October 2009
Six Disciplines for Excellence by Gary Harpst
Author Gary Harpst found that less than 5 percent of businesses are high-impact companies, those that produce significant revenue growth and expanded employment. Likewise, he found companies that do become high impact rarely sustain their momentum more than three or four years.
Six Disciplines for Excellence is a collection of Harpst’s lessons from building several companies in his career. At the same time, Harpst takes the extra step beyond stories about those businesses and key decisions to a complete blueprint that executives can use to build organizations that achieve and sustain success over time.
The six disciplines are a set of interconnected practices that ensure employees in the organization know what they have to accomplish today to make the organizations successful. The disciplines are:
- Decide What’s Important
- Set Goals That Lead
- Align Systems
- Work The Plan
- Innovate Purposefully
- Step Back
For each discipline, Harpst provides step-by-step recommendations and insights that any company can use to implement a new strategic direction.
August 2009
by Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired and author of the The Long Tail, a best-seller about the Internet economy.
Free! is his exploration of the past, present, and future of free as a business model. Anderson provides a retrospective of free, including King Gillette’s marketing revelation to give away razors in order to sell disposable blades, and the rise of advertising to support free media. Anderson also delves into Google’s business model and explains how the search-engine giant can afford to give away applications, virtually unlimited e-mail, free 411 services, etc. to improve its ad sales.
Sticking with his theme, Anderson has made the entire book available for free as a downloadable audiobook.
(The complete book is available as a free e-book on scribd.com, but scribd was having technical difficulties at the time of distribution.)
Read more about Free! on publishing veteran Rex Hammock’s
blog.
June 2009
by Tom Rath
Success often requires playing to your strengths. But do you really know you’re your strengths are and how to capitalize on them?
StrengthsFinder 2.0 has the answer.
Author Tom Rath has spent his career studying strengths and why people should make the most of them instead of focusing on their shortcomings. His research has identified 34 most common talents (he calls them themes) and created a tool for determining anyone’s top five. Rath believes that discovering your primary talents will have great benefit to you and your work peers.
Each StrengthsFinder 2.0 book includes an access code that allows the reader to take a 45-minute online test to determine his or her strengths. The book includes detailed information on each of the themes, such as Analytical, Focus, Maximizer, and Strategic. It also includes ideas for action and working with others who exhibit that particular strength.
April 2009
by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
People are using technology to get the things they need — information, recommendations or advice — from each other instead of corporations. In Groundswell Li and Bernoff, two Forrester Research analysts, use consumer data and experience with dozens of companies to examine this social trend.
New media technologies such as networking sites (MySpace and Facebook), user-generated content (YouTube) and blogs allow people to come together and share information, making them a more powerful force than institutions. But instead of feeling threatened, companies can harness that power by using these tools to build relationships with customers and other key audiences.
Li and Bernoff use real-life examples of how companies use social media technologies to listen to their target groups and join the conversation that’s already taking place. They emphasize that companies should concentrate on the relationships, not the tools.
February 2009
What was the best business book of 2008? Was it Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell? What about Tribes by marketing guru Seth Godin? Or could it be Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman’s follow up to The World Is Flat?
We’ve compiled several lists so you can decide for yourself. Happy reading.
December 2008
Guts!: Companies that Blow the Doors Off Business-as-Usual
by Kevin Freiberg
Freiberg, the well-known business author who penned the best-seller Nuts! about Southwest Airlines, advocates the notion that great leaders “gotta have guts.”
In Guts!, Freiberg advocates replacing fear-based management with heart, soul, discipline, loyalty, and humor. Among the topics covered in the book’s seven chapters are ways to brand the culture, make business heroic, and inspire fun. Whole Foods and Omnicom Group are among the examples he uses to illustrate his themes.
If you find Guts! insightful, check out the sequel in Boom! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-as-Usual.
