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Posts by month in 2001: Jan. Feb. March April May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
Posted March 6, 2001 10:00 a.m. by katie
This is a strange and wonderful little book. I deeply respect the people who are running the new publishing company called Texere because of their outstanding track record, and I also have a huge respect for Henry Mintzberg, one of the greatest contemporary thinkers on strategy. When I heard about this book, I thought, all right, the great professor Mintzberg is going to show the airlines how flawed their strategy is and how they should fix it. Nope, that isnt what this book is about. Instead, it is the authors very funny rant about his personal airline and airport experiences. Surprised? I was, but the result is delightful.
Mintzberg makes it clear from the start that Why I Hate Flying will not be like any other management books, saying, No chapter begins: Five easy steps to. He then warns that if management advise is what you are looking for, then you should read the book carefully and do the opposite. Some of the shots he levels at the airlines are obvious and I have heard them before, but he presents them with almost Leno-style humor. Laugh out loud funny. His tale about cashing money in at Heathrowor as he calls it Haltrowis especially hilarious. But Mintzberg hasnt completely ignored the traditional business book approach, because the subtitle of each chapter has a business flair for those readers who need a little guidance. An example that speaks for itself?
Chapter 12: Why I Hate Airports Even MoreSubtitled
Consider this to be the chapter on Benchmarking. Not marking benches, imitating. Benchmarking means comparing your organization to others that are better than yours so that, at best, you can become second bestalongside everyone else. Becoming good is another matter. Here we ask: Can airports become, if not good, at least almost as good as airlines?
One of the things that you, the business book consumer, may have noticed in the past few years is that business books are getting shorter. Does that mean there is less to say on the subject? Of course not. Instead, I imagine that somebody somewhere hypothesized correctly that business people might want to be able to read and digest a business book during a long plane ride, and, ta da!, a new trend was set. (Who Moved My Cheese and FISH! are the perfect examples of how popular (and valuable) these quick reads can be). This little book, Why I Hate to Fly, is indeed the perfect airplane read, for obvious reasons. Pick up a copy and make your next flight an enlightening one.
Posted March 5, 2001 9:56 a.m. by katie
Patti Seybolds first book, Customers.Com has been one of our best-selling books for the past 5 year. It was our #1 bestseller for all of 1999, and, one must also note (as much as I hate to acknowledge it) we werent the only company selling her book. In fact, the publisher still has 250,000 books of her first book in print. In other words, it was a BIG book! Needless to say, I was looking forward to what she had to say in her next book. Could she continue to stay out in front of the crowd like she had with her first book? She has succeeded.
In The Customer Revolution, Seybold provides a fascinating look at the Internet and e-commerce, and explains why the real measure of success is customer relationships and customer loyalty. Music to my ears. Whenever I read books like this, books that talk about practical issues which I can apply to retail, I always compare the authors opinion with my own experience in the business. Typically, these types of books serve as a guidepost for my role as president of a company. Best case, they have me nodding along saying, Yeah thats my experienceIm doing the right thing. Then, again best case, suddenly they bring up a point that makes me stop and think: Geez, I havent thought of that. Those moments are the most valuable, of course. Its great to have a book reaffirm any actions you have taken in your business, but it is even more valuable for books to act as motivators, as idea farms, that may inspire you think outside your box. The Customer Revolution does this successfully.
In the beginning of the book, Seybold talks about the music industry and the devastating effects Napster and Mp3 and the portable Mp3 player have wrought on the industry. She uses them as the canary in the coal mine because she believes that the customer revolution will affect all industries. As a previous insider, and now an outsider looking in on the music industry, I find her points about why Napster and other peer-to-peer networks and the digitizing of music are changing the music industry right on. She explains very cogently the issues involved, like copyright protection for the artist, but she also shows that many consumers are using the new technology to change how they use music. People are digitizing their entire CD libraries so they can make private mixes and share the mixes with friends. She calls these folks renegade customers. It is very easy for me to take to heart these lessons of the music industry, because it is not unlike what the publishing industry is looking at in terms of the Internet and ebooks, etc.
Seybold ends each chapter with a section of takeaways which are extremely valuable.
