CivilSociety Resource / Reference Library
Entrepreneurship, personal development, life coaching, return migration, research on inter-communal stress, and the Middle East
Listed by author, with links to Amazon.com for more information (when possible)
See also: The WWW Virtual Library on Migration and Ethnic Relations
Entrepreneurship, personal development, life coaching, return migration, research on inter-communal stress, and the Middle East
Listed by author, with links to Amazon.com for more information (when possible)
See also: The WWW Virtual Library on Migration and Ethnic Relations
7. Business Development
Bellman, Geoffrey. Getting Things Done When You Are Not In Charge
A fresh reminder of how leaders are powerless without followers, and how "the rest of us" can change the way our world and our organizations operate.
"Dreams are not realized through small investments of energy, and leaders portray this. Leadership can be seen as energy collected, directed, and released toward a future vision. "
"Belief in what could be and confidence in your supporters' ability to get you there. Your image of the world is different from the image of those who are invested in keeping the world as it is. You see the organization as it could be, in potential, and you risk taking steps toward that imagined organization." I like this book, and have greater affirmation that I can make a difference.
Bennis, Warren and Robert Townsend. Reinventing Leadership: Strategies to empower the organization
Bennis and Townsend compiled here a great collection of pithy sayings and insights into how leaders make an impact through their influence, not because (only) of their position or status. This is a very useful work into the difference between leaders who change the world and managers who sustain stability. The two need each other, and here are a few favorite quotes:
—Leaders are people who do the right things and managers are people are who do things right. Leaders are interested in direction, visions, goals, objectives, intention, purpose, and effectiveness—the right things. Managers are interested in efficiency, the how-to, the day-to-day, the short run of doing things right.
—A manager tends to think of his people in terms of how much they cost and how little he can pay them. A leader tends to think of his people as resources and wonders how much they can earn and how he can help them become heroes.
-- The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
The manager has a short-term view; the leader has a long-term view.
The manager asks why and how; the leader asks what and why.
The manager has her eye on the bottom line; the leader has her eye on the horizon.
—“If you’re going to have people connecting with the public, you’d better get extroverts. They like talking to people. They like interacting with people. Don’t get introverts. They don’t like to do that.”
Chilton, David The Wealthy Barber: Everyone's Commonsense Guide to Becoming Financially Independent
Humourous autobiography of how one man learned to change his future
Clason, George S. Richest Man in Babylon
Great story about putting aside just a little bit each month can lead to great changes in your life
Cornish, Edward. Futuring: The exploration of the Future.
Sponsored by the World Future Society, this book brings into one volume dozens of the world's "experts" in many areas of life and science and religion and technology and government to project their visions and scenarios of the next 25 years. I find their opinions hopeful, and, although very "man can do anything" in outlook, encouraging. We can create a better future than previous generations could dream of. "While it would be pleasant to envision a world free from the pressure of material want, a more realistic projection, based on the evidence, is of a world in which generation after generation thinks it needs only another 10 to 20 percent more income to be perfectly happy."--page 32.
Crichton, Michael. State of Fear
Global Warming: how does the theory and rhetoric stand up in view of thousands of years of global change? That is according to your political ambitions, is the theme of this book. Wrapped in a thriller novel, the scientific debate is not over, and the mass of evidence simply can prove that we don't have enough evidence from history to prove that trends are fixed. The politicians have agendas and they choose facts and hype to support their agendas. This book does prove to me that given a large enough budget, the mass media audiences can be led to believe anything. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
—One of the first things you learned in law school was that the law was not about truth. It was about dispute resolution. In the course of resolving a dispute, the truth might or might not emerge.
—“Well, I shall tell you how,” he said. “In the old days—before your time, Peter—citizens of the West believed their nation-states were dominated by something called the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned Americans against it in the 1960s, and after two world wars the Europeans knew very well what it meant in their own countries. But the military-industrial complex is no longer the primary driver of society. In reality, for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population—under the guise of promoting safety.”
“Safety is important.”
“Please. Western nations are fabulously safe. Yet people do not feel they are, because of the PLM. And the PLM is powerful and stable, precisely because it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media need scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless. If it has no basis in fact at all.
—Alston Chase; “When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”
Davidow, William and Malone, Michael S. The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century
Real thinking about a "virtual" product that "can be made available at any time, in any place, and in any variety."
dealmac.com Where I shop for iPods and other Mac hardware
DeLorean, John. On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors
This is a favorite book because of the clear description of the life and emotions of an innovative project leader working inside one of the world's most bureaucratic organizations. Once seen as the ultimate in career security and lifelong comfort, General Motors became a constraining and anti-innovative weight around the passions of Mr. DeLorean. And, while once he was seen as a bright and promising superstar by the corporation, he was later considered irresponsible and a danger to corporate stability. His journey story, as told here, will give serious insights into corporate life that workers, managers, and leaders in many organizations would do well to study. Favorite quotes: "I got the empty feeling that “what I am doing here may be nothing more than perpetuating a gigantic fraud,” a fraud on the American consumer by promising him something new but giving him only the surface alterations....I always had he vague suspicion that the annual model change may be good for the auto business in the short term but that it wasn’t good for the economy and the country. Couldn’t the money we spent on annual, superficial styling changes be better spent in reducing prices or in improving service and reliability? Or seeking solutions to the sociological problems with which our products were creating in areas of pollution, energy consumption, safety, and congestion?" "A fault that GM has had for a long time is its feeling that, since it sells more cars and trucks than anyone else in the world and makes far more money than any other automotive company, the GM way is the only way. At Chevrolet this corporate thinking translated into the theory that since Chevrolet is the number one nameplate in the American automobile industry it is unwise to tamper with its proven formula for success....This malady is common in some businesses. It also is common in professional sports where management with a team that is old but still winning is often reluctant to bring in younger talent. The result is, of course, that one day the winning record stops because the players are to old to compete effectively."
