Your Summer Reading List

As we wind our way through summer and you’ve hit the beach or the links got in a little R & R and you may start thinking about the Fall and the start of planning season for next year. Here are a handful of books that may come in handy as you work on your leadership skills and planning needs.

One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life – Mitch Horowitz (Crown Books)

The power of positive thought may seem as old as time itself, but that’s not the goal of author/speaker Mitch Horowitz’s new book, One Simple Idea; rather than re-hashing or re-packaging the principles, this weaves together a cogent history of positive thought.

Horowitz doesn’t just espouse the thought process, but creates a historical biography of the those who contributed to the positive thinking movement and avoids that hokey sentimentality of the “you can be anything you want to be” types. I have said for years that there is a reason way bookstores have entire sections on motivation; because no one needs a guide on negative thinking because it’s so easy. This would make for an interesting starting place if you’re looking for and attitude shift.

When Buyers Say No – Tom Hopkins and Ben Katt (Business Plus)  

ABC – always be closing. The sale starts when the customer says no. I could go on and on with a laundry list of sales clichés; like my all time favorite from Glengarry Glenn Ross, “coffee is for closers.” Over the course of time there have been shelves of books written on the art of selling chock full of ideas about overcoming objections and closing the deal.

With When Buyers Say No, veteran sales trainers Tom Hopkins and Ben Katt, aren’t necessarily breaking new ground, offering up techniques for making the sales they do offer some insight into the process of uncovering and responding to unstated objections or unasked questions or concerns that buyers may have. There is a great deal of psychology at play when it comes to buying and selling and Hopkins and Katt offer some useful strategies to keep the sales process moving forward.

The Opening Playbook: A Professional’s Guide to Building Relationships That Grow Revenue – Andrew Dietz (McGraw Hill Publishing)

With NFL training camps in full bloom, rookies and veterans alike are not only breaking a sweat during two a day practice sessions, but are spending plenty of time with their nose stuck firmly in their playbooks and study film to get a handle on their coaches approach to playing the game. Anyone who is paying attention knows that the business world is rife with sports analogies, so why not a business strategy book that literally borrows from the sports playbook?

That’s exactly what Andrew Dietz, president of the Creative Growth Group serves up with his new book, The Opening Playbook: A Professional’s Guide to Building Relationships That Grow Revenue. Dietz articulates a series of foundational principles and then illustrates clearly how to execute a more effective approach to relationship building that realizes the goal of growing your business. This one is useful across a broad spectrum of businesses, but if you are in the professional services end of things, this book is essential reading for your continued growth and success.

Step Up – Lead in Six Moments That Matter – Henry Evans and Colm Foster (Josey Bass Publishing)

Leaders…true leaders are those folks that answer the call when the situation demands. So much of what separates a great leader from the run of the mill is those moments or situations that when you as a leader are hit with the choice of stepping up and taking charge or sitting back and letting someone else deal with it. Call it grace under fire or doing the right thing, it really boils down to those leadership moments.

That is the focus of Henry Evans and Colm Foster’s new book, Step Up – Lead in Six Moments That Matter. Rather than trying to define the traits of great leadership, Evans and Foster detail broad situations that we all face on a daily basis and how leadership respond to those challenges and offer actionable strategies to be a more effective leader. Step Up is chock full of QR codes that lead to a plethora of additional insights and techniques and even offers an online assessment tools to gauge your leadership skillset.

Do You Have What It Takes to Take It To The Next Level?

Executive Presence – The Missing Link Between Merit and Success – Sylvia Ann Hewlett (Harper Business)

The old boys club. It is a comment that is old as the hills when it comes to business. The thought process for too long has been that the only reason why some people, notably women, don’t seem to climb the ladder of success to the highest levels is that they are held back by the unseen hand of the old boys club.

