

With his presentation skill

Who help us realize

What it takes to absolutely kill.

Victoria helped us to see

The 3 parts of a show

Seen through the prism

Of feel, do, and know.

A few more insights

They did say

Like never end your show

With Q and A.

Tim was up last

Before we went to dinner

And he was a force to be reckon

No wonder he’s a winner.

From Yelpification

To the digitizing age

Soon E-books will dominate

And be all the rage.

To Salt-Lick we went

On a bus that swaying

But the best thing of all

Was that we were not paying.

Then some sleep we did get

And awoke to full power

We started right back in

To maximize every hour.

Publicity was up next

And some stories were fun

But we learned that after p-date

The work has just begun.

Twitter! Link’d

Facebook and more!

Get yourself a Social Media Strategy

Or you’ll seem like a bore.

We discussed the merits

Of authentic tweeting

But had to stop short

To wrap up the meeting.

Then it was over

So much to digest

That our brains are not likely

To soon get any rest.

#PowWow11

Had come to an end

We meet lots of new people

Made some new friends.

But the information was key

And in abundance it was dished.

So that we all might fulfill

Our publishing wish.

Thanks to Rusty’s, Hendricks,

Greenleaf and 8CR

For hosting the PowWow11

That will make us a star.



Friday Links
Posted Sept. 3, 2010 11:10 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ Chris Guillabeau's The Art of Non-Conformity will be released on Tuesday—a book I hope everyone reading this blog will pick up. On his blog yesterday, he briefly discussed Seth Godin's departure from traditional publishing before laying out the Strategy, Tactics, and the Plan for the Next 97 Days he has devised for entering the publishing arena that Seth is leaving. And his plan is the only plan that has ever succeeded: think big; work hard. Responding to the notion that “The only authors who sell books anymore are those who have popular blogs,” he writes:

Where does a popular blog come from—does the blog fairy descend from the sky with a passionate group of readers, all eager to support a new writer?

It's a valid question, and we are glad this dedicated, unconventional (indeed, dedicatedly unconventional) individual has taken a step into traditional publishing, and we wish him the best on his Unconventional Book Tour.

If you'd like to learn more before picking up a copy of his book for yourself, you can read the interview Callie Oettinger did with him over at Steven Pressfield Online, or dig into some of his online offerings.

➻ Scott Stratten's UnMarketing also comes out next week, and in true social-media guru fashion, he did a 140-character interview on Twitter with new PR pros. Some advice:

@ssiewert: How can young pros/Gen Y apply their years of personal experience online to achieve business objectives?

@unmarketing: You have the advantage, since you’re already online. Be yourself, have an opinion but also be humble. You don’t know everything yet.

➻ The Bullish on Books blog had a great guest post from our dear friend Erika Andersen today, entitled You’ve Been Laid Off – Now What? She used the space to discuss how, once you declare an intention, or "put up your sail to catch the wind you’re looking for—it makes you available to other winds, as well." And Erika knows. She is one of the best advisers in country and the author of two outstanding books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, the latter of which was recently made into a PBS special (Check your local PBS listings for the airtime, or purchase the DVD at shopPBS.org).

➻ The Economist recently took a look inside The innovation machine, reviewing Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble's book recently released on the topic, The Other Side of Innovation. From the article:

Many would-be innovators deal with the trade-off between efficiency and innovation by rejecting traditional management entirely. They repeat mantras about “breaking all the rules” and “asking for forgiveness rather than permission”. They set up skunk works (small, autonomous units with a remit to innovate) and mock the boring corporate types who write their pay-cheques. But again this is counter-productive. Mocking the corporate establishment only encourages it to starve you of resources.

They also touch on Warren Bennis's Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership briefly, and thought it looks like a great book, I think they did so only to have an excuse to introduce the topic of innovation by writing "Today there is no hotter topic in management theory than 'sperm in the air.'"

➻ Bob Sutton, author of the soon-to-be-released Good Boss, Bad-Boss, wants to know... Is Your Boss A Certified Brasshole? And he has devised a test for you to find out.

➻ Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, writes a twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun. His most recent post discussed the 10 Best Books For Back To School Business Reading, and his list is very solid:

I personally think that if you have read all of these books, just go ahead and forgo going back to school and get on out there and start conquering the world.

➻ The 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style went on sale this week, but you can get the original edition (1906) for free. Head on over to Papercuts to figure out how.

➻ "In addition to being a bullfighter and magician, he's a lazy river, a slow moving train, a future hall-of-famer playing through the pain, he's a grizzly bear." And his son is a book reviewer.