And, a word to organizations seeking to reduce expense instead of changing the world, "A man trained and skilled only in financial control, who has no direct operational experience, simply lacks the understanding necessary to run the business."
Study the decline of the dinosaur, General Motors, and you can predict what many of today's organizations will experience in the near future.
Didsbury, Howard, Editor. (World Future Society, 2004) Thinking Creatively in Turbulent Times
Major trends that affect how we work today and how we will have to work in the future.
—If we want to stop killing ourselves by the tens of millions in violent conflict, we’re going to have to get much smarter, because our genes haven’t been able to solve that by themselves.
—However, Mulhall’s vision of being “surpassed by our own creations” is not so clear. Being “smart” also has to do with intuition and imagination or is driven by intention, purpose, and the amazing power of curiosity. In this sense, machines are not now nor may never be smart, while humans are. Intelligence is the source of knowledge that helps people make imaginative and intelligent choices. Intelligence is the essence of order: defining the knowable and the known, the predictable, the expectable, and the dependable. “Smartness” on the other hand, has the flavor of the unpredictable, of opportunity, the unknown, and the surprise of innovation. NO change, no innovation, no scientific breakthroughs, no groundbreaking engineering insights, and no new expressions of art take place without this smartness. Smartness is just another word for “creativity with purposes”.
—In every organization, trying to avoid traps in future thinking and being thirsty for success, whether operating in business, administration, education, or the academy, it would be good to have a kind of disturbance generator (DG) to keep you awake in front of the turbulent future(s). The tasks of a DG include asking odd questions concerning the basic assumptions and modes of operation in the organization from the future perspectives, identifying new important weak signals in the operating environment—in the economy, technology, world politics, societal issues, environment, values, etc.—having potential impacts on the organization’s development, and producing innovations related to products, services, customers, modes of operation, strategies, and scenarios.
—The 21st century is being recognized as the “century of cities”.
More than half of the world’s population now live in cities, and the importance of urban environments has become even greater over recent decades. Cities are the key centers of human activity and the engines of economic growth throughout the world, a world that has been dramatically transformed and is more complex, more competitive, and better connected than ever before.
—“Home-basing” will be the next phase of disaggregating our vertically integrated Industrial Era enterprises, following “outsourcing” and “off-shoring”.
—If given free time, humans tend to become unhappy, disordered, and unproductive. Surprisingly, people tend to find work more satisfying than free time. When we focus our minds we feel better.
Mental order leads to increased happiness and productivity.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the power of thinking without thinking
An excellent study of how true experts in a field can "know" something without necessarily being able to explain how they know.
Godwin, Seth. All Marketers are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
An example o f how to make customers want something, even if it is bad for them. I put this here to explain marketing success, not to promote at all selling without ethics. I believe that concern for a customer will sell and do good, and sustain a good reputation for longterm survival.
Harris, Victory. A Book of Five Rings translated by Victor Harris
This is a 1603 book updated to provide glimpses of ancient warrior wisdom to modern managers. Here are a few quotes:
—You must train day and night in order to make quick decisions. In strategy it is necessary to treat training as a part of normal life with your spirit unchanging.
—It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know other. If you study a Way daily, and your spirit diverges, you many think you are obeying a good Way but objectively it is not ht true Way. If you are following the true Way and diverge a little, this will alter become a large divergence. Yo must realize this. Other strategies have come to be thought of as mere sword-fencing, and it is not unreasonable that this should be so.
—Strategy, fixing the eyes mean gazing at the man’s heart. In the large-scale strategy the area to watch is the enemy’s strength. ‘Perception’ and ‘sight’ are the two methods of seeing. Perceptions consists of concentrating strongly on the enemy’s spirit, observing the condition of the battlefield, fixing the gaze only, seeing the progress of the fight and the changes of advantage. This is the sure way to win. In single cob at you must not fix the eyes on details. As I said before, if you fix your eyes on details and neglect important things, your spirit will become bewildered, and victory will escape you.
Kawasaki, Guy. Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People
I read a lot of Kawasaki, in print and in his Blog. He shares a lot of wisdom, and in the volume of writing there are many jewels of wisdom in this survey of some of the most influential people of modern times. Guy says, "A CEO has two main jobs: to live in the future and to pick good people."
Kawasaki, Guy. Art of the Start
How to start and lead a new business or organization
How to clarify your vision, choose your support team, nurture investment contacts, and get the results you've dreamed of.
Kotter, John. Leading Change.
