Social Responsibilty « 800 CEO Read

December 28, 2012

Our ‘Favorite’ Business Books of 2012

Filed under: Big Ideas,Blog,History and Biographies,Leadership,Personal Development,Personal Finance and Investing,Social Responsibilty,Technology,Thought Leaders,Uncategorized — Tags: Antifragile, best of, Bitter Brew, book list, favorite books, Fine Print, five books, Global Odds, Quiet — Sally @ 11:53 am

Last week, we released our picks for the Best Business Book of 2012 as well as the eight category winners. Following in the footsteps of the New York Times, if we may, who asked a few of their esteemed book reviewers to reveal a list of their favorite books of 2012 (“Favorite is not synonymous with best, so this process can be painful. Brutal honesty is required. We pick what we actually liked, not what we only admired, although ideally our favorites fit both descriptions” writes Janet Maslin. And also, “In the midnight hour these 10 Favorites — not 10 Bests — call for a gut check. Bottom line, for each of us: Is this a book I’d give to a friend?”), we’ve decided to also share with you a list of our ‘favorite’ business books. For us, we decided this list should consist of books that are square pegs that don’t quite fit into the business book genre’s round holes. Books that are valuable and interesting to the business and/or nonfiction reader, but might have more universal application than the books that were picked for our annual awards. And so…our editorial staff’s favorite books of the year:

Sally – Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain from Crown Business

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers–of persistence, concentration, insight, and sensitivity–to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, think deeply. [...] Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they’re difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you’re done.

Dylan – The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use ‘Plain English’ to Rob You Blind by David Cay Johnston from Penguin Portfolio

How the promise of cheap, competitive and unlimited telecommunications service has been turned into a reality of expensive, monopolistic and limited service is just one part of the larger transformation in the American economy since the late 1970s. A host of large industries, including banks, credit card lenders, electric utilities, health care, oil pipelines, Hollywood studios, property insurance, railroads and water companies, all have worked quietly to rewrite America’s economic playbook in their favor. [...] In The Fine Print, we’ll look at how legislatures have rewritten basic business laws, some whose principles date back thousands of years.

Michael – Beating the Global Odds: Successful Decision-making in a Confused and Troubled World by Paul Laudicina from John Wiley & Sons

Today’s leaders and citizens have to accept a world fraught with volatility and disruptive change, and they have to realize that inaction is not a good option. It’s not all bad: This unprecedented volatility is accompanied by an equally unprecedented and compelling convergence of doing well with doing good–a blending of the pursuit of enlightened self-interest with the pursuit of the common good….By leveraging new technological capabilities and employing more dynamic ways of thinking and inspiring the future, we can beat the global odds.

Jon – Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb from Random House

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, and risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it anti-fragile. [So...] The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without certainty, and an ethical life isn’t so when stripped of personal risk.

Jack – Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America’s Kings of Beer by William Knoedelseder from HarperBusiness

Thanks to their beer, the Busch family had tasted all that America ever promised the immigrant class from which they sprang –wealth almost beyond comprehension, political power that provided access to presidents, and a lifestyle rivaling that of history’s most extravagant royals. Along with that, of course, came a king-sized portion of heartbreak, scandal, tragedy, and untimely death. But they had endured…. Of the brewing giants that boomed after Prohibition…only Anheuser-Busch remained as a free-standing, independent company, still operated by the family that founded it.

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March 22, 2011

World Water Day and The Big Thirst

Filed under: Current Events,New Releases,Social Responsibilty — dylan @ 4:35 am

Designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993, World Water Day is held annually on March 22. It’s a day to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and sustainable management of water resources that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. With over half of the world’s population now living in cities, this year’s focus is understandably on water and urbanization, under the slogan “Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge.”

To observe the day, we’d like to share some sobering (yet mind-boggling) statistics that Charles Fishman, author of the upcoming The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, was kind enough to share with us.

