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The Halo Effect. ..and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers.  Phil Rosenzweig. 2007. ISBN 9780743291255.  This is a must read.  The author literally blows the roof off the popular business books (and gurus)  like In Search of Excellence, Built to Last, Good to Great.   He explains perfectly one puzzle I have always had. When a company is booming along the business press is all over it in praise of everything about it. Then bam, a few bad quarters and the rock start managers become bums, the business has lost its way, employees are arrogant, products are out of step and so on. It just never made sense to me. This is called the Halo effect.  The business books above ( and others) based their premise on outcomes, not inputs.  (Read the book to learn more about that)

The same problems are true of top 100 , best of 40  business lists. They ignore the input data and focus on the outcome. To better see what’s up, you need to rely on  measures that are not shaped by performance , else your data is haloed. Fascinating reading also on the  impact of the eight other delusions.  For us it was gratifying to read a clearly stated rational that it is strategy and execution that need to be looked at, with the risk laden strategy bit being the input that needs to be most revisited.  We also hear much too often from some clients ” We have the right strategy, we  just need to execute better.”   Excuse me?  Revisit the strategy and dare to test and question its ongoing validity.  Blaming execution is often a fall back excuse.

This book reaffirms the high wire act of business. It dismisses the “Do this four things right and you will be successful” schools, to take  the reader back to what Michael Porter first stated about business.  Then you will read the business press as stories, not reports – since the science, if any,  is faulty.  You can enjoy the popular business books as really great stories (eg Good to Great is another example of the Rags to Riches plot line), while enjoying this books analysis of what really happened to all the featured companies in the best seller business lists!   You can still enjoy listening to the highly paid gurus, while knowing they do not have any secret sauce. Great easy read – your travel time will vanish . Buy it, read it (and more Michael Porter) and then review it annually – for a kick in the head.

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Talking Your Way to the Top. Gretchen S. Hirsch. 2006. ISBN 9781591024613.  I learned from Hirsch much. For example.  Did you realize how much TV (American announcers ) is ruining good language habits?   Did you also know that only 15% of the 2 billion English users are natural English speakers?  In future  years Chinglish is not going to be the only mangled English example.

If you care how you speak and want to ensure that what you say is what you mean, this is the handbook for you.  I call it a handbook, because it wastes little time before jumping into the correct and incorrect (with explanations) use of common English words/phrases.  I remember many of these lessons from a diminutive grade seven teacher – she is nameless in my memory- but she was absolutely immovable on the use of proper English.  She pounded it fiercely into our tormented adolescent brains. Imagine my surprise and dismay to find that I was severely guilty of many obvious misuses of English that until I read this book , I had forgotten.  Its short, concise,  easy to pack and quite fun to read – you will be dumbfounded, I assure you.

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Subliminal Persuasion Influence & Marketing Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know. Dave Lakhani. 2008. ISBN 9780470243367.  Also Persuasion. the art of getting what you want. Dave Lakhani. 2005. ISBN0471730440. Taken together these are two of the bets books on persuasion I have come across . The author uses his well researched techniques throughout the book so you can experience how persuasion is not manipulation, its selling, marketing, seduction. all rolled up.  Lakhani is the guru in this space and his research is extensive and documented for the discerning reader.

You need to read these books to

1. recognize and be forewarned when techniques are being used and
2. learn how to apply them.

You will recognize the impact of these techniques through stories about Volvo (safe and boxy), The Sierra Club, the Organic Food movement (pay more for the same thing)  as well as the Natural movement.  Read about the most influential (and unknown) American ever, Edward Bernays who made it fashionable for women to smoke, promoted bacon and eggs until it was the American breakfast, stoked the fear of communism to “rally the population”,  and participated in the United Fruit Co /Guatemala/CIA led government toppling.  Bernays believed that the conformity of the masses made for a smoother “democratic” society.   Amazing yet serious stuff.

The authors take on Positioning:

• Positioning and packaging is creating a legendary message that meets the expectation of your target audience and gains persuasive compliance.
• We are leveraging storytelling.
• We are focusing on creating complementary models
• We are creating a persona that is easily identifiable with you, your company, and your product or your service you are leveraging.

Taken with Chip Bells work on customer loyalty, these persuasive techniques create a one two punch that would help you beat most opposition.  I believe that todays sales and marekting leaders need to become more familiar with Lakhanis work. They are easy concise reads, well worth the little effort to learn.

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Customer Loyalty Guaranteed. Create, Lead and Sustain Remarkable Customer Service. Chip R. Bell & John R. Patterson. 2007. ISBN 9781598694680.   Great little book – a true pocket book that you can carry around while you savour the great ideas and clear simple examples given.

Pearls of wisdom that I gleaned:

• Measures of satisfaction are not equal to predictors of return visits nor of customer loyalty
• There are many types of customer heroes,; how do you recognize, support and guide them?
• How does a leader treat the workers . Ie. in construction how does he treat carpenters and operators?
• What happens with a error? A rebuke or an opportunity to learn?
• No …buts. You did an amazing job , but
• What do you want to be famous for?
• The dash boarding ideas in Chap 19.