Kotter gives us here a valuable handbook on how to visualize, introduce, and sustain change in an organization. Here are a few quotes:
"Handling new initiatives quickly is not an essential component of success in relatively stable or cartel-like environments. The problem for us today is that stability is no longer the norm. And most experts agree that over the next few decades the business environment will become only more volatile."
"Useful change tends to be associated with a multistep process that creates power and motivation sufficient to overwhelm all the sources of inertia."
Kuniavsky, Mike Observing the User Experience: a Practitioner's Guide to User Research
How to plan and implement a thorough test of the usability of your webpage or communications tool.
Lowe, Janet. Jack Welch Speaks: Wisdom from the World's Greatest Business Leader
The personal viewpoint of Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) on how the industrial world transitioned into a post-industrial network of commercial systems, led by those with passion to succeed at any cost. Here are a few favorite quotes:
—Operating as a political democracy (or nearly so) with a capitalist economy. That, he said, gives a competitive advantage.
—“You know, all of a sudden ‘manager’ isn’t the status word it has been for a century.
—“Punishing failure assures that no one dares.”
--“Quality means literally providing something that’s better than the best, not just better than most.”
Maxwell, John. Developing the Leaders Around You.
I like the premise of this book: take care of your network and they will return the favor.
"The determination of a positive or negative outcome in my leadership depends upon my ability as a leader to develop those closest to me. It also depends upon my ability to recognize the value that others can give my organization and me. My goal is not to draw a following that results in a crowd. My goal is to develop leaders who become a movement....Leaders create and inspire new leaders."
He even quotes Druker--"There is no success without a successor" -- Peter Drucker
Maxwell, John. Maxwell 3-in-1 Special Edition (The Winning Attitude / Developing the Leaders Around You / Becoming a Person of Influence).
I include several Maxwell books on this page because he does write insightfully and has given to me useful answers when dealing with organizational or leadership challenges. In this 3-books-in-1 volume, there is repetition of the most-important points of his tenure as a leadership trainer. Favorite quotes: "-In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary. " And, "Being an influencer means....
modeling integrity with everyone you come into contact with.
nurturing the people in you life to make them feel valued.
showing faith in other so that they believe in themselves.
listening to them so that you can build your relationship with them.
understanding them so that you can help them achieve their dreams.
enlarging them in order to increase their potential.
navigating them through life's difficulties until they can do it themselves.
connecting with them so that you can move them to a higher level.
empowering them to become the person they were created to be.
reproducing other leaders so that your influence continues to grow through others." pg 209.
Maxwell, John. The Winning Attitude
I sometimes like Maxwell's writing. This is a book that presents accurate data and analysis, with conclusions that are helpful to projects I work on. For example, "16,000 executives were studied. Observe the difference between executives defined as "high achievers" (those who generally have a healthy attitude) and "low achievers" (those who generally have an unhealthy attitude):
High achievers tended to care about people as well as profits; low achievers were preoccupied with their own security.
High achievers viewed subordinates optimistically; low achievers showed a basic distrust of subordinates' abilities.
High achievers sought advice from their subordinates' low achievers didn't.
High achievers were listeners; low achievers avoided communication and relied on policy manuals."
McGehee, Tom. Whoosh : Business in the Fast Lane
Short, easy read on enhancing creativity in teamwork.
Naisbitt, John. Global Paradox
Paradoxes surround us in the big/little, global/local, corporate/personal, and public/private contexts. You can find here insights for the emergence of the post-industrial global culture and economy. Because of the global integration, small businesses have even more hope of becoming successful in the future. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
—A famous paradox in architecture that has served the profession well is “Less is more,” meaning that the less you clutter a building with embellishments, the more elegant it can be, the greater a work of architecture it can be.
--The entrepreneur is also the most important player in the building of the global economy. So much so that big companies are decentralizing and reconstituting themselves as networks of entrepreneurs.
--The principle of the global paradox—the bigger the world economy, the more powerful its smallest players—applies especially to business. Huge companies like IBM, Philips, and GM must break up to become confederations of small, autonomous, entrepreneurial companies if they are to survive. Big companies and “economies of scale” succeeded in the comparatively slow-moving world of the four decades to the mid-1980s. But now, only small and medium-sized companies—or big companies that have restyled themselves as networks of entrepreneurs—will survive to be viable when we turn the corner o f the next century. Already 50 percent of U.S. exports are created by companies with 19 or fewer employees; the same is true of Germany. --Economies of scale are giving way to economies of scope, finding the right size for synergy, market flexibility, and above all, speed. ...What is going on in American corporations today is the “ODD effect” : outsourcing, de-layering, and deconstruction.
—In the years ahead all big companies will find it increasingly difficult to compete with—and in general will perform more poorly than—smaller, speedier, more innovative companies.
Olivier, Richard. Peak Performance Presentations : Tools and Techniques from the World of the Theatre
Defines in a new way effective communication--getting the audience involved in the drama of a presentation. This gives excellent advice on how to benefit you and your audience for more passionate and interactive groupwork.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Robert l. Sutton. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truth sand Total Nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management.
