Ask 8cr! is a section of our blog used as a forum to address the kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We take these issues and apply a business book we feel offers a viable solution. Others then chime in via the comments section. The person with the selected challenge gets a free copy of the book, but everyone who reads these posts, wins. What’s your challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.
Today’s challenge deals with doing everything that matters in order to improve your business:
“Strategic thinking — how to get a better grasp on thinking strategically to tie PR, communications and marketing efforts to driving and achieving business results” – Sandy
Business is sort of like the game Tetris. You have to do one thing to make it conducive for the next unknown event to fit without problems. How do you plan this? In the game, it’s sort of luck. In business, it’s a little of that, but your chances of success can be greatly improved by reading books like James M. Kilts’ Doing What Matters.
Kilts was the CEO of Gillette, and during his time there, saw every key metric of the company improve. This book details his methods for making that happen. In Sandy’s challenge, she’s looking to connect a number of things together in order to create that smooth Tetris scenario, where each shape magically fits nicely with the next, and allows the game (your business) to move forward without a hitch. Kilts sees these connections, and adds a ton more, in his overview of things to do that matter. Part strategy, part organizational behavior, part intuitive skill, Kilts lays out an approach to strategy beyond PR and marketing, encompassing an entire overview of how he took Gillette to levels that impressed even the likes of Warren Buffett.
Here’s a very abbreviated list of his things that matter:
- Growth
- Relationships
- Loyalty
- Small moments
- Timely decisions
- Doing what you enjoy
- Life’s early lessons
- Right team members
- Confronting reality
Throughout the book, he goes into great detail on each of these things, and offers examples, facts, and his own experiences to make them transferable to Sandy or anyone’s situation to think strategically.
February 29, 2008
Ask 8cr! – Doing What Matters
Here are just some of the things we found interesting on this Friday – take some time to browse:
1001 Interviews You Must Read Before You Die review from Blogcritics.
Jordan’s new book on social change: Mudbound is the winner of the Bellwether Prize
With the movie The Other Bolelyn Sister coming out, you may be interested in finding out more of what happened in Henry VIII’s court HERE.
Noted author William F. Buckley Jr. (82) has passed away this week.
Misha Defonseca’s book Survivre avec les Loups was indeed partly made up, according to the author. She basically invented an alternate story to ‘make up for her painful real experiences’.
Just for fun:
A clip from The Daily Show
Eminem’s new book: The Way I Am.
TGIF!!!
February 28, 2008
Negotiation Thread at Signal vs Noise
There is a great thread at Signal vs Noise where they are asking readers for good negotiating stories.
The books mentioned thus far include:
- You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen
- NO: The Only Negotiating Strategy You Need for Work and Home by Jim Camp
- Humanitarian Negotiation: A handbook for securing access, assistance and protection for Civilians in Armed Conflcts by The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (free download)
Jack Nicholson’s famous negotiation in Five Easy Pieces is also mentioned.
Ferris' "Then We Came To The End" Wins B&N New Writers Award
Joshua Ferris was named a winner in Barnes & Noble’s 15th Annual “Discover Great New Writers Awards.”
His book Then We Came To The End is a novel about a Chicago ad agency and the tumultuous 1990′s. Our resident writer Todd Lazarski wrote this short piece about the book for an upcoming 800-CEO-READ project:
The next generation of the business novel, Ferris’ hilarious critique of modern office life and the world of marketing acts almost as the written word companion to “Office Space” or “The Office.” Addictively funny, it also belongs in the same vein of rumbling satire employed by [John Kennedy] Toole. Ferris sheds light on all of our oft-overlooked, inter-office mannerisms, inanities, and silly drama. Throughout the prose paints a portrait that, while obviously entertaining, is also sharply revealing about that 40-hour-a-week, alternative universe known as “work.”
We mention it here, because some times it helps to see the business world through a different lens with someone else describing the scene we see every day.
February 27, 2008
Indexed, Farber and Charity
Three notes, not quite related.
