Nov. 2005 – An offering from the Havard Business School Press subtitled “How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.” An exceptional book about truly assessing where the market is going and figuring out how to create a new space before your competition does. It’s a matter of looking at your own company’s…
Nov. 2005 – I loved this book. The subtitle is “How America’s Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive.” I found it through a book review in FastCompany magazine, which often profiles excellent new books. The beginning of the book speaks immediately to those who have experience with a “start-up.” Although our company was…
Nov. 2005 – One of those business fables made so popular by writers like Ken Blanchard, who wrote the forward for this third edition. This book was recommended by our VP of Insurance (recently made President of Personal Lines) who announced at a department heads meeting that he considered me a peacock. It is one of…
Nov. 2005 – I definitely want to be Jack Welch when I grow up. If I had any plans to grow up. I’m still considering my careers options – dancing pirate or possibly talk show host. Still, Jack has a way of cutting to the essential truths about running a business. Especially a large, complex, multi-national…
Nov. 2005 – This book was recommended by one of our regional vice presidents in SW Virginia. The book is excellent for giving a background and overview to the articles that are appearing every day from the Wall Street Journal to BusinessWeek. Globalization seems to have come out of nowhere with the rise of India…
Nov. 2005 – Just finished Daniel H. Pink’s A Whole New Mind. It was loaned to me by one of my colleagues in the Training Division whose son was assigned the book as part of a college course. The concepts are very interesting and the author makes an excellent case for an overall shift in business…
Do I think these people will be back? No. I think a great many of them will discover it’s better to take a chance on your own failure than to put your future in the hands of a entity that is focused on profits instead of people – as if there is no connection between the two.
Nov. 18, 2010 – A really interesting book by UVa professor Jonathan Haidt. His analogy of the elephant and rider is used throughout Chip & Dan Heath’s new book Switch. This book is also part of the culture and training used by Tony Hsieh at Zappos and referenced in his book Delivering Happiness. Not bad for…
(July 2010) – Subtitled: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. A great book in the “must read” category because it is so fundamental to how we perceive what happens to us, and that perception affects everything else. Dr. Seligman developed a test for measuring optimism and pessimism, and throughout his career did meticulous research…
Beyond the basics of a quality product and good customer service, we are bound by our relationships with people. Another favorite quote of mine is one I recall being in Jack Welch’s book Winning. When asked about which restaurant was his favorite, he replied: “The one where they know my name.”
Nora Ephron’s new movie Julie & Julia (opening Aug. 7th) does for blogging what her 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail did for email.
I was still quite surprised to see it jump off the headlines of The Washington Times this morning when I stopped to get coffee: “Palin fires back at critics on Twitter.” The Times is a very conservative newspaper by Washington standards, and to have that screaming from beneath their masthead gave me a jolt. My mind registered “Twitter” but took a minute to orient where I was seeing it – in this very unexpected context.
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