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Paperback
336 pages
ISBN 9780385721707 Published Aug. 2005
Anchor Books
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Posted June 15, 2009 3:33 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths For Winning At Business Without Losing Your Self by Alan M. Webber, HarperBusiness, 270 pages, $24.99, Hardcover, April 2009, ISBN 9780061721830
Books like The Wisdom of Crowds and Super Crunchers show that groups and algorithms beat gurus and experts consistently in the decision-making department. It seems the usefulness of the sage is waning, but maybe something is being lost. Logic trees and collective aggregations may be more accurate, but they lack the compelling richness of a person's life experience. In the case of Rules of Thumb, missing out on Alan Webber's insights would be a terrible loss.
Webber spent his initial years out of college in Portland city politics. From there, he landed at the Harvard Business Review, where he worked under the legendary Ted Levitt and met his future business partner, Bill Taylor. Alan and Bill left HBR, and in 1994, founded Fast Company magazine. The duo sold the magazine in 2003 for $350 million to the magazine division of German media giant Bertlesman.
In Webber, you have someone who has sailed in the sea of business ideas for thirty years, as both discerning editor and successful entrepreneur. His new book, Rules of Thumb, is a compilation of the wisdom he collected over the years on 3"X5" index cards. He says he learned this technique of note-taking from Levitt, who used it as a way to organize all of the ideas he was exposed to each day.
Fifty-two rules fill the 270-page book and the stories Webber tells to illustrate each insight are personal. Webber's Rule #19 is "Focus on the Signal to Noise Ratio." He quotes Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer to help explain: "Too much measurement is no different than no measurement all. Pick a few metrics and stick to them." The same rule applies for purpose and values: identify two or three that represent what you do, and live by them. But, in contrast to the problem of too many metrics, it's often the lack of values or the absence of purpose that causes confusion.
Here is a sample of a few of the other rules:
Rule #15 - Every change needs four things: change, connections, conversation, and community.Rule #16 - Facts are facts; stories are how we learn.
Rule #34 - Simplicity is the new currency.
Rule #43 - Don't confuse credentials with talent.
Read Rules of Thumb slowly, in increments of ten or twelve pages. Spend some time contemplating a few of Webber's rules in those following days, as these truths need some time to sink. Then go do something. Do something different with the knowledge you've gained. As Webber says, "It's the best chance of creating the future we all want."
Jack Covert Selects: More Than You Know
Posted June 7, 2006 5:10 a.m. by jack
More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places
by Michael J. Mauboussin, Columbia University Press, 288 pages, $27.95 Hardcover, June 2006 ISBN 0231138709.
For the past two years, I've said that the new business book explains big ideas; it shows us how to look at the world differently. The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, and The World Is Flat all fit that bill. What if one book could give you a flavor for all of them? More Than You Know comes pretty close.
Author Michael Mauboussin, the chief investment strategist at Legg Mason, believes the investment community is overly influenced by its way of thinking. The book is a collection of 30 essays he wrote as a newsletter titled "The Consilient Observer". You won't find consilience in the dictionary; it means the "jumping together" of knowledge. Maubossin hoped to better understand various stock market phenomena by studying other disciplines for clues.
Each essay starts with quotes from his sources. He then spends a few pages talking about key elements of the source. In one essay, he talks about ant colonies, in the next its world class chess, followed by the concept of "herding" for psychology. The chapters end with how each topic applies to investing.
The strength of the book is its wide breadth of sources. The concepts of "affect", behavioral finance, and power law distributions, are some of the concepts for Blink, The Wisdom of Crowds, and The Long Tail. Because each idea is boiled down to its essence, you'll spend a little more time contemplating their broader applications.
Check it out and find out how everyday life influences financial logic.
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