1 Rework - Jason Fried
2 The Orange Revolution - Chester Elton
3 Crush It - Gary Vaynerchuk
4 Let My People Go Surfing - Yvon Chouinard
5 Behind the Cloud - Marc Benioff
6 Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh
7 It’s Your Ship - Michael Abrashoff
8 Influence - Robert Cialdini
9 Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt
10 You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader - Mark Sanborn
11 The Fred Factor - Mark Sangorn
12 The Art of Influence - Chris Widener
13 Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
14 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
15 Good to Great - Jim Collins
16 Switch - Chip Heath
17 Shift - Peter Arnell
18 The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
19 How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
20 Crucial Conversations - Ron McMillan
21 Made to Stick - Chip Heath
22 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
23 The Pursuit of Wow - Tome Peters
24 Swim with the Sharks - Harvey Mackay
25 The Art of War - Sun Tzu
26 Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
27 Little Red Book of Selling - Jeffrey Gitomer
28 Multipliers - Liz Wiseman
29 The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kamkwamba
30 Presentation Zen - Garr Reynolds
31 Purple Cow - Seth Godin
32 Linchpin - Set Godin
33 Built to Last - Jim Collins
34 The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman
35 The Fifth Discipline - Peter Senge
36 Competitive Strategy - Michael Porter
37 In Search of Excellence - Tom Peters
38 The Little Big Things - Tom Peters
38 When Pride Still Mattered - David Maraniss
40 Washington - Ron Cherno
41 Be Great - Peter Thomas
42 The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
43 Enchantment - Guy Kawasaki
44 How Full is Your Bucket - Tom Rath
45 The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding - Al Ries
46 Fish - Stephen Lundin
47 Business Playground - Dave Stewart
48 Fascinate - Sally Hogshead
49 59 Seconds - Richard Wiseman
50 Baden-Power: The Two Lives of a Hero - William Hillcourt
51 Peak - Chip Conley
52 Tribal Leadership - Dave Logan
53 Achieving the Impossible - Lewis Gordon Pugh
54 The Secret - Rhonda Byrne
55 Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Suess
56 Principle Centered Leadership - Stephen Covey
57 Pour Your Heart Into It - Howard Schultz
58 Never Eat Alone - Keith Ferrazzi
59 The Orange Revolution - Adrian Gostick
60 The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
61 Visioneering - Andy Stanley
62 Finance for Managers - Harvard Business School Press
63 It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be - Paul Arden
64 Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
65 The Leadership Moment - Michael Useem
66 Discovering the Soul of Service - Leonard Berry
67 Zag - Marty Neumeier
68 First, Break All the Rules - Markus Buchingham
69 Orbiting the Giant Hairball - Gordon MacKenzie
70 What the CEO Wants You To Know - Ram Charan
71 Thinker Toys - Michael Michalko
72 Getting Things Done - David Allen
73 Freakonomics - Stephen Levitt
74 The Mentor Leader - Tony Dungy
75 The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman
76 Strategy - Sir Basil Lidell Hart
77 MBA: Management by Auerbach - Red Auerbach
78 The Essential Drucker - Peter Drucker
79 Innovation and Entrepreneurship - Peter Drucker
80 Capital Markets - Franco Modigliiani
81 Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore
82 A Whack on the Side of the Head - Roger von Oech
83 Creating - Robert Fritz
84 The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John Maxwell
85 As a Man Thinketh - James Allen
86 The Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt
87 The Greatest Salesman in the World - Og Mandino
88 Five Frogs on a Log - Mark Feldman
89 Jack Welch and the GE Way - Robert Slater
90 We - Rudy Karsan
91 What Every Body is Saying - Joe Navarro
92 On Becoming a Leader - Warren Bennis
93 Jack - Jack Welch
94 War - Sebastian Junger
95 Naked Economics - Burton G. Malkiel
96 The Speed of Trust - Stephen Covey
97 Winning - Jack Welch
98 Brand Simple - Allen Adamson
99 How the Mighty Fall - Jim Collins
100 Nuts - Kevin Freiberg
Customer Engagement Zone
Do you map your markets/customers through to an engagement zone? The above is a sample (not real) of how I map markets to decision makers/customers to an engagement zone.
This enables me develop specific tactics for each customer sub-set, ensuring I’m engaging with each in a way that is meaningful to them.
I do this for each market until I reach a specific customer set I am trying to have a relationship with.
It provides a clarity and a specificity needed to provide real content/messaging to each interaction.
Current Phase – Not Using Social Media
1. Have two people stand outside her doorway and start a conversation.
2. Shut the door.
3. Tell her the people behind that door are talking about her, but she doesn’t know what they’re saying and she can’t engage with them in any way.
No awareness of the conversation
Phase 2 – The Start
1. Open the door.
2. Have the two people continue the conversation about her. Make sure one of them is commenting about her “horribly ugly bright green polka dot shirt” (or any other ridiculous or inaccurate comment)
3. Your boss will have the urge to correct them, but let her know she can’t. All she can do is listen and take notes.
Listening to the conversation. Gathering data.