1.
Jessica Hagy’s book Indexed is out today.
She shares stories via index cards. This past month, we published her ChangeThis manifesto. You can follow her on a regular basis at her blog.
2.
As I’ve mentioned before, Steve Farber who wrote two fables, The Radical Leap and The Radical Edge, is back to the writing board. His next book is due out in January of 2009 (seems like eons away). There’s an unedited prologue over at his blog.
3.
More than 160 people have taken part in our Mystery Box offer with the money going to Room to Read. That’s over $3000 that will be donated to help children around the world learn to read. Thank you for all your help! If you’d like your own Mystery Box (three books, all a surprise), read on.
February 26, 2008
The 8cr Author Blog
Are you a business author? Do you plan on writing a book someday?
Head over to the 8cr Author Blog for posts written specifically for authors and future authors. I’ll post there regularly on common issues authors have, surprises in the publishing world, what’s expected from authors, and the gigantic world that gets opened to you once you publish a book. Using a variety of internal and external knowledge, we hope this blog becomes a useful resource for those taking business thought to the next level.
Ask 8cr! – Senior Leadership Teams
Ask 8cr! is a section of our blog used as a forum to address the kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We take these issues and apply a business book we feel offers a viable solution. Others then chime in via the comments section. The person with the selected challenge gets a free copy of the book, but everyone who reads these posts, wins. What’s your challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.
Today’s challenge deals with managing poor decisions from above:
“How does a senior level person working in a small corporation keep the owners from making mistakes? In other words, how do you manage one level up in the organization? Often, experience is overlooked and sales are made that should not be made. After all, some deals are too good to be true!”- Gary
Walking into your boss’ office and telling them that they’ve made a mistake or should do things differently might put you in a worse off situation than the mistake is. There are, of course, diplomatic ways of communicating such things, but even then, it might just be viewed as an opinion and overlooked in the end.
Developing a team is a challenging process, particularly if hierarchy is involved. Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss, and J Richard Hackman have written a helpful book on this subject called Senior Leadership Teams: What it takes to make them great. In it, the authors talk about how to design a system that takes the bulk off one head (CEO) and shares it with a group of dynamic executives operating under analysis, feedback, accountability, goals, and group direction. The initial challenge is formation, as the author’s identify that good leadership teams develop slowly over time – it’s not about one person deciding they need a team and “making it happen.” Rather, a series of discussions, gathering the right people, the conceptual thinkers, with the agenda of making hugely positive changes for the company must take place. Imagine the results.
However, the author’s state:
“Expect the process to be emotionally demanding. All the leaders we worked with and studied struggled with the emotional aspects of setting direction for their leadership teams. Clarifying the team’s purpose invariably uncovers discrepancies and conflicts about what members think their role is or should be, and using your authority to say, “This is what we will do” triggers anxiety for leaders and members alike. But when done persistently and well, it also energizes and inspires.”
In Gary’s case, this book will provide some thoughts on how to approach the owners of his company and begin to form a solid team that is involved in the issues he refers to. By creating a solid case for development and improvement, while taking burden off them, Gary will succeed at showing interest in helping the company, and also accomplish his goal of avoiding the bad deals, once he and his team have more input in the process.
More info on this book can be found in the Jack Covert Selects article published last week.
Books in the March issue of Portfolio magazine
The March issue of Condé Nast Portfolio includes a lengthy review of Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It’s Under Siege by Craig Karmin, published by Crown Business. You can read the review at www.portfolio.com.
Portfolio also features a section called “Also Worth a Read…” Here are the books mentioned this month:
George Washington and the Art of Business: The Leadership Principles of America’s First Commander-in-Chief by Mark McNeilly
Sneaker Wars: The Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sport by Barbara Smit
and three art books…
Flight Attendants by Brian Finke
Birth of the Cool edited by Elizabeth Armstrong
5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website
There are countless ways to get the most out of your web site, and even more opinions about the best ways. In Zero to One Million, Ryan Allis offers an evaluation system to determine whether your business idea is viable. Then, he provides strategies and steps for optimizing your online marketing efforts. The excerpt below is from Chapter 10, Step 8: Build Your Online Marketing Strategy.
