Monthly Archives: December 2009

The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management

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The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft ManagementThe 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management: How to Think and Act Like a Microsoft Manager and Take Your Company to the Top
by David Thielen

WAIT! Don’t skip this particular review because you lack interest in technology or maybe even despise Bill Gates. This book offers its readers a wealth of information, ideas, and strategies that can easily be adapted to any organization. It’s a quick read, very candid and to the point. 

You may admire him for his chutzpah or detest him for his audacity, but you can’t deny that Bill Gates has developed a company capable of dominating any market it resolves to enter. This is not an accident, contends David Thielen—a 20-year veteran of the technology industry who once toiled at Microsoft as a senior software developer on Windows 95 and other projects—and in fact stems directly from the chairman’s own unique attitudes on corporate administration.

The author reveals a dozen key elements he learned during three years at Microsoft. This book is an inside look at the way Gates and his lieutenants have successfully harnessed those particular practices that initially put the firm on the map and subsequently used them to build their business into one of the world’s largest. “Microsoft’s management style is its core strength,” writes the author. “There are other companies that produce better software, market better, and make fewer mistakes. However, no other large company manages its business as well.”

This book puts forth a convincing case for the competitive advantage that exists in Microsoft’s management style: a big company’s resources with a small company’s agility and focus. While other books talk about Microsoft’s success and what it has done, this books tells you how Microsoft became successful.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

Heads, You Win!

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Heads You WinHeads, You Win!: How the Best Companies Think-and How You Can Use Their Examples to Develop Critical Thinking Within Your Own Organization
by Quinn Spitzer and Roe Evans

Remember New Coke, The Walt Disney Company’s aborted theme park near the Manassas battlefield or AT&T’s acquisition of the NCR Corp? Were these merely the mistakes of individual decision makers, or do they represent larger, organizational deficiencies in critical thinking? How confident are you in the collective brainpower of your organization?

The most crucial task facing any business leader in today’s brutally competitive economy is to sharpen his or hers organization’s ability to effectively solve problems, make decisions, and cut through the information clutter. In this book, Kepner-Tregoe’s CEO Quinn Spitzer, and executive Ron Evans cite the experiences and share the advice of presidents and CEOs of some of the world’s most innovative companies—organizations like Johnson and Johnson, Chrysler Corp., British Airways, and Harley Davidson, Inc.—which are successful because they capitalize on the brainpower of every employee.

Filled with practical tips and techniques and lightened with amusing real-life anecdotes, this book is an indispensable tool for sorting through the complexities of running a business today and identifying the essential skills that determine a company’s success.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

Heart at Work

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Heart at WorkHeart at Work
by Jack Canfield and Jacqueline Miller

This is a priceless, best-selling collection of inspirational stories about bringing back self-esteem to the workplace and creating a happier environment that ultimately leads to greater productivity and profit. Compiled by Jack Canfield, co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and Jacqueline Miller, this treasury of soulful wisdom shows leaders from every level how to use the power of self-esteem to empower, energize, and motivate their co-workers to bring out the best.

Overflowing with positive yet practical advice, proven strategies, and personal testimonies from every rung of the corporate ladder—from CEOs to busboys—Heart at Work is a much needed dose of inspiration for today’s increasingly impersonal workplace.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back

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1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back: WOW Ideas That Make Customers Happy and Will Increase Your Bottom Line
by Donna Greiner and Theodore Kinni

You can now have the customer-service secrets of the world’s most successful businesses right at your fingertips. The authors spent five years uncovering how Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, and many other world-class companies keep their customers for life. You’ll find these customer-retention ideas to be timely, entertaining, and brilliantly inventive. You’ll discover the secrets to:

  • Creating products/services tailored to your customers’ needs
  • Using three kinds of guarantees to build customer trust
  • Turning first-time customers into frequent buyers 

This book identifies the companies and individuals who have found successful techniques, strategies, and programs that not only satisfy customers but keep them coming back and bringing others. It’s a quick, easy read that you’ll want to share with your entire staff.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

The Guru Guide

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The Guru GuideThe Guru Guide: The Best Ideas of the Top Management Thinkers
by Joseph Boyett and Jimmie Boyett

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had the time to read all of the business books that hit the best-seller list? Well, if you’re striving to make your mark in the business world, you simply don’t have that kind of time. However, it’s obvious that you do need the essential information they contain. You need to keep up with the latest business trends and understand emerging ideas and new terminology. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have concise, penetrating explanations of today’s most advanced thinking on business management and leadership.