This book is a call for evidence-based management, a case for its potential impact, and a guide on how to use it. The authors document carefully that management decision-making is usually not based on facts, and that the results are disasterous. "A big part of the answer is that Western countries, like the United States, glorify rugged individualism so much that we make a cognitive error. We forget that history, organizational goals, rewards, and structure are potent causes of what people and organizations do. We give too much credit to individuals heroes when organizations do things right and place too much blame on individual scapegoats when things go wrong." The authors give data and rigorous analysis to support their call for intelligent management. As has been proved in much recent social science literature, individual managers making independent decisions often make wrong decisions, and managers making decisions based on "wisdom of their crowds" do just as poorly! Research and analysis is not just for new product development, but is essential for organizational leadership. In Pferffer's MBA programs, students will often confuse poor strategy with poor implementation. As others have said, a mediocre strategy properly implemented may be better than an excellent strategy poorly implemented.
Rosen, Emanuel. The Anatomy of Buzz
Marketing is greatly affected by word of mouth, person-to-person communication outside of mainline advertising. Mr. Rosen gives us insights into how and why "buzz" happens, and how to build buzz about a product or service. His Six Rules About Ads and Buzz:
1. Keep It Simple
The message needs to be simple in order for people to pass it on.
2. Tell Us What's New
Fluff doesn't travel well in the networks.
3. Don't Make Claims You Can't Support
Don't tell customers that you care about them unless you really mean it and can consistently demonstrate superb customer service.
4. Ask Your Customers to Articulate What's Special About Your Product or Service
If your customers? can't tell you what's unique about your product, they won't be able to explain it to their friends.
5. Start Measuring Buzz
When you conduct customer satisfaction surveys, ask your customers whether they have recommended the product recently. If so, to how many people?
6. Listen to the Buzz
How is the product being used out in the field? What problems are encountered by users? What are the product attributes being discussed?
Sculley, John. Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple : A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future
'Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?' So began John Sculley's engagement with Apple Computer. He went from managing a huge global and very traditional beverage company to leading a bleeding-edge of technology innovation center. This fantastic book describes his personal journey into high-speed product development and constant change in at Apple Computer. "Reorganizations,in fact, are looked at positively. In many corporations, they're viewed with anxiety. People wonder, 'Where do I go, what will I do? That's especially true in companies that have had no lay-off or have cradle-to-grave employment policies. In Apple, it's constant change. People expect buildings, structures, offices, and people to change. Organizations shouldn't have permanence....The beauty of a network is that is has no centre. It is a process more than a structure, composed of modular groups that establish themselves to take on specific tasks-- not to build fiefdoms and traditional 'departments' do." He compares the "organization man" who had job security in return for his loyalty, with the self-directed man who deals with "third-wave companies" in a different type of relationship: one of creativity and trust and co-maturation. Sculley's description of Steve Jobs, who replaced him as CEO, "Steve Jobs was less a manager and more an impresario. He knew that the role of managment wasn't to stifle creativity through structure and process, but to foster it through unusually innovative means and thinking."
Semler, Ricardo. Seven-Day Weekend.
Fascinating book on business organization systems for the future. Mr. Semler took over management of his father's traditionally profitable, but declining engineering business and began bringing all employees into participation in the reshaping of the company, Semco. "Semler dismantled the rigid management structure imposed by his father in favor of a more flexible organization based on three interdependent core values: employee participation, profit sharing, and the free flow of information."
Many clear improvements over normal business systems can be seen in the book, and in the reports on the group of companies described on the internet. For example, the best people in a company to choose new janitorial equipment are the janitors, not the purchasing agents or the senior management. In other areas of business, it makes sense that the total knowledge base of a company be brought into planning and implementing of every area of business life. Senior managers do not have enough knowledge, enough wisdom, or enough energy to make decisions that will be eagerly supported by every member of an organization. And, if employees do not have a voice in defining new directions of a company, then those new directions are likely to fail.
Mr. Semler is too forward-thinking for most older businesses and business managers to agree with, but for all of us there is a lot to think about. If he is wrong, we who try his way will only have lost some time and some expensive, low-performing middle managers. If he is right, we can gain flexible leadership systems to innovate and grow and build organic growth patterns for the next generations.
Vitale, Joe and Bill Hibbler. Meet & Grow Rich: How to Easily Create and Operate Your Own “Mastermind” Group for Health, Wealth, and More
Leading personal coaches today are saying that you can only grow quickly if you surround yourself with people who are smarter than you area. The authors here back up that statement by showing how to build a very smart team (mastermind group) of advisors and coaches to help you make faster and smarter decisions. I develop virtual teams for each of my areas of interest. Because of new technologies, I can meet frequently with people all over the globe without having to get onto an airplane. But, remember: email is for data, voice if for the relationship, but trust needs some face-to-face.
Whitney, Russ. Millionaire Real Estate Mentor: Investing in Real Estate: A Comprehensive and Detailed Guide to Financial Freedom for Everyone
Real estate investing has different levels of players. Some are content to buy at list prices and hope for appreciation of the value of their holdings, some buy at list price and then rent a property to hope to offset some or most of the mortgage value while waiting for appreciation. Mr. Whitney goes a step further to show how to buy below list price and then to make the maximum amount possible by renting, leasing, or selling. This is a very useful handbook for the beginning investor. He provides many links to other resources, as well as very clear explanation of how and where to find the right kinds of properties to invest in.