But first, a little background on Fishman. He has been a favorite of ours for years here at 800-CEO-READ. His previous book, The Wal-Mart Effect, was a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week bestseller, a finalist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and a Jack Covert Selects in 2006. And we’ve used his 2007 article for Fast Company, Message in a Bottle, as an example of superb writing in our writing sessions at past author pow-wows (author gatherings we host every year).

The statistics and factoids below come from his new book, the aforementioned Big Thirst, being released on April 12 by Free Press.

➻ Water is the oldest substance you’ll ever come in contact with. The water coming from your kitchen faucet is about 4.3 billion years old.

➻ A typical American uses 99 gallons of actual water a day—for cooking, washing, and the #1 personal use in the U.S., toilet flushing.

➻ The average cost of water at home in the U.S.—for always-on, purified drinking water—is $1.12 per day, less than the cost of a single half liter of Evian at a convenience store.

➻ Americans spend almost as much each year on bottled water ($21 billion) as they do maintaining the nation’s entire water infrastructure ($29 billion).

➻ Microchip factories require water that is so clean it is considered dangerous to drink.

➻ The difference in price between home tap water and a half-liter bottle of water at the convenience store is a factor of 3,000—you could take the bottle of Poland Spring that you buy for $1.29 at the local 7-Eleven and refill it every day for 8 years before the cost of the tap water would equal that original price, $1.29.

➻ We often hear that “only” 2 percent of the water on Earth is fresh and available for human use, outside of the polar ice caps.

The “only” 2 percent comes to 1.5 billion liters of fresh water for each person on the planet. It’s 400 million gallons for every person alive. That’s a cube of fresh water for each us as long as a football field and as tall as a 30 story building.

➻ The U.S. uses more water in a single day than it uses oil in a year.

The U.S. uses more water in four days than the world uses oil in a year.

➻ Enough water leaks from aging water pipes in the U.S. each day to supply all the residents of any of 30 states.

➻ The city of London loses 25 percent of the water it pumps.

➻ Seventy-one percent of earth is covered with water, but water is small compared to earth. If Earth were the size of a minivan, all the water on Earth would fit in a half-liter bottle in a single cup holder.

➻ Not one of the 35 largest cities in India has 24-hour-a-day water service. Even the global brand-name cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai offer water service only an hour or two a day.

➻ Treating diarrhea consumes 2 percent of the GDP of India. The nation spends $20 billion a year on diarrhea—$400 million a week—more than the total economies of half the nations in the world.

➻ A common statistic is the 1 billion people in the world—one in six—don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water.

But a less well-known statistic is equally stunning: 1.6 billion people in the world—one in four—have to walk at least 1 km each day to get water and carry it home, or depend on someone who does the water walk.

Just the basic water needs of a family of four—50 gallons total—means carrying (on your head) 400 pounds of water, walking 1 km or more, for as many trips as required, each day.

➻ Between 1900 and 1936, clean water in U.S. cities cut the rate of child deaths in half.

➻ Cooling water a typical U.S. nuclear power plan requires: 30 million gallons per hour

Water that New York City requires: 46 million gallons per hour

➻ Water required to maintain a typical Las Vegas golf course: 2,507 gallons for every 18-hole round of golf

Each hole of golf, for each golfer, requires 139 gallons of irrigation water.

➻ Average time a molecule of water spends in the atmosphere, after evaporating, before returning to Earth as rain or snow: 9 days

➻ Amount of water that falls on a single acre of ground when it receives 1 inch of rain: 27,154 gallons

This year’s official World Water Day ceremonies are being held in Cape Town, but there are events being held worldwide. To see if there is one in your area, visit the World Water Day website.

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November 23, 2010

The Mesh Holiday Gift Guide

Filed under: Big Ideas,Information Technology,Innovation,Social Responsibilty — dylan @ 12:59 pm

Not sure what to get that special someone for the Holidays this year?

