Power Why Some People Have It And Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Power Why Some People Have It And Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer




Jeffrey Pfeffer is a professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University. He is writing about building power or authority inside organizations. His focus is more than politics. It is also about how to succeed at the top levels of companies or organizations.



There is focus on personal success in this book. He describes the process as much more than working hard. In fact, he shows how performance can hinder a persons career. I like his description of how personal networks are the second most important skill after technical ability. People move ahead becausue of who they know.



Parts of this book made me uncomfortable. There are descriptions of how to stand out without angering people.. This is a different approach than what I am used to.



The chapters on How To Make Something Out of Nothing and Overcome Oppositions and Setbacks made me think hard about my own career. He advises people to not look for where it is most prestigious, but look where they will succeed. The writing is quite thoughtful. It is aimed at making relationships with other people work.



I also like his description of the price of power; long hours, hard work, and loss of family and personal time. But, the author correctly points out in these days, you have to often fight just to stay in the middle.



This book describes pattersn and tools to mproave your chances of success in organizations. It is very much a career management book. Jeffrey Pfeffer uses examples from very successful people like Zia Yusuf  CEO of Streetline Inc, the California politician Willie Brown, and the venture capitalist and entrepreneur Heidi Roizen. This book is worth reading if you want to understand power inside organizations.

The Other Side of Innovation Solving The Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble.

The Other Side of Innovation Solving The Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble.

The Other Side of Innovation is about innovation inside enterprises. It does not cover innovation inside startups. This is a business management book. The authors argue that there are usually two ways to innovate; build special innovation teams or improve on existing products.

Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble argue that for major changes it is important to create special groups of people outside of every day operations. This is because innovating requires different skills and mindset than day to day operations. They make the case that innovation is about learning, experimenting, and taking risks. These are not day to day activities in most corporations.

I found their argument convincing. Where they said innovation occurs inside a corporation is in its "performance engine". It is there that small continuous changes in process and execution can be introduced over time. This has to have more than just ideas and excution, it also has to be accepted by managers or it will not work.

The examples the authors use are from large corportations; Nucor, Fisher-Price, John Deere, Thomson West and other large corporations. The writing is easy to follow; it is in plain english. The book is written for the practitioner. It even includes a set of assessment tools at the end of the book.

There is a Scholarly Foundation section at the end of the book. Like all the content in this book, they justify their choices. They not only give bibliographic citations, they also give reasons why the material was cited. This makes the writing more believable.

This book is a quality business title. It is published by Harvard Business Review Press. Both Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble are faculty at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. There is a companion website at http://www.theothersideofinnovation.com I plan to read their other book, Ten Rules For Strategic Innovators. It is supposed to be more focused on startups.

Writing That Works How To Communicate Effectively in Business, 3rd Edition by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

Writing That Works How To Communicate Effectively in Business, 3rd Edition by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson





Writing That Works is an updated book on business writing that includes sections on email, presentation decks (bullet pointed lists often in powerpoint), and a reminder that computers are only as good as what you put into them.



The writers describe when it is appropriate to use paper memos and letters to add a personal touch or appear official. They also talk about how to give presentations to sell your product or idea in person.

The book covers written documents, presentations, and the internet. The chapters are short, clear, and present clear business objectives; getting a job with a resume, getting money for your ideas, saving time by managing email properly, and selling yourself in writing.



Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson open the book with a statement that the point of business writing is to get things done, not just to be clear.



There is a reminder to edit your work, be understandable, and write for a specific objective. Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson do this with ease. They make excellent use of bullet pointed lists, indented italicized text, and bold headings which catch your attention.



Kenneth Roman retired from being CEO of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide and Joel Raphaelson retired from being Creative Executive Director of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide. This makes them very qualified to write about business. This book is well worth reading.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson

Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson

Jason Fried and David Hansson are the founders of 37 Signals which is a software development company.  They have produced a number of different products including Ruby on Rails.   They are contributors to the blog Signal Vs. Noise.  37 Signals was not founded on venture capital.