I suggest this is a good leadership and hr book. Lots to learn from it and it gives you how tos not do nots.

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Sway. The irresistible pull of irrational behavior. Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman 2008. ISBN 9780385524384.  Ori wrote the enjoyable and perceptive The Starfish and the Spider.  Now with his brother he has put together a fascinating study that really extends the work of other books like Blink . Why do we do things that clearly do not add value to the situation and any reasonable person would say stop. Yet we do. This book is well researched and annotated , so you can go right to the source for every quirk.

Here an example from HR.  Of the following popular 10 interview questions only one has shown to give any helpful information on the interviewee.  The research from Bradley University tells us that the rest are just useless.   So which one would  you pick as helpful?

1. Why should I hire you?
2. What do you see yourself doing five years from now?
3. What do you consider to be your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
4. How would you describe yourself?
5. What college subject did you like the best and least?
6. What do you know about our company?
7. Why did you decide to seek a job with our company?
8. Why did you leave your last job?
9. What do you want to earn five years from now?
10. What do you really want to do in life?

We have all hired lots of folks  and I bet you like me have used these and more questions. The book analyzes each question to show you the flaws until you are left with? Number six is useful because it shows if the candidate has taken the time to research the company. The rest are no help at all. Consider this for irrational behavior, the department at Bradley U. which sponsored the above research has not put these results into place in their own interview process!

There is lots more here but you should get the idea. This concise easy to read – short plane ride book is well worth your time.  It will certainly get your brain working.

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The Innovators Guide to Growth. Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work. Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield, Elizabeth Altman. 2008. ISBN 9781591398462. So Geoffrey Moore has the Chasm Companion. Now the field of innovative disruption so clearly identified by Clayton Christensen has its own implementation book. Like anything put out by Innosight, Christensen’s consulting company, the book is thorough from end to end. If you read nothing else you must read the Summary and FAQs at the end.  I read it in two lengthy sittings. It is a fascinating read that starts out talking to established companies like P&G , Intel and RIM. Then it hits its stride and the implementation guides, examples, templates and resources are useful for every company. Yes even start-ups.

IMHO anyone working in tech should have read and review this book,  But I am a fan of Christensen’s work , and if everyone followed his ideas, there  would be less work for my consulting firm.  The book is full of great case studies Swiffer, Wii, Skype, YouTube, Metro newspapers, ITunes, Whitestrips, Adwords, eBay.  Some great lines. ” Medical device cos commoditze doctors”. ” Look for people with the right school of experience – What problems could arise? Who has encountered these problems?”   “What job is the client needing done? ”

Wait for Amazon to get the book in stock.

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Summer reading. Grass Beyond The Mountains. Discovering the last great cattle frontier on the North American continent. Richmond P. Hobson. 1951. ISBN 0771041705.  I first read this book while at University after spending  a summer of helicopter mining exploration in the regions that Hobson talks about,  the Batanuni  Range and the Blackwater River . If you take the Anaheim trail from Quesnel through to  Bella Coola you will see this incredible and huge country. I was lucky to meet some of the characters in the book, Panhandle Philips and his wife Adelia at their ranch.  This book details the finding of the 5 million acre ranch and the toughness shown by these pioneers in just getting there.  Hobson’s second book , Nothing Too Good For  A Cowboy, details the building of the ranch and the trials and tribulations they went through. (It became a TV drama)  This is real horses and men stuff, unvarnished and simple – but a great read at anytime, especially since its all about opening up BC in the 30s.

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Stopwatch Marketing.Take charge of the time when your customer decides to buy. John Rosen, Annamaria Turano. 2008. ISBN 9781591841944.  This is likely one of the best consumer marketing books I have read in along time.  Through detailed examples (Goodyear. Roto-Rooter,  Whole Foods, Walmart, Microsoft, Lexus and a terrific matrix (See below)  they really bring this concepts home.

You folks  in B2C markets  will have lots of aha! moments. Check out Chapter one here .  My lesson learned is that all marketers need to remember and remind their CEOs that buyers are rarely if ever as fascinated by the product as the creator.  This book reinforces the work of TunedIn (The correct value statement at the correct time) and Christensen (People buy products to do work) by adding the time element to our previously static vision of demographics. The people can and do purchase the same product at different times for vastly different reasons.

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• clubhub
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• Boeing’s Dreamliner
• ZipCar
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Riches in Niches. How to make it big in a small market. Susan Friedmann. 2007. ISBN 9781564149305.  This is a book for the sole practitioner who desires  to be an expert in a small vertical niche. There is everything one would need to know in this book. She uses an easy to read, thoughtful style which makes the book a very good complement to the practitioner’s toolkit.  A lot of common sense and good planning has gone into the book.  (I expected a  book that would give guidance to companies in penetrating niche verticals. This is not that book. )