We had the pleasure of having Jeanne Bliss at our LeaveSmarter event in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago. In terms of presentations, we thought it was one of the best we’ve had to date.
We wrote a Jack Covert Selects on I Love You More Than My Dog for October, and it’s always nice to see what our friends have to say about important books. John Moore wrote an excellent review on Jeanne’s latest book over at Brand Autopsy. It is well worth a couple minutes of your time.
The day before Thanksgiving, Nick posted a list of Ten Reasons for Public Speakers to be Thankful, which we thought appropriate to repost here… with extra emphasis on reason number five.
10. 2010 already looks to be a better year for conferences than 2009.
9. Pico Pocket Projectors are here.
8. We have a gifted orator in the White House.
7. Flip camcorders are here.
6. Audiences want you to succeed, studies show. Really.
5. 800ceoread is still here.
4. Studies show audiences only remember 10-30 percent of what they hear.
3. Marshall Goldsmith has promised to take all of 2010 off to meditate in an ashram.
2. The Powermat portable wireless recharging mat is here.
1. Tony Robbins has promised to take 2010-11 off to build an ashram out of native woods and natural fabrics and meditate in it on the impermanence of personal achievement.
And, though that ashram sounds really inviting, we’re not going anywhere. Thanks Nick!
And thanks to Kate for passing this list on to us. Now, I think it’s high time you get back to The Lettuce Farm.
“There is only one way to happiness, and that is cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
You’re darn tootin’ Wednesday links. We’re leaving the realm of the Internets until Monday, so we thought we’d leave you some reading material until we get back.
We know this last year hasn’t been an easy one for many people. It was a year many of us or our friends lost their jobs. It was a year that saw the closing of the Milwaukee institution we sprang forth from, Harry W. Bookshops, after 80 years in business. Everything certainly did look grim there for awhile, and for many it still does. But, we still feel we have a lot to be thankful for and hope that those of you on the other side of this screen feel the same. In other words… Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
◊ Company friend and former president Todd Sattersten linked to a great series from the wonderful illustrator Scott Campbell earlier this week (with a tip of the hat to Dave Gray and Adland). It’s an illustrated guide to ideas and how to kill them. Here’s a sample of Cambell’s work.
◊ We’re really excited about Greg Mortenson’s upcoming book, Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you’d like to see waht it’s all about, check out his recent article in Parade.
◊ Pirate’s Dilemma author Matt Mason posted a video of Lawrence Lessig’s latest presentation that’s rather long, but really thought-provoking. In it, he discusses “Institutional Corruption,” or “A certain kind of influence … an influence within an economy of influence that has a certain kind of effect … that weakens the effectiveness of an institution … weakening public trust of that institution.” You may know Lessig as the author of Free Culture or Remix. If so, you know he’s brilliant and well worth 30 minutes of your time.
◊ Guy Kawasaki explains a new interview process that Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon—authors of I Hate People!—have developed. It consists of watching candidates cross the street.
◊ Don’t Think Pink author and friend of the company Andrea Learned asks “Do Women Have ‘Social’ Advantage?”
◊ With it being Thanksgiving tomorrow, Roy reminds us to remember The Family.
◊ The Coauthor of Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook, Darren Barefoot, wrote about the Eleven Lessons He Learned About Writing a Book yesterday. Number nine is my favorite:
I forget where I heard this, but there’s so much truth in this quote: “Publishing isn’t an industry, it’s an organized hobby.”
◊ The New York Times book blog, Paper Cuts, posted the video below yesterday, writing:
This stop-motion advertisement from the New Zealand Book Council is a delight for ink-on-paper fetishists everywhere.
And it is.
The strategy + business annual books list is always one of the finest and most anticipated of the year. They get really smart and talented people who know how to pick ‘em, and have them write (always highly intelligent and insightful) essays on their category—and, of course, the books in it. I’ve listed the picks below, but it really is worth heading over to strategy + business for the essays. (The links to the individual essays are in the headings below.)
Clive Crook picks the best books on The Meltdown:
Charles Handy picks the Leadership books:
Phil Rosenzweig picks the books on Strategy:
Ayesha Khanna and Parag Khanna take on Globalization:
Judith F. Samuelson picks the Management books:
Catharine P. Taylor finds the best books on Marketing:
Steven Levy looks at the best books on Technology:
James O’Toole picks the best Biographies:
As Theodore Kinni writes in the introduction to this year’s essays:
This year’s best business books help us understand current conditions and chart a secure course forward. With luck, next year’s best books will offer similar insight into a recovery of historic proportions.
You can read the full feature here.
We’ve been following this list since 2003. The previous years’ lists are below.
2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008
Skimming around Huffington Post during lunch, I found Jesse Kornbluth’s blog post on working with Twyla Tharp on her new book that came out today, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together. Kornbluth recounts his time working with her on the book, offering us a tasty morsel of insight on what it was like to work with a genius of her ilk.
One of Tharp’s earlier books, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, was included in the Innovation and Creativity chapter of our The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. While it might have been regarded as a bit of a stretch to include The Creative Habit in a list of game-changing business books, Todd reasoned, “Artists have long struggled with constant and consistent idea generation for centuries longer than us corporate types. It is about time we use such methods of creativity to enrich our every project.” According to Kornbluth, Tharp would agree that no matter what the work is—dance, design, or die-casting—the same principles of creativity and innovation apply because, she says, “work is work.”
In The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together, Tharp has written a book about the benefits of partnering, a theme that I am seeing quite often in the newest business/nonfiction books. Jack has recently reviewed and recommended Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life by Rodd Wagner and Gale Mueller, published by Gallup Press. In The Power of 2, Wagner and Mueller propose that while there are certainly instances of individual success, when a person defies all odds and surmounts great challenges to excel at some endeavor, truly excellent work is more often the result of a great partnership, particularly one in which each person has complimentary strengths.
While networking books abound, books that encourage you to gather a group of people that can help you land a better job or connect with new clients, these new books that focus on working together have a real spark of productivity to them, of creative combustion even. It’s hard to share work, hard to give up control and to trust, but these books will inspire you to take the chance.
As I promised earlier this month, I’ll be updating all y’all on the progress of the deconstruction of the old office space. Thank the gods that this is all being done later at night and the weekends!
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”
“Always dream and shoot higher that you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
If you travel often, you have probably bought a book from an airport bookstore. And, if so, chances are it was from Hudson Booksellers. Because they have so many people traveling on business visit their stores, they probably have a better idea of what is popular in the business genre than most retailers. And, lucky us, they’ve been releasing a “best books of the year” list the last few years which includes a business interest category. This years list is:
You can find the rest of this year’s winners on Scribd (thanks again to GalleyCat for pointing the way), or find our coverage of the past two year’s winners here: 2007 | 2008
