Posts by year: 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000
Posts by month in 2001: Jan. Feb. March April May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
Posted Jan. 9, 2001 9:40 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Duty First: West Point and the Making of American Leaders by Ed Ruggero, Harper Collins Publishers, 320 Pages, $27.50 Hardcover, January 2001
I have met some very interesting people in this career. I have had dinners with Ken Blanchard and listened to his many wonderful stories. I have had a few beers with Tom Peters and talked about how we can and will change the world. But I think the most interesting person I have ever met was ex-US Army Chief of Staff General Gordon R. Sullivan. Years ago, General Sullivan had written a book called: Hope is Not a Method. To promote the book, his publisher brought six other booksellers and me to the Gettysburg battlefield to learn about leadership using the three-day battle as a training exercise. General Sullivan explained that the downsizing of the US Army after the Gulf War was the largest reengineering project ever. As a guy who spent some years in the military, I found his thoughts about changing the Army after the Gulf war interesting, but I just didnt think it would be possible for the military to change centuries of top down management style. (What did you learn from your visit there and how does that pertain to this book youre about to talk about?). Accompanying the general was the historian for the Army stationed at West Point. (What does this historian have to do with this review? I think you are using it to segue into the West Point book, but Im not sure I get it. Can you elaborate on the connection between your experience with G. Sullivan, and why this new book is important?) Duty First is a book that follows the men and women of the class of 2002 during their first year at West Point Military Academy. I really enjoyed meeting the young men and women that populate this book, in addition to the books value as a business text. Ruggero shows how the USMA has changed its leadership training from screaming-upper-classman-demeaning-the-incoming-freshman approach to a more reasoned leadership learning program. USMA claims to be Americas premier leadership school and this book breaks down how they are going about changing the old to the new. These changes are not done without some grumbling from past classes, of course, and Ruggero does a good job for showing the kind of resistance military innovators face. If you are stuck in a large organization that seems impossible to change, this is the book for you to read. If you are interested in knowing some other good books about USMA, let me know and Ill send you a list.
Posted Jan. 7, 2001 4:05 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
One of our best sellers from 1999 was First, Break All the Rules, a book we continue to sell in large quantities. So, I was excited to hear that Buckingham and Clifton were coming out with a new book. Not only would I love to have another great seller on my hands, but I also looked forward to reading the book myself. I truly feel that people are the heart of an organization, and that the best organizations utilize their people to their utmost potential. That potential is the focus of Now, Discover Your Strengths.
To begin, the authors posit that businesses (and personalities) are built on two faulty assumptions:
1. Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything.
2. Each person's greatest room for growth is in his or her areas of greatest weakness.
The author's claim (and it sure makes sense to me), that the best managers lead using these alternate assumptions:
1. Each person's talents are enduring and unique.
2. Each person's greatest room for growth is in the areas of the person's greatest strengths.
So, if these claims are correct, how do you go about identifying your strengths and getting them to work for you? Buckingham and Clifton offer a solution for this dilemma. Working with data gathered by Gallup, who conducted interviews with over 2 million people, the authors present the reader with thirty-four basic "themes", or strengths. There are hundreds of combinations of these individual strengths, and in order to find out what your 'combination of strengths' is requires you to take a test on their website. When you buy the book, you are given a password and a URL. The test is serious, extensive, and comprehensive. It isn't short, it takes a commitment from you, but I also think the rewards are significant. I took the test and according to the people in my organization who judged the results, the test was dead-on, nailing me and how I manage. Think about it. Self-knowledge is often hard to come by.
In addition to the valuable test, Now, Discover Your Strengths offers you supporting information regarding the results of your test, defines the thirty-four strengths, and help you along with any questions you may have regarding the test. I really had fun with this test and book. Learning something about yourself that you can immediately apply for $26.00 is a good thing.
Posted Jan. 6, 2001 4:57 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
As I have mentioned in past JCS's, I love to (as we used to say in the sixties) "turn people on" to new books, authors, or ideas. Last week, I received an email from a woman whose business savvy I really respect because she keeps her ear held solidly to the ground, listening for what is coming. In this email, she told me she had been at a conference the week before where a new book called The Cultural Creatives was all the rage.
