thinks

You’ve gotta love Seth Godin. Even if you hate him. He’s made a mini-empire out of writing little books that distill big topics into bite-sized chunks for busy business owners, marketers and executives. Take his latest,“Meatball Sundae”. Please.

It’s a great little book. Seth covers fourteen trends, many of them book subjects on their own, that represent a change “…in the environment we live in.” These range from “no insulation” between customers and companies, through outsourcing, the rise of Google and the birth of the Long Tail (itself one of my 12 Crucial Reads of the last 10 years). What Seth has done is break down the barriers between these trends and provide a field guide for marketers interested in using them to engage with customers and sell more effectively.

When I channeled Henny Youngman earlier, I wasn’t just making a bad joke. I was actually asking you. Please buy “Meatball Sundae”. It won’t take you much longer to read than this review. And it will do so much more for you.

Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li and other fine folks at Forrester have a report on what they call “The POST Method” for social strategy. It’s an excellent report, well worth the read for many folks at larger companies interested in the best way to set social strategy for their firm. Charlene and Josh both have excellent insights into the right way to do social strategy.

For instance, the way that Josh got folks to review this report (and their forthcoming book) illustrates excellent social strategy implementation.

I learned about this report from a link on Josh and Charlene’s blog, encouraging bloggers to tweet Josh if they were interested in a review copy of the report. (Tweets are messages sent via Twitter, for those new to both). He offered the report to the first 100 TWITs. (TWITs are what many folks call the folks using Twitter. Ah, how we love our irony). What impressed me about this method is that Josh sized up his audience first, connected bloggers using social platforms such as blogs, RSS and Twitter. Who better to review a report about social strategy than the folks using social technologies. But, key to both the report and the approach is Josh didn’t start by saying, “I’ll use Twitter.” He started be knowing what mattered to his customers, then using tools that worked for those folks. It might sound obvious, but that’s precisely Josh’s point. Too many companies start with “Let’s use some cool new technology” without thinking first about what value it has to their customers. Your business can use Twitter in a number of ways. But that doesn’t mean you should in all cases. Josh just happened to demonstrate one of them. His colleague Peter Kim listed other uses for Twitter in a recent post, too. But without the right objectives and strategies in place, you won’t see the value you should.

So, should you buy the report? The answer depends on your budget. For many large companies, the cost is low relative to similar reports. For small companies though, I’d recommend waiting for Charlene and Josh’s book. I suspect it will cover everything in the book, plus some and for a much more reasonable price.

Anne Zelenka at WebWorker Daily points to 10 great books for 2007. It makes an excellent complement to my list of the 12 most important business books. While we only have one book in common between us (the outstanding Made to Stick), the WebWorker list adds some books that come highly recommended from friends, too.

Along with Made to Stick, this year I have also reviewed the following books on Anne’s list:

• Everything is Miscellaneous
• A Whole New Mind
• Rule the Web

And, yes, I have pre-ordered Anne’s book, too. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Happy reading!

David Weinberger - based on his 2001 classic, The Cluetrain Manifesto - is a god. That book, originally published and available for free online, discussed the need for companies to “get on the Cluetrain,” and recognize that the web enabled customers to have as large, if not larger, a voice as companies in the marketplace for products and services. It tore through the Web like a bullet (train) to the brain. Weinberger’s insight presaged blogs, user-generated content, consumer-generated media and many of the other transformational shifts companies and the mainstream media spend much of their days trying to capture, comprehend, and control.

Because of his role in shaping this dialogue about the new brand dialogue, I tore into Everything is Miscellaneous, anticipating Weinberger dropping some knowledge and, once again, racing ’round the curve, providing a ride to a place I’ve not been before. Perhaps I expected too much. It’s not that Everything is Miscellaneous is a bad book; it’s more that Weinberger set the bar too high the first time for anyone to clear again. Perhaps his omniscience in Manifesto only gave the impression he was a god, when, in fact, he’s merely a very good writer who understands the changes wrought by the weavers of the web implicitly and who helps make those changes explicit for those who do not. That’s not a bad thing. I definitely learned a few things reading Miscellaneous, for instance, the way in which tagging enables computers - and people - to identify relationships between content not obvious at first glance, or frequently at second, third or fourth. Pretty cool. Did the Earth move, though? I’m afraid not.

I don’t like to slag books. And I won’t begin here, because this book is far too good for that. If you’re not a regular user of del.icio.us, Flickr, ma.gnolia and the like, you will absolutely benefit from reading Everything is Miscellaneous. If you do use these sites, if you already ride this cluetrain, you’ll find Weinberger conducting a thorough, and thoroughly enjoyable, tour of the state of the art for these technologies, with a glimpse of what’s to come. If, however, you seek a religious experience, as I was and expected based on the original Manifesto, I’m afraid Weinberger proves he is nothing more, and nothing less, than a very good writer wielding a topic he knows well. You could do much worse. All aboard.

Marc Andreessen posts “Coming Soon” titles on his blog. That’s really cool and something I’d love to do, too. Of course, I’d have to follow through on it. So why not borrow one of Marc’s instead?

