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…
Category
Leadership
I Hope I Didn’t Make You Sick, Too
I Hope I Didn’t Make You Sick, Too Fellow entrepreneur and MyWay blogger Chris Yeh takes me to task for my post last week entitled Humbled at TED. Although his blog post was pretty harsh on me — saying essentially that I’d lost my brain and made him sick by fawning over celebrities (which I didn’t do) — his comment on my blog was a little more measured, just reminding me that people like Bill Clinton is human and puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. I think Chris missed my main point, and since he decided to go public blasting me, I’ll repeat here what I emailed him privately before he…
An Execution Problem
An Execution Problem My biggest takeaway from the TED Conference this week is that we — that is to say, all of us in the world — have an execution problem. This is a common phrase in business, right? You’ve done the work of market research, positioning, and strategy and feel good about it. Perhaps as a bigger company you splurge and hire McKinsey or the like to validate your assumptions or develop some new ones. And now all you have to do is execute — make it happen. And yet so many businesses can’t make the right things happen so that it all comes together. I’d guess, completely unscientifically, that far, far more businesses have execution problems than strategic…
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…
Right, That's MY Job
Right, That’s MY Job I made a dumb comment at our recent Board meeting that got me thinking. We came into the meeting with, in addition to lots of the regular updating and reporting, one specific strategic topic we wanted guidance on from the Board about something that’s been nagging the management team for a while without an obvious solution. We had a great conversation about the topic with the Board and got very clear guidance as to their perspective on what we should do. I agreed with most of it, albeit with a couple modifications, but more than anything else, I was happy for the note of clarity on an issue with which we’d been struggling as a management…
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…
Half Your Waking Hours
Half Your Waking Hours I just came back from our annual Board/Management ski trip (and Board meeting) — we had about half of both groups join, which is typical given the time commitment. We had a great time, and the conversation for the three days was a nice blend of business and personal. The thing that struck me during the weekend — and I am reminded of this regularly in the office and at other work events as well — is how much I genuinely enjoy the company of the people with whom I work. Whether it’s my senior staff, my Board, or anyone I can think of in other roles within Return Path, we can manage to have a…
Half Your Waking Hours
Half Your Waking Hours I just came back from our annual Board/Management ski trip (and Board meeting) — we had about half of both groups join, which is typical given the time commitment. We had a great time, and the conversation for the three days was a nice blend of business and personal. The thing that struck me during the weekend — and I am reminded of this regularly in the office and at other work events as well — is how much I genuinely enjoy the company of the people with whom I work. Whether it’s my senior staff, my Board, or anyone I can think of in other roles within Return Path, we can manage to have a…
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 (Not So) Short: Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure
Book (Not So) Short: Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure I couldn’t get the catchy jingle from the 80’s commercial for Sure deodorant (you remember, the one with the Statue of Liberty at the end of it – thanks, YouTube) out of my head while I was reading the relatively new book, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. Written by HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kantor, Confidence is one of the few business books I’ve read that’s both long and worth reading in full. The book has scores of examples of both winning and losing streaks, from sports, business, politics, and other walks of life, and it does a great job of breaking down the core elements…
Book Short: Another 8 Habits
Book Short: Another 8 Habits Besides having a fantastic title, Richard St. John’s Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky, and Rich is a fun and quick read. It’s a completely different style than Stephen Covey’s “habits” books (The 7, The 8th). It’s a little cartoony and list-oriented, and it’s a much quicker read — and also easier to put down and pick up without feeling like you’re losing your place. The book’s foundation is interviews, mostly by the author, of successful people who span many different careers, from artists to actors and models to athletes to politicians to business leaders. The organization is very solid, and the content is highly motivating. It’s a good guide to success in any field, and in particular…