I keep telling my friends in business that Lisa Gansky’s book, The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, is one of the most important reads of the year. It does more than document a trend. It explains a movement in business—a movement away from selling products and services outright to selling access to them, an emerging model she calls “The Mesh.” As Gansky explains:

Fundamentally, the Mesh is based on network-enabled sharing—on access rather than ownership. The central strategy is, in effect, to “sell” the same product multiple times. Multiple sales multiply profits, and customer contact. Multiple contacts multlipy opportunity—for additional sales, for strengthening a brand, for improving a competitive service, and for deepening and extending the relationship with customers.

The book itself would make an outstanding gift, but now, just in time for the holiday season, Lisa Gansky has developed something beside it—The Mesh Holiday Gift Guide—for a “different kind of holiday giving.” It profiles Mesh companies that you can sign your loved ones up for—”no boxes, no gift wrap, no batterries required.”

The advantage for customers are many. We don’t have to buy and clutter our homes with all the DVDs we want to watch anymore… we can just get them from Netflix. We don’t have to buy a car and worry about the high costs of insurance and parking in our urban centers… we can simply sign up for Zipcar and use one of the many shared cars they offer when we need to. And we don’t have to buy brand new clothes for our growing infants every three weeks… we can log onto peace. love. swap and exchange the clothes our children have outgrown for gently used clothes from other families online. Basically, it is a way to have access to everything we need and want without taking on the mental and physical clutter that owning them entails.

So, instead of giving your loved ones more stuff to clutter up their lives (and landfills) this holiday season, why not free them of it by giving them an experience that keeps on giving? I know that one of the gifts I’m most grateful for was the free months of Netflix I received from a coworker years ago (thanks again, Meg!). Head on over to the Mesh Holiday Gift Guide to explore similar options. Your family and friends will be thanking you for for years to come.

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May 13, 2010

An inBubbleControversy?

Filed under: Blog,InBubbleWrap,New Releases,Social Responsibilty,Uncategorized — Sally @ 11:18 am

After I posted my new inBubbleWrap article and giveaway last week, a friend commented with a link to a This American Life story which looked into the validity of Steve Poizner’s written account of his time at Mount Pleasant, the high school where he, a successful Silicon Valley business man, volunteered to teach for a year in the early 2000′s.

The accusation against Poizner is that he greatly exaggerated just how downtrodden the school and its students really were. He describes the neighborhood as having “[y]ellowing, weedy gardens” and “driveways marred by large oil spots or broken down cars,” the school itself as “painted a surly brown” with “a big portal onto the campus…like the entrance to a cave.” The administrator is “dull,” many of the teachers biased against his Republican conservatism, the kids underprivileged and inattentive, if not down-right dangerous, and the classrooms “[b]athed in the harsh light of overhead fluorescent bulbs, the space…as uninviting as an interrogation room.” Poizner uses statistics regarding teen pregnancies, violence and state standards to drive the point home that there was some risk in his decision to teach at Mount Pleasant.

This American Life pokes a number of holes in Poizner’s recollections of Mount Pleasant and the desperate state of the school, but toward the end of the story, several people are interviewed who give Poizner a pass on the alleged hyperbole and support his commitment to teaching, and his representation of the poor academic performance of the school.

Poizner refutes any implication that he “got it wrong” when Ira Glass pushes him on the subject during their interview included in the This American Life piece, and I think this point of view is, in one way, defensible. Last summer, I took a week-long nonfiction memoir writing workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. I have always had an interest in memoir and continue to write down my own story periodically. One of the recurring questions for our professor, a published memoirist, was just how accurate our writing, our recollections of the past, had to be. Many memoir and nonfiction writers are gun-shy after the drama of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was outed to be more fiction than nonfiction and other such books were put on trial.

The answer: be as truthful as possible, but know that it is “your” truth and don’t subscribe that truth to another person. Memory is slippery, relative, individual, a changeling. In an article in The Washington Post in 2009, writer Karl Taro Greenfeld reflects on the making of memories.

