August « 2009 « 800 CEO Read

August 18, 2009

A Sneak Peak of Exploiting Chaos

Filed under: General Business,Jack Covert Selects — dylan @ 1:27 pm

We told you about Jeremy Gutsche’s upcoming Exploiting Chaos late last month (here) when the advance copy first came across Jack’s desk. The book itself won’t be available in bookstores until September, but you can see what attracted Jack to the book over at exploitingchaos.com, where they’re offering a free preview.

Jack has chosen the book to be one of his Jack Covert Selects for September, so we’ll have more on the book when those reviews are posted. And it’s not just Jack raving. Dan Pink has praised the book, saying “Exploiting Chaos is a rousing battle cry for the kind of creative, risky thinking that is most needed in times of change and disorder” and Guy Kawasaki has called the book “The quintessential roadmap for all those who seek opportunity …” That’s a lot of highly respected, intellectual weight being thrown around this book.

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What Arrived In My Mailbox Today

Filed under: Leadership — Todd Sattersten @ 9:46 am

I just received The Essential Bennis in the mail and the book is incredible. The collection displays the breadth and depth of Warren Bennis’ work.

Just to give you a flavor here is one of the closing paragraphs from an essay titled “Winning and Losing,” where Bennis explains why business as sport is a poor metaphor.

“The best-run and most successful companies in America do not think in terms of victories and defeats, shining moments or last-minute saves. They do note count on regulations or referees. Instead, they think in terms of staying power, dedication to quality, and an endless effort to do better than they have done. They see change as their only constant and count on their own ability to adapt to the world, rather than expecting the world to adapt to them. Indeed, it is a business’s ability to adapt to an ever-changing world that is the basis for both its success and progress.”

More soon.

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Jack Covert Selects – The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited

Filed under: General Business,Jack Covert Selects — 800-CEO-READ @ 9:00 am

The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-Life Lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Emanuel Rosen, Broadway Business, 384 pages, $15.95, Paperback, February 2009, ISBN 9780385526326

One of the first books I recommended when I started writing Jack Covert Selects reviews in 2000 was Emanuel Rosen’s The Anatomy of Buzz. Ahead of his time, Rosen wrote the first book on word of mouth marketing, using the word “buzz” to describe people talking about the products and services they love. At the time, Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point had just come out and opened the floodgates of interest in how ideas spread. Rosen’s The Anatomy of Buzz should be considered just as significant a publishing event.

For this new edition, Rosen went back and rewrote two-thirds of the book with updated research, theories, and anecdotes that have been developed over the last decade. The work of BzzAgents and Brains on Fire, standout word-of-mouth marketing agencies that didn’t exist when Rosen wrote the first edition, now appear alongside his original discussions of the phenomenon of Birkenstocks and the African soap opera Soul City. The role of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, and Yelp now appear as examples of the power of personal networks in word-of-mouth marketing.

Rosen’s new information discusses primarily the nuances of word-of-mouth marketing. While he says that historically “most marketing research focuses on finding the right message that will persuade someone to buy a product,” he explains that agencies like Proctor & Gamble offspring Tremor are now more intent on finding out what people will talk about. Or, in another example, rather than focusing on “what” people talk about, Andrea Wojnicki focused on “how often” people talk while earning her doctorate at Harvard,. She wanted to know what influenced the frequency with which people talk about their experiences. She discovered that while experts and non-experts shared bad experiences equally, experts told twice as many people about a good experience as non-experts did.

By reviewing The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited, I am doing something I haven’t done before—recommending a book for the second time. But when it comes to understanding how and why ideas spread, there are just as many reasons to read Rosen now as there were almost ten years ago.

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August 17, 2009

Jack Covert Selects – The Score Takes Care of Itself

Filed under: Jack Covert Selects — 800-CEO-READ @ 11:17 am

The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh, Portfolio, 288 pages, $25.95, Hardcover, August 2009, ISBN 9781591842668

After the San Francisco 49ers went 2-14 in 1978, the owner went down the road to Stanford and hired Bill Walsh as GM and coach. During his tenure with San Francisco, the team went from the worst to first faster than any team in history. While his coaching skill is to be admired, it is his leadership skill that is on display here in The Score Takes Care of Itself.

