We are working on a new project.
I can tell you it has something to do with books.
I can tell you that there will be something new every day.
And I can tell you it starts Nov. 7th.
Let us know if you want to be the first to know.
October 27, 2005
The Play List
I found a gem locked away in my email this morning. Our friend Kevin Carroll sent me a list of the books he gives out at his seminars. It is a great list. I am just going to let it speak for itself.
- The Art of Business by Stan Davis and David McIntosh
- Bang! By Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval
- Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
- Discover Your Genius by Michael J. Gelb
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
- How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb
- Jamming by John Kao
- Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz
- Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders
- Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands by Kevin Roberts
- Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon Mackenzie
- Primal Leadership by Danielle Coleman
- Purple Cow by Seth Godin
- Rules of the Red Rubber Ball by Kevin Carroll
- The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
- The Five Faces of Genius by Annette Moser-Wellman
- The Map of Innovation by Kevin O’Connor
- The Power of Cult Branding by Matthew W. Ragas and Bolivar J. Bueno
- The Power of the Tale by Julie Allan, Gerard Fairtlough and Barbara Heinzen
- The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
- The Visionary’s Handbook by Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker
- The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
- Unstuck by Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro
- Why Not? By Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
- Roadtrip Nation by Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard
- The Battle Against Boredom by Ray Nelson
- Cool To Be Kind by Val Litwin, Chris Bratseth, Brad Stokes, and Erik Hanson
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Creative Class
Richard Florida’s books are interesting and troubling. His latest The Flight of the Creative Class is another thought provoking book. Fast Company has an exclusive web based interview with him. He is interviewed by Adam Hanft, founder and CEO of Hanft Unlimited:
Here is one of the questions and answers.
FC: Any kind of two-tier sociological stratification makes us a bit nervous. For everyone in the Creative Class there must be someone in, well, the Creative Underclass. Isn’t that a recipe for a dysfunctional society?
Florida: Absolutely. It’s something I talk about often, from my book, The Flight of the Creative Class, to the Atlantic Monthly article I referred to before. It’s a deeply, deeply disturbing phenomenon, this socioeconomic division our world — and especially frighteningly, our country — faces in the 21st century global creative economy.
Check out the rest of the interview here.
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October 26, 2005
The Way The World Might Be
Can anybody really predict the future? No.
What is interesting though is what Royal Dutch/Shell did in the 1980′s and 1990′s with scenario planning. Fast Company did an article in July 2002 on how scenario planning changed the course of the entire company.
What grew out of that thinking was the Global Business Network. This was a group that included Peter Schwartz (The Art of the Long View), Jay Ogilvy (Creating Better Futures), Napier Collyns, Stewart Brand, and Lawrence Wilkinson. The idea was to continue the evolution of scenario planning and scenario thinking.
The current GBN CEO is Eamonn Kelly and he has a book out from Wharton Business School Publishing called Powerful Times: Rising To The Challenge of Our Uncertain World. It reminds me of a more academic version of Funky Business.
Kelly describes extensively what is going on in the complex world around us. The meat of the explanation is given in dichotomies (clarity vs. craziness, secular vs. sacred, technology accleration vs. pushback, prosperity vs. decline). After laying out the case, he asks two questions – “Will sources of innovation, leadership and change be centralized or decentralized?” and “Will the United States exert more or less influence globally?” He shows alternate scenarios for what the world might look like as the answers to those questions varies.
For you crystal ball watchers out there, it may be worth a look.
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October 25, 2005
2005 Berry-AMA Book Award
The Berry-AMA Book Award has been given out the past four years to books “whose innovative ideas have had significant impact on marketing and related fields.” It is the only award we know of that recognizes marketing books and one of only two that recognizes business books (FT/Goldman Sachs being the other).
The 2005 winner is Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most by Patrick Barwise, Sean Meehan (Harvard Business School Press).
The other finalists for this year’s award included:
- Accountable Marketing: The Economics of Data Driven Marketing (Thomson), by Peter J. Rosenwald
- Effective Advertising: Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works (Sage Publications), by Gerard J. Tellis
- Marketing and the Bottom Line (Prentice Hall), by Tim Ambler
- Purple Cow (Penguin Group), by Seth Godin
I should mention that Jack is one of the judges for this competition.