A note about the author: Ryan Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed marketing and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10 million in annual sales and 80 employees. He is also the Chairman of the web marketing firm Virante, Inc. For more info, visit www.zeromillion.com.
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5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website
The majority of Web site owners have fewer than 10 incoming links to their sites. The search engines view incoming links as verification that your site has quality content. The more related links your site has from other sites (with the underlined clickable text that includes your targeted keywords), the higher your ranking in the search engines will be. Here is a step-by-step overview of this entire SEO process:
- Select your keywords. Use tools such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, Google’s Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Word tracker to determine which related keywords or key phrases it would be best to optimize your site for. Once you have a list of potential keywords, go to Google and type in those keywords. Then see how many incoming links the top few sites have. You can determine this number by typing in “link:http://www.competitordomain.com.” Take a look at whether the first few sites have the targeted keyword in the domain name or in the title, or whether they appear often on their page. Use this information to estimate what it would take to get your site above the current sites in the rankings.
- Ensure that your site has those keywords on it. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting are on your home page at least five times. Having a 5 percent to 15 percent keyword density for your targeted search term on your home page is optimal. Also ensure that your title tag and image alt tags contain your targeted keyword. Add your targeted term to an H1 header tag for added prominence.
- Build good-quality content on your site. I call this phase the “content campaign.” Either write articles yourself for the site or go through the search engines to find related content. If you find an article on another site that you’d like to publish on your site, send an e-mail to the author, site owner, and/or publisher to request permission to syndicate the article on your site. Present it as a win/win quid pro quo in which you receive good-quality content and the author/publisher receives free exposure and a link to his or her Web site in the byline of the article. I’d suggest having at least 25 quality articles on your site before going forward. Optimize your home page for the two or three most competitive target terms. Optimize your in-site pages for the more unique and less competitive terms. You can also outsource the creation of this content to copywriters, using a service such as elance.com, for about $30 per 400-word article.
- Build links to your Web site. Without incoming links to your site, it will never have a chance at being at the top of the search engines for competitive terms. Use the research you did earlier on the number of links the sites at the top of the listings have or your targeted keywords to set a goal for how many related incoming links you want to build to your own site. To obtain links, go through the search engines and find related Web sites, then contact the owners of those sites and offer to exchange links. Add their links to your Web site and e-mail them to let them know that you’ve linked to their sites and would appreciate a reciprocal link. I’d suggest contacting them first via e-mail and then via phone if necessary. In your initial e-mail to site owners, include the URL and description of your site, as well as the location of where their links are and which sites of theirs you are referring to. I’d suggest creating a resources section on your site and placing your link partners in the appropriate category within. You can also build links naturally through press releases or by having great content, a useful tool, a viral video, or an interesting blog. If you have more money than time, you can also purchase relevant links from quality Web sites through a service called LinkExperts or purchase reviews with links from sites such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and Blogvertise. Ensure that whatever links you build to your Web site have your target key phrase in the anchor text, the words that are clickable and underlined. Finally, text links are much more valuable than image links, as the search engines can follow text links and associate the link text with your Web site, but they cannot do this for image links.
- Continue building your site’s reputation. Once you have built a few related incoming links, the search engines will find and index your site. If your site is new, it can take up to nine months for Google to allow it to show up for competitive search terms. During this time, continue building good-quality related content and work to build as many incoming links from related Web sites as you can.
From the book Zero to One Million: How I Built a Company to $1 Million in Sales…and How You Can, Too by Ryan P. Allis
links for 2008-02-26
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Chang argues that the policy recommendations of the “unholy trinity” of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization would have been unacceptable to the U.S., Britain, Japan, and the European powers when they were industrializ