When this book first landed on my desk, I looked at it with a cynical eye, figuring it was a book published simply to take advantage of the start of the football season. Instead, the author had been working with Bill Walsh on this book for some time before Walsh’s death of leukemia in 2007, and it holds its own as a business book. Between his retirement from coaching and resuming front office responsibilities with the 49ers, Walsh taught classes in leadership at Stanford and, during that time, the two men worked on this book. When Walsh went back to the 49ers, the book was put on hold, but after his death, Walsh’s surviving son continued the process and opened up the coach’s archive. And those wishing to improve their leadership skills are better for it.

The first thing Walsh did when he took over the 49ers was install his “Standard of Performance.” This document includes such requirements as:

“Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement; demonstrate respect for each person in the organization and the work he or she does; be deeply committed to learning and teaching …; be fair; demonstrate character; honor the direct connection between details and improvement, and relentlessly seek the latter …”

And that’s only about half of the list’s requirements. With standards such as these clearly laid out, everybody in the organization always knew where they stood, and Walsh’s Standard of Performance greatly shaped the team that went on to win five Super Bowls and have a winning record of 102-63-1.

Walsh’s leadership abilities, according to Joe Montana’s foreword, were based in “… his ability to teach people how to think and play at a different and much higher, and, at times, perfect level.” Within The Score Takes Care of Itself, Walsh and his co-writers unveil just how Walsh communicated his vision to the hundreds of people in the organization, and how he molded that vision into reality.

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August 14, 2009

Why do you read business books?

Filed under: Misc. — Todd Sattersten @ 9:30 am

“Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can’t help but push you forward.”

-Seth Godin, The Scientific Method

Thanks to @jaysingh for the tweet that reminded me to post this question and answer.

So, why do you read business books?

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Working for Yourself

Filed under: Careers,Internet,Marketing,Personal Development — Jon @ 8:56 am

Whether you freelance, work your hobby at night, are an artist, or found yourself out of a job and are thinking hard about taking your career in your own direction, your excitement might be outweighed by trepidation. As the economy continues to rumble, many people have found themselves struggling in one of the above scenarios, and are looking for answers.

For those who have tried working for themselves as designers, writers, consultants, and other independents, it can be difficult to manage both the work itself, and the work to make the work happen. It really is a lot to take on.

For artists, many of them have spent years (and money) on learning their trade, only to be released into the world armed with incredible talent, but not a lot of business sense to put that talent to work.

However, there are success stories and case studies for both scenarios that can give everyone insight into how to get a grip on their own situation. A great source for those are the new digital bundles of Unconventional Guides we’re offering from Chris Guillebeau. Click here to read more about them. Chris has been self-employed since he started working, so he’s figured many things out throughout his career, and this is a great chance to learn from his experience. Working for yourself can be incredibly challenging, yet highly rewarding – financially and otherwise, if you approach it with the insight you’ll gain from this information.

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Jack Covert Selects – The Four Conversations

Filed under: Jack Covert Selects — 800-CEO-READ @ 8:27 am

The Four Conversations: Daily Communication That Gets Results by Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford, Berrett-Koehler, 238 Pages, $19.95, Paperback, August 2009, ISBN 9781576759202

Communication is the foundation of relationships, whether personal or professional, and rarely are we trained in how to improve those skills. Instead, experience tends to be our guide. We use commands and requests, whatever has worked for us in the past. The Four Conversations shows that we may not be taking full advantage of the tools available to us.

Jeffrey and Laurie Ford believe conversation can be classified into four types. Initiative conversations set the vision and direction, like John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech that committed to putting men on the moon. If initiative conversations are about what, when, and why, understanding discussions answer the who and the how. These conversations ground individuals at the start of a project by laying out the roles they will play, and reinforce the value of the initiative. Understanding conversations do not create action, however. That’s the purpose of performance conversations: asking that something be done and obtaining a promise for completion. Closure conversations mark an ending and create the opportunity for new beginnings.

The authors make a clear argument for just why it is so important to become more aware of our own tendencies toward how we use these types of conversations. Using the four conversations with a more balanced and/or intentional approach in the workplace leads to better productivity and results. Reducing tardiness on projects comes from using all four types effectively. Closure conversations heal wounds. Interrogating performance excuses can reveal whether individuals did everything they could. Altering the rate of progress toward a goal is as simple as increasing the frequency and the magnitude of what you ask for.

