- NEW!!! Wisdom for Work e-newsletter
Subscribe to "Wisdom for Work" and each Monday morning you'll get a short quote from the best and brightest with additional commentary from one of our experts on a significant issue facing professional services companies today. It's a quick and straightforward way to avoid the pitfalls of leading in today's constantly changing business environment.
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- Thursday, March 20th, Charles will be at the Virginia Beach chapter of the American Marketing Association, speaking on The Trust Equation: How to Build & Maintain Trust-based Relationships.
- Upcoming, Charles will be presenting a two day workshop on "Creativity and Personality" for Marketing Executives in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Recommended Reading
The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage by B. Joseph Pine, James H. Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine II
Transformations are what all of us are looking for: experiences that change us for the better. Pine and Gilmore maintain that in the coming century, companies that provide us with transformational experiences will rule the roost. Pine and Gilmore explain what it means to systematically design for experience, when "the customer IS the product."
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A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century by Scott Bedbury
Bedbury, who headed advertising and marketing divisions for Nike and Starbucks during their phenomenal growth, coaches on establishing a memorable brand in this appealing, well-organized guide. Observing consumers overwhelmed by countless choices, he argues that now's the time to build a brand that evokes trust from its customers.
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True Professionalism: The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career by David Maister
Maister sets out to help professionals align their real-world actions with their true (espoused) values. He tells us that successful firms are clearly differentiated by a strict adherence to values and professionalism and that doing the right thing is good business.
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Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen is the business leader's most important job. While failure in today's business environment is often attributed to other causes, Bossidy and Charan argue that the biggest obstacle to success is the absence of execution. They point out that without execution, breakthrough thinking on managing change breaks down, and they emphasize the fact that execution is a discipline to learn, not merely the tactical side of business.
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The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema
The authors' thesis is deceptively simple: that successful organizations—the market leaders—excel at delivering one type of value to their chosen customers. The key is focus. Market leaders choose a single "value discipline"—best total cost, best product, or best total solution—and then build their organization around it. They sustain their leadership position not by resting on their laurels, but by offering better value year after year. Choosing one discipline to master does not mean abandoning the other two, only that a company must stake its reputation—and focus its energy and assets—on a single one to achieve success over the long term. No company can reliably succeed today by trying to be all things to all customers.
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Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith
Today it's estimated that nearly 75 percent of Americans work in the service sector. Instead of producing tangibles--automobiles, clothes, and tools--more and more of us are in the business of providing intangibles--health care, entertainment, tourism, legal services, and so on. However, according to Harry Beckwith, most of these intangibles are still being marketed like products were 20 years ago. In Selling the Invisible, Beckwith argues that what consumers are primarily interested in today are not features, but relationships. Even companies who think that they sell only tangible products should rethink their approach to product development and marketing and sales.
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The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk by Al Ries and Jack Trout
The book deals with the establishment of an identity, a position, which will be good for years to come, not with campaigns which may increase sales in a given quarter. This book is important because it demonstrates that if you don't understand the basic concept of positioning, and the rules which logically follow it, you can easily create campaigns (or develop products to be promoted under a brand name)which actually harm or destroy the company's position in the mind of the consumer.
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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a sick individual in a crowded store can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push start a fashion trend or cause the popularity of a new restaurant to take off overnight or cause crime or drug use to taper off. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell shows how very minor adjustments in products and ideas can make them more likely to become immensely popular. He reveals how easy it is to cause group behavior to tip in a desirable direction by making small changes in our immediate environment.
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Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know by Nancy M. Dixon
Common Knowledge gets to the heart of one of the most difficult questions in knowledge transfer today: What makes a system work effectively in one organization but fail miserably in another? Going beyond "one-size-fits-all" approaches and simple generalities like upper management involvement and cultural issues, this important book will help organizations of every kind construct knowledge transfer systems tailored to their unique forms of "common knowledge" — and in the process create the best kind of competitive advantage there is: the kind that can't be copied.
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Fast Company Magazine
Inside are smart attitudes and information that give entrepreneurs and business professionals the particulars of leadership and organization, no matter what the trade. Find key ingredients of working in teams or read a candid interview with the leaders of today's leading-edge companies. The magazine also offers practical business tools and tactics, from must-have gadgets to how to handle voluminous amounts of e-mail. Ideas come from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Harvard, and even Las Vegas.
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Harvard Business Review
HBR delivers entrepreneurial ideas and insights that help managers strengthen their leadership power. Every issue shows how to use technology for competitive advantage. Guides strategic decision making in times of change. Profiles innovative leaders. Tells how to motivate today_s workers. Shares the details of successful online alliances, and more.
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Visibooks: The Visual Learners Guide To Managing Web Projects"
Learn how to plan and organize Web site construction.
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