The approach which is described in this book is contrary to many current business practices.  The authors are describing a bootstrapping and self motivated style of business practice.  They write against fast growth, venture capital, and forecasting.  For them financial projections are just guesses.

This does not mean that they are backward.  The authors describe how it is possible with a laptop and very little money to start your own company.  They describe how their company hires and works with people remotely on many software projects.  They tell you that to start a company you do not need an office or fancy quaters.  Your house or a garage will do.

I like the ideas in this book.  It fits well with my own personal style.  I agree that working all night, having lots of meetings, and creating giant lists do not lead to being more productive.  I also like the philosophy of doing it yourself as much as possible, and breaking large projects into small pieces.

The layout of this book is very well done.  Each section has a large black and white drawing with a saying next to it to begin the chapter.  Some of the sayings are; "good enough is fine", "long lists don't get done," and "say no by default."

The writing is plain language.  There are very few business terms in the book.  Jason Fried and David Hansson ask a lot of questions in the text.  They also use short bulleted lists.  Most of the paragraphs are fairly short.  This makes for very fast easy to absorb reading.  It is more of a book on a philosophy of business than a book of practice or case studies.

The book does not have an index.  There are not a lot of other companies cited. If you read this book, you might stop talking, roll up your sleeves, and start working.

Daily Thoughts 9/17/2010 (Zero History, Books, Business)

Zane Grey, western author and writer of the book, Riders of the Purple Sage.

Daily Thoughts 9/17/2010

This is an interesting list of business books.  All of them are very popular.  The Financial Times Business Books of the Year.  http://www.ft.com/indepth/business-book-award-2010




Today has been very interesting.  The list of business resources has been added to the upcoming Business Expo 2010 for our city.  I also did a small display of business management and leadership books in the lobby.  I picked out a few books by Peter Drucker as well as some  business strategy books like Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne and Built to Last by Charles Collins.   I am still talking with SCORE about doing business counseling.




I did some spot checking the shelving in the storage areas.  Things are getting a little better.  We also got a request for Louis L'amour who writes westerns.  People are starting to get more interested in the western genre again.  Some of the older authors like Zane Grey and Max Brand are being asked for again.  Larry McMurtry and Joe Lansdale are also very popular right now.   I think some of the steampunk authors have also sparked an interest in the old west as well.  Cherie Priest has at least part of her steampunk novels set in the old west.    The Victorian setting of steampunk easily ties in with the frontier period in American history.

I also looked through the latest gifts and added some thriller paperbacks from Dan Brown, Brad Meltzer, and James Patterson.  We always get donations of romance and thriller paperbacks.

I checked out three movies, Where The Wild Things Are, City of Ember, and Coraline.  These are all based on books.  Where The Wild Things Are was one of my favorite books as a child.  I would give it a tie with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.  I am very much looking forward to seeing it as a live action film.  I also like Neil Gaiman and his writing.  Coraline was an excellent graphic novel.




On the train home, I finished reading Zero History by William Gibson.  I felt like I was missing something when I was reading the book.  It is part of a trilogy starting with Pattern Recognition.  I did not realize this until I looked up the book as a Wikipedia article.  I had read Spook Country which also features Milgrim.  Spook Country is the second book in the trilogy.  I feel like I have to go back to read Pattern Recognition to understand the book a little better.  I put Pattern Recognition on hold.  I am not quite sure when I will read it.  I currently have ten books which I have plans to read.

If you are on Linked In, there is an excellent ebook group with thousands of members.  They are planning a physical meetup on September 24, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=1515307&type=member&item=29195727&qid=d76be11f-da3b-4940-9a9b-66c849ce5ac6

Daily Thoughts 9/15/2010 (Ordering, Business, Books)

Szymon Buchbinder, The Astronomer , Date Unknown, Oil On Panel 

Daily Thoughts 9/15/2010

I won a book from one of the exhibitors at the Brooklyn Book Festival, For Beginner Books
http://www.forbeginnersbooks.com/catalog.html  The book which I chose was Barack Obama for Beginners by Bob Neer.  It will be added to the libraries collection.




