Book Short: Allegory of Allegories Squirrel, Inc., by Stephen Denning, is a good quick read for leaders who want a refreshing look at effective ways to motivate and communicate to their teams. The book focuses on storytelling as a method of communication, and Denning employs the storytelling method fairly successfully as a framework for the book. The specific kinds of messages he focuses on, where he says storytelling can have the biggest impact, are: communicating a complex idea and sparking action; communicating identity – who YOU as leader are; transmitting values; getting a group or team to work together more effectively; neutralizing gossip or taming the grapevine; knowledge-sharing; and painting a vision of the future that a team can hang…
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Books
Book Short: Reality Doesn’t have to Bite
Book Short: Reality Doesn’t have to Bite I just read Confronting Reality (book; audio), the sequel to Execution, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Except I didn’t read it, I listened to it on Mariquita’s iPod Shuffle over the course of two or three long runs in the past week. The book was good enough, but I also learned two valuable lessons. Lesson 1: Listening to audio books when running is difficult – it’s hard to focus enough, easy to lose one’s place, can’t refer back to anything or take notes. Lesson 2: If you sweat enough on your spouse’s Shuffle, you can end up owning a Shuffle of your own. Anyway, I was able to focus on the book…
Book Short: The Most Rapacious Guys in the Room
Book Short: The Most Rapacious Guys in the Room I just finished The Smartest Guys in the Room, by journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. This is the story of Enron, and what a tale it is! The book is a good quick business novel read. It reminded me a lot of Barbarians at the Gate, except that it made me far angrier. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m at a different place in my career now than I was 10 years ago and therefore have a different appreciation for what goes on in companies, or if the Enron guys were just far worse than anyone surrounding RJR Nabisco. But in any case, as my Grandpa Bill would have…
Hackoff – The Blook
Hackoff – The Blook Fred and Brad have already posted some pertinent details as well, but here’s a must-read for you – entrepreneur Tom Evslin, who has a great blog, has just launched an online book, serialized as a blog. It’s about a fictitious Internet bubble company called Hackoff.com (nice name!), and you can subscribe to the episodes of the book, either by RSS feed or by email. The first episode and various subscription options are all here. Tom’s a great writer and had front row seats/was a lead actor in the bubble. The first episode has me hooked. This is going to be fun!
Why Publishing Will Never Be the Same, Part II
Why Publishing Will Never Be the Same, Part II In Part I of this series, I talked about our experience at Return Path publishing a book back in January through a new type of print-on-demand, or self-publishing house called iUniverse and why I thought the publishing industry was in for a long, slow decline unless it changes its ways. We had another interesting experience with iUniverse more recently that reinforces this point. It turns out, although iUniverse is mainly a “self publisher,” they also have a traditional publishing model called their Star Program, which includes an editorial review process. The good news for us is that they contacted us and said they liked our book so much, and sales are…
Book Shorts: Fred the Cow?
Book Shorts: Fred the Cow? I enjoyed two interesting, super-quick reads from last week that have a common theme running through them: being remarkable. The Fred Factor, by Mark Sanborn, is one of those learn-by-storytelling business novellas. It’s all about the author’s mailman, Fred, and how Fred has figured out how to make a difference in people’s lives even with a fairly routine job. The focal points of the book are things like “practice random acts of kindness” and “turn the ordinary into the extraordinary by putting passion into your work.” It’s a good reminder that it is unbelievably easy, not to mention free, to be kind and thoughtful, and that those things are always always always worth doing. Kinda…
Book Short: Not As Deep As You’d Like
Book Short: Not As Deep As You’d Like Deep Change, by Robert Quinn, is a reasonably interesting collection of thoughts on management and leadership, but it doesn’t hang together very well as a single work with a unified theme. The promise is interesting — that we must personally abandon our knowledge, competence, techniques and abilities and “walk naked into the land of uncertainty” to undergo great personal change that can then lead us to organizational change — but the book doesn’t quite deliver on it. That said, I enjoyed the book as a quick read for a few of its more interesting concepts. For example, Quinn has a great crystallization of many things I’ve observed over the years called “the…
Why Publishing Will Never Be the Same, Part I
Why Publishing Will Never Be the Same, Part I As you may know, we published a book earlier this year at Return Path called Sign Me Up! Sales are going quite well, in case you’re wondering, and we also launched the book’s official web site, where you can subscribe to our “email best practices” newsletter. The process of publishing the book was fascinating and convinced me that publishing will never be the same. Even in two parts, this will be a long post, so apologies in advance. Front to back, the process went something like this: – We wrote the content and selected and prepared the graphics – We hired iUniverse to publish the book for a rough total cost…
Book Short: Why Not Both?
Book Short: Why Not Both? Craig Hickman’s Mind of a Manager, Soul of a Leader talks about how tapping the natural tension between managers and leaders allows an organization to achieve its best. It covers dozens of topical areas and for each compares how a prototypical manager handles the area (practical, reasonable, decisive) vs. how a prototypical leader handles it (visionary, empathetic, and flexible). Of course, the book describes the ideal organization as “balanced an integrated” between the two extremes. My take for startups, a topic not addressed in the book, is that the job of the entrepreneur CEO is to be both manager and leader, and try to do both roles effectively without driving the team nuts. The book…
Book short: Blink
Book short: Blink Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, is a must read for marketers, entrepreneurs, and VCs alike, just as is the case with Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point. Where The Tipping Point theorizes about how humans relate to each other and how fads start and flourish in our society, Blink theorizes about how humans make decisions and about the interplay between the subconscious, learned expertise, and real-time inputs. But Gladwell does more than theorize — he has plenty of real world examples which seem quite plausible, and he peppers the book with evidence from some (though hardly a complete coverage of relevant) scientific and quasi-scientific studies. Blink for Entrepreneurs/CEOs: What’s the most critical lesson in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, as…
Book Short: Legal Aid
Book Short: Legal Aid The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law, by Constance Bagley (HBS) and Craig Dauchy (Cooley Godward), while not exactly a page-turner, is a great reference book for even experienced CEOs. It’s pretty broad in its coverage of all major legal issues an entrepreneur will face, from patent law to firing employees. Remember, you may make fun of lawyers on occasion or grips about their fees, but they DID attend law school for three years, after all. If nothing else, the $20 on this book will almost certainly save you at least 10x that in reduced legal fees someday, for something.