Leadership Revised

Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 – John C. Maxwell – (Harper Collins Leadership)

Twenty-five years ago, John C. Maxwell first released the leadership development book Developing the Leader Within You, one of the truly classic texts that offered his early insight into how individuals could develop a leadership vision and values and put them to work influencing their teams and others around them.

Now, Maxwell has revisited and revised this classic to account for the trends and influences that have impacted on his process over the course of the past two and half decades, in Developing the Leader Within You 2.0. Reading through the revised text offers you a real insight into how prescient Maxwell’s original work truly was.

Current business and leadership buzzwords like influencer and change agent were part and parcel of what Maxwell did and continues to impart on his readers. For so many, developing influence and then knowing how to wield it is one of the most challenging aspects of being a leader. Maxwell offers a grand primer of how you can not only become influential, but the proper use and maintenance of it once it is in place.  

One thing I always like about Maxwell’s books is that they offer guidance and insight based on experience, but they never fall into the realm of snake oil by promising the magic elixir of leadership. Let’s face it, there is a lot of hard work and heavy lifting that goes into becoming a leader and while Maxwell is a master at offering tools and resources you can utilize to become a leader or a better leader, he also maintains a level of realism that is refreshing in a world filled with folks huckstering a new program to solve all of your leadership problems for a price.

Advertising as Social Incubator

Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age – Miles Young – (Bloomsbury)

Those who don’t either work in the business of advertising or who don’t follow the business may not be aware of the name David Ogilvy. Mr. Ogilvy was one of the preeminent practitioners of the form; his name, written in his distinctive script, still adorns the fronts of the offices of his worldwide agency, Ogilvy & Mather.

Ogilvy is the author of what is widely proclaimed to be the go to treatise on the subject of advertising and how it is supposed to done, Ogilvy on Advertising, in which he offers a primer on all facets of advertising. Since its publication nearly 35 years ago the world and in particular the world of advertising has evolved at an astonishing pace.

Given that evolution it seems only fitting that this classic text would be updated and enhanced for the digital age in the form of Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age. Equally fitting is the choice of who would be tasked with that update; Miles Young, joined Ogilvy & Mather in 1983 and rose through the ranks to become the worldwide chairman of the agency in 2009. In September of 2016 he became the dean of New College, Oxford and he remains the non-executive chairman of Ogilvy & Mather.

Delving into this densely written and researched volume is a time consuming and at times difficult task. Given its seemingly microscopic text and literally thousands of miniaturized graphic examples of you will find yourself having to reexamine passages and the visuals multiple times to take in their full meaning.

While the concepts Young/Ogilvy describe in the course of the book are certainly of interest to me, since I make my living working in advertising/marketing, I found myself wondering at times what Mr. Ogilvy’s take on this update might be. At times Young seems to suggest, and certainly there are a multitude of examples of the business drifting in this direction, that advertising has moved away from trying to influence the buying behaviors of customers and into the realm of social incubator; more focused on shifting social mores than selling products and services.

Influence has become a massive commodity in this day and age of social and digital media, not always for the better. Businesses, often enabled by advertising and social agencies, no longer seem to concern themselves with the possibility that they may piss off half of their potential consumers by staking out a position on a social issue. What used to be focused on moving products and selling services has become more of a social dance of political correctness.

Young seems to champion this direction to distraction. He posits that there is a need to change the perception of advertising and how women are perceived by upping the influence of women in the leadership roles of ad agencies. While that is certainly laudable, has Mr. Young taken a look at an average hour of network television and the overwhelming legion of stereotypically stupid men who populate ads ranging from household cleaning supplies and car ads to latest fixes from the pharmaceutical industry?

While Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age, certainly offers some keen insight into the current state of advertising, it left me reaching for a well-thumbed copy of the original.

The Push You Need to Succeed

The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work The Way You Like. Have the Life You Want. – Elaine Pofeldt – (Lorena Jones Books)

You’ve thought about it…maybe for a long time. You really want to give it a whirl, but the thought of hitting up your obnoxious brother-in-law or rich cousin for some start up funding is enough to have you avoid pulling the trigger on your great idea. Or maybe you hold off because you think you don’t know what it takes to run a business, hire and deal with employees and everything involved with that.

Well, maybe the answer isn’t going down the road of building a traditional business with an office or storefront or warehouse; it could be as simple as starting a one person business that you can develop, grow and scale all by yourself without all of the startup funding and hassles of hiring people.

Elaine Pofeldt has made a career out of profiling small businesses for Fortune, Inc, Forbes and Money, among others; and when I say small I mean the number of employees (or lack thereof) not the bottom line. In Pofeldt’s new book, The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work The Way You Like. Have the Life You Want, she profiles a wide array of businesses in equally wide range of fields, that all have one thing in common, they are all a part of the growing movement of one person shops or so-called solopreneurs.

While The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business gives you some tremendous insight into how to get rolling with a one person business, please don’t expect it to tell you what business to start or for it to hold your hand and lead you to a big payday. What Pofeldt does is give you the basic tools to take the plunge into following your dream, often by citing how the folks she profiles made that leap. 

She also helps you avoid some of the repetitive pitfalls and mistakes that folks starting out make; in a sense you can learn from the mistakes of others.

Pofeldt also points you to some tools that will help you build your “team”, those folks who will help support you in a range of areas from production and fulfillment to content and growth strategy. If you’ve had the thought of starting your own thing, pursuing a dream, and just needed a push to get you rolling, then The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, could be the push you need to succeed.