800-CEO-READ's Decade-in-Review
Posted Dec. 31, 2009 9:45 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

It's an admittedly worn device to use the alphabet to organize one's thoughts, but when reflecting over the past decade and trying to distill the most notable events and objects that affected our company and also the publishing industry and business sector into a brief blog post, I found such a device to be quite helpful. As Jack put it when we initially discussed writing a decade-in-review post, not only is it like opening a can of worms, it seems like whenever one harkens back to the Millenium, one can't help but get sidetracked into thoughts about 9/11. But of course there were many more ups and downs that we've all been a victim and/or a participant in, and this list is an attempt to do that chaos a little bit of justice.

Amazon (may not have its origins in this decade, but grew from 1.6B in 1999 to 19.1 in 2008; Annual 800ceoread Business Book Awards (Inaugural 2007); Erika Anderson, founder of Proteus International, Inc., author of Growing Great Employees, and great friend of 800-CEO-READ who introduced us to a new in-office vocabulary (2007)

Blue Ocean Strategy (our decade's Best Seller, 2005); Bill George, author of three 800-CEO-READ best sellers, Authentic Leadership (2004), True North (2007) and Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis

ChangeThis (website presenting ideas via manifesto PDFs adopted by 800-CEO-READ from Seth Godin, 2005)

Disasters, natural and otherwise (Dot Com Bust, 2000; 9/11, 2001; tsunami, 2004; Hurricane Katrina, 2005; banking, 2009)

Enron bankruptcy (2001); Eight years of George W. Bush (2000-2008); Election of Barack Obama (2008)

Farewell, Schwartz Bookshops (2009); free/freemium changes everything; Facebook leads the herd.

Good to Great by Jim Collins; Green, Global and Google become top trends

Heath Brothers’ Made to Stick (2007) introduced us to a new language for the creation of ideas

InBubbleWrap offers free business books from 800-CEO-READ (2005); In the Books, 800-CEO-READ's yearly review of business books (2007); It's Your Ship by D. Michael Abrashoff (2002), an 800-CEO-READ bestseller with legs.

JackCovertSelects reviews (Inaugural 2000); Joy Panos Stauber, design extraordinaire and great friend of 800-CEO-READ.

Kindle (2007) and the advancing threat (revelation?) of digital books.

Lay-Offs (2009), Levitt & Dubner’s Freakonomics (2005), The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (2006); 800-CEO-READ's LeaveSmarter events (2006) kick off in Milwaukee.

Mega-Sales of Oprah’s Recommendations, Harry Potter & the Twilight series, lend hopefulness that books still beguile.

New York (book launch, company party, annual awards fete, 2009)

The 100 Business Books of All Time (written & anguished over during 2008, published 2009)

PechaKucha – 800-CEO-READ becomes the Milwaukee host for this exciting new way to present ideas in 20 images in 20 seconds (2008).

QbQ! The Question behind the Question by John Miller (2004), an 800-CEO-READ best seller that tapped into the perceived absence of personal accountability.

Rich Dad books populate the decade as the best selling personal finance books; Rehiring & Remodeling (2009)

Seth Godin (Unleashing the Idea Virus 2001 to Purple Cow 2003 to Tribes 2008); Strengths-based management books and strategies from Gallup.

Todd Sattersten (consultant 2004 - coauthor, 2008 - president, 2009), The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (2000); Twitter

Used books on Amazon (2001); The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld (2006) became the basis of some important questions we asked of our company and our customers.

Visit 800ceoread's Daily Blog for daily business insight (2001).

Wiki-anything; The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki (2004) and The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (2005), two books that changed the way we think.

X-treme changes to news and publishing industry

You're a blueberry (2008), an 800-CEO-READ inside joke that encapsulates the relationships of the 800-CEO-READ employees.

Zero percent. The likelihood that 2010 will be anything but another exhilarating ride.

Okay, so in terms of adhering to the alphabetization of this list, some are a bit of a cheat. And some inclusions are events that had a direct effect on our company internally, but most were important occurrences felt by everyone in business. If there is anything I missed, feel free to add in comments.

Happy New Year everyone!



In the Books - Off to the Printers III
Posted Dec. 28, 2009 4:43 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Our third installment of articles from past issues of In the Books, our annual review of the finest business books, comes from the indomitable spirit of Erika Andersen, founder of Proteus International. Erika is a friend of the company, and I've always thought of her as our cool and world-wise aunt. She is one of those people that teaches you something about yourself every time you meet her and, lucky for us, she does so for organizations as well. If you need to better understand your organization and the folks that make it run—and, no offense, but you probably do—you can do no better than call on Erika Andersen. If you would like to learn more, check out her two ChangeThis manifestos or her two books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic.