The problem with books like this are that every page contains something I want to tell you about. I guess that means that I should stop here and let you buy the book and read its wisdom for yourselves. However, I want to share with you a little about the second part of the book. There, Seybold presents case studies that will show you what familiar companies (and some unfamiliar ones) have done and are doing to focus on delivering a great branded customer experience and how leaders are changing their companies to respond to their customers needs. I have a strong feeling that this book will have a prominent spot on my best of 2001 and is another book that I want you to know you heard about it first here.
Posted Feb. 4, 2001 8:15 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In this new book, Honold postulates that all organizations need to have a workforce that is not just willing to learn but one that embraces learning. Her premise is that employees that want to learn can develop new skills, add creativity and welcome changeall essential ingredients for a successful organization. Let me share this an example with you:
Chaparral Steel needed to increase the yield on a specific lathe in order to meet the needs of its customers. A manager asked the machinist who operated the lathe to investigate the purchase of another one in order to meet the need. The operator visited companies that used the lathe in the US as well as in Japan. He selected a used machine rather than a brand new one and saved the company $300,000. Had the manager done the same investigation and come to the same conclusion, it is likely the machine operator would have grumbled about being given secondhand equipment. Instead, the lathe operator not only learned a great deal about the equipments cost and operation but also gained a stake in making the machine function effectively.
It seems that every page in part 1 and 2 contains motivating examples like this that you can adapt to fit the people in your organization. Part 3 offers ninety tools for managers and HR people to help guide them through the process of adding learning to their employees day-to-day routine. Included in this section is everything from informally looking at customer contact to formally looking at Instruments for understanding perceptions and tendencies using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and other personal assessment instruments.
Deep down, we all know that our workforce and our work-life require constant learning in order to engender growth, but we also know that it is difficult to create an environment where learning is second nature. This book will guide you on how to promote learning opportunities, but more importantly, the book is flexible enough to complement any training programs that may already be in place.
Posted Feb. 2001 9:52 a.m. by katie
I love this book! Why? Because I love to learn, and I love to keep current on business trends and the changing culture. In the process of learning, however, I more often than not acquire just enough knowledge to be, as my wife says, dangerous. Not so with this book. What you will learn through reading Commanding Communications will bring you up to date with an industry that just may determine the future of business.
Bonocore has written a book that looks at an industry that is changing so much and so rapidly, I am surprised that he wrote a book, not a magazine article. He acknowledges this dilemma in the preface saying I was more determined to write a booknot a technical abstract or marketing tome or statistical survey, but a comprehensive and comprehensible bookthat would examine and interpret the explosive world of communications in a completely fresh and, hopefully, enlightening way. He does it. This is the book that I have been looking for that explains the new technology of wireless and wireline communications. This is the book that will explain acronyms like VOIPVoice Over Internet Protocol, and many more that you have heard, but didnt understand. Bonocore begins his tale with the breakup of the Bell System, and then follows the various telecommunication acts that opened the market to aggressive enterprises like MCI and McCaw. Then, he lays out the demolition-rebuilding process, defining the five building blocks to that process: 1) Voice Consolidation; 2) cable-telephony consolidation; 3) network integration; 4) content versus conduit; and 5) computing-communications integration.
If we want to be an learned participant in the future of telecommunications, this is the book that we all need to read so we can understand how this industry got to where it is now and what it will be like in three years.
Posted Feb. 2001 5:53 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Ram Charan is the co-author of our best-selling Every Business is a Growth Business and has written the perfect book for people like me who have worked themselves into a management or supervisory position without the "booklearning" many of our peers have. As the title implies, this is a book that explains everything from margins to 'Return on Investment', and much more. Charan uses the street merchant and the CEO of a multinational company to show that everybody in business cares about the same things, such as cash, inventory, velocity and growth. I especially loved that Chapter 1 is titled "Why Jack Welch thinks and talks like a street merchant." While the chapter doesn't talk about the soon-to-be ex-leader of GE directly, it explains in very easy to understand terms what it means to run either a one horse operation "street merchant" or a multinational "GE." They both need to understand the simple and not-so-simple concepts of making money.
This book can change your business, because your people will have that business knowledge that they didn't get when they were getting that English Lit degree in college. Also to be noted, the book is very short and written in unbelievably simple terminology so that even a non-reader in your organization can get value from it. This is the absolutely perfect book to use to start "open book management" program in your company. Think about it: everybody in your organization understanding how business is done and all pulling on the same oar at the right time. Good stuff!