Zhou M. "Revisiting ethnic entrepreneurship: Convergencies, controversies, and conceptual advancements"
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 38 (3): 1040-1074 FAL 2004
Bellman, Geoffrey. Getting Things Done When You Are Not In Charge
A fresh reminder of how leaders are powerless without followers, and how "the rest of us" can change the way our world and our organizations operate.
"Dreams are not realized through small investments of energy, and leaders portray this. Leadership can be seen as energy collected, directed, and released toward a future vision. "
"Belief in what could be and confidence in your supporters' ability to get you there. Your image of the world is different from the image of those who are invested in keeping the world as it is. You see the organization as it could be, in potential, and you risk taking steps toward that imagined organization." I like this book, and have greater affirmation that I can make a difference.
Bennis, Warren and Robert Townsend. Reinventing Leadership: Strategies to empower the organization
Bennis and Townsend compiled here a great collection of pithy sayings and insights into how leaders make an impact through their influence, not because (only) of their position or status. This is a very useful work into the difference between leaders who change the world and managers who sustain stability. The two need each other, and here are a few favorite quotes:
—Leaders are people who do the right things and managers are people are who do things right. Leaders are interested in direction, visions, goals, objectives, intention, purpose, and effectiveness—the right things. Managers are interested in efficiency, the how-to, the day-to-day, the short run of doing things right.
—A manager tends to think of his people in terms of how much they cost and how little he can pay them. A leader tends to think of his people as resources and wonders how much they can earn and how he can help them become heroes.
-- The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
The manager has a short-term view; the leader has a long-term view.
The manager asks why and how; the leader asks what and why.
The manager has her eye on the bottom line; the leader has her eye on the horizon.
—“If you’re going to have people connecting with the public, you’d better get extroverts. They like talking to people. They like interacting with people. Don’t get introverts. They don’t like to do that.”
Chilton, David The Wealthy Barber: Everyone's Commonsense Guide to Becoming Financially Independent
Humourous autobiography of how one man learned to change his future
Clason, George S. Richest Man in Babylon
Great story about putting aside just a little bit each month can lead to great changes in your life
Cornish, Edward. Futuring: The exploration of the Future.
Sponsored by the World Future Society, this book brings into one volume dozens of the world's "experts" in many areas of life and science and religion and technology and government to project their visions and scenarios of the next 25 years. I find their opinions hopeful, and, although very "man can do anything" in outlook, encouraging. We can create a better future than previous generations could dream of. "While it would be pleasant to envision a world free from the pressure of material want, a more realistic projection, based on the evidence, is of a world in which generation after generation thinks it needs only another 10 to 20 percent more income to be perfectly happy."--page 32.
Crichton, Michael. State of Fear
Global Warming: how does the theory and rhetoric stand up in view of thousands of years of global change? That is according to your political ambitions, is the theme of this book. Wrapped in a thriller novel, the scientific debate is not over, and the mass of evidence simply can prove that we don't have enough evidence from history to prove that trends are fixed. The politicians have agendas and they choose facts and hype to support their agendas. This book does prove to me that given a large enough budget, the mass media audiences can be led to believe anything. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
—One of the first things you learned in law school was that the law was not about truth. It was about dispute resolution. In the course of resolving a dispute, the truth might or might not emerge.
—“Well, I shall tell you how,” he said. “In the old days—before your time, Peter—citizens of the West believed their nation-states were dominated by something called the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned Americans against it in the 1960s, and after two world wars the Europeans knew very well what it meant in their own countries. But the military-industrial complex is no longer the primary driver of society. In reality, for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population—under the guise of promoting safety.”
“Safety is important.”
“Please. Western nations are fabulously safe. Yet people do not feel they are, because of the PLM. And the PLM is powerful and stable, precisely because it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media need scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless. If it has no basis in fact at all.
—Alston Chase; “When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”
Davidow, William and Malone, Michael S. The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century
Real thinking about a "virtual" product that "can be made available at any time, in any place, and in any variety."
dealmac.com Where I shop for iPods and other Mac hardware
DeLorean, John. On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors
This is a favorite book because of the clear description of the life and emotions of an innovative project leader working inside one of the world's most bureaucratic organizations. Once seen as the ultimate in career security and lifelong comfort, General Motors became a constraining and anti-innovative weight around the passions of Mr. DeLorean. And, while once he was seen as a bright and promising superstar by the corporation, he was later considered irresponsible and a danger to corporate stability. His journey story, as told here, will give serious insights into corporate life that workers, managers, and leaders in many organizations would do well to study. Favorite quotes: "I got the empty feeling that “what I am doing here may be nothing more than perpetuating a gigantic fraud,” a fraud on the American consumer by promising him something new but giving him only the surface alterations....I always had he vague suspicion that the annual model change may be good for the auto business in the short term but that it wasn’t good for the economy and the country. Couldn’t the money we spent on annual, superficial styling changes be better spent in reducing prices or in improving service and reliability? Or seeking solutions to the sociological problems with which our products were creating in areas of pollution, energy consumption, safety, and congestion?" "A fault that GM has had for a long time is its feeling that, since it sells more cars and trucks than anyone else in the world and makes far more money than any other automotive company, the GM way is the only way. At Chevrolet this corporate thinking translated into the theory that since Chevrolet is the number one nameplate in the American automobile industry it is unwise to tamper with its proven formula for success....This malady is common in some businesses. It also is common in professional sports where management with a team that is old but still winning is often reluctant to bring in younger talent. The result is, of course, that one day the winning record stops because the players are to old to compete effectively."