The piece below is from our first annual review, released two years ago, and is about our favorite topic—business books!

◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊

Why We Love Business Books More Than Ever BY ERIKA ANDERSEN

Around 1500, a guy named Machievelli wrote a book called Il Principe. It could be argued that this tough-minded little volume was the first classic business book of the western world. It was a wild time: he was advising various warring Popes and secular rulers—the Jack Welches and Sumner Redstones of his time—and Machiavelli offered advice he thought would be most helpful to them in consolidating

their power and creating thriving and profitable governments. Though it’s now mostly read as a cautionary tale, an example

of how NOT to lead, hundreds of generations of leaders have absorbed its lessons, and the business book was born.

The next few hundred years of western civilization (this phrase always reminds me of Gandhi’s response as to his view of western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea,” he said…but I digress) produced a few other volumes of political and economic wisdom. In 1609, for instance, Hugo Grotius published Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), which helped to establish the foundations of international law by formulating the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations should be free to

use it for seafaring trade. Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was one of the earliest attempts to systematically study the development of industry and commerce in Europe, and offered rationales for free trade, capitalism and libertarianism. It seemed that only a handful of people felt compelled to share their thoughts about business, and that a slightly larger handful read them.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that the business book began to emerge as an actual category. In the early 1900s, two books on business became standards in the libraries of America’s captains of industry: Henry Ford’s My Life and Work, and a book by a man named Henri Fayol, called General and Industrial Management. They offered very different opinions on business and management (Henry Ford deeply distrusted managers, though he treated his front line workers much better than most of his contemporaries, while Fayol talked about management as one of the six key elements of business success), but both focused on providing personal insights into how business should be done.

Through the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of books published about business gradually increased. Still, by today’s standards, business books had a relatively modest readership: in 1975, about 300 new business book titles were published in the US, with overall sales for the business category of just over a million volumes.

Then in the early ’80s, the whole business of business books changed—quite suddenly and dramatically: the bellwether book of this change was Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, which became the first bona fide business best seller. And over the past 25 years, the business book category has literally exploded: in 2006, almost 11,000 new business books were ublished in the U.S., with total business book sales of over $800,000,000.

Why this ever-increasing appetite for business books?

THERE'S GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS

Part of the explanation, I believe, can be found in the current American mythology that business is the best and most reliable road to fame, fortune and happiness. In fact, this mythology seems to have largely replaced other American mythologies about achieving success, such as “the overnight star,” “marrying rich,” “being plucked by fate from the chorus line (or assembly line),” “virtue rewarded” and (my personal favorite) “persisting through terrible tribulations and being uplifted by some extremely unlikely deus ex machina.” Not that these things don’t still happen (occasionally), or that people don’t pine for them, but I’ll bet if you talked to ten college students who want to become wealthy, nine would say they’re planning to do it by starting or getting involved in some sort of lucrative business venture.

This popular mythology about business, it seems to me, is an amalgam of a number of elements. First, there’s the core American belief in the efficacy of hard work and the possibility of raising oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This

has formed the basis of how we see ourselves since the very beginning of our nation: the idea that in America, ancestry is not destiny, and that people can become what they envision. Pushing westward, building the railroads, inventing, creating, refining: we have always believed in commerce as the great leveler of society.

Second, there is the assumption spawned by the Internet (the late-’90s bust notwithstanding) that if you just find/create the right product/service/idea at the right time and offer it online in the right way, you can achieve crazy-level financial success. Look at the Google guys. For most of us, there’s still enough mystery and magic about how the web actually works to enable us to imagine that any business having to do with new media might instantly result in thousands of rabbits from hundreds of hats.

Finally, we may no longer think that “greed is good” (in the words of Gorden Gekko, the creepy Michael Douglas character from Wall Street)—or, at least, most people don’t say it out loud—but the legacy of the eighties is this: that young, Bright-eyed men and women can aspire to do well in business without feeling like soulless sell-outs.

So, if we as a nation believe that there is both physical and psychic gold to be had by pursuing business, what better way to find out where to dig than by reading books that provide the needed maps? Unlike previous generations, who had to actually get out and do it (make your way to California, apprentice yourself to a bootmaker, sign up for the next clipper ship to China), we can sit in the comfort of our living rooms and look over the shoulders of those who’ve done it before us, trying to extract the lessons we’ll need to do it ourselves...or at least to let us dream—to convince us that we could do it if we really wanted to.

