STRATEGY CENTRAL

Had a chance last weekend to read Hugh MacLeod’s latest, Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination.  If you caught his first book, Ignore Everybody, you know already this is certain to be a fun and perversely inspirational read.

MacLeod, an A list blogger at Gapingvoid, first made his name with “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards.”  He’s definitely one of the most interesting characters in the world of marketing,   Along with MacLeod’s customarily insightful and slightly off-kilter observations about how to unify work and love, Evil Plans provides an interesting retrospective on his wild ride of a career.

What I’ve always really loved about MacLeod’s unique combination of cartoon and writing is characteristically evident in Evil Plans.  There’s no shortage of sarcasm.  Wit is in abundant supply.  And there’s enough actual how-to to make it fun and very practical.

If you’re at all interested in carving out a niche where you control your own destiny and actually do what you love…this is a book that ought to be in your stack.  It’s not a tough read.  You’ll find yourself smiling, probably shaking your head acknowledging that it takes all kinds, and maybe starting to work on your own evil plan.  I’m up for world domination…how about you?

Working my way through The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo.  And “working” is really not the right word.  Much like he did with The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Gallo does a great job of fleshing out each secret with an anecdote or two from Jobs’ amazing story.  The book is full of great stories, both from Jobs’ life and the lives of other notables, that illustrate the principle.

Gallo has identified 7 secrets or principles that are essential to Jobs’ innovative track record.  If you’re at all familiar with Jobs’ career at Apple and Pixar, you’ll recognize many of the secrets right away:

• Do What You Love
• Put a Dent in the Universe
• Kick Start Your Brain
• Sell Dreams, Not Products
• Say No to 1,000 Things
• Create Inanely Great Experiences
• Master the Message

Each of the secrets is illustrated with a one-two punch of chapters; the first, fine tuning the principle, the second, laying out some practical takeaways about how to apply the principle.  For example, principle #3 is Kick Start Your Brain.  The two chapters supporting it are Seek Out New Experiences and Think Differently About How You Think.

Seek New Experiences cites examples of Jobs’ track record of “bombarding the brain with new experiences.”  He studied calligraphy, spent time in a commune, visited India, and hired musicians, artists, poets and historians.  Gallo makes the point that “some of Jobs’ most creative insights are the direct result of seeking out novel experiences either in physical locations or among people with whom he chose to associate (p. 89).”

Think Differently about How You Think points out “five skills that separate true innovators from the rest of us”:

• Associating: Innovators seek out diverse experiences
• Questioning: Innovators get a kick out of questioning the status quo
• Experimenting: Successful innovators engage in “active” experimentation
• Networking: Innovators surround themselves with interesting people who expand their domain of knowledge
• Observing: Innovators watch people carefully, especially the behavior of potential customers

Each of the application chapters conclude with a short list of “iLessons,” practical steps that you can take to implement the principle.

I have to say, although I find the stories fascinating and thoroughly engaging, it’s the practical application that has the greatest potential for me.  I’ve read many books on innovation.  This is one that goes beyond biography, beyond what the innovator did, and identifies a little bit of a path.

If you’re a student of innovation…The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs ought to be on your reading list.

If you are a presenter, you’re going to want to take a look at Nancy Duarte’s newest effort.  Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences is a great follow-up to slide:ology (her previous book on “the art and science of creating great presentations).

Duarte, the CEO of Duarte Designs (an award winning design firm whose clients include Adobe, Chick-fil-A, Cisco, Citrix, Food Network, Facebook, GE, Google, etc.), might be best known as the leader of the team that shaped Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation.

Although slide:ology got the conversation started, Resonate takes it to a whole new level with the introduction of the concepts and practices that help tell “visual stories that transform audiences.”  Using examples drawn from great storytellers in a wide variety of industries (Ronald Reagan, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Feynman, John Ortberg, Steve Jobs, and Martin Luther King, Jr.), Duarte skillfully illustrates the steps that create moments (and take it way beyond a presentation).

I found a couple of the chapters especially helpful.  Create Meaningful Content is a great combination of practical steps that begin with idea collection and creation and end with the transformation of information into stories and ideas into messages.

Another chapter that gave me introduced me to some new practices that were immediately helpful was Structure Reveals Insights.  Now, I’ll have a new set of tools to use whether I’m building a consulting presentation or a leader training event.

Finally, I loved chapter 7, Deliver Something They’ll Always Remember.  Referencing some of the best known presentation moments in recent history (Bill Gates releasing a jar of mosquitoes at the end of his TED talk on solving some of the world’s biggest problems and Steve Jobs unveiling the MacBook Air by pulling it out of a interoffice envelope), Duarte details the creation of “memorable moments that get repeated and retransmitted so they cover longer distances.”

If you’re looking for a way to take your presentation skills from the delivery of information to the creation of transformational moments…resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences needs to be in your toolbox.