Today has been fairly busy.  We had an ordering meeting for the library this afternoon.  I put all of my orders in.  I also had the graphic novels club this afternoon which went well.  We are getting a steady small group of people who are attending.  We are having an author talk this evening as well. 




I also finished putting together the business resources list for the library.  There will be other resource lists that we will create as well.   We also did a bookmark of books on starting a business recently. There is going to be a business expo on the 22nd and 23rd of September sponsored by the city.  There is also a Business Resource list which we added to the Community Links on our website. We are having the Women's Enterprise Development Center do a presentation on starting a business tonight.  http://www.wedc-westchester.org/  This is the third year that the Women's Enterprise Development Center  has been coming to our library.   Hopefully, this will strengthern our contacts with local businesses and businesses organizations.




Two books came in for me to look at, Clementine by Cherie Priest and the social media marketing book by Dan Zarella.




I have started reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson.  I think it will take a while for me to think over what they are writing.

Smart Start-Ups How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Benefit by Creating Online Communities by David Silver

Smart Start-Ups How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Benefit by Creating Online Communities by David Silver.

David Silver is a venture capitalist and an author of over 30 books on business. This book varies between being a strategy guide to start an online community and a stream of ideas for starting a variety of online businesses. The book describes online communities as being both on the internet and on mobile phones.

I found the sections on how to start an internet company quiet interesting. He was focusing on social networks like myspace.com and twitter. Social networks are described as being successful because of the ability to generate mobs of people and focus on user generated content. David Silver describes them as requiring very little capital to create.

He argues for a different strategy in creating communities. His view is that it is important to be part of the crowd, not appear to have a lot of money, ask for tips, try to encourage people to provide content for you, and create services which people will pay for.

Part of the strategy he is describing is appearing to be in opposition to large media companies. For example if you are selling ebooks, you might tell people why you don't like paper books, or if you are selling music downloads, suggest why compact discs are obsolete. Being persuasive and generating controversy, even lawsuits will generate even more interest in your sites as well as money.

Where the book did not do well with me was the constant stream of ideas which he proposed. It is easy to generate ideas but it is much harder to show how to execute on them. David Silver talked about everything from online legal arbitration societies to social sites on how to reinvent the American car. This was distracting. The sections on strategy and implementation were much better than the suggestions for new businesses.

I liked his ideas on how to create an online business strategy. It very much describes how to think like a social networking business person. The book was written in 2007 and seems to have been right on target for 2010. If you can get past the constant stream of suggestions for new businesses this book is worth reading.

Undress For Success The Naked Truth About Making Money At Home by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish

Undress For Succes The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish

The central focus of this book is telecommuting. It does not promise the reader that telecommuting will be easy or pay a lot of money. The authors describe the practice of homeshoring where people are hired from home to do customer service work at low pay. The book is honest. The descriptions of lower pay for comparable jobs in an office compared to working at home are covered. Tutors earn $12-15 hour, customer service workers earn $10-12 an hour, and online help technicians $18-20 an hour from home. Low pay for the advantage of working from a home office. Working from home doing research also does not pay as well as in an office.



The book lists a lot of real companies that offer work at home jobs; Tutor.com, Alpine Access, Team Double Click, Smart Thinking, writing for About.com, and other jobs. The jobs that are most lucrative are computer programming and web design jobs. There is also discussion of telemedicine. They also give real job boards for work at home jobs as well as freelance job sites. Rat Race Rebellion and Dreamjobs
Inc are two websites that they suggest for telecommuting job hunting.