Memory, neuroscientists now believe, is a pattern or grouping of neighboring neurons firing in the brain in reproduction of the initial pattern that fired when the actual experience happened. Each time that experience is recalled, it triggers a similar pattern of neurons, thus strengthening the memory while at the same time altering it; the grouping may lose a few neurons and gain a few new ones. A memory, in other words, is nothing more than a chemical reaction that is subject to the same variations and inconsistencies as any other human endeavor; we can be no more sure of the accuracy of our recollections than we can be of, say, the accuracy of the next foul shot in basketball. A falsehood can be deposited in the brain and reinforced almost as easily as a true-life experience. Memory is fallible, we all acknowledge that, yet a memoirist is expected to report a version that is true to life.

In other words, if Poizner felt there was a risk in driving his Lexus to Mount Pleasant high school, that emotion could certainly have altered his memory of those first days at the school. For him, the job was high-risk, not only due to his perception of actual danger, but because he was personally taking on a challenge–teaching with no teaching experience outside of his managerial expertise and the odd sales presentation.

So what happens when a nonfiction writer like Poizner writes something that many say is simply an impossibility, or a misrepresentation? Greenfeld explains:

So if a memoirist’s job, on some level, is to sift through and filter those experiences that somehow added up to the person the writer is today, and to present those in some form, chronological or categorical or geographical, that has an internal or narrative logic, then what does one make of a memory — that is, the chemical processes that create a memory — that simply could not have happened? Perhaps that process influenced the memoirist even more than the actual events. Putting aside for a second the need to entertain the reader and the murkier issues of commerce that can also influence a writer’s decision to include or exclude material, and assuming that I am acting in good faith here, then what do I do with the memory that simply could not have happened?

While it is more Poizner’s perspective that is in question more than his facts, this point about “good faith” is worth considering in regards to Poizner’s book. Another criticism of Poizner’s book is that he wrote the book (and perhaps took the teaching job) to further his political career, that he created additional risk in his presentation of the school to make his actions shine brighter. That’s a tough judgment to make since every book has an agenda of some sort, even if it is simply to tell a good story, or as Greenfeld mentions, “murkier issues of commerce, “just as it can be expected that accusations against his work may have an agenda driving them as well.

Clearly Poizner is using his experience teaching at Mount Pleasant as a launching pad for his support and creation of charter school and to shore up his experience base to reference during his run for California governor. Did his alleged misrepresentation of Mount Pleasant harm the school and its students and teachers? Or did it bring singular attention to the school that perhaps improves the school in the future?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but as I wrote in my inBubbleWrap editorial and as Ira Glass mentions in his This American Life piece about Poizner, public school systems are struggling, many are struggling more desperately than Mount Pleasant, and it is the responsibility of all to find solutions. Regardless of speculation over Poizner’s personal agenda or his perceptions, one hopes his book and his work in that school may cause some to look at how they can serve their community schools personally.

What do you think? Does Poizner get a free pass due to his good intentions and the relativity of memory? Or do his valid deductions lose credence due to his allegedly questionable presentation of the school and its students? Does this controversy make you more or less likely to pick up Mount Pleasant? Might the book still inspire you despite the questions?

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August 31, 2009

Devastating Intelligence

Filed under: Blog,Global Business,Social Responsibilty — Jon @ 1:37 pm

“Details of Bravo’s destruction were so deeply unsettling that over the next five years, the Atomic Energy Commission released only fragments of reports about it. Even a report to Congress was delayed due to “international political sensitivity.” Most of the scientific studies of radiation were conducted by academic institutes funded by the AEC. And many of the scientific articles published in the open literature followed AEC reports that had been classified – and unchallenged – for several years. Together, these limitations assured strong agency influence over public knowledge of the extent of destruction and contamination that would likely follow an attack. And it demonstrated the potent role that classified information could play to insulate political and military leaders from public criticism and accountability.”