I learned some time back that when Bill Taylor publishes a new book…you jump on the opportunity to pick it up and start the journey.  As the co-founder of Fast Company magazine and the co-author of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win (with Polly LaBarre), Taylor seems to be always talking about things that cause the imagination synapses to fire.  Practically Radical is no exception.

81 pages in and I haven’t had a book this marked up, underlined, starred, and dog-eared in quite a while.  The sub-title perfectly describes what I’ve experienced in the last 48 hours.  “Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself.”  I have to say, much like Mavericks at Work, Practically Radical is a book with an inspiring idea on just about every page.

As the subtitle informs, Practically Radical is “built around three distinct (but related) modules: transforming your company, shaking up your industry, and challenging yourself (from the introduction).”  Further, the three sections are designed to be read in any order.  You can begin reading the section that has the most immediate appeal.

I started right from the beginning and struggled a little through the introduction.  Honestly, it was a little slow going.  But…once I turned the page and began reading chapter one, “What You See Shapes How You Change — the Virtues of Vuja De,”…oh my.  Almost immediately found myself underlining whole sections and rapidly finding very transferable concepts and ideas that will quickly get application and implementation.  Chapter two, “Where You Look Shapes What You See,” is very much the same; seriously marked up, starred and underlined.

I first picked up Mavericks at Work in the fall of 2006 when I began hearing people like Guy Kawasaki and Tom Peters talk it up.  Practically Radical is already getting the same treatment as authors like Dan Pink begin to talk about Taylor’s latest project.  If you haven’t already ordered your copy, let me help you get on the bandwagon.  In the next few months, everyone will be talking about Practically Radical.  You can order your copy right here (affiliate link).

You’ve heard plenty of experts telling you that you need to be reading broadly.  You certainly don’t need anyone else telling you the same thing, but you might need a little guidance.

I should probably tell you that I’ve been blogging at StrategyCentral since 2005.  I find so much that ought to be helping the leaders of the Church and non-profits in the writings of Jim Collins, Peter Drucker, Patrick Lencioni, and many others about the intersection of strategy, vision and mission, change and innovation, marketing and design.

Every year I read 20 to 25 books in this cross section of disciplines.  These are the top 5 that I read this year.

Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From kept my attention to the very end.  A great collection of innovation stories spun by a great story teller, Johnson connects the innovation process (i.e., where good ideas come from) to natural history and Charles Darwin’s research.

Adding breadth to the topics in your reading stack will go a long way towards expanding the way you think.  You can read my review right here.

If your organization is about customer service (and if it’s not is should be), this is a book that ought to be on your stack.  Delivering Happiness is the story of Zappos.com as told by Tony Hsieh, its enthusiastic CEO.  You’ll come away inspired and challenged to up the ante on the way your organization approaches customer service.  In addition, I think you’ll find yourself thinking about ways to develop your other customers…your employees.

I loved The Orange Code.  If you didn’t pick this book up when it published in 2009, you’ve got to make time to read this one.  You’ll definitely come away with a genuine appreciation for the ING Direct organization and its founder and CEO, Arkadi Kuhlmann.

For me, the supreme test of a book’s value is often the way it looks after I’m finished reading it.  If it’s marked up, starred, underlined and dogeared…I know I really got my money’s worth.  You should see my copy of The Orange Code!

Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Harvard Business School’s award winning Professor Youngme Moon is well worth a read.  If you find yourself drawn to the idea of adopting the model of another organization, you’ll find Different helpfully challenging.

You can read my full review right here.  I loved this book!

Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky will probably turn out to be the book of the year for many organizations.  If you find it hard to execute on the great ideas you come up with or if you find yourself frustrated by a lack of a process that leads to implementation…this is a book you need to pick up.

You can read my review right here.

Every once in a while I trip across a book that intrigues me right out of the gate and holds my attention to the very end.  I have to say, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation is one of those books.  The newest by Steven Johnson, this one takes a painstaking look at innovation from the vantage point of evolutionary science.  And let me be quick to add, regardless of your first glance reaction to the notion of evolution…this book is packed with great insight to the way innovation happens.

Where Good Ideas Comes From takes a look at seven concepts that can be demonstrated in natural history and illustrated in contemporary innovation.  For example, the first concept Johnson teases out is the idea of the adjacent possible; essentially the principle that every new development puts you into a next space that often makes ideas implementable that weren’t before.  A phrase coined by scientist Stuart Kauffman, “the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself (p. 31).”

