Archive for March, 2007

I started reading Execution a few months ago at a book store, but not buying it.  Then I found it at a used book store and started reading it.  The book is worth the reviews given to it.  It gives a pretty good overview on leadership principals and the importance of keeping people accountable (as well as being honest with people).  This is similar to “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team”.  They also present a pretty good way for tying the people process, strategic process, and operations process together.  It’s a fairly practical book and a worthwhile read.

On a whim at the library a few weeks ago, I picked up a book by Tom Peters called “The Circle of Innovation”.  If you read many business books and find yourself in a store with this book, it’s really worth flipping through.  He set out to write a business book like none other, and I would say he succeeded.  It’s almost like a 500 page mind map with pictures and lots of different fonts.  I actually found the format rather engaging and ended up reading the whole thing.

Many of the concepts in the book are actually certainly worth of consideration.  It’s always amazing to me to read business  books and while each have a slightly unique perspective, they all have overlaps.  But the different perspectives do help to see things in different light.  Some of the concepts that I found interesting in this book are things like making sure that you not only thing about the things you should be doing, but also the things you should stop doing. Every department should look at what they do as an art, constructing systems of work which are beautiful (think “Fish Sticks!” – another book that is kind of interesting).  I also thought it was interesting that he focused on having work be oriented toward projects (particularly where things are ongoing).  He also argues that one of the most important things is a transition for quality to design.

Anyway, it’s worthwhile perusing.

Finished reading Slack by Tom DeMarco tonight.  There is a reasonable review here .  The basic premise of the book  is that by building some slack into schedules, the projects are better — that innovation and improvements happen during the slack.  Basic premises include avoiding overtime, not doing ‘aggresive’ schedules, build trust for risks and mistakes, manage risks rather than ignoring or avoiding them, etc. Some of this was mentioned in Deadline which I thought was a much better book by Tom (in fact, that’s why I ended up reading this one).

Overall, I felt like this was a drive by shooting of contrarian management ideas.  The ideas are interesting, but he doesn’t flush out the ideas very far nor stick around long enough to do so.  It’s also fairly anecdotal rather than research based.  Nevertheless, it’s worth reading quickly (or reading a summary)

I finished reading a used copy of Freakonomics over the weekend.  If you haven’t read a review of this book, follow this link

I thought this book was interesting, but I don’t know how highly I would recommend it.  His use of statistics make it an intersting read and he generally avoids, and actually points out, the correlation vs. causality dicotomy.  His correlations on a number of different items are interesting and are contrary to ‘common wisdom’.  He avoids the morality of his points and simply make observations about the different data.

In the introduction, he suggests that there are several points he is trying to make (p13):

1. Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life
2. Conventional wisdom is often wrong
3. Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes.
4. “Experts” – from criminologists to real-estate agents – use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda
5. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so

On those points, I found the discussion of incentives interesting and obviously, given the name of this block, I find the 3rd item pretty interesting.

On incentives, he suggests that there are three types of incentives: economic, social, and morale. One anecdote that I thought was interesting was that a study with a day-care in Israel did a study where they were trying to reduce the number of people picking up their kids late, so they imposed a small fine.  The number of people now picking up their child late increased becuase the incentive had shifted from a moral one to an economic one and the economic cost was not that great.  When they removed the fine, the number stayed high.

Anyway, if you happen to find a copy, it’s worth taking a look at.

I finished reading the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.  It was written in 1993 so it’s a little bit dated, but in that sense it make the principles more interesting since most of his predictions can be tested because you can see how accurate the predictions turned out.  The concept of the book though is rather interesting.  One of my favorite quotes was:

“Most people think they are better perceivers than others.  They have a sense of personal infallibility.  Their perceptions are always more accurate than those of their neighbors or friends.  Truth and perception become fused in the mind, leaving no difference between the two.”

The book focused on how people decide what to buy and essentially talks about how to market into the perception of the consumer.  Many of the observations run contrary to how you would think things work.   There are several online summaries that are worth taking a look at, but ultimately, I would recommend this book as a good overview and having some ideas that force you to think about the long term impact of marketing decisions on the mind of the cunsumer.

Reviews:

• 1000Ventures
• Eric.Weblog()