One future title in particular, “Top 10 books for high-tech entrepreneurs,” intrigued me and got me thinking about the most valuable books I’ve read. So, in no particular order, the list below represents the twelve most influential and important books for marketers and general business folks over the last 10 years:

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries popularized the notion of positioning, that is, owning a position within your customer’s mind and ignited a revolution in the way marketers thought about their brands. Seth Godin takes it a step further with his notion of “edgecrafting” in Free Prize Inside. While Godin notes the differences between the two approaches (one focuses on perception, the other on reality), I see them as two sides of a single coin. And what a valuable coin it is.
• Selling the Invisible - While still in the realm of “pure” marketing, Harry Beckwith’s slim volume provides excellent guidance for companies looking to market services instead of products. And Beckwith’s style has influenced a number of business book writers over the years (I’m looking at you, Seth).
• The Long Tail - Possibly the most influential and important business idea of the last decade, Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail literally stands the traditional notion of commerce on its (short) head. Much like Blink and The Tipping Point, more folks get more mileage from one simple idea than the author could ever have expected. Brilliant. And absolutely mandatory for anyone selling products online today.
• Made to Stick - The Heath Brothers’ study of messages that work best, not surprisingly, works wonders. Not only did I learn a great deal, I enjoyed the read immensely. You will, too.
• Blue Ocean Strategy - OK. Compared to most other items on this list (with one notable exception) this one’s a little dry. Suffer. You should read the book. You’ll see strategy in a whole new light.
• Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big And Small - Purely tactical information for coming up with new ideas and approaches. I’ve read better books, but I keep returing to Nalebuff and Ayre’s techniques. That’s got to count for something.
• Deadline! How Premier Organizations Win the Race Against Time - Dan Carrison has written the perfect book for aspiring project managers. Or anyone who needs to manage any project. And you think your projects are tough? Imagine building an NFL stadium, on environmentally protected land, dealing with multiple county, state, and federal agencies, working towards opening day of the season. Oh, and you’re not allowed to tear down the old stadium which sits on the same footprint until weeks before you’re supposed to be done. If that sounds easy to you, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The stadium case study is only half as compelling as the one involving FBI kidnap recovery teams. You’ll learn real skills and be really amazed at the same time.
• Don’t Make Me Think - Why a web usability book? Two reasons: one, I’m a web guy. Steve Krug speaks my language. Two, you’ll gain tons of common sense insights about how people interact with your products and how to use those insights to improve your business.
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day - What, you’re thinking, and now a web analytics book? What gives? Simple. Avinash Kaushik has given deep thought to the importance of metrics and how companies can create the ones that really matter. While the book speaks about web analytics in particular, many of the lessons apply to any measurement effort. See this recent post for just one example.
• The World is Flat - Excellent overview of how the world has changed, and continues changing, due to globalization, outsourcing and technology. Consider it a roadmap for today’s world. And tomorrow’s.
• Essential Peter Drucker - OK, this one’s cheating a little bit, since many of these essays predate my 10-year limit, but Drucker gave us too much good information to keep him off the list. You’ll learn more about how to run a business well in this book than just about anything else on the list.
• Warren Buffett’s “Owner’s Manual” from BerkshireHathaway.com - One of the great reads for any business person. Ever. Buffett provides an outstanding overview of how shareholders - business owners in reality, if not always in attitude - need to evaluate their businesses. The approach Buffett recommends would benefit all business owners. Written in 1996, but posted online a few years later and incredibly important, so we’ll grandfather it. As a bonus book, check out The Intelligent Investor, written by Ben Graham. Graham taught Buffett how to invest. And that seems to have turned out OK. If you need to understand the capital markets in this country, Graham is a good place to start.

What’s missing? What books got you were you are today?

Who really succeeds in the new economy? Dan Pink would have you believe it’s right-brained (or, more accurately, right-brain directed) individuals, connectors, communicators, not the numbers crunchers, the dominant players among Drucker’s knowledge workers. Pink makes a compelling case for his thesis in his book “A Whole New Mind” (also availabile in paperback), arguing that the tasks at which L-directed folks (i.e., logical, analytical) generally excel are the same ones that end up automated, outsourced or offshored. By comparison, Pink argue those who possess a critical “six senses,” design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning, can expect greater success in the modern American economy. Better still, Pink offers suggestions on how the L-directed among us can expand their skills in those areas, improving their ability to contribute in this changing economy.

First off,
you should read this book. Pink is onto something, no matter what its issues might be. What issues? Primarily, Pink struggles to balance the need for a whole-brain approach, his stated intent. He argues, more than once, “…the defining skills of the previous era…are necessary, but no longer sufficient” (emphasis mine). In over 230 pages, Pink makes the case for increasing focus on the right-brain, while seeming to diminish the importance of the left, analytical brain. In fact, Pink actually intends to promote more rounded individuals, those capable both with aspreadsheet and the meaning and context its numbers represent (hence the “whole” in the book’s title). It’s a tricky balancing act, and one which he fails to manage altogether well. Pink also describes how developing the “six sense” skills will prevent your job from being outsourced due to, to use just one example, greater emphasis on design among the creative class. But, he undercuts his own argument, noting the dramatic increase in design schools in Japan, South Korea and Singapore. Seems like those skills could move overseas just as easily in time. Clearly, the point is that the competition is developing these same abilities. The folks who fail to recognize this fact force themselves to compete with one brain tied behind their back.

Read the book. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of how business and the people working at it succeed today. You may even gain a deeper understanding of yourself. And that’s a powerful lesson anyone can benefit from.