Advanced Search

In the book, Big Winners and Big Losers, Alfred Marcus argues that business books are either agility-based or discipline/focus-based. In Appendix A of the book, Marcus offers a summary of various strategy books in relation to these two camps. 800-CEO-READ has posted the appendix online - very interesting...

800-CEO-READ offers this free e-book which reviews the work of nine marketing books, including:
1. The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling by Annette Simmons
2. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Customer by Michael J. Silverstein
3. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
4. The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business is a Stage by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore
5. The Trendmaster's Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next by Robyn Waters
6. The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market by John Zagula
7. Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage by Fred Senn
8. PyroMarketing: The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life by Greg Stielstra
9. Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Saavy to Sell Just Causes by Katya Andresen

Speaking about what motivates a network of people to collaborate with companies, the excerpt comes from Chapter 7, “Collaborate: Involve Your Customers at Every Stage of Your Enterprise,” in Part II of the book, “Five Strategies to Thrive with Customer Networks.”

Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have spent close to a decade digging deep into what makes these companies tick, and how other managers and leaders can apply those truths to their own organizations. Their research is revealed in their new book, Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. An interview with the authors.

Ideas are a dime a dozen; anyone can have them. They can be good or bad ideas, saving your hide in some cases, wasting your time in others. The best thing about a good idea is that it forces you to act. Insight is rarer, and infinitely more precious. A strong insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand reasons to act and make something happen.

Profit is not the explanation, cause or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity. If archangels instead of businessmen sat in director's chairs, they would still have to be concerned with profitability, despite their lack of personal interest in profit.

When you get out of bed in the morning and think about what you want to do that day, ask yourself whether you'd like others to read about it on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. You'll probably do things a little differently if you keep that in mind.

So much of what we hear and what we're taught turns out to be false on closer scrutiny. Whether it is expert advice, what you read in the paper, or what your mother told you, if it is important, take the time to figure out for yourself whether it is really true.

What makes people great at small talk? However quickly they can transcend the meaningless chitchat about the weather and what company they work for and engage their conversation partners in discussions about stuff that really matters - like their favorite hobbies, their troublesome teenage children, their frustrations at work, their family relationships that really put a strain on them. Only when you talk with someone about their deepest desires and struggles do you get to know and respect and value them as humans, and that's when you really start to bond.

Don't cross the line between enough and too much accountability. To what degree are we able to be accountable? Don't have people accountable for things not under their control or purview as this comes across as unfair. Our managers ask for the impossible and we complain - that's normal but not optimal. Measure the right things and draw the line between enough and too much accountability. Imposing too much accountability kills initiative. How good are your managers at giving feedback? We have to deliver feedback to require accountability. How much cooperation does something take? If a lot of cooperation, it is hard to pinpoint accountability. Finger pointing does not make it happen more quickly. Team goals may be more appropriate.

Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.

A time of turbulence is one of great opportunity for those who can understand, accept, and exploit the new realities. One constant theme is, therefore, the need for the decision maker in the individual enterprise to face up to reality and resist the temptation of what "everybody knows," the temptations of the certainties of yesterday, which are about to become of deleterious superstitions of tomorrow. To manage in turbulent times, therefore, means to face up to the new realities. It means starting with the question: "What is the world really like?" rather than the assertions or assumptions that made sense only a few years ago.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

The five most dangerous words in business may be "Everybody else is doing it."

It is the customer who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good or for a service converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the business thinks it produces is not of first importance--especially not to the future of the business and to its success...What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers value, is decisive--it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper. And what the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for him. And what is value for the customer is, as we shall see, anything but obvious.

Messages should do four things: establish a Connection, promise a Reward, inspire Action, and stick in Memory. (CRAM)

Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving.

Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.

Big shots are little shots who kept shooting.

Entrepreneurialism is a way of living life, not a way of managing life. The real entrepreneur has a certain spirit, an elan and an approach to issues that is just different. And that is the key. In a system that demands sameness, the entrepreneur is willing to be different. Only by being different can things be made better. That is the philosophy at the heart of being an entrepreneur.

There is no point in trying to assess people's abilities without first finding out what they care about. The same goes for trying to assess things such as "leadership potential" or "creativity" out of context. One has always to ask, in relation to what?

Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests...civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering ignorance, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals.

Progress is not created by contented people.

Creativity is natural and abundant, the natural human state. We are creative beings. Being creative is not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out how to marry creativity to discipline so that the discipline amplifies the creativity, rather than squelching it. Truly great entrepreneurs do not just have a great idea (and often, they copy their ideas from others). The entrepreneurial path to greatness is to go from idea to business, then business to company, then company to great company, then great company into enduring great company. To accomplish this entire journey requires much more than just a creative idea.

The 800-CEO-READ Blog links to and excerpts some reviews of the book, Ahead of the Curve by Philip Delves Broughton.