Book Short: What’s For Dinner Tonight, Honey? The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, by Barry Schwartz, presents an enlightening, if somewhat distressing perspective on the proliferation of options and choices facing the average American today. The central thesis of the book is that some choice is better than no choice (I’d rather be able to pick blue jeans or black jeans), but that limited choice may be better in the end than too much choice (how do I know that the jeans I really want are relaxed cut, tapered leg, button fly, etc.?). We have this somewhat astonishing, recurring conversation at home every night, with the two of us sitting around paralyzed about where to eat dinner. The author’s arguments and examples…
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Books
Book Short: A Must Read
Book Short: A Must Read Every once in a while, I read a book and think, “This is an important book.” Microtrends, by Mark Penn, was just that kind of read. Penn is the CEO of one of our largest clients in the market research business as well as CEO of Burson Marstellar and, more notably, the Clintons’ pollster and strategy director for much of the last 16 years. He’s a smart guy, and more important than that, he’s awash in primary research data. The premise of Microtrends is that America is no longer a melting pot, where lots of different people come together to try to be the same, but rather that it’s a big tent, where lots of…
Book Short: a Corporate Team of Rivals
Book Short: a Corporate Team of Rivals One of the many things I have come to love about the Christmas holiday every year is that I get to go running in Washington DC. Running the Monuments is one of the best runs in America. Today, at my mother-in-law’s suggestion, I stopped i8n at the Lincoln Memorial mid-run and read his second inaugural address again (along with the Gettysburg Address). I had just last week finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and while I wasn’t going to blog about it as it’s not a business book, it’s certainly a book about leadership from which any senior executive or CEO can derive lessons. Derided by…
Book Short: A Good Dose of Introspection
Book Short: A Good Dose of Introspection I rarely blog about non-business books since this is a business blog — and I read a lot of them! But occasionally, one manages to slip in, and this time, it’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. From the author of Tuesdays With Morrie, which I also liked quite a bit, this one is excellent. And a very, very quick read. The book, in short (i.e., a book short <g>), is about a guy who dies, and who, in heaven, meets five people who have shaped his life and died before him. Some he knows well, some he knows barely, some he’s never met. Each one tells him a…
Book Short: Shamu-rific
Book Short: Shamu-rific I re-read an old favorite last night in preparation for a management training course I’m co-teaching today at Return Path: Ken Blanchard’s Whale Done! The Power of Positive Relationships. I was reminded why it’s an old favorite. It has a single concept which is simple but powerful. And yes, it’s based loosely on killer whale training tactics. Accentuate the positive. The best example in the book is actually a personal one more than a professional one. The main character of the book has a “problem” in that he chronically works late, then comes home and gets beat up by his wife about coming home so late. The result? No behavior change — and probably even a reinforcement…
Book Short: Blogging Alone?
Book Short: Blogging Alone? I usually only blog about business books, but since I read Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam, because of its connection to the topic of Internet community and social media, I’ll record some thoughts about and from it here. It’s an interesting read, although a little long. Putnam’s basic thesis is that America’s social capital — the things that have brought us physically and emotionally together as a country throughout much of the 20th century such as church, voting, and participation in civic organizations like the PTA or the Elks Club — are all severely on the decline. The reasons in Putnam’s view are television (you knew all those re-runs…
Book Short: Crazy Eights
Book Short: Crazy Eights In honor of Return Path being in the midst of its eighth year, I recently read a pair of books with 8 in the title (ok, I would have read them anyway, but that made for a convenient criterion when selecting out of my very large “to read” pile). Ram Charan’s latest, Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t, was pretty good and classic Charan. Quick, easy to skim and still get the main points. The book lost a little credibility with me when Charan lionized Verizon (perhaps he uses a different carrier himself) and Bob Nardelli (the book was published before Nardelli’s high profile dismissal), but makes good…
Book Short: Next, Write a Sequel
Book Short: Next, Write a Sequel Written by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter and billed as “the long awaited sequel to First, Break All the Rules” (one of the best management books I’ve ever read), I thought 12: The Elements of Great Managing, was good, but not great. 12…, along with the original book First… and Now, Discover Your Strengths, the latter two both by Marcus Buckingham, are all based on an extensive database of research done on corporate America by the Gallup organization over many years. All three are valuable reads in one way or another, although I found this to be the weakest of the three. (Note that Now… is different from the other two in that…
Book Short: Finishing First
Book Short: Finishing First The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness, by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, is one of those “airport books” that takes about an hour to read. I had an ear-to-ear grin reading the book, in part because, well, it’s just a happy book, filled with anecdotes about how a smile here or a gesture of kindness there made a difference in someone’s life — both personally and professionally. But part of my interest in the book was also driven by a long-standing debate we have at Return Path over whether we’re “too nice” as a company and whether we should have “sharper elbows.” I was struck by a few comments…
Book Short: Virtuous Cycle
Book Short: Virtuous Cycle Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business is a fun read if you’re a New Yorker who eats out a lot; a good read for entrepreneurs around scaling leadership skills as the business grows; and a great read for anyone who runs a serious customer service-oriented organization. I’ve eaten at all of his restaurants multiple times over the years except for the new ones at MOMA (perhaps a few too many times at the Shake Shack), and while I like some more than others (perhaps the Shake Shack a bit too much), they all do have great hospitality as a common theme. While there are a lot of good lessons in…
Book Short: Unsung Heroes
Book Short: Unsung Heroes If you like “entrepreneurship by analogy” books, you’ll like The Innovators: The Engineering Pioneers Who Made America Modern, by David Billington. I have to admit some bias here — Professor Billington was my favorite teacher and senior thesis advisor at Princeton (I almost majored in civil engineering because of him), and this book is one of a number he’s written that are outgrowths of his most popular courses at Princeton. And while there’s no substitute for the length or energy of his lectures, the book works. The book is basically a person-focused engineering history of America from 1776-1883. Billington talks about four classes of engineering product: public structures (mostly bridges), machines that produced power, networks like…