This is from a book no one wants to know exists. In fact, much of the details, such as referred to above, reveal the government’s habit of keeping much information about toxin levels in our environment out of view. However, though it’s not information we want to understand as truth, the content of this book affects us all, has affected us for a long time, and holds future consequences we are not even yet aware of. It’s an important book.

John Wargo’s Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health describes the incredible destruction that’s been done to our environment, and how that damage, on a molecular level, is evidenced in every existing soil, plant, animal, and human in existence today. Starting with nuclear testing, progressing through pesticides, mercury in food, and ending in plastics manufacturing, progress has carried a catastrophic price tag, and our only hope now, according to Wargo, is to deal with it on a creatively defensive level going forward. There is no way to erase the effects already in place, but we can do something about contributing to them further.

This isn’t an environmental book about being nice to people, animals, etc. It’s a book of very stark facts about the world we live in, written with intelligence, insight, and profound recommendations of how we can deal with, somewhat literally, the black cloud over our heads.

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January 22, 2009

New excerpt up – from Green to Gold

Filed under: Safety, Health, and Wellness,Social Responsibilty,Strategy — Tom Ehrenfeld @ 9:45 am

One of our favorite books, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage by Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston, is now available in paperback.
Over on the Excerpts blog we’ve posted a passage called “Green-to-Gold Plays” in which the authors map out the strategies that they have found to create value in organizations that are interested in “doing good and doing well” simultaneously.

Here’s a short excerpt from the excerpt:

An Eco-Advantage Mindset, supported by the right tracking tools, a focus on redesign, and a culture of environmental stewardship, is the foundation for turning green to gold. But the real action lies in the strategies that create value, the Green-to-Gold Plays.
Like any other business strategy, our Green-to-Gold Plays aim to reduce the downsides a business faces (cost and risk) or increase the upsides (revenue and intangible value). Unlike many others, though, these plays don’t sacrifice responsibility in the pursuit of profit — or profit in the pursuit of responsibility. Our WaveRider companies offer proof every day that doing good and doing well can be symbiotic.
We’ve mapped the eight Green-to-Gold Plays drawn from our study of WaveRiders onto the two-by-two strategy framework we outlined earlier. Not surprisingly, most green business efforts to date have focused on the lower left box. Cost reduction is extremely low risk, easy to sell internally, and often pays back quickly. It can yield competitive advantage. But our research suggests that, by focusing solely on the cost side, many companies are missing chances to generate broader Eco-Advantage. Most companies have not yet executed all of the plays — they’re leaving money on the table.

Here’s a direct link to the excerpt: 800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/008676.html

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December 29, 2008

How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint – a great little book

Filed under: Big Ideas,Current Events,Safety, Health, and Wellness,Social Responsibilty — 800-CEO-READ @ 8:50 am

One of my favorite stocking stuffers this holiday season was How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: 365 Simple Ways to Save Energy, Resources, and Money by Joanna Yarrow.
This colorful little book, made of recycled products and printed with vegetable oil ink, offers tips for making easy behavioral and purchasing changes to reduce your carbon footprint and save money and energy at the same time.
Here are the topics covered in the chapters:

Heating and Cooling
Electricity and Electronics
Cooking
Washing and Cleaning
Gardening and D.I.Y.
Shopping
Children
Work
Leisure
Transportation
the bigger picture…

Yarrow covers the short-term and long-term benefits of implementing these changes, and shows both the cost savings and the environmental benefits.
Here are a few tips I found particularly useful:

Under heating and cooling controls… use “a programmable, or setback, thermostat, which allows you to set different temperatures for different times (particularly useful if your home is usually unoccupied during the day) and turn your water heater on and off automatically”
Under water use… “Harvest the rain – Capture some of the rain water that falls on your roof by connecting a water barrel to a downspout. This water can then be used in the garden.”
Under public transportation… “Adjust your working hours, if you can, so that you don’t have to travel on public transportation at peak times. The journey will be quicker, and you’ll be guaranteed a seat.”

