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Posted Oct. 31, 2008 5:00 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In The Company - 800 CEO Read Blog
We've been talking about how to help people, how to focus on what's positive and helpful in the current state of our world, rather than grumbling over the things that are both out of our control and truly uncertain. One of the ways we can do that is by starting a conversation that starts at a personal level...by talking about our own experiences and the books that have shaped our lives.
We've also heard a lot about change, lately. Below I list 5 books that changed my perspective on something; not all have a business angle, but each does have something universal to offer readers.
1. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, 1st edition
If you're discouraged by the dark cloud of political rhetoric that has settled over the U.S. for the past, oh, two years, I recommend reading Whitman's introduction to Leaves of Grass as a reminder of why we should care so deeply about our country and government:
"...but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislature, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors...but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships--the freshness and candor of their physiognomy--the picturesque looseness of their carriage...their deathless attachment to freedom--their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean [...] their delight in music [...] their good temper and openhandedness--the terrible significance of their elections--the President's taking off his hat to them and not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it."
2. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan.
This is an incredibly accessible and enjoyable book about the cultural significance of geography and physical orientation. Tuan explores the ways people have historically made sense of their surroundings. For instance, he examines why we form attachment to "home," how time affects our sense of space, and why certain cross-cultural similarities exist among groups that have had no exposure to the habits and values of others (e.g., our proximity to others, or the prominence of right-handedness). I read this book as part of a grad school project on "sense of place" in virtual environments, and it has changed the ways I perceive the space around me and my values with regard to architecture and place.
"What sensory organs and experiences enable human beings to have their strong feeling for space and for spatial qualities? Answer: kinesthesia, sight, and touch. Movements such as the simple ability to kick one's legs and stretch one's arms are basic to the awareness of space. [...] Space assumes a rough coordinate frame centered on the mobile and purposive self. [...] Purposive movement and perception, both visual and haptic, give human beings their familiar world of disparate objects in space. Place is a special kind of object. It is a concentration of value, though not a valued thing that can be handled or carried about easily; it is an object in which one can dwell."
3. Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin
Reading Emergence was like a thousand light bulbs turning on in my world. I grew up with a mentally disabled family member, but until I read Temple Grandin's words about what it felt like to be overwhelmed by her existence, I did not fully appreciate the complexities of the minds around me. Grandin has also contributed greatly to our understanding of the animal world, and has worked as a scientist to develop more humane ways of interacting with animals.
"But as a child, the "people world" was often too stimulating to my senses. Ordinary days with a change in schedule or unexpected events threw me into a frenzy, but Thanksgiving or Christmas was even worse. At those times our home bulged with relatives. The clamor of many voices, the different smells--perfume, cigars, damp wool caps or gloves--people moving about at different speeds, going in different directions, the constant noise and confusion, the constant touching, were overwhelming. One very, very overweight aunt, who was generous and caring, let me use her professional oil paints. I liked her. Still, when she hugged me, I was totally engulfed and I panicked. [...] I withdrew because her abundant affection overwhelmed my nervous system."
4. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
Of the few voices we have from this dark period in our world history, Primo Levi's is perhaps the most renowned and penetrating. Survival in Auschwitz is his memoir of the 10 months he spent in the death camp. He details the subcultures that develop within even the most degrading of circumstances, reflects on our instincts and desire to overcome in the face of utter hopelessness, and creates an arresting, almost visceral reading experience that helped me understand, in my sheltered experience, what millions of people endured through no fault of their own.
"If we were logical, we would resign ourselves to the evidence that our fate is beyond knowledge, that every conjecture is arbitrary and demonstrably devoid of foundation. But men are rarely logical when their own fate is at stake; on every occasion, they prefer the extreme positions. According to our character, some of us are immediately convinced that all is lost, that one cannot live here, that the end is near and sure; others are convinced that however hard the present life may be, salvation is probable and not far off, and if we have faith and strength, we will see our houses and our dear ones again. The two classes of pessimists and optimists are not so clearly defined, however, not because there are many agnostics, but because the majority, without memory or coherence, drift between the two extremes, according to the moment and the mood of the person they happen to meet."
5. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
I know we give the Heath brothers a lot of love here at 800-CEO-READ, but I hope that my selection demonstrates the transformative nature this recent business book can have on the way you do your work. As a relative newcomer to the world of business books, Made to Stick will forever stick (no pun intended) in my mind as one of the first and most influential business books I have read on communication. I can't tell you how many times we referenced ideas from Made to Stick while working on The 100 Best. And while we recognize that the book borrows definitions and terms from other places (most notably, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell), Made to Stick is the only one that lays out a practical and useful way of putting these ideas to work.
