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Posted April 14, 2009 4:34 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Some of the most successful business books use the research method to find the standouts in business, and then dig into those organizations to see what makes them so successful. Jim Collin's brilliant Good to Great comes to mind.
Jim Champy, author of Reengineering the Corporation—which is one of the titles featured in our book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time—also uses the research method. This is his second book in a new series of compact volumes that he describes as follows: "Taken together, these volumes deliver practical advice on how to succeed in today's brave new world of business. That's because they are rooted in the actual experiences and insights of a select group of companies that have found new and better ways to innovate and grow in spite of our challenging economic environment."
The chapter "What Could Be More Inspiring Than Convenience with Economy?" uses the story of car-sharing company Zipcar as an example. Every time Clark Waterfall—the co-founder of high tech headhunter Boston Search Group—had a meeting in town, he had to drive in and deal with the ridiculous Boston traffic, instead of having the convenience of the train he was used to. Parking and the huge commutes were a royal pain. Zipcar has solved his problem, and found a very sweet spot in major metropolitan areas. You pay ZipCar $10 per hour to use their cars. They are parked in convenient places, and you simply wave your Zipcar card to get into a car, drive it for as long as you want, and then return it to that spot and replace the gas. For a commuter like Clark, this is a perfect deal.
In the chapter titled "What Could Be More Inspiring Than a Crusade?" Champy tells the story of Stoneyfield Farm and how they found a need, and created a brand around it, using simple, yet dramatic marketing ideas—like giving their product away for free to create buzz. Champy smartly summarizes each chapter with practical and valuable "Rules of Engagement." This chapter's are "Make sure your customers are true believers," "Don't hesitate to break the rules," "Use every available technique to tell your story," and "Be completely true to your cause," among many, many more.
In closing, I must congratulate either Jim Champy or FT Press for the design of this book. They use different font sizes to highlight and summarize ideas not only very effectively, but attractively as well. I'm looking forward to the future releases in this series. This one is a small treasure that will help you inspire and grow your business.
Posted April 13, 2009 7:19 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Everyone seems to have a vague idea of what sociology is. But a high school history class, or the course you took in college to cover some elective requirement, is about as far as we usually get in that understanding. In business, we should care more about this area of study, as this is the realm of science that deals with how groups behave. Teams, firms, and even customers all fall into this realm.
Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody is a big-think book along the lines of Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind and Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. But, where Pink and Ariely deal with individuals, Shirky writes about the collective. The thrust of the Brooklyn-based consultant and professor's argument is that our focus on technology itself is misplaced, and what we should be paying closer attention to are the new behaviors society adopts as the result of technology. "[S]ocial tools don't create collective action—they merely remove the obstacles to it," Shirky writes.
Shirky shows how many popular business concepts of the last several years have roots in sociology. The Long Tail, the description author Chris Anderson used to shape his idea of power law distributions, is usually formed by systems where things interact with each other. Many social phenomenons, ranging from population of cities to popularity of music tracks on iTunes and changes on Wikipedia pages, follow the same quickly sloping curve from popularity to obscurity.
You may have heard of "flash mobs" forming at random in train stations, hotels and city parks. The tasks they take to are harmless, like freezing in place at a given time or dancing to some unheard soundtrack. These groups can form quickly and with little more than a text message—a great example of the speed technology can bring to the coordination of groups. As Shirky writes, "Whenever you improve a group's ability to communicate internally, you change the things it is capable of." Protesters in Belarus have used these exact techniques to oppose their repressive government. Flash mobs have formed to read books on the steps of the that country's Supreme Court and eat ice cream in Oktyabrskaya Square—harmless activities for which people are still arrested, and allow organizers to document the suppression and treatment of citizens.
These may sound like weighty topics for a business book, but they are exactly the issues leaders are going to be struggling with, or taking advantage of, as technology changes our social behaviors. Technology allows more loosely formed groups to accomplish more complicated tasks to greater effect, whether sharing tips for hacking new features on iPhones or staging boycotts after complaints go unaddressed. The rules are changing and, as Shirky says, "What the group does with that power is a separate question."
Posted April 10, 2009 7:23 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In my dotage, I have discovered some things—one of them being that, often times, patterns repeat themselves. In Don't Bring It to Work, Sylavia Lafair contends that negative behavior traits at work can often be traced back to one's family. And, though being a jokester or a gossip at work can be fun, it can also be very destructive in a team business environment.
The author identifies thirteen of the character/workplace patterns many of us have seen in offices we have worked in. They include: Super-Achiever, Rebel, Persecutor, Victim, Rescuer, Clown, Martyr, Splitter, Procrastinator, Drama Queen or King, Pleaser, Denier, and Avoider. Now, truth be told, I am not usually a fan of books like this. But when I saw this list and looked back at my forty-plus years of working, I was hooked. She really nails people with these thirteen patterns.
Because she believes that much of this behavior comes from our family relationships—hence the title of the book, Don't Bring it to Work—she believes it can be changed and offers three steps to becoming aware of, and avoiding, these patterns at work.
Those three steps are "The Way OUT: Observe, Understand, and Transform."
- Observe your behavior to discern underlying behavior patterns
- Understand and probe deeper to discover the origins of these patterns
- Transform by taking actions to change your behavior.
In the book, she takes the thirteen character patterns and discusses the "typical family experience" that caused those patterns. What I found fun is that she added some famous figures as examples. For instance, the "typical family experience" of the Super-Achiever is "There is financial or emotional bankruptcy in past generations, a history of failures or losses that instill shame." Examples here include Richard Nixon, William Clinton, and Jerry Lewis.
The author uses some really interesting and remarkable stories to support her ideas and add the connective tissue that a book like this needs to stick. As a result, we're more able to act on changing these patterns at work because we actually remember the stories that support the ideas.