And, a word to organizations seeking to reduce expense instead of changing the world, "A man trained and skilled only in financial control, who has no direct operational experience, simply lacks the understanding necessary to run the business."
Study the decline of the dinosaur, General Motors, and you can predict what many of today's organizations will experience in the near future.
Didsbury, Howard, Editor. (World Future Society, 2004) Thinking Creatively in Turbulent Times
Major trends that affect how we work today and how we will have to work in the future.
—If we want to stop killing ourselves by the tens of millions in violent conflict, we’re going to have to get much smarter, because our genes haven’t been able to solve that by themselves.
—However, Mulhall’s vision of being “surpassed by our own creations” is not so clear. Being “smart” also has to do with intuition and imagination or is driven by intention, purpose, and the amazing power of curiosity. In this sense, machines are not now nor may never be smart, while humans are. Intelligence is the source of knowledge that helps people make imaginative and intelligent choices. Intelligence is the essence of order: defining the knowable and the known, the predictable, the expectable, and the dependable. “Smartness” on the other hand, has the flavor of the unpredictable, of opportunity, the unknown, and the surprise of innovation. NO change, no innovation, no scientific breakthroughs, no groundbreaking engineering insights, and no new expressions of art take place without this smartness. Smartness is just another word for “creativity with purposes”.
—In every organization, trying to avoid traps in future thinking and being thirsty for success, whether operating in business, administration, education, or the academy, it would be good to have a kind of disturbance generator (DG) to keep you awake in front of the turbulent future(s). The tasks of a DG include asking odd questions concerning the basic assumptions and modes of operation in the organization from the future perspectives, identifying new important weak signals in the operating environment—in the economy, technology, world politics, societal issues, environment, values, etc.—having potential impacts on the organization’s development, and producing innovations related to products, services, customers, modes of operation, strategies, and scenarios.
—The 21st century is being recognized as the “century of cities”.
More than half of the world’s population now live in cities, and the importance of urban environments has become even greater over recent decades. Cities are the key centers of human activity and the engines of economic growth throughout the world, a world that has been dramatically transformed and is more complex, more competitive, and better connected than ever before.
—“Home-basing” will be the next phase of disaggregating our vertically integrated Industrial Era enterprises, following “outsourcing” and “off-shoring”.
—If given free time, humans tend to become unhappy, disordered, and unproductive. Surprisingly, people tend to find work more satisfying than free time. When we focus our minds we feel better.
Mental order leads to increased happiness and productivity.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the power of thinking without thinking
An excellent study of how true experts in a field can "know" something without necessarily being able to explain how they know.
Godwin, Seth. All Marketers are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
An example o f how to make customers want something, even if it is bad for them. I put this here to explain marketing success, not to promote at all selling without ethics. I believe that concern for a customer will sell and do good, and sustain a good reputation for longterm survival.
Harris, Victory. A Book of Five Rings translated by Victor Harris
This is a 1603 book updated to provide glimpses of ancient warrior wisdom to modern managers. Here are a few quotes:
—You must train day and night in order to make quick decisions. In strategy it is necessary to treat training as a part of normal life with your spirit unchanging.
—It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know other. If you study a Way daily, and your spirit diverges, you many think you are obeying a good Way but objectively it is not ht true Way. If you are following the true Way and diverge a little, this will alter become a large divergence. Yo must realize this. Other strategies have come to be thought of as mere sword-fencing, and it is not unreasonable that this should be so.
—Strategy, fixing the eyes mean gazing at the man’s heart. In the large-scale strategy the area to watch is the enemy’s strength. ‘Perception’ and ‘sight’ are the two methods of seeing. Perceptions consists of concentrating strongly on the enemy’s spirit, observing the condition of the battlefield, fixing the gaze only, seeing the progress of the fight and the changes of advantage. This is the sure way to win. In single cob at you must not fix the eyes on details. As I said before, if you fix your eyes on details and neglect important things, your spirit will become bewildered, and victory will escape you.
Kawasaki, Guy. Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People
I read a lot of Kawasaki, in print and in his Blog. He shares a lot of wisdom, and in the volume of writing there are many jewels of wisdom in this survey of some of the most influential people of modern times. Guy says, "A CEO has two main jobs: to live in the future and to pick good people."
Kawasaki, Guy. Art of the Start
How to start and lead a new business or organization
How to clarify your vision, choose your support team, nurture investment contacts, and get the results you've dreamed of.
Kotter, John. Leading Change.
Kotter gives us here a valuable handbook on how to visualize, introduce, and sustain change in an organization. Here are a few quotes:
"Handling new initiatives quickly is not an essential component of success in relatively stable or cartel-like environments. The problem for us today is that stability is no longer the norm. And most experts agree that over the next few decades the business environment will become only more volatile."