THE CELEBRIFICATION OF BUSINESS LEADERS

If you scan the business book shelves of any Barnes and Noble or Borders, you’ll see a lot more volumes with faces on them than in years past. Business books used to be serious—if boring—tomes in strong colors with impressive typefaces. Now, more often than not, the front cover shows a slick photo of Donald, Martha, Lee, Carly, Jack or whoever. What gives?

It seems to me the American fascination with celebrity has played a large part in boosting business book sales. As a culture, we seem endlessly intrigued with people who have lives of privilege and wealth, and over the past decade or so, we’ve turned some of our attention away from movie stars, athletes and royalty, and trained it on business tycoons. In fact, it seems that no matter what these celebrity business people are saying (or, in some cases, preaching) in their books, the real draw is that face on the cover.

When I was looking for an agent for my first book a few years ago, one of the people I spoke to—a woman who is agent to a few of these very mega-executives—told me that while my book was very solid and compelling, I didn’t have a “big enough platform.” A novice in these matters at the time, I asked her what she meant. “Well, to be quite blunt,” she replied, “you’re not famous enough.”

So, it’s not so much what these folks have accomplished or the clarity of their wisdom that sells their books—although that is, in some cases, very impressive—it’s quite simply that they’re well-known and therefore interesting. People buy books by “famous” business people for basically the same reason other people buy Entertainment Weekly or listen to Larry King—they want to find out more about people whose lives they find intriguing.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

A few months back, when I was just beginning to think about writing this article, I was out to dinner with my 19-year-old son, and I asked him why he thought there were so many more business books being bought these days. “It’s the complexity of the undertaking,” he replied. At my quizzical look, he continued, “Imagine some guy in the Korean war. All he thinks about is getting back home and starting an auto-body shop, or a pizzeria. And when he gets home, he does it: borrows some money from his dad or the bank, rents a space, buys some stuff and starts fixing cars or making pizza. If he works hard and does good work, he hires a couple of people. Gets married, sends his kids to college. The American dream: simple.” I nodded. “Now, though, that guys’ kids want to be portfolio analysts or music producers. It’s much more complicated and shapeless. How do you do it? And they think, ‘I bet there is a bunch of books about this.’ And there is.”

I think he’s absolutely right. And I’d expand it to include the complexity of everything—not just of the undertaking. People who want to start businesses today, who want to do well in their chosen careers, or who want to figure out how to choose a career are faced with orders of complexity that would boggle the mind of that unconfused Korean war vet.

It seems to me this is the most important factor driving the exponential increase in the popularity of business books: the world—and the world of business—is a complicated place, and we want help figuring it out.

We’ve always used books to explore and to learn. Books about history to explore the past and learn the lessons of others’ mistakes; books about travel to explore distant places and learn about other cultures; books of fiction to explore invented worlds and learn about others’ experiences. Now, as we rush headlong into the 21st century, business books allow us to explore all the emerging worlds of commerce, invention and growth, and teach us how to navigate through those worlds.



"[A]ll of us read too many business books."
Posted May 26, 2009 3:56 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Leadership - 800 CEO Read Blog

Eduardo Castro-Wright, vice chairman of Wal-Mart Stores was the subject of the Corner Office column in Sunday's New York Times.

The question that caught our attention was:

Q. So you find that people make business more complicated than it is?

A. No doubt about it. I think that all of us read far too many business books. I’ve worked 30 years now in management roles, and a number of times I’ve seen a new C.E.O. come in, and the first act is typically to get the leadership team to an offsite. And you get a consultant - because you can’t do it without a consultant - and the consultant then helps the team design a vision. And then you’ve got all these words, and several thousand dollars and a couple of days of golf later, you go back to the company to actually try to communicate that vision throughout the organization. So you hire another consultant to do that. It shouldn’t be like that.

What's interesting to me is that Castro-Wright blames one thing, when the problem is something all together different. Reading business books can cause people to hire their authors, but the inability to implement a vision/strategy/plan falls back on the leader.

Later in the Q&A, Castro-Wright was asked about what he would change in business school education. He laments that everyone with an MBA has taken classes in accounting, operations, and strategy, and have had no exposure to the skills needed to lead and manage people. “How do you talk with the person who comes to your office late at night to tell you that her daughter is sick and she might not be able to come in the following day?,” he asks. Here is an example where business books do a great job of supplementing the knowledge of new leaders. Books like Quiet Leadership, 12, and Growing Great Employees are perfect for the task.

So, I am not sure this was really about business books, and if it was, then the problem is seeing business books in the right context: they deliver knowledge, not results.