May « 2004 « 800 CEO Read

May 28, 2004

Jack Covert Selects: Call of the Mall

Filed under: Jack Covert Selects — Jack @ 5:22 pm

This is a Jack Covert Selects from April 2004. I thought this went well with Todd’s prior post today.

The Call of the Mall: A Walking Tour Through the Crossroads of our Shopping Culture by Paco Underhill, Simon and Schuster, 200 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, February 2004, ISBN 0743235916

Mall shopping is a sensual experience that combines lights, music, food, people, and an American favorite, consumerism. The Call of the Mall guides you on a tour of a typical mall through the eyes of author Paco Underhill, a retail-anthropologist, who points out all the oddities of the shopping experience. Underhills first book, Why We Buy, was an enthralling observation of the buying public. I consider myself to be a pretty astute salesman, but Ive learned a lot from both books.

The Call of the Mall is literally set up as a shopping experience. The story unravels as you approach the parking lot from the highway, you enter the mall, shop, go to the bathroom, eat, and observe. As this is going on, Underhill is explaining the hidden details happening around you. You are introduced to two professionals along the way: one is a visual merchandiser and the other is a store designer. They offer their observations and knowledge to point out many helpful tips on making a store a place to discover, rather than just a place to buy. Actual customers also offer their point of views, and are examined to determine what would make their shopping experience more enjoyable.

This book is interesting and useful, but also humorous. For example, Underhill points out that when men go shopping with their wives, they walk around with their hands in their pockets; check it out next time you are shopping its true! Underhills writing is conversational and concise, which makes it easy to relate to his professional observations.

I consider myself a merchant in the classical sense, as I have spent most of my life selling books and music, but The Call of the Mall gave me a load of new valuable marketing advice. As a consumer, I thought it was interesting to learn about the purpose of a stores layout, and the psychology that goes into retail sales. This is a great study of sociology, not just the phenomenon of the mall and shopping. The Call of the Mall is some thing everyone who takes part in the exchange of goods should read.

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Armstrong at AT&T

Filed under: General Management — Todd Sattersten @ 5:16 pm

There is a feature article* in Wednesday’s (5/26/04) Wall Street Journal about C. Michael Armstrong. He is retiring as chairman of Comcast after forty years in business. It will be interesting to see how history treats him as a business leader. He has taken hits for his reign as CEO of AT&T, but many are looking at that period again with the information now available.

In Armstrong’s words from commencement at Shenandoh University: “What we didn’t know was that WorldCom was fraudulently cooking their books for $6 billion in the year 2000. Qwest was federally investigated, individuals criminally charged and it has restated billions of its financial reporting.”

Here is the business book angle of the story. This from the WSJ article:

A low point for Mr. Armstrong came in 2002, when he learned that Mr. Bossidy devoted a section of his book “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” to Mr. Armstrong’s mistakes. The three-page section said AT&T’s strategy went wrong because of bad personnel choices and faulty assumptions. Mr. Bossidy and co-author Ram Charan noted that long-distance rates declined faster than AT&T assumed and that it took AT&T longer than expected to execute its plan.

Writing before WorldCom’s fraud was disclosed, the authors said AT&T “did not take into account its organizational inability to compete against aggressive rivals in a fast-moving marketplace.”

Mr. Armstrong complains Mr. Bossidy never called him for comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bossidy declined to comment on why he didn’t speak to Mr. Armstrong before publication. She also said the comments in the book about Mr. Armstrong “were not personal” and were “consistent with widely reported accounts of the company’s strategy.”

Mr. Bossidy declined to comment on whether WorldCom’s fraud changes his opinion of Mr. Armstrong’s strategy.

Making matters worse, Ralph Larsen, a former AT&T board member who had been one of Mr. Armstrong’s biggest supporters, wrote a blurb praising the book that appeared on its back cover. Mr. Larsen says that when he read the galleys of the book, the section about AT&T wasn’t included. Mr. Bossidy’s spokeswoman says that the AT&T material was in the galleys.

I am used to seeing this sort of he-said/she-said in the politics, but not in the small world of business books.

*subscription needed

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Busy Bee

Filed under: Human Resources/Organizational Development,Personal Development — Todd Sattersten @ 12:59 pm

Matthew at nonbillablehour is really busy this weekend. I was hoping to just get some yard work done, but you should see Matthew’s list. The book related item on his agenda is finishing Seven Day Weekend.

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Creative Commons Coolness

Filed under: Information Technology — Todd Sattersten @ 10:33 am

Suw Charam writes an extensive post on Lawrence Lessig’s new book Free Culture and all the derivative work that came from the use of Creative Commons.