Turns out, it may be an unseen hand, but based on a collection of hard data, and the conclusions drawn from a number of nationally conducted surveys, there actually is something holding people back from taking that next step. That is the hypothesis proffered by author and president of the Center for Talent Innovation, Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her new book, Executive Presence – The Missing Link Between Merit and Success.

Hewlett drills down into the data and lays out the core pieces that make up Executive Presence and how perceptions of it can vary based on gender. Things like communication skills, and executive gravitas seem like pretty basic starting points for gauging executive presence, but appearance does matter; but physical attractiveness doesn’t carry the same weight as many might think scoring just 16% for the ladies and 14% for the men based on the research.

Hewlett goes on to offer up advice on how to improve one’s executive presence. While her focus tends to lean towards the ladies, certainly much of what she suggests throughout the book can be adapted for use by men. Things like grace under fire, confidence, taking decisive action, emotional intelligence and great speaking skills can cut across both genders and impact executive presence.

Disruptive Genius

Michael Jackson, Inc: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of a Billion-Dollar Empire – Zack O’Malley Greenberg (Atria Books)

Before the likes of Russell Simmons, P-Diddy and Jay Z ever came along to build empires based not only on their music business savvy; spinning of wide ranging and diverse business empires there was there was Michael Jackson.

Forbes Magazine senior editor, Zack O’Malley Greenburg tracks Jackson’s musical genius, which spawned his business genius, from the beginning days of his career in Gary, Indiana; being managed by the Jackson family’s hard-nosed patriarch, Joe Jackson, and the start of the Jackson 5. Michael Jackson, Inc: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of a Billion-Dollar Empire takes us forward through his meteoric solo/business career, his financial downfall and his after death, rebirth of the Jackson empire.

Greenburg recounts the King of Pop’s financial downfall, which can be tied to legal troubles and confrontations with the likes of slimy “journalists” like Martin Bashir who focused on Jackson’s at times less than stellar life choices. While his undeniable musical genius could not always over-shadow the ills and allegations that Jackson faced during his period of financial and personal difficulty, his untimely passing could.

 

While so may find it hard to comprehend, Greenburg recounts that since his death five years ago, the Jackson estate has generated nearly half of his life time career earnings, which exceed one billion dollars.

With the current and future projects on the drawing board it is easy to speculate that Michael Jackson, Inc, will easily and quickly usurp that figure within the next few years. Without new personal foibles to derail any progress and his popularity still intact, the Jackson estate is on stable footing to continue that rapid growth position.  

How Much Is Enough?

Conform – Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education – Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions/Mercury Radio Arts)

For years when it comes to public education, I have been asking the question; how much is enough? That simple question has now taken on a much greater meaning; while I was asking it about from the straight forward financial perspective, with the advent of Common Core, that question has now expand to include government control of our and our students lives.

Media mogul Glenn Beck offers up the second installment in his Control series; Conform – Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education, which offers up a basic primer not only on the roots and breadth of Common Core, but also spells out a broad based break down of systemic problems with the U.S. public education system.

Naturally, because Beck is who he is, this will no doubt engender howls of protest and name-calling, but the fact of the matter is he does arm folks with the basic understanding they need to fight back against Common Core before it becomes deeply engrained in the education system. While the career path training may sound good and has certainly proven the strange bedfellows analogy by drawing interest and support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and business organizations across the U.S., the longitudinal computer tracking of students through out there educational career and on into their career path is downright scary.

Clearly, anyone with even a modicum of common sense will recognize that Common Core’s twisted approach to education will do nothing to improve outcomes and sets up the perpetual argument that the only reason why it failed is of course, because we didn’t spend enough money! Not that it was doomed to fail from the start.

The U.S. education system is beyond repair until we address the systemic issues that have become deeply seated and are protected by education fiefdoms and teachers unions. Taxpayers are saddled with too many school districts that duplicate too many administrative functions at too great a cost. The city that I grew up in upstate New York is divided into four separate school districts in a relatively small geographic area. There are 500(!) school districts spread across the 67 counties that make up Pennsylvania; that means 500 school superintendents, 500 district administrative staffs and the high costs inherent to these systems.