In this easy-to-use primer, two internationally respected business consultants provide an executive summary of the most effective and successful management ideas put forth by the leading business thinkers and doers of our time: Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey, Warren Bennis, Michael Hammer, Margaret Wheatly, Peter Senge, and many more. They also give you:

  • Clear explanations of essential business terms, concepts, and theories
  • Profiles of more than 75 top management figures and their ideas
  • Cross-links to issues on which these gurus agree and disagree
  • Insightful commentaries and real-life case studies
  • Quick-reference charts, bulleted lists, chapter summaries, and other creative quick-learning tools.

The Guru Guide is a must for your personal and/or corporate library!

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

Everyone a Leader

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Everyone a LeaderEveryone a Leader: A Grassroots Model for the New Workplace
by Horst Bergmann, Kathleen Hurson, and Darlene Russ-Eft

For years now, AchieveMax® consultants, trainers, and speakers have promoted the idea that true leaders can and do emerge from every level of the organization. We have witnessed organizations that believe, promote, and benefit from this approach, and we have sadly observed companies that disbelieve, refuse to encourage, and pay the price as a result.

An employee doesn’t necessarily need a title, seniority or position to demonstrate leadership. Initiative, creativity, and ideas can and do come from every level of the organization. Imagine a company where every employee does what it takes to help his or her organization reach its goals! 

If chaos and confusion come to mind, think again! Spreading leadership and decision-making responsibilities liberates, inspires, and motivates everyone to achieve more and contribute the maximum—making a positive impact on both productivity and business results.

Based on a landmark study that involved 2,000 people across 450 organizations, Everyone a Leader explores the critical moments when employees at all levels step forward into leadership roles. The findings are summarized in five key strategies the authors call the CLIMB model of leadership effectiveness:

Create a compelling future
Let the customer drive the organization
Involve every mind
Manage work horizontally
Build personal credibility

The CLIMB model’s step-by-step tools for grassroots leaders build competencies such as presenting thoughts and ideas, listening proactively, giving recognition, managing priorities, turning conflict into collaboration, identifying and meeting unspoken customer needs, and many, many more.

To remain flexible and responsive in today’s dynamic, highly competitive marketplace, successful organizations recognize the critical need for greater flexibility, knowledge, and adaptability across the entire organization. To do so means everyone must learn to be a leader.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

Best Practices

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Best PracticesBest Practices: Building Your Business with Customer Focused Solutions
by Robert Hiebeler, Charles Ketteman, and Thomas B. Kelly

What makes the world’s top companies so adept at providing stellar customer service? How do they meet the needs of every customer and still turn healthy profits? And, most important, how can you adapt their practices to fit your business?

Thanks to more than six years of ongoing research and an investment of $30 million, Arthur Andersen has created its Global Best Practices Database to uncover breakthrough thinking at world-class companies. Now, in Best Practices, Arthur Andersen for the first time shares its understanding of how more than 40 best-practices companies focus on their customers, create growth, reduce cost, and increase profits. Managers of any business in any industry can adapt and apply what those companies do best.

Unlike most books based merely on an author’s own theories or limited anecdotal experience, Best Practices is backed up by 30,000 pages of active, documented data on hundreds of companies worldwide. This book concentrates primarily on customers and how to involve them in everything from the design of products and services to marketing, selling, and product delivery.

Perhaps the greatest value of the book lies in its linking of best practices to business processes, thereby encouraging managers to expand their thinking and engage in creative problem-solving with the help of insights from companies inside or outside their own industry. For example, the manager of a clothing store chain can study how Federal Express adapted the concept of just-in-time manufacturing to its rapid delivery of parts between supplier and customer. The owner of a small coffee shop chain might learn from American Express and Peapod how to target customers by offering particular products and predicting exactly when they will make their next purchases.