The Four Conversations is a generalist book that anyone can use to his or her advantage. The authors’ holistic view of communication pulls together concepts commonly needed in the areas of leadership, management, and change initiatives. I like books that are applicable and can produce powerful results, and The Four Conversations meets both criteria. It provides an opportunity to improve yourself and your business by improving your communication skills.

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August 13, 2009

Social Media University Reading List

Filed under: Information Technology,Jack Covert Selects,Marketing — Todd Sattersten @ 10:48 am

I had the opportunity to speak at Social Media University – Milwaukee a few weeks ago. Some of the follow-up email has been asking for the recommended reading list I gave out during my Blogging For Success session. Here the list and some reasons these are worth your time:

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky – This is the big idea book; it’s the one that examines social media from a sociological viewpoint with outstanding examples the reduced friction the Internet provides. Here is what we said in our Jack Covert Selects – “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.’”

Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff – There is no question that this is the book to read if you are in a corporate environment. The book was written by two analysts from Forester Research that provides a framework that executives recognize and language that fits the Fortune 500. Download an excerpt of the book to get a feel for the book. There is also a new condensed version of the book called Marketing in the Groundswell which contains a new introduction and three chapters from the original book.

Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin – Seth’s premise is pretty simple: most of the products and services are not designed to be used with the new tools and techniques that are available to marketers. The call for corporate blogs and the creation of viral videos leads to meatball sundaes. Seth wrote a great ChangeThis manifesto based on this idea called Marketing Mismatch: When New Won’t Work With Old (Riffs on Meatball Sundae). I also did a podcast with Seth when the book came out.

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith – I am recommending this a bit on faith because the book comes out later this month. Chris is certainly one of the leading voices on social media and if you need proof go read this.

Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg – I recommended this specifically for my blogging session. Rosenberg is a journalist and writes about the evolution of blogging. He talks about the players who have shaped the medium (Heather Armstrong, Robert Scoble, Evan Williams, and Dave Winer to name just a few). It is a good book to catch up on what has been happening over the last decade. There are also excerpts from the book available on the book’s website.

The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein is a simple book that teaches what you need to know about Twitter and also takes the next step providing tips for using the service to its full extent.

Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel extolls the power of connecting with your customers online. It’s not written for alpha geeks and instead describes uses language business people will understand.

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August 12, 2009

Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year – The Longlist

Filed under: Book Awards,General Business — dylan @ 3:40 pm

The longlist for the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award has been announced. The press release states that “The award is designed to highlight the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance, and economics.”

The books on the longlist are:

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A Akerlof, Robert J Shiller
Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee, Gareth Jones
Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson
Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World by Stephen Green
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street By William D Cohan (Cohan won the award two years ago for his first book, The Last Tycoons.)
How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give in by Jim Collins
Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation by Nandan Nilekani
In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic by David Wessel
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy
The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street by Justin Fox
Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff
Why Your World Is about to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin

The shortlist will be announced in September, and the overall winner will be announced at gala dinner in London at the end of October. We will, of course, keep you informed of further developments.

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ChangeThis : Issue 61

Filed under: ChangeThis — dylan @ 2:21 pm

ChangeThis turns five years old this month. Started by Seth Godin and his merry band of interns (most famously Amit Gupta) back in August of 2004, we took over in May of 2005 and have been caring for it ever since. If you’d like to see the most popular manifestos of the last five years, you can find them here. Below you’ll find the excerpts and links to the latest issue.

:::::

F2 | Firefly Manifesto: Remixed by Jonathan Fields

“Try this career choice standard on for size.

Will this choice allow me to:

Spend the greatest amount of time
Absorbed in activities and relationships that fill me up
While surrounding myself with people I cannot get enough of, and
Earning enough to live comfortably in the world?

It sounds so simple. This is the standard I’ve used to guide my own evolution from six-figure, beaten down mega-firm attorney to lifestyle entrepreneur, blogger, author, copywriter, marketer and, yes, even yoga teacher…oh, and still earn enough to live very comfortably in the world and support my family in New York.

Fact is, this definition of success keeps me honest.

And, with good reason. It’s evolved out of thousands of hours of testing and exploring a broad spectrum of career paths and entrepreneurial ventures, interviews with a wide cross-section of successful career renegades, from maverick CEOs to internet-earning soccer moms and extensive research into the field of applied positive-psychology.