This book is a fascinating study of a newly-discovered, rapidly-growing segment of the population the authors call "The Cultural Creatives." The authors are market researchers and opinion pollsters, and the data they used was acquired from thirteen years of survey research studies on more than 100,000 Americans, plus more than 100 focus groups and many in-depth interviews. This new segment (the other two are labeled "Moderns" and "Traditionals") was too small to be considered prominent in the 60's, but now the authors estimate the CC's as 50 million strong. The qualities which define the CC's include: having a very strong belief in ecology; caring about interpersonal relationships; dreaming of world peace; working as social activists. They are active volunteers- in other words, they are walking the walk. In addition, the CC's have a strong belief in spirituality and holistic practices. (In Europe, they could be called "Greens"). To really show, in dramatic detail, the differences between the segments, the authors include charts which clarify their findings.
The reason I have picked this book for JCS, even though the book is classified by the publishers as a "Social Science/Sociology title", is because, about ten years ago, there was a book called, The Clustering of America, which illustrated how the authors believe America was segmented. Business people were able to apply that information to their businesses, and I think this book can work in this same way. 'The Cultural Creatives' are a segment of consumers that is growing, will continue to grow, and needs to be acknowledged by business to truly utilize them in the future.
Posted Jan. 6, 2001 3:58 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
About three months ago, I was interviewed by The Industry Standard about the success of fable-based business books like Who Moved My Cheese? The attitude of the interviewer was that the books are lightweight fluff (not unlike today's pop music) that simply proves that the world is indeed going to hell-in-a-handbasket. I rather vehemently disagreed with the interviewer saying that these books can change the business world more quickly and thoroughly than a book written by the most distinguished professor. Think about it. We learned many of our most valuable moral lessons via Mother Goose, and we all know the lyrics to at least one Beatles song. Pop culture is pop culture, because it is popular. Books like Cheese reach the greatest number of people at various levels of an organization, because they are readable and engaging, and should not be disregarded because of their popularity.
The originator of the fable-based business book is Ken Blanchard, whose One Minute Manager (cowritten by the author of Who Moved My Cheese) jumpstarted the trend. Blanchard continues to couch his business advice within compelling fables in Gung Ho! and Raving Fans, written with Sheldon Bowles. Now, he and Bowles offers a third book in this trilogy, High Five!.
The essence of High Five is captured in one catch phrase: None of us is as smart as all of us. I love simple ways of looking at complex ideas. This book is the story of a guy who is laid off from his job because he is a lone wolf and not a team player. He takes over his fifth grade son's hockey team, and finds a "guru" in a retired teacher who was the winningest girls basketball coach in the state. Ultimately, he learns how to coach his team and to become a better team player. Again, I think the authors have created a book that can explain a rather abstract concept, which will appeal for a very broad base of readers.
Posted Jan. 5, 2001 3:48 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Because I'm human and a slacker at heart, "Building Cross-Cultural Competence" is not the kind of book I usually consider for JCS. It is from a University press (read: dry and boring), is scholarly (read: dry and boring), is on a subject that couldn't be interesting, (read: dry and boring) and is a physically large book (read: dry, boring AND time-consuming). HOWEVER, before I completely turn you off, let me tell you about what I learned: to overlook this book is to make a BIG mistake.
Yes, the book is published by a University Press, but is far from being dry and boring (even if the cover art is awful). They use graphics to add a surprising amount of humor. I know, I know, I said a University Press published the book, but you'll easily be engrossed by the wealth of timely information within.
Yes, the book is scholarly. The authors used more than fourteen years of research with nearly 50,000 managers who responded along with their international business experience to compare American values with over forty other nations.
Yes, it concerns a topic that cannot be interesting- usually. The authors define six cultural issues and their reverse images (for example, universalism vs. particularism) as examples of how people of different cultures look at the same issue. The authors make the point that often Americans look at one side and the rest of the world looks at the other side. Americans should consider this as we are negotiating, selling, or just relating to people of other cultures.
Yes, it is a physically large book, but only because it has quite a few illustrations and graphs that do a great job in making this easy-to-read book immediately understandable. Actually, the layout of the book is kind of fun. The odd numbered chapters are the explanation of the six cultural issues in detail, and then, the even numbered chapters consist of examples that illustrate the issues. These examples are perhaps ones you have heard before, but when looked at through the authors' prism, they are seen in new light.
Why do we need this book? Some factiods: 25% of Silicon Valley's technology business is run by Chinese and Indian engineers. Immigrant-run companies account for $16.8 billion in sales in 1998, and created 58,282 jobs in that year alone. This constituted 17 percent of the total sales in 1998, and 14 percent of the total jobs. Yes, folks. The train is leaving the station and you can either board or be left behind. This book helps us, at least, know the fare.