These and other examples will help business people diagnose the processes in place at their own companies and determine how best to improve them. Comprehensive and on the cutting edge, Best Practices will serve as an invaluable information resource.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 4.)

Lessons from the Top

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Lessons from the TopLessons from the Top: The Search for America’s Best Business Leaders
by Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin

What makes a business leader great? This is one of the burning questions in companies and boardrooms across America. An even more compelling question: Are there things each of us can learn from these leaders that we can apply to our own lives? Not surprisingly, there is no single answer to copy or formula to follow in order to excel in business. 

In fact, the leaders selected in Lessons from the Top are wildly different in their personalities, their paths to the top, and the industries they work in. But perhaps the best way to learn how to excel is by studying the strategies and thinking of the wide range of leaders who have proven themselves the best in their industries. 

Spencer Stuart, specialists in hiring CEOs, is one of the nation’s leading executive recruiting firms. Neff is the chairman and Citrin a managing director. After several of their clients had asked them to identify the traits that make a leader successful, the firm commissioned the Gallup Organization to conduct a survey to “nominate” the best leaders in the U.S. on the basis of 10 factors, including vision, long-term performance, customer focus, and impact on business or society. 

The result was a list of 240 successful leaders, which the authors narrowed using the same proprietary criteria they use to select executives for their clients. This roster of America’s 50 best is the end product. Finalists’ profiles include their comments on the difficult issues, what they consider to be most important about leadership, and how those factors improve organizational performance. In the final section of the book, the authors distill the surprising number of qualities and characteristics that these extraordinarily accomplished individuals share, to offer lessons to help us in our own lives and careers. It is noteworthy that those at “the top” represent a wide range of leadership styles. 

A groundbreaking book on business and success, Lessons from the Top should be required reading by leaders—and future leaders—everywhere.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 4.)

In the Words of Great Business Leaders

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In the Words of Great Business LeadersIn the Words of Great Business Leaders
by Julie M. Fenster

This book presents the accumulated experience of 19 business legends, in their own words. Each leader provides inspiring and motivating wisdom that runs the gamut from investing to setting priorities to making the most of opportunity. 

This book also features thorough background information on each leader, telling the stories of their struggles to succeed, their triumphs—both good and bad—that formed their business philosophies. 

The 19 legends, are divided into five categories: hustling hard workers, self-made successes, bosses, mavericks, and salesmen. 

Thrive on the wisdom of such legends as:

  • Thomas Watson (IBM),
  • Andrew Carnegie (Steel),
  • Sam Walton (Retail),
  • John Rockerfeller (Standard Oil),
  • Henry Ford II (Ford Motor),
  • J. Paul Getty (Oil),
  • Mary Pickford (United Artists),
  • Alfred Sloane (GM),
  • David Packard (Hewlett-Packard),
  • Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines), and
  • Ted Turner (Broadcasting) to name just a few.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 4.)

The Circle of Innovation

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The Circle of InnovationThe Circle of Innovation: You Can’t Shrink Your Way to Greatness
by Tom Peters

In 1982, Tom Peters introduced himself to the business world by co-authoring one of the most influential management books of all time: In Search of Excellence. Now, through his in-your-face style, bold graphics, astounding facts and figures, and quotes whose sources range from Martha Stewart to Bill Gates, Peters introduces his seventh work, The Circle of Innovation. In this offering, he blows the lid off accepted management styles and opens our eyes to new ways of envisioning the challenges of today’s world. 

Whether you manage a six-person department or a 60,000-body behemoth, this book empowers you to transform your organization, your career, and yourself. Inspiring and timely, this blueprint for success is pure Peters—a handbook as energetic as it is profound. Tom provides a practical guide that will teach you how to reverse the rising tide of product and service commoditization and foster uniqueness, capitalize on the skyrocketing purchasing power of women, and convert sluggish staff into vital centers of intellectual capital, creativity, and innovation. 

Tom Peters has become a recognized leading voice in management theory, urging large and small companies to thrive on chaos. This book is certainly a step in that direction.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 4.)