"Useful change tends to be associated with a multistep process that creates power and motivation sufficient to overwhelm all the sources of inertia."
Kuniavsky, Mike Observing the User Experience: a Practitioner's Guide to User Research
How to plan and implement a thorough test of the usability of your webpage or communications tool.
Lowe, Janet. Jack Welch Speaks: Wisdom from the World's Greatest Business Leader
The personal viewpoint of Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) on how the industrial world transitioned into a post-industrial network of commercial systems, led by those with passion to succeed at any cost. Here are a few favorite quotes:
—Operating as a political democracy (or nearly so) with a capitalist economy. That, he said, gives a competitive advantage.
—“You know, all of a sudden ‘manager’ isn’t the status word it has been for a century.
—“Punishing failure assures that no one dares.”
--“Quality means literally providing something that’s better than the best, not just better than most.”
Maxwell, John. Developing the Leaders Around You.
I like the premise of this book: take care of your network and they will return the favor.
"The determination of a positive or negative outcome in my leadership depends upon my ability as a leader to develop those closest to me. It also depends upon my ability to recognize the value that others can give my organization and me. My goal is not to draw a following that results in a crowd. My goal is to develop leaders who become a movement....Leaders create and inspire new leaders."
He even quotes Druker--"There is no success without a successor" -- Peter Drucker
Maxwell, John. Maxwell 3-in-1 Special Edition (The Winning Attitude / Developing the Leaders Around You / Becoming a Person of Influence).
I include several Maxwell books on this page because he does write insightfully and has given to me useful answers when dealing with organizational or leadership challenges. In this 3-books-in-1 volume, there is repetition of the most-important points of his tenure as a leadership trainer. Favorite quotes: "-In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary. " And, "Being an influencer means....
modeling integrity with everyone you come into contact with.
nurturing the people in you life to make them feel valued.
showing faith in other so that they believe in themselves.
listening to them so that you can build your relationship with them.
understanding them so that you can help them achieve their dreams.
enlarging them in order to increase their potential.
navigating them through life's difficulties until they can do it themselves.
connecting with them so that you can move them to a higher level.
empowering them to become the person they were created to be.
reproducing other leaders so that your influence continues to grow through others." pg 209.
Maxwell, John. The Winning Attitude
I sometimes like Maxwell's writing. This is a book that presents accurate data and analysis, with conclusions that are helpful to projects I work on. For example, "16,000 executives were studied. Observe the difference between executives defined as "high achievers" (those who generally have a healthy attitude) and "low achievers" (those who generally have an unhealthy attitude):
High achievers tended to care about people as well as profits; low achievers were preoccupied with their own security.
High achievers viewed subordinates optimistically; low achievers showed a basic distrust of subordinates' abilities.
High achievers sought advice from their subordinates' low achievers didn't.
High achievers were listeners; low achievers avoided communication and relied on policy manuals."
McGehee, Tom. Whoosh : Business in the Fast Lane
Short, easy read on enhancing creativity in teamwork.
Naisbitt, John. Global Paradox
Paradoxes surround us in the big/little, global/local, corporate/personal, and public/private contexts. You can find here insights for the emergence of the post-industrial global culture and economy. Because of the global integration, small businesses have even more hope of becoming successful in the future. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
—A famous paradox in architecture that has served the profession well is “Less is more,” meaning that the less you clutter a building with embellishments, the more elegant it can be, the greater a work of architecture it can be.
--The entrepreneur is also the most important player in the building of the global economy. So much so that big companies are decentralizing and reconstituting themselves as networks of entrepreneurs.
--The principle of the global paradox—the bigger the world economy, the more powerful its smallest players—applies especially to business. Huge companies like IBM, Philips, and GM must break up to become confederations of small, autonomous, entrepreneurial companies if they are to survive. Big companies and “economies of scale” succeeded in the comparatively slow-moving world of the four decades to the mid-1980s. But now, only small and medium-sized companies—or big companies that have restyled themselves as networks of entrepreneurs—will survive to be viable when we turn the corner o f the next century. Already 50 percent of U.S. exports are created by companies with 19 or fewer employees; the same is true of Germany. --Economies of scale are giving way to economies of scope, finding the right size for synergy, market flexibility, and above all, speed. ...What is going on in American corporations today is the “ODD effect” : outsourcing, de-layering, and deconstruction.
—In the years ahead all big companies will find it increasingly difficult to compete with—and in general will perform more poorly than—smaller, speedier, more innovative companies.
Olivier, Richard. Peak Performance Presentations : Tools and Techniques from the World of the Theatre
Defines in a new way effective communication--getting the audience involved in the drama of a presentation. This gives excellent advice on how to benefit you and your audience for more passionate and interactive groupwork.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Robert l. Sutton. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truth sand Total Nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management.