"No special expertise is needed to apply these principles. There are no licensed stickologists. Moreover, many of the principles have a commonsense ring to them: Didn't most of us already have the intuition that we should "be simple" and "use stories"? It's not as though there's a powerful constituency for overcomplicated, lifeless prose. But wait a minute. We claim that using these principles is easy. And most of them do seem relatively commonsensical. So why aren't we deluged with brilliantly designed sticky ideas? Why is our life filled with more process memos than proverbs?Sadly, there is a villain in our story. The villain is a natural psychological tendency that consistently confounds our ability to create ideas using these principles. It's called the Curse of Knowledge. (We will capitalize the phrase throughout the book to give it the drama we think it deserves.)"
Now, we'd like to ask you: What are the books that changed your perspective? How can they help others?
Amazon lists The 100 Best Business Books of All Time
Posted Oct. 13, 2008 2:48 a.m. by jack
In 100 Best - 800 CEO Read Blog
Amazon now has catalog copy and cover art for our book.
Four months before publication date, our sales ranking is already 280,000, but who's counting.
Check us out here.
Exciting Book News
Posted Oct. 2008 11:09 a.m. by jack
In 100 Best - 800 CEO Read Blog
Amazon now shows the cover of our new book. Check it out here. Thanks Jeff.
Also, we're sending out month two of our 6-month Countdown Book Club later this week.
Jack Covert Selects - A Sense of Urgency
Posted Sept. 12, 2008 5:53 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter, Harvard Business School Press, 196 pages, $22.00 Hardcover, 190 pages, September 2008, ISBN 9781422179710
In 1997, Harvard Business School Press released the best book on change that I have ever read, entitled Leading Change. Authored by Professor John Kotter, it is so good that Todd and I included it in our book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, due out in February of 2009. In Leading Change, Kotter gives the reader an eight-stage process needed for a successful change initiative.
In the decade since that book's release, his audiences asked him time and again about the first stage of that process, "establishing a sense of urgency," and how to accomplish it. Change cannot be accomplished without urgency, and A Sense of Urgency was written to answer that difficult problem. As Kotter states:
The Strategy [is to] create action that is exceptionally alert, externally oriented, relentlessly aimed at winning, making some progress each and every day, and constantly purging low value-added activities--all by focusing on the heart and not just the mind.
The author proceeds to lay out four sets of tactics to help you undertake creating this sense of urgency within your organization. The stories Kotter uses to illustrate these tactics are generally stories you haven't heard before, like that of the successful grocery chain that didn't notice the change going on around them until it was too late. This story helps to illustrate Kotter's first tactic of "bringing the outside in." If you are lucky enough to have had "historical success," it can lead to a "we know best" culture, which can insulate organizations from the outside world. Another issue is with a relatively strong position compared to others; you have a tendency not to look outside for disruptions. Finally with success often comes size, which adds to the lack of looking outside.
One of the reasons I like John Kotter and his teaching style is that he knows the job is never done. Let's assume you've created a sense of urgency and had a change initiative succeed. How easy is it going to be to keep a sense of urgency strong after that initial success? Well, it's not easy, and Professor Kotter knows it. The final chapter of the book covers this problem.
The ultimate solution to the problem of urgency dropping after successes is to create the right culture. This is especially true as we move from a world in which change is mostly episodic to a world in which change is continuous.
This concise, easy-to-read book, written by one of the premier minds on the subject, will be the perfect roadmap to successful change, both for now and for the long-term.
Remembering Michael Hammer
Posted Sept. 6, 2008 6:07 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Operations - 800 CEO Read Blog
If the book of the 80's was In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman, then book of the 90's was Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and Jim Champy.
We were saddened to hear Michael Hammer died this week at age 60.
The best way we can think of to acknowledge his impact is by announcing the inclusion of Reengineering The Corporation in our upcoming book. Here are the opening paragraphs to our review of Reengineering the Corporation, which give perspective to the work that Hammer and Champy started fifteen years ago:
"Reengineering became the magic managerial term of the 1990s. Cover stories in business magazines touted Michael Hammer and Jim Champy as the strategic gurus of the moment. Companies like Deere, Ford, and Duke Power all found huge success using the concepts. Even Lou Gerstner in his autobiography, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, calls out reengineering as having played a role in his turnaround of IBM. The trouble with every fad is the ridicule that follows.
In the 1990s, the term "reengineering" became an easy substitute for the prior decade's "reorganizing,""restructuring," "delayering," "downsizing." The popularity of the term gave embattled executives needed cover when faced with media scrutiny and stock market pressure. The mere mention of a new reengineering initiative acknowledged the severity of a problem and indicated to shareholders that proper steps were being taken. But the actual results varied widely, and business leaders and journalists were quickly off to find and report on the next silver bullet. What's left is general ambivalence for one of the most important business concepts in the second half of the 20th century."