The descriptions of teleworking are of being more productive, having more flexible hours, getting paid less and getting less recognition. Telecommuters have to be very technically savvy, they are using the internet to to do their jobs.   Even the customer service jobs require knowledge of how to use computers, hands free headsets and have some ability to type. The better paying jobs require more complex equipment including digital cameras, cell phones, different software packages, and cable internet. This equipment is mostly bought out of the teleworkers salary.  Having a home office with a computer  is often a prerequisite to applying.



The authors preach the environmental benefit of working from home; you don't have to spend money on the commute, are comfortably at home, and you don't pollute as much. They also describe how it costs the company less to hire people from home because they are not paying for real estate or equipment for a person in an office. 

This is an excellent, honest overview of telecommuting jobs. It is comprehensive in scope and covers all kinds of resources associated with telecommuting.  There are many benefits and disadvantages of working from home.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Hyder Kabani

the zen of social media marketing An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue by Shama Hyder Kabani.

This is very much a motivational book combined with a social media book. It is designed to convince you to go out and join social sites. The first part very much feels like a motivational speech.

After the initial pep talk, when the writing starts to describe social media sites, it becomes quite practical. The book focuses on three main sites, Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook. The writing convinced me to update my Facebook profile as well as my Linked In profile. It has clear steps on what to do and what to avoid without any pie in the sky promises.

It does not just cover pure social media sites. It also reminds you that if you are in social media you should take the time to learn how to include digital photography and digital video. Podcasting and pictures are very important to build an online social presence. The pep talk was convincing enough for me to consider getting a digital camera as a first step.

Shama Hyder Kabani includes a lot of screen captures of pages from Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In to show you what she is doing with the social sites. The descriptions are extremely easy to follow. They also lead to a very clean, professional look.

Because this book is very much a business book, she also discusses policies for using social media inside companies as well as gives a number of two page case studies of how people successfully improved their business with social media.

The motivation to convince me to update my site was useful. The description of how to use the tools was at a beginners level. This would be useful for someone starting out in social media. I recommend this as an introduction to using social media for business. The author clearly has a fairly large online presence.

Shama Hyder Kabani is using her book to sell her social media business. The motivational style with a strong sense of sweetness might not be for everyone. I found it interesting and very convincing. http://zenofsocialmedia.com/

Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Drive is about intrinisic motivation or self motivation. The drives which lead us to excel; autonomy, purpose, and mastery. It is about how these drives are becoming more prevalent in the modern workplace. White collar work is going through the same route as blue collar work. It is being outsourced, homesourced, and automated. The creative aspects of white collar work are what survives. Daniel H. Pink is trying to counter current management theory which is often inadequate to deal with modern workplaces. He argues this is one of the reasons there has been so much economic uphieval.

He argues for an end to a focus on a rote work environment with strong fixed hours, routine work, and incentive plans. He also attacks carrot and stick management styles. In his view, there should be solid wages, more autonomy for workers, greater learning opportunities, and a focus on more than just profits.

Some of the changes in work which he describes are the ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) created by Best Buy where scheduling becomes very flexible and Google's focus on giving its engineers 20% of their time to work on projects of their own design.

He also introduces us to psychological theories of motivation that are focused on what goes on inside people. He describes how optimal experiences and performance at work are not necessarily tied to incentives, but have a lot to do with the environment in the workplace. Two people he focuses on are Edward L. Deci and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

Sometimes, I think Daniel H. Pink draws too much from mainstream management theorists to make his point. Peter F. Drucker, Gary Hamel, and Jim Collins are all very standard business leaders. It seems like he is often making points using people who have a different management style than the one he is proposing.

I liked his list of recommended reading. I plan on reading Infinite Games A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse. I have already read Talent Is Overrated What Really Separates World Class Performers From Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin.

This book would be good for people whose work is autonomous; artists, writers, programmers, and other creatives. I saw the book mentioned on Tobias Buckell's blog who is a science fiction writer. It also might be helpful for people who have to manage in an increasingly creative work environment.