Unions are designed to do two things; perpetuate unions and protect the worst teachers, keeping them in the classroom and subjecting students to their mediocre skills. Until we create a system that properly measures and rewards highly skilled teachers and frees those less than stellar teachers to pursue their true career path, we will continue to lag behind the rest of the world in educational outcomes.

Business at The Beach - Summer Business Reads

Traditional thinkers will tell you that “beach reads” are realm of thrillers, mysteries and other lighter fare. While I love a good thriller, I for one think sand between my toes should not limit my ability or desire to learn. Here are a stack of my recommendations for business books to take along on your next jaunt to a sandy stretch or wherever you choose to relax and unwind; some might even give you inspiration for when you head back to the grind.

The Obstacle Is The Way – Ryan Holiday (Portfolio Books)

I love the basic concept of this book and the fact that I think anybody in business can relate to the idea putting maybe too much effort into avoiding that issue, project, or report that stares at us from the corner of the office. As much as we hope, wish, ignore or just generally try to avoid it, it never really goes away and with the passing of time it starts to loom even larger.

In The Obstacle Is The Way, author Ryan Holiday shows us how to avoid the traps of fear, frustration, confusion, helplessness and even anger and find our way to the answer that more often than not is part and parcel of the issue that we are stymied by. Simply put, you can’t avoid your way to success, but you can apply the same principles have put into play by successful leaders stretching back to the Roman Empire.

This is a great read for wherever you are in your leadership career; just starting out on the leadership track, mid-cycle looking to take that next step or a seasoned pro seeking new inspiration to fuel your fire.

Mistakes I Made at Work – Edited by Jessica Bacal (Plume Books)  

I am always intrigued by trends or what I perceive as a trend and their seems to be a noticeable movement in the business world to celebrate…failure! Well maybe celebrate is a strong word, but recently there have been a number of pretty solid books that at the very least highlight, the opposite of success.

While not necessarily focusing on failure, Jessica Bacal has done an admirable job of getting 25 women from widely varied fields with equally diverse levels of success to sit down and talk on the record about some of their less than stellar moments in the workplace in Mistakes I Made at Work. Along the way Bacal also avoids falling into a rut of all too similar areas of business misadventure.

I found her approach of doing a brief set up of each of the participants background/careers, followed by the subject putting things in their own words and then wrapping the short essays with a handful of bullet point takeaways to be easy to digest and an effective tools for sharing useful information.

The Elements of Journalism – Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel (Three Rivers Press)

Certainly not a “traditional” business book, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel are the authors of The Elements of Journalism, what is widely considered one of the definitive treatises on journalism. In this revised and updated third edition of the book Kovach and Rosenstiel have accounted for the changing journalistic landscape to include the exponential growth of social media.

With the rise of content marketing, native advertising and business news operations, this makes for a great primer for those who are approaching content development and production from a non-journalism background. Re-reading this classic provided me with a handful of aha moments that I can put to use in my own content marketing operation.

Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown (Brown Business Books)

If you’re old enough to remember The Ed Sullivan Show, then you likely also remember the amazing talents of Erich Brenn, a regular on the show, famous for his act where he kept a set of plates spinning on sticks. (You can search YouTube if you’ve never seen it.) Anyone who is part of the current, “do more with less approach” to business can probably relate to Mr. Brenn’s often frantic, frenetic challenge to keep the plates spinning.

Now Greg McKeown, cited as a “leading essentialist” offers up Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, but don’t confuse this with a way to get more things done in less time, or to better manage your calendar; it really boils down to a new approach to thinking that focuses your efforts only on what truly matters. Those essentials are where the wins are and are the things that produce your highest level of satisfaction.

Imagine a world where all of the extraneous (for lack of a better word) bullshit that so often bogs us down was cast out and your energy could be focused on those essential elements. It’s an appealing thought, but it possible to be within reach? That’s where the biggest challenge lies for most of us.