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New DVD Version of Cubicle Classic
Office Space is the cult classic about working for corporate America. In case you weren’t one of the 3.5 million who bought the original DVD, here is the summary from the Internet Movie Database:
Peter Gibbons just can’t seem to catch a break. His girlfriend is cheating on him, he has an obnoxious neighbor, and he’s completely miserable with his job as a small cog in a company called Initech. Then he visits a hypnotherapist, who dies just after putting Peter into a state of complete bliss. Free of worrying about making a living, he no longer feels the need to keep his job, just as the company is going through a massive downsizing. However, his new attitude only makes him more valuable in the company’s eyes, and his friends Michael and Samir are fired instead. Together, they scheme to plant a virus inside Initech’s computer system that will pull money into their own account.
There is new version titled Office Space: Special Edition with Flair. The new features include outtakes, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and animated shorts from creator Mike Judge that inspired the movie
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October 24, 2005
Russian Bestsellers
As I was browsing The Atlantic Monthly, I found a list composed of bestselling books in Russia. Three of the books on the list were business related. Here’s the list and The Atlantic Monthly‘s descriptions:
- I Take My Words Back by Viktor Suvorov.
Description: A Russian military historian finds flaws in the memoirs of the late Soviet World War II hero Marshal Zhukov–and takes his words back for him. - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Description: World economic institutions are purportedly shown to be as corrupt and conspiracy-ridden as Russians always believed them to be. - The Blue Day Book by Bradley Trevor Greive
Description: Animal photos and corny captions as mood enhancers, compiled by a Tasmanian author. - My Life by Bill Clinton
Description: The memoirs of Russia’s favorite American president. - Catherine the Great: The Diamond Cinderella by Aleksadr Bushkov
Description: A patriotic account of a German noblewoman’s rise to the Russian throne and of her rule as an enlightened despot. - Hunting for Werewolves by Aleksandr Khinshtein
Description: A Dumba deputy’s expose of the gravest threat to law and order in Russia: “werewolves” (corrupt law-enforcement officers). - Business is Psychology by Marina Meliya
Description: Self-help for the disgruntled Russian businessman. - Lost Civilization: In Search of Lost Mankind by Aleksei Maslov
Description: The “true” history of mankind, including Atlantis, our vanished horned ancestors, and mysterious giants. - Doctor Sinelnikov’s Practical Course: How to Learn to Love Yourself by V. Sinelnikov and S. Slobodchikov
Description: A step-by-step course in supermarket psychology, Russian-style, for sufferers of low self-esteem. - The Mafia Manager: A Guide to the Corporate Machiavelli by V
Description: An anonymous author confirms what Russian entrepreneurs already know: business isn’t about mission statements, but about who whacks whom–commerically, of course.
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October 21, 2005
Boss's Day Summary
With Boss’s Day a few days behind us, here is a brief overview of the leadership items posted in the last week:
- Book recommendations just for bosses
- Interview with Justin Menkes about the components of executive intelligence; Justin is the author of Executive Intelligence
- Excerpts and exercises from the book Resonant Leadership
- An e-book: Nine Lives of Leadership
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October 20, 2005
Get your Freakonomics Book Plate!
For those of you who bought (and enjoyed!) the book Freakonomics, here is a unique opportunity for you.
The authors, Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, are offering a free autographed bookplate. Want one for your book? Check it out here. They’ll even pay the $0.37 to send it your way.
Another note on the book, it just won the 2005 Quill Book Awards’ business book of the year award. Check it out.
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October 19, 2005
The Art of Execution
At your company, what is the time ratio of brainstorming vs. executing ideas? It’s easy to get caught up in the brainstorming process. The next rut: agreeing to do something without plans to implement it. The art of follow-through is where many leaders are lacking.
Earlier this week, Tom Peters posted a blog entry on executing ideas. The entry referenced the book Execution.
The idea presented in the book:
More time is spent on creating ideas and not enough time is spent implementing them.
It’s definitely a true review of what happens in many companies. Ideas are great; they’re even better when they’re put into practice.
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