This from Lessig’s blog: “36 hours after the book was released, I know of nine versions available, including: MS-reader, Rocket e-Book, zipped, iSilo, Mobipocket, EasyRead, PostScript, Plain Text, and HTML.”

Charam’s post details the quick evolution and creation of the audiobook. People from all over the world recorded themselves reading a chapter of the book. Within three days, the whole book was available.

If you aren’t familiar with the Creative Commons effort, Charam’s post is a great way to get caught up.

[via Creative Commons Weblog]

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Hearing the Call of the Mall

Filed under: Retail — Todd Sattersten @ 9:25 am

Here is what people have been saying about Paco Underhill’s new book Call of the Mall.

You start by reading the first chapter at the ABC’s Good Morning America website.
Nicole at Fuzzy Signals has a pretty extensive review of the book and she talks about how she has used Underhill’s work on other projects.
In their fifty book challenge, infinitejess.com is not so thrilled with the book.
Monica and Deepak at webjives.com pull the book review from the Wharton newsletter.
Jessamyn at jessamyn.com gives her take on the book.

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May 27, 2004

Switzerland and Innovation

Filed under: Innovation — Todd Sattersten @ 8:35 am

Joel Kurtzman (former HBR editor and editor of MBA in a Box) writes a piece for European Business Forum. He says you need to be messy to innovate and that places like Switzerland and Japan are a little too organized.

This goes well with a post from Evelyn at Crossroads Dispatches. The original article she quotes is Where To Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group – by Michael Erard, Think Tank, NYT, May 22, 2004:

A cautionary real-life anecdote is in Hans Finzel’s book, “Change Is Like a Slinky: 30 Strategies for Promoting and Surviving Change in Your Organization” (Northfield Publishing).

He describes how 50,000 of the 62,000 Swiss watchmakers lost their jobs from 1979 to 1981 because the world began shifting to quartz watches — mostly ones made in Asia. The Swiss didn’t realize how the world was changing until it was too late.

“It was the Swiss themselves who invented the electronic quartz movement at their research institute in Neuchatel, Switzerland,” Finzel writes. “Yet when the Swiss researchers presented this revolutionary idea to the Swiss manufacturers in 1967, it was rejected.

Hope we didn’t hurt anybody’s feelings by picking on the Swiss today

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What Lip-Sticking Recommends

Filed under: History and Biographies,Marketing,Personal Development,Retail — Todd Sattersten @ 7:31 am

This week, we are showcasing Lip-Sticking by Yvonne DiVita for our “What Do You Recommend?” feature. I liked seeing a lot of titles I am not familiar with.

Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online by Yvonne DiVita
Release 2.0 by Esther Dyson
Selling To VITO (The Very Important Top Officer) by Anthony Parinello
Networlding: Building Relationships and Opportunities for Success by Melissa Giovagnoli
Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons by Lynn Peril
Marketing to Moms : Getting Your Share of the Trillion-Dollar Market by Maria T. Bailey
Pretty Good for a Girl : The Autobiography of a Snowboarding Pioneer by Tina Basich
Why We Blog by Dave Young
FutureConsumer.Com: The Webolution of Shopping to 2010 by Frank Feather
The Natural Advantages of Women by Michele Miller

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May 26, 2004

Introducing Dennis, My Mechanic

Filed under: Jack's Thoughts,Small Business — Jack @ 3:46 pm

I was at my mechanic yesterday and he was lamenting being a small business person. He has gone to some classes put on for mechanics, which has helped. I sent him the Jeffrey Fox new book on small business and I told him that I would like him to review the book for the blog. He is extremely computer literate and he said he would.

BTW, I consider a good mechanic more important than a good doctor. You need a mechanic many more times..that said, now that I am officially a senior citizen, that may change. Dennis has been my mechanic for twenty plus years and I love the fact that I can say that the car does something and I know it will be fixed and what it costs is in fact what I should pay. He is really good.

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A New Enterprise

Filed under: Publishing Industry — Jack @ 2:43 pm

It is no secret that business books as a catagory are suffering. Certain classic publishers are now selling cook books–The Free Press–and some have disappeared–Perseus Books, actually they still exist but as the name of a collection of publishers.

W.W. Norton, an employee owned independent publisher–not owned by some major “media” company–is launching a new imprint called Enterprise, an Atlas/Norton Book. They describe the imprint as “The business book as literature.” The first two books being published in September are a bio of Ted Turner by Ken Auletta and a book on Chess Records and the Business of Rock and Roll called Machers and Rockers.

My understanding is that Norton will official announce everything at next weeks book convention in Chicago. I should have galleys of the two books before the end of the week and will report my thoughts shortly. It is always exciting when something new is launched.

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