Book Review: Reinventing The Wheel
How Do You Create An Amazing Customer Experience? As a business owner and consultant, I understand the pressure that exists to differentiate yourself in a crowded field. The most impressive thing about the Zane Cycle story that was told in the book Reinventing The Wheel was how a bike shop was able to stand out in a business where it would seem difficult to differentiate yourself. There are a ton of great lessons and reminders on standing out through creating an unheard of customer service experience. One of my favorite lessons from this book is that creating the ultimate customer experience is indeed a science. Getting feedback from customers on
Book Review: The Culture Code
What’s the difference between why we think we make decisions and what the actual subconscious process looks like? That’s the question that is tackled by The Culture Code. A business associate of mine, Rich Christiansen, just read this book and and blogged about it and so I was compelled to check it out. The author makes some interesting observations about how the American culture makes decisions based on its’ adolescent status. The Culture Code for fat? Checking out. The Culture Code for Alcohol? Gun. The Culture Code for Work? Who We Are. Understanding the culture code for how we see things allows us to then speak to the public
Book Review: Business Model Generation
Business Model Generation really exceeded my expectations on so many levels. The Use Of Our Socially Networked Society The book had 470 contributors in 45 countries. While there were 9 core contributors on the book they had influence from all over the planet. Traditional Publishing Not Needed When you look at how beautifully this book is put together, you can’t believe that it didn’t come about through a typical publishing channel. This book was financed and put out independently. The Content is So Relevant For Business Owners Beyond the fact that this book is one of the most stylishly laid out books that I have ever seen. The content is
Book Review: Drive
What we are motivated by is a topic of conversation that has been discussed in conjunction with work for years. In his latest book, Drive, Daniel Pink has laid out some compelling information about what actually motivates us. Pink has identified three key motivators for people: Autonomy- It turns out we humans like to have a little freedom with the kind of work we do and when we do it. There are real life examples of how this has worked for Best Buy and Google. Mastery- When we are working we want to feel like we are working on things that are important and that enhance our skills. Being put
Book Review- Linchpin
The way that we are able to get paid for the work we do is changing. The media looks at things like unemployment rates and asks “when will we get back to normal? When will this thing turn around?” The reality is that is wont. It turns out there may be a better way. Seth Godin says this towards the beginning of his terrific book, Linchpin: There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do. In it’s essence Linchpin gives a glimpse into the artist revolution. If you want to get paid for work you to do today you need to become indispensable.
Book Review: Rework
The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you. The above quote really resonates as when you are thinking about taking the leap into business the “real world” myth always pops into a new business owners head. That’s what you can expect from the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. This book is chalk full of business advice that is relevant to today’s business owner and the shift that is occurring with how we do business. As the book illustrates, there is a growing number of people who are doing work and creating value
Book Review: Invaluable
The uncertain economy has caused a lot of people to question previously held paradigms of what job security really is. We are learning at a rapid rate that it is up to us to create our own job security. We can do this through starting a business or as Dave Crenshaw puts it in his new book, we figure out what it takes to become Invaluable. The book centers around a particular character, Jason, that we can all relate to. He’s young, has high expectations for his career and becomes disillusioned with his initial career path. Not only is he disillusioned, he begins to take on the dreaded victim’s mentality
Book Review- Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard
Chip and Dan Heath gives some compelling insight to change. The book, Switch, starts by talking about 3 surprises about change. The most powerful insight here is that often with change what looks like a people problem is often a situational problem. When I work with business owners and we talk about what’s going on in their business, the conversation always turns to employees. More specifically, how bad their employees are. What Switch shows is that many of our problems with other people have to do with the process and environment other the people themselves. This is true whether we are talking about employees or our kids. The entire book
Book Review: Fake Work
Fake Work is defined as work that is not targeted or aligned with the strategies and goals of the company. Looking at the landscape of work today, you see companies making cut backs on personnel and resources which then transfers additional responsibility to the people in organization who still have a job. In this type of an environment, it becomes even more critical to spend your time working in alignment with what makes your company successful. Americans are working longer and are busier than ever, unfortunately this has not actually translated into productivity. Consider this quote from page 11 of the book: An average worker today needs to work a
Book Review: Ignore Everbody and 39 Other Keys To Creativity
I ran across Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys To Creativity by Hugh MacLeod as I was perusing Amazon’s best of the year for 2009. The book had a different feel to it than other books I have read recently so I picked it up. This book did not disappoint. Most of the ideas are not necessarily groundbreaking which I think the author readily admits. (Hugh’s final chapter is titled “None of This Is Rocket Science”.) What struck me while I was reading this book was just how straightforward and honest the book was as well as how much it reeked of common sense. I use the words “common sense”
-
Check Out Our Sponsors