It integrates concepts like famed cognitive scientists, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi’s seminal work on cultivating ‘flow’ states with Gallup researcher, Tom Rath’s eye-opening studies on the critical impact of friendships in the workplace.

Apply it, test it, kick its wheels & see what unfolds.”

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

The Hazards of Leading Culture Change by Chip R. Bell & John R. Patterson

“When great starts have poor endings, it can leave change pioneers disappointed, hard working organizers disheartened, and skeptics with proof they were correct all along. It makes the next initiative more challenging to launch and the next set of resistors more defiant. However, without needed change the organization risks losing its competitive advantage. Losing its edge makes it harder to attract and retain the best talent and resources, and in today’s economy, the death knell begins.

Planned change takes courage and tenacity. Even organizations with a burning platform, effective leaders, and well-crafted plans can sometimes miss the mark because they fail to recognize early signals that the seeds for derailment are being sown or they fail to realize the power of the signals they are sending via decisions that are unsupportive of the culture change commitment. Derailment is much more likely during periods of organizational anxiety from economic challenge, organizational shift (like a major merger or new competitor), or a change in senior leadership. However, these high profile hazards are easier to spot and therefore simpler to combat. It is the more subtle shifts that can do the most damage before their presence is even noticed.”

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

Quit Managing Your Time… and Start Managing Your Attention by Lee J. Colan & David Cottrell

“The myth of time management never dies. Many people enroll in ‘time management’ classes and learn techniques like making to-do lists. That’s fine. Lists can be useful, even satisfying. It’s great to experience that rush—Ahhhh!—as we check something off the list. However, by the end of the day, or the week, or the month, most people discover projects that are still not checked off and some projects they haven’t even started. That’s when frustration begins to set in. The time is gone, and there’s no way to get it back.

You can’t manufacture time, you can’t reproduce time, you can’t slow time down or turn it around and make it run in the other direction.

You can’t trade bad hours for good ones, either. About all the time management you can do is to cram as much productive work as possible into each day.

What you can manage, however, is your attention.

Attention is a resource we all possess. It’s a lot like time. In fact, as long as we are awake, we produce a continuous stream of it. But how effectively do we use this valuable resource? That depends on where we direct our attention and how intensely we keep it focused to produce the desired results.”

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

Your Butt’s in the Wrong Seat: A Manifesto for Public Transportation by Ryan Barton

“It’s not sexy. It’s not tracking as a Twitter trend. And it’s not a YouTube sensation.

In fact, by current reputation, it’s dirty, it (sometimes) smells, it forces you to interact with people you don’t know, it’s slow, and inconvenient. But it shouldn’t be.

Or at least, it shouldn’t be positioned and marketed like it is.

Here’s the problem with ‘it.’ Its competitors are some of the largest, most renowned companies in the world, and despite the current ‘crisis’ affecting the automobile industry, it doesn’t stand a chance. ‘It’ is public transportation, and ‘it’ is hurting.

So what’s the problem? It’s simple; your butt is in the wrong seat.”

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

Habitudes in the Classroom: Teaching the Habits and Attitudes Our Students Need in the 21st Century by Angela Maiers

“Education shouldn’t be about adding more to our lists of HAVE’s, DO’s , and BE’s, but rather thinking outside the lines, intentionally about the BE’s, DO’s, and HAVE’s that matter most.

The 21st century world needs learners to BE critical, BE creative, and BE strategic. The 21st century world demands learners to DO their own thinking, rather than relying on someone else to think for them. The 21st century world expects learners to HAVE the endurance, fortitude, and courage to brave through each new challenge with confidence and competence.”

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

Design for the Other 90% by Paul Polak

“Ninety percent of the world’s designers spend all their time working on solutions to the problems of the richest 10 percent of the world’s customers.

A revolution in design is needed to reverse this silly ratio and reach the other 90 percent. In my book, Out of Poverty, I talk about how this can be done. I pull stories from some of the 17 million people I’ve help lift from poverty with the organization I founded 25 years ago, International Development Enterprises. More recently, we have incorporated an organization called D-Rev: Design for the Other Ninety Percent, whose mission is to create the design revolution.”

Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.

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