This book is a call for evidence-based management, a case for its potential impact, and a guide on how to use it. The authors document carefully that management decision-making is usually not based on facts, and that the results are disasterous. "A big part of the answer is that Western countries, like the United States, glorify rugged individualism so much that we make a cognitive error. We forget that history, organizational goals, rewards, and structure are potent causes of what people and organizations do. We give too much credit to individuals heroes when organizations do things right and place too much blame on individual scapegoats when things go wrong." The authors give data and rigorous analysis to support their call for intelligent management. As has been proved in much recent social science literature, individual managers making independent decisions often make wrong decisions, and managers making decisions based on "wisdom of their crowds" do just as poorly! Research and analysis is not just for new product development, but is essential for organizational leadership. In Pferffer's MBA programs, students will often confuse poor strategy with poor implementation. As others have said, a mediocre strategy properly implemented may be better than an excellent strategy poorly implemented.
Rosen, Emanuel. The Anatomy of Buzz
Marketing is greatly affected by word of mouth, person-to-person communication outside of mainline advertising. Mr. Rosen gives us insights into how and why "buzz" happens, and how to build buzz about a product or service. His Six Rules About Ads and Buzz:
1. Keep It Simple
The message needs to be simple in order for people to pass it on.
2. Tell Us What's New
Fluff doesn't travel well in the networks.
3. Don't Make Claims You Can't Support
Don't tell customers that you care about them unless you really mean it and can consistently demonstrate superb customer service.
4. Ask Your Customers to Articulate What's Special About Your Product or Service
If your customers? can't tell you what's unique about your product, they won't be able to explain it to their friends.
5. Start Measuring Buzz
When you conduct customer satisfaction surveys, ask your customers whether they have recommended the product recently. If so, to how many people?
6. Listen to the Buzz
How is the product being used out in the field? What problems are encountered by users? What are the product attributes being discussed?
Sculley, John. Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple : A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future
'Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?' So began John Sculley's engagement with Apple Computer. He went from managing a huge global and very traditional beverage company to leading a bleeding-edge of technology innovation center. This fantastic book describes his personal journey into high-speed product development and constant change in at Apple Computer. "Reorganizations,in fact, are looked at positively. In many corporations, they're viewed with anxiety. People wonder, 'Where do I go, what will I do? That's especially true in companies that have had no lay-off or have cradle-to-grave employment policies. In Apple, it's constant change. People expect buildings, structures, offices, and people to change. Organizations shouldn't have permanence....The beauty of a network is that is has no centre. It is a process more than a structure, composed of modular groups that establish themselves to take on specific tasks-- not to build fiefdoms and traditional 'departments' do." He compares the "organization man" who had job security in return for his loyalty, with the self-directed man who deals with "third-wave companies" in a different type of relationship: one of creativity and trust and co-maturation. Sculley's description of Steve Jobs, who replaced him as CEO, "Steve Jobs was less a manager and more an impresario. He knew that the role of managment wasn't to stifle creativity through structure and process, but to foster it through unusually innovative means and thinking."
Semler, Ricardo. Seven-Day Weekend.
Fascinating book on business organization systems for the future. Mr. Semler took over management of his father's traditionally profitable, but declining engineering business and began bringing all employees into participation in the reshaping of the company, Semco. "Semler dismantled the rigid management structure imposed by his father in favor of a more flexible organization based on three interdependent core values: employee participation, profit sharing, and the free flow of information."
Many clear improvements over normal business systems can be seen in the book, and in the reports on the group of companies described on the internet. For example, the best people in a company to choose new janitorial equipment are the janitors, not the purchasing agents or the senior management. In other areas of business, it makes sense that the total knowledge base of a company be brought into planning and implementing of every area of business life. Senior managers do not have enough knowledge, enough wisdom, or enough energy to make decisions that will be eagerly supported by every member of an organization. And, if employees do not have a voice in defining new directions of a company, then those new directions are likely to fail.
Mr. Semler is too forward-thinking for most older businesses and business managers to agree with, but for all of us there is a lot to think about. If he is wrong, we who try his way will only have lost some time and some expensive, low-performing middle managers. If he is right, we can gain flexible leadership systems to innovate and grow and build organic growth patterns for the next generations.
Vitale, Joe and Bill Hibbler. Meet & Grow Rich: How to Easily Create and Operate Your Own “Mastermind” Group for Health, Wealth, and More
Leading personal coaches today are saying that you can only grow quickly if you surround yourself with people who are smarter than you area. The authors here back up that statement by showing how to build a very smart team (mastermind group) of advisors and coaches to help you make faster and smarter decisions. I develop virtual teams for each of my areas of interest. Because of new technologies, I can meet frequently with people all over the globe without having to get onto an airplane. But, remember: email is for data, voice if for the relationship, but trust needs some face-to-face.
Whitney, Russ. Millionaire Real Estate Mentor: Investing in Real Estate: A Comprehensive and Detailed Guide to Financial Freedom for Everyone
Real estate investing has different levels of players. Some are content to buy at list prices and hope for appreciation of the value of their holdings, some buy at list price and then rent a property to hope to offset some or most of the mortgage value while waiting for appreciation. Mr. Whitney goes a step further to show how to buy below list price and then to make the maximum amount possible by renting, leasing, or selling. This is a very useful handbook for the beginning investor. He provides many links to other resources, as well as very clear explanation of how and where to find the right kinds of properties to invest in.
Zhou M. "Revisiting ethnic entrepreneurship: Convergencies, controversies, and conceptual advancements"
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 38 (3): 1040-1074 FAL 2004
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