Posts by year: 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000
Posts by month in 2010: Jan. Feb. March April May June July Aug. Sept.
Jack Covert Selects – The Mesh
Posted Sept. 9, 2010 3:25 p.m. by dylan
You want to see a movie, but don’t want to spend $25.00 on a DVD that you will watch once, and then let sit uselessly around your home gathering dust. Instead, you decide to join Netflix, receive shared DVDs in the mail, and then send them back to whence they came when you’re finished with them.
You want to have consistent access to a vehicle, but you don’t want to deal with maintaining or parking it—or dishing out hundreds of dollars a month for insurance. So, you sign up for Zipcar, and share vehicles with the many others around your city in the same situation.
Your kids have quickly outgrown their clothes, but those shirts and pants are in too great a condition to throw away, and take up too much closet space to store. So, you decide to try thredUP to swap those clothes for new clothes from other families online.
Welcome to the Mesh. It is a term coined by Lisa Gansky in a fascinating new book of the same name—The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. Gansky has identified four characteristics Mesh businesses have in common: They offer something that can be shared, they use advanced web and mobile data networks to track the goods they offer, they focus on physical goods, and they rely on word-of-mouth and social networks.
Mesh businesses have given up the sell-to-own, one-off transaction in favor of the ability to rent out a product or service over and over and over (and over) again. The Mesh is not exactly new, of course. We’ve always had libraries, hotels and public transportation. The difference now is how new technologies, and the ability to access real-time information about everything around us via GPS-enabled mobile devices, are expanding what we can share with one another:
Up to now, the information revolution has primarily swept through industries and services that are or can be digital—numbers, text, sound, images, and video. Related sectors, such as banking, publishing, music, photos, and movies, have undergone massive change. Now, mobile networks are rapidly expanding that disruption to physical goods and venues, including hotels, care, apparel, tools, and equipment.
Many books can tell us how to conduct conversations and share information online. The Mesh reveals how technology is facilitating ways to share the physical essentials of our lives—from transportation to clothing, shelter and entertainment—creating less waste and less clutter in our homes in the process of doing so, and generating profits for the businesses that get there first.
Jack Covert Selects - Still Surprised
Posted Sept. 9, 2010 3:24 p.m. by dylan
When you look at the greatest business thinkers from the second half of the last century, Warren Bennis would have to be in the conversation. When you focus on the field of leadership, he would have to be on the top of that list. In the past fifty-plus years, Bennis has written some of the seminal books on leadership. We included On Becoming a Leader in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time because, as we said in the book, “Bennis treats leadership with a certain gravitas that is perspective changing.”
Now, after writing twenty-seven books on business thought, he tells us his leadership story. It begins when, as a 19-year-old second lieutenant, he commanded a platoon during the final days of the Second World War in Europe and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. It was his first real lesson in leadership:
I had been changed and enriched by the advance course in leadership the war had thrust on me. It is no accident that the war produced so many authentic leaders in the second half of the 20th century. Nobody who has to make choices that result in the deaths of others takes leadership lightly.
He then used the G.I. Bill to go to college at Antioch, a small “free-thinking institution that championed both learning and social justice” in Ohio where he met Douglas McGregor, who would become his early mentor. He went on to do his graduate work at MIT. These two experiences in higher education would transform his life:
One of the first and most critical things those two institutions did for me was radically alter my definition of work. … Work—paid work at that—could be the activity of an engaged mind or a group of minds collaborating to solve a worthy problem.
So inspired, he has spent the rest of his life in higher learning. As he recounts his journey, we meet an incredible group of people—like Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelsson, counter-culture guru Werner Erhard and writer Norman Mailer. We also find out how Bennis developed his beliefs surrounding team-focused leadership instead of the hierarchical leadership model. All of this along with the tale of a life well lived. There are no new theories here, just great stories. But, like all of Warren Bennis’s books, it finds the heart of leadership.
Jack Covert Selects - Resonate
Posted Sept. 9, 2010 3:14 p.m. by dylan
Everyone gives presentations, in any number of forms. Expressing our opinion, our research, our hard work to a group of people is always a risk. Sometimes, these situations are dreadful: our point gets missed, and instead of leading the group to higher ground, we create even more confusion or frustration. There are other times, however, when we create a connection with all those present, and our idea resonates with the group. How can we become more consistent?