If you’ve followed along here at StrategyCentral.org (or over on MarkHowellLive.com) you might recognize right away the reason I was intrigued by the concept of the adjacent possible.  I’ve written quite a bit about Glen Hiemstra’s three cone model, in fact, it’s become the basis for my talk on getting to there.  One of the concepts in the talk (and Hiemstra’s diagram) is the idea that in handcrafting a preferred future for your organization (a vision):

• some of what you land on comes from the probable future (where your organization will end up if you just keep doing what you’re doing now)
• some will be the fruit of identifying the best of what’s possible and energetically going after that
• and some will actually come from outside what is currently possible

The concept of the adjacent possible gives me a way to think about how some of the preferred future can develop from outside or beyond what’s currently possible.

Where Good Ideas Come From takes a look at six other concepts in addition to the adjacent possible and each one has a number of insights and if you’re like me, your copy will be underlined, dogeared and starred with quotes and references you want to come back to later.

If you’re looking for a book that will help you think outside the box, or step into the adjacent possible, Where Good Ideas Come From should be on your list.

Just worked my way through Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky and have to say, Seth Godin was right.  Shirky’s on to a key insight and does a great job explaining it.

The cognitive surplus Sharky is talking about is wrapped up in the idea that “the buildup of well over a trillion hours of free time each year on the part of the world’s educated population, and the invention and spread of public media that enable ordinary citizens to pool that free time in pursuit of activities they like or care about (p. 27, Cognitive Surplus)” makes possible an entirely different world; a world where media isn’t consumed…but created.

Delivered in the style of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point or Outliers, Cognitive Surplus is packed with stories that make the point.  Examining the means by which we are aggregating our free time (i.e., contributing to Wikipedia), our motivations in taking advantage of this new resource (to make a difference), and the nature of the opportunities that are being created, Shirky provides an eye-opening resource that is both inspiring and informative.  I found myself re-reading whole sections to be sure and catch key ideas.  Bet you will too.

If you’ve been following the action here at StrategyCentral for any length of time, you know that change is an important topic.  How to help people move from the status quo to what’s next is a huge part of what our conversation has been.  So you’ll understand when I tell you that the newest offering from Chip and Dan Heath is a must read.  If you lead an organization that is doing anything of significance…you need to be reading this book.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard is very practical.  On top of practical, it introduces a language that has the potential to permeate your organization and become part of the way your team talks about bringing change.

As was the case with their previous book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Switch is a very story-driven book.  Written in a style made popular by Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers), the Heath brothers make every point by referring to the example of a research project or case study.  This makes for a very engaging read.

The book takes a core metaphor and teases it out to make three big ideas easy to understand and tempting to act upon.  The metaphor is that while our emotions often spur action or a predictable pattern of response (referred to as The Elephant), our rational side can play a role (referred to as The Rider).  The three big ideas are that:

• It’s possible to direct the rider
• The elephant can be motivated
• The path that rider and elephant take can be shaped

For me, one of the most important aspects of a book is its immediate application.  I ask the question, “How can this be applied?”  Switch is a book that I devoured.  It started out a page turner and got better as the authors began to tie together the concepts.  It’s really marked up.  There were never more than a few pages turned that I wasn’t thinking, “This can be applied to that!”  In addition, it stayed applicable right to the end.  In fact, the last section on smoothing the path might have been the most practical and application oriented part of the book.

Picked up my copy of Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh today.  Don’t know if you know the story of Zappos.com but this is a great read!  I really only knew two things about Zappos when I opened up the book.  First, they are well known for their practice of offering new employees a lot of money to quit.  Second, they are known for offering “superior customer service.”

Delivering Happiness is more than the story of Zappos though.  It’s really a look at “the highlights of the path that [Hsieh] took in [his] journey toward discovering how to find happiness in business and life (p. xii, Delivering Happiness).”

You need to know that this is a really fun read!  Some books are packed with helpful takeaways but a pain to work through.  Others are just plain engaging, page turners, that end up being very impactful.  An hour on the front porch and I found myself on page 76 and reluctantly setting it aside for the night.

I’ve got to say there are not many books that I trip across that are as fun to read as this one.  Probably not since Chip Conley’s Peak have I been this captivated by the story itself.  Interesting to me that Peak was also really the story of a superior customer service organization.

Delivering Happiness is a great read.  I highly recommend it.

I picked up The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause off my stack this week. I can already see why so many have been raving about it. Written by ING Direct founder and CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann and Bruce Philp, founder of GWP Brand Engineering*, this is a really well-written story. Even better, it’s the story of how ING Direct succeeded in dramatic fashion led by a leader with a cause.

The first few pages captivated me as an analysis of “what it takes to be the leader of an organization with a cause:

• It takes a calling. Sound familiar? It ought to. This is already at the very center of how so many of us operate.
• It take the guts to make it personal. Again, isn’t that the way it really is?
• It takes a powerful enemy.
• It takes an inner circle.
• It takes the possibility of failure.

*If you didn’t check out GWP Brand Engineering…you need to do that now, if only to roll your curser over the men’s bathroom drawing in the scrolling images below.