Duct Tape Selling – Think Like A Marketer – Sell Like a Superstar – John Jantsch (Portfolio Books)

Does the thought of picking up the phone and making a cold call leave you shaky and busting out in a cold sweat? Does trying to make a sales script sound “natural” push you to the brink of your sanity? Then John Jantsch may have the perfect solution to your woes in the form of Duct Tape Selling -Think Like A Marketer – Sell Like a Superstar.

Jantsch plays a high value on becoming a subject matter expert and then connects the dots between developing and executing a platform and converting that expertise into sales. While there are plenty of books detailing content marketing and platform, Jantsch makes the missing connection to actual conversion. Content without conversion is just more stuff and nobody is looking for more stuff! This is truly where the rubber meets the road.

 

 

   

Smart Money Smart Kids - Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruze (Lampo Press)

Full disclosure up front; while programming a talk radio station over a decade ago, I “hired” Dave Ramsey, by signing on as an affiliate station to his radio program. In the intervening time, other than his continued growth and success, not much has changed with Dave; he still offers up straightforward, no nonsense advice to his listeners, readers and program participants.

Joined by his adult daughter, Rachel Cruze, Ramsey has put together Smart Money Smart Kids to offer parents a winning road map to educating/raising their kids to be smart about the basics of personal finance.

It may seem utterly odd that the duo write about going to work and earning a living, but given the current circumstance that finds 20% of families in the United States don’t have one member of the brood who gets up and goes to a job on a daily basis, that might be some winning advice. Other basics include spending, saving, saving up towards a purchase and it wouldn’t be a Dave Ramsey message if it did not include advice on charitable giving.

Any parent who has had a sleepless night worrying about paying for college will want to take in Ramsey and Cruze’s advice on how to take on that challenge. While the information here is clearly built on the model of training kids, but I can clearly discern light bulbs going on above the heads of a lost generation of young parents.

What concerns me is that the folks who pick up Smart Money Smart Kids probably have a good foundation and this will be a useful tool, but those who really need this foundational advice are more likely to buy a DVD or video game for their kids.

How to be Brilliant

Talk Like TED: The Nine Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds – Carmine Gallo (St. Martin’s Press)

What started out as the cult of TED, a group of folks who got together at an annual conference to hear/see presentations on a range of topics that fell into the broad categories of technology, education and design, as morphed and grown to be a worldwide phenomenon that has generated tens of millions of online video views. Along the way it as spun off regional organizations (TED X) that host their own conferences/speakers.

Bestselling author and business coach Carmine Gallo has studied not only the growing impact of TED presentations, but also spent countless hours dissecting what it is that makes some of the most viewed TED speeches so impactful in his latest effort, Talk Like TED: The Nine Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds.

While some of the most viewed videos fall in to a wide range of topics, Gallo focused on what elements these presentations had in common that made them so impactful. Along the way he uncovered 9 common things, secrets if you will, that make them stand out from the pack, and how you as a presenter can include them in your presentations to increase your impact.

The “secrets” include:

1.   Unleashing the master within

2.   Mastering the art of storytelling

3.   Having a conversation

4.   Teaching something new

5.   Delivering jaw-dropping moments

6.   Lightening up

7.   Sticking to the 18 minute rule

8.   Painting a mental picture with multisensory experiences

9.   Staying in your lane

Gallo explores the business value of TED presentations. I found that it was very useful to read the book with a notebook close at hand and a laptop dialed into the TED presentations Gallo was detailing, to see firsthand the examples he cites.

Even as an experienced public speaker and business presenter I found a variety of new and useful tips throughout the book. One common theme that Gallo hits on was that successful TED presenters clearly spend plenty of time practicing and refining their craft before they ever set foot on the stage; while this may seem like common sense, but it’s winning advice on how to be brilliant.