As a follow-up to her book Slide:ology, Nancy Duarte has written Resonate, a book with enough information, insight, and keen examples to make any type of presentation connect better with an audience. Anyone can tell a story, but how it’s told—visually, sonically, physically, and linearly—is the key to true resonance. And, her #1 rule is: “Resonance causes Change.” How best to create resonance? Become a storyteller. Storytelling utilizes multiple psychological and emotional triggers and creates an experience for your audience. “Creating desire in the audience and then showing how your ideas fill that desire moves people to adopt your perspective. This is the heart of a story.” Like the characters Yoda and Luke Skywalker in the movie Star Wars, Duarte points out that the audience is the hero (Luke), and Yoda (you) must reveal and align ideas and capabilities already present within the group consciousness.
The author practices this same methodology in the book by presenting her ideas through photographs, drawings, graphs, charts, diagrams, and even poetry, making Resonate a truly unique reading experience. By doing this, Duarte offers a variety of ways for the reader to understand the greater meaning of her message. With the example the book sets for how we interpret and retain information, it’s clear to see that how people present information matters. And, by practicing exactly what it is preaches, Nancy Duarte’s Resonate will help you become more effective at transforming your audience into active participants.
Jack Covert Selects - Bury My Heart at Conference Room B
Posted Aug. 13, 2010 9:01 a.m. by dylan
In 2010, 800-CEO-READ moved to our newly remodeled “world headquarters” and with all this new space, we had walls that needed filling. Lots of pictures of me, of course, but I’ve got to keep my ego in check. What to put on the rest of the walls? As you can imagine, we get lots of books through our door, so there are plenty of sources of inspirations for quotes to put on those walls.
In Bury my Heart in Conference Room B, we found the following quote, which will soon adorn the wall of our new conference room: “The irreducible essence of leadership is that leaders are people who live their deepest personal values without compromise, and they use those values to make life better for others—this is why people become leaders and why people follow leaders.”
In this one quote, I could tell that Stan Slap had penned one of the smartest and most compelling books on leadership I have been lucky enough to read. On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis has been my totem of the genre, though even in that excellent book, this amorphous subject remains slippery.
That is why this book is special: Slap uses his research with over 10,000 managers from seventy countries to point out dichotomies that encapsulate the problems the modern business manager faces. For example:
The personal values that an overwhelming number of managers in every position in every country reported as being most important to them:
1. Family 2. Integrity.
The personal values that those same managers reported as being the most under pressure to compromise in order to do their jobs successfully:
1. Family 2. Integrity
Bury my Heart in Conference Room B will help managers become better leaders and, on the way, become committed managers. Slap’s methodology is to help managers become committed first to themselves, to live their personal values at work which, as the quote in the first paragraph states, is why people become leaders in the first place, and why people follow them.
Jack Covert Selects - The Man Who Sold America
Posted Aug. 13, 2010 9:00 a.m. by dylan
![](http://800ceoread.com/images/book/5/85/9781591393085/thumb.jpg?update=1283549319")
The provocative and fiercely competitive ad world portrayed in the Emmy-winning television series Mad Men has captivated critics and viewers alike. Mad Men offers viewers a nostalgic (but not idyllic) look back at a time when advertising and business was unchartered territory. Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz have written an equally engrossing book about a real-life Don Draper, The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (But True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century. Without hyperbole, it can be said Lasker near-single-handedly built the advertising industry.
From Lasker’s early days of working in newspapers and his nervous breakdowns to his outspoken personality, alcohol abuse, political work, and reimagination of advertising (and making millions in the process), The Man Who Sold America has everything you’d expect in a sexy, glamorous TV show, but offers even more.
Through the book, we learn, alongside Lasker, what advertising is. An early meeting with John E. Kennedy revealed to Lasker that advertising is “Salesmanship in print.” Lasker put this philosophy to use, creating “reason-why” advertising, pursuing untouched industries like women’s sanitary products and revolutionizing cigarette sales which put him at the very top of the advertising game for many years—but not without a price. Along the way, he faced many challenges and intense failures, but Lasker persevered in the face of all adversity.
The Man Who Sold America is an interesting look at business through the brutally honest and turmoil-filled story of a man who had no interest of getting involved in the very industry he made millions in. Part biography and part inspiration (maybe success does indeed exist in the places we least expect it), The Man Who Sold America is about a man who relied on the power of ideas. Regardless of what industry you’re in, reading this book makes you realize how ideas can change everything.