By following even a few of the tips in How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint, you’ll get back your $12.95 and more. And you’ll start to see significant benefits. This little book has been a hit with my friends and family this year, and I plan to buy a few more to keep on hand for gifts or host presents.

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October 22, 2008

Do you eat Stonyfield Yogurt?

Filed under: Social Responsibilty — Kate @ 11:29 am

GOOD magazine devoted 32 pages to business in their November/December issue. To start the section off is an interview with Gary Hishberg, dairy king, founder of Stonyfield Farm and author of Stirring it Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. Here’s a link to the interview.
Also, check out the manifesto Gary wrote for ChangeThis.
This past month we’ve been working on our yearly magazine, In the Books (our second edition is due out in January!). My research project was on sustainability and business and the business books written about that intersection. One of those books was Stirring it Up.
In the interview, GOOD asks Gary what’s the holdup in companies pursuing sustainability? Gary answers that the selling point of sustainability is not “your company is better morally if it’s sustainable”; rather it’s, your company can be more profitable when it is sustainable. Morality doesn’t sell. Increased profits does. As Gary tells it:

We need to shine a very bright light on the inherent un-profitability on depending on non-renewable fuels and conventional agribusiness. Waste is really too expensive now. The concept of waste doesn’t even exist in nature. Nevertheless, we’ve allowed it because it’s been cheap. The reality is that all businesses use non-renewable fuels, all businesses generate waste. But waste can be food; waste can be energy. It will have to be for us to have any hope for our children. The idea of waste is a flawed concept. We have to re-engineer our thinking.

In architecture, exists the study of biomimcry. The idea of copying various elements of nature to build stronger (and more varied) structures. Gaudi did this in Barcelona with many of his buildings, churches and parks. In business, understanding nature and copying its lessons is a good starting point to begin re-engineering our thinking about sustainability, as Gary suggests.

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September 23, 2008

September 8, 2008

The Tao of Sustainability

Filed under: Big Ideas,Current Events,Personal Development,Safety, Health, and Wellness,Social Responsibilty — 800-CEO-READ @ 9:27 am

We’ve seen a large increase in the number of books on sustainability and “greening” this year, including this new one from Yale University Press: Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture by John R. Ehrenfeld. You’ll read more about these books in our forthcoming 2008 annual review, In the Books (links to inaugural 2007 edition), but here’s a look at this book, which is based on the premise that “sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever.”
Don’t dismiss that premise as lofty and unrealistic, though. The success of sustainability efforts in this world depends on our adoption of idealistic standards and a vision for a healthier world. Ehrenfeld addresses the obstacles and problematic attitudes to this vision, and offers practical steps to adopting a sustainability mindset on both the personal and corporate levels. He suggests new, holistic approaches to sustainable design that won’t act, as others have in the past, as Band-Aids. Instead, Ehrenfeld focuses on the routes we should take to ensure success.
Here is John Ehrenfeld on The Tao of Sustainability:

Flourishing can occur only if we pay close attention to the three critical domains that the forces of modernity have dimmed:

Our sense of ourselves as human beings: the human domain.

Our sense of our place in the [natural] world: the natural domain.

Our sense of doing the right thing: the ethical domain.

And here are his suggestions about the Special Role of Business in becoming a sustainable society:

Replace the rubric of sustainable development with that of sustainability as flourishing

Stop publishing misleading advertisements hinting that ecoefficiency will solve the world’s problems and save money at the same time

Use the “Tao of Sustainability” as a strategic and operational template

Create a culture of sustainability in the workplace

Businesses should design their offerings to guide behavior toward ethical responsibility

Social responsibility, like charity, begins at home.

You can read more about John and Sustainability by Design at: http://johnehrenfeld.com/index.html

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