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Posted Jan. 12, 2009 4:05 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Gallup has been producing great strength-centric books for the past decade. It all started with Now, Discover Your Strengths, released by Simon & Schuster in 2001, and the series continued with last year's bestselling Strengths Finder 2.0.
Up until this point, these books have been focused on the individual, whether it was learning about and focusing on your own strengths, or managers leveraging the strengths of their reports. Strengths Based Leadership shifts that focus and takes the step into the larger realm of teams, showing that they perform at their best when the group possesses a variety of strengths. Or, as the authors sum it up neatly, "Although individuals need not be well-rounded, teams should be."
Part One of the book refocuses on concentrating on your individual strengths as a leader, Part Two breaks those leadership strengths into four domains (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking), and Part Three takes on the crucial task of understanding why people follow.
The brilliance of Gallup is their ability to look at issues from simple, yet revolutionary angles. The strengths-based approach itself is a radical departure from the more traditional approach of self-improvement that focused on improving one's weaknesses to be more effective. Similarly, Gallup ignored traditional approaches to leadership books. Rather than doing a round of interviews with successful leaders to gather their insights and impart that wisdom to the rest of us, they went directly to those who are followers and asked them what makes a good leader. By going to those who follow, they discovered four key traits great leaders inspire: Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope.
This is a book every leader should own, and like Gallup's other strengths books, it's not done with you even when you're done with it. You're invited to take the web-based "StrengthsFinder" test again to reinvest in your strengths, and to take a new leadership version that will help you form teams and lead others based on their strengths.
Posted Jan. 12, 2009 4:03 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
It is very rare to read the foreword of a business book and laugh so hard that you just had to tell as many friends as you could about it. By inviting successful actors John Cleese and Craig Ferguson to say a few words about his new book, Andy Nulman grabs your attention in the first five pages, with nothing more that the element of Surprise.
It's become easier in today's Internet world to reach more people, but increasingly difficult to grab their attention and make them care. In POW! Right Between the Eyes, Nulman reveals the secrets and tactics of how to successfully use Surprise marketing to generate word-of-mouth and strengthen your relationship with customers. Andy hits you throughout the book with examples of Surprise marketing that will amaze you with their results. For example:
-How Oprah Winfrey used Surprise marketing with the "Everybody get's a car!" episode. Not only was it shocking that all 276 walked away with a free Pontiac G6, but website traffic skyrocketed 800% and helped Pontiac outsell its competitors by 20%, becoming a pop culture phenomenon.-How Nintendo reinvented the videogame experience, by creating the Wii for people who previously had no interest in videogames.
-How Target earned $7 billion a year in free publicity by floating a temporary store down New York's Hudson River.
-How Gary Veynerchuk, from his basement, took his family's 6 million dollar liquor store and transformed it into a 50 million dollar Wine Library.
The first chapter of the book lays out why Surprise is crucial to creating good marketing, and then you're off on an eight-chapter ride spanning everything related to it--from what Surprise is, to "The Art of the Business of Creating Surprise." Each chapter ends with a clever summary of the important takeaways, leaving readers eager to move onto the next lesson.
Andy Nulman, the king of Surprise, has succeeded in writing a book full of ideas that every organization can find value in. The outrageous stories and laugh-out-loud humor alone make it hard to put the book down, but as the CEO of Just for Laughs and Airbone Mobile, Nulman has the tools, knowledge and experience to show business owners, marketers, and organizations how to create practical and effective communication.
Posted Jan. 8, 2009 10:59 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Ping, the courageous frog, is back from his quest from the first book Gold wrote about him and he's ready to take his kindred creatures back to the Great Ocean with him. He is met with much opposition and doubt from the pond, especially from Toad, the Elder who doesn't want to move anywhere, because life as he knows it is good. In fact, Toad and the others can't even grasp the fact that the ocean is bigger, and has much more to offer them, than the pond they are used to. That is, everyone but two frogs: Daikon and Hodo.
These unlikely companions to Ping forge their way ahead, trying to understand how their life can be altered by this ocean. Ping takes them on a journey, not just away from the pond, but in their minds as well. He helps them see that if life isn't quite what you planned for or hoped it would be, you still have the power to change it. Daikon and Hodo, two aimless, meandering and naïve frogs, find that they can actually be in control of their own lives and make decisions for themselves.
This book is not just about taking risks and charting your own path in life. It's also about getting a booster shot of bravery. In these times of economic and job stress, many people are getting lost in their pursuit of the dream they had. They may think they are stuck in something they have to do now in order for things to get better. What Ping tells us is to have a clear goal in mind and to keep it in focus, no matter what the obstacles are. Maybe how you are getting there is not the right way, but only you have the power to make what's wrong right. To get there takes perseverance, drive and initiative. Sort of like the little engine that could, Ping helps his friends realize their individual hopes for the future, and along the way he teaches us all a valuable lesson or two.
The Way of Ping is not just a simple story of a little frog from a small pond. It's about the everyman and the struggles we all face in life.
Posted Jan. 8, 2009 10:54 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Peter A. Ubel is a physician, so how is it that he ended up writing a book about the intersection of psychology and the free market for one of the most prestigious business publishers in the country? The quick answer is that he knows what he's talking about. The long answer is that he has "spent the better part of fifteen years researching the forces that influence the way people make decisions" and directs the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan.
There has been a rash of behavioral economics books published recently that challenge the traditional view that human economic behavior is essentially rational. While most of the other books in the genre are subtler in their critique of that view, with titles like Nudge, Sway and Predictably Irrational, Ubel openly challenges the ways he believes traditional economics have failed us. Despite the book's title, though, Ubel is in no way anti-free market. He recognizes the tremendous wealth "of both opportunity and of consumer goods," that free markets have created, but also recognizes their fallibility.
With the meltdown of the economic system, there has been a lot a clamoring for more regulation of markets recently, but Ubel's critique is not a response to that crisis. His book is in response to "free market evangelists" who believe the market is the solution to every human ailment, even if it's an ailment the market itself seems to have created--such as the alarming increase in obesity in this country. As a physician on the front lines of the obesity battle, Ubel concentrates much of his focus on that problem, which he sees as a clear market failure. The problem, as Ubel sees it, is that those marketing products have spent so much time and money studying our behavior that they know more about how we make decisions than we do.
As you would expect from any book published by HBSP, Free Market Madness is well researched and intellectually engaging. Ubel weans us into the heavier issues with a brief history of both traditional and behavioral economics, while introducing us to the major players in each fields' development. Ubel definitely has a point of view and an agenda in this book, and as a self-described "flaming moderate" uses his platform to clamor for a middle way between free market evangelism and what critics of market regulation call a "nanny state." Regardless of whether or not you agree with the author, you will find the history and examples he provides a good addition to this ongoing conversation.
