Taking People with You


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Hardcover
256 pages
ISBN 9781591844549 Published Jan. 2012
Portfolio
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Taking People with You
The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen
By David Novak 

Related Blog Posts
Friday Links
Posted April 6, 2012 9:20 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ I suppose I should cover the big news in eBooks this week, but as Google Ends Their eBook Agreement with Indies and Apple Finally Meets Its Match (Hint: It's Called the DOJ), the landscape looks as unsure as ever and I really don't know what to think or write about it all. (I do wonder if Google's decision has anything to do with the Google, Asustek plan to co-brand a 7-inch tablet PC that it sounds like we'll be seeing soon.) Maybe I'll head down to Chicago to see Nicholas Carr's talk about A History of the Future of the Book and report back to you all.

➻ So how about we go for something more fun, like a discussion of What Books Make You Cringe To Remember? or People Who Changed Graphic Design Forever?

➻ Or how about a video of Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about "how important it is to be sensitive to someone’s current state of mind when you are trying to teach or persuade."

Being an educator is not only getting the truth right, but there has to be an act of persuasion in there, as well. Persuasion isn't always, "Here's the facts; you're either an idiot or you're not." It's, "Here are the facts and ... a sensitivity to your [audiences'] state of mind. And it's the facts plus the sensitive, when convolved together, [that] creates impact.

He made this point as a slight rebuke to Richard Dawkins "articulately barbed" teaching methods. To counter, and to show that there are worse approaches than his, Dawkins quotes a former editor of New Scientist magazine who, when asked what the philosophy of the magazine was, replied:

Our philosophy at New Scientist is this: Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can f*** off."

It's worth watching the video just to hear Dawkins curse.

➻ You could also listen in as Charlie Rose talks about business in China with Zhang Xin, CEO of Soho China, and two Portfolio authors—David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands and author of Taking People With You, and Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group and author of End of the Free Market and Every Nation for Itself. Brilliant people and conversation.

➻ And to celebrate the joy of a new baseball season and the inevitable suffering of life, I recommend Josh Wilker's Satori One and Satori Two. Mashing up the endings of those two posts:

We stumble into things, lose our grip on other things, go to Japan or don’t go to Japan, whichever would be more indicative of life’s tendency to expel us from our dreams, and yet once in a great while we connect in such a way that there is no feeling whatsoever, the bat meeting the ball just right, no mind, big mind, and we round the bases, tracing an imperfect oval with our route, a woozy zero, our misshapen bliss. ... Breathe out. You are chained to the world.

And the Brewers are on the field as I type this, Bob Uecker telling me about it in my headphones.

➻ The birth of a book, a beautiful thing.

Birth of a Book from Glen Milner on Vimeo.



Taking People With You
Posted Jan. 18, 2012 5:43 a.m. by bob
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Over the course of several decades in business, David Novak has worked his way up in the Pepsi Cola North America Co. through sales and marketing, into what was then its fast food division. In the late 1990s, the restaurants were spun off into a separate company and Novak went with them. Today he serves as Executive Chairman and CEO of Yum! Brands Inc., owner of the Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell chains.

All that time building businesses, creating products and creating value has taught Novak one thing, which is the subtitle to Taking People With You, and that’s taking people with you is “The Only way to Make BIG Things Happen.” Novak attributes the success the companies he’s bee involved with to the lessons he’s learned and stuck with over the years. These lessons, he says, help get people aligned, enthusiastic, and focused relentlessly on an organization’s mission. The tenets laid out in the book help achieve that. They are based on a trademarked program Novak has developed and uses at Yum! that’s also Called Taking People With You. His approach is less about literally taking people with you, as in promotions and carrying them into your inner circle, than it is about inspiring them to sign on to your vision of the future – a vision that includes them. In the book, Novak tells the story of an experience early in his career in which he had just become head of Pepsi Bottling. Prior to this, he spent the bulk of his career in sales and marketing, so operations were new for him, he wrote. In an effort to learn more about operations, Novak travelled to a plant where he picks up the story:

I was at a plant in St. Louis, conducting a 6:00 A.M. roundtable meeting with a group of route salesman, when, over coffee and doughnuts, I asked what I thought was a pretty straightforward question about merchandising, which is all about the displays and visibility we get in convenience and grocery stores. I wanted to know what they thought was working and what wasn’t. Right away, someone piped up, “Bob is the expert in that area. He can tell you how it’s done.” Someone else added, “Bob taught me more in one day than I’d learned in two years on the job.” Every single person in the room agreed: Bob was the best there was. I looked over at Bob, thinking he must be thrilled by all this praise. Instead, I saw that he had tears running down his face. When I asked him what was wrong, Bob, who had been with the company for over forty years and was about to retire in just two weeks, said, “I never knew anyone felt this way about me.” The rest of my visit to the plant went pretty well, but I walked away that day with an uneasy feeling. It was such a shame that Bob never felt appreciated. It was a missed opportunity for the business, too. We all could have benefited from his expertise, and more people could have learned from him. This guy was clearly great at what he did, but who knows how much better he could have been in a workplace that recognized and rewarded his knowledge. I knew that if he felt overlooked and underappreciated, others at the plant did too.

Novak wrote that the experience profoundly changed him and made him determined to never be the kind of leader who would let someone move through his or her entire career without being appreciated or that she had the potential to be so much more. None of this is as fluffy as it sounds as, in addition to his insightful advice, Novak provides exercises, worksheets and other tools to help executives from any size company bring people with them. And does this stuff work? Consider that Yum! Brands’ stock has grown in value by 13 percent or more for each of the last nine years, that the company operates in 112 countries and employs 1.4 million people. Taking People With You is destined to become a staple on the bookshelves of leaders. The advice is practical, effective and actionable. The cherry on top? Novak is giving his share of the proceeds from the sale of the book to the United Nations World Food Programme.



Introducing the Candidates: Leadership, Management
Posted Dec. 22, 2011 2:45 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Over the course of this week, we will be introducing, by category, the candidates for the 2011 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards. Even though only one of the candidates can win the big prize, good business books deserve an audience, and perhaps one on this list will be the winning book..to you.

Today, we take a look at the candidates in two categories, Leadership and Management.

Leadership

So which book is going to win the Leadership and the Management categories and be in the running for the 800-CEO-READ Best Business Book of 2011? We'll announce the shortlist and winner in January!

Stay tuned!




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