Phase 3 – Foot in the Door
1. Have your boss shout, in the direction of the doorway, the correction – “I’m wearing a nice pink shirt!”
2. Have one of the people in the doorway, pick up her cell phone and say, “Oh, she’s wearing a nice pink shirt.” Have the other person pick up her cell phone and continue to comment on her ugly polka dot shirt.
Broadcasting. One way communication.
Phase 4 – Joining In
1. Now have your boss walk up to the person still bashing her ugly shirt, and talk to her - showing her the nice pink shirt she is wearing.
2. The person on the phone corrects herself, saying, “Whoops, I made a mistake, her shirt is really nice. It’s pink.”
Joining the Conversation
Phase 5 – Making Friends
1. Have your boss take her seat again.
2. Have one of the people from the doorway walk in to the office and ask the boss what type of shoes would go with a pink shirt.
3. Have your boss answer.
4. Now the person walks out and tells her friend how much the boss knows about shoes. And that she’s really nice.
Now you have engaged and built a relationship
If there was one book that “spoke to me” - it was Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Perhaps some of these quotes will do the same for you.
1. One’s self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse
2. I project the history of the future
3. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty
4. None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is
5. I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days
6. I celebrate myself, and sing myself
7. I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy
8. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now
9. Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul
10. Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am
11. A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands, How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven
12. The smallest sprout shows there is really no death
13. what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life
14. The press of my foot to the earth springs forward a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate them
15. And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, And of these one and all I weave the song of myself
16. I am … stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine
17. I resist any thing less than my own diversity
18. battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won
19. Does the daylight astonish?
20. How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
21. Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones
22. I exist as I am, that is enough
23. The minute that comes to me over the past decillions, There is no better than it and now
24. Walt Whitman, a kosmos
25. A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books
26. I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic
27. All truths wait in all things
28. What is more or less than a touch?
29. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the narrowest hinge of my hand puts to scorn all machinery
30. The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?
31. When I give I give myself
32. Immense have been the preparations for me
33. I know I have the best of time and space
34. Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself
35. You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life
36. He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own, He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher
37. There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe
38. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes
39. But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?
40. I am surely far different from what you suppose
41. Passing stranger … I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured
42. Within me is the longest day
43. I myself am good-fortune
44. From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines
45. I inhale great draughts of space
46. Wisdom is not finally tested in schools
47. I did not know I contained such goodness
48. Only the kernel of every object nourishes; Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
49. The earth never tires
50. It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall
51. The true poets are not the followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty
52. It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time
53. Nothing exterior shall ever take control of me
54. A great city is that which has the greatest me and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world
55. If you remember your foolish and outlaw’d deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw’d deeds?
56. All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it
57. Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
58. I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can
59. A vast similitude interlocks all
60. That you are here – that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse
61. Of Equality – as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself
62. What stays with you latest and deepest?
63. affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet, Those who love each other shall become invincible
64. I am more resolute because all have denied than I could ever have been had all accepted me
65. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations
66. He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing
67. When Liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go, It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last
68. I do not sound your name, but I understand you
69. Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run
70. It is no lesson – it lets down the bars to a good lesson
71. Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough
72. Peace is always beautiful
73. I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited
74. We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave
75. Camerado, this is not book. Who touches this touches a man
I do, I really hate winters. My soul belongs in the Southwest, but for whatever reason, my body is living in the Northeast.
But as a runner, I love winter running.
Maybe it’s the purity of the snow covered landscape. The clean white blanketing everything.
Maybe it’s that everything is a little quieter. Sometimes eerily so, save for my crunching steps and the peeps of birds.
Maybe it’s that I feel a little bit tougher than the average guy or girl. Not many of us are out there on a Saturday morning, when it’s 15 degrees and the wind is howling. I kind of like throwing on the gear and heading out for a run, just to feel like a tough guy.
Maybe it’s that I feel a bit more lonely on a winter run - and that’s OK, given we’re now a 24/7 society - with more noise, interruptions and distractions than we know what to do with.
Maybe it’s the crispness of the air. So refreshing and cool.
Maybe it’s the cover up, the extra clothes I wear - before the shedding of Spring. When there is the freedom and joy of running in nothing but a pair of shorts.
Maybe it’s the slower pace. The calm before the storm of summer running.
Maybe it’s the mere fact that I am outside - something we do much less of during the winter months.
Maybe it’s my only chance to play in the sun. Or even see it.
I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s all of those things. Perhaps more.
Why do you like winter running?
I’d love to hear your stories.
Recently I attended an employee recognition dinner where I heard a nice story that recounted the hiring of one of those being honored.
The manager telling the story said he interviewed this employee first, and was so impressed he begged HR to cancel all the other interviews - as he found “the guy” on interview #1. It was a great tribute to the employee and we all were impressed that someone could knock the socks off a hiring manager like that. We certainly were lucky to have him on our team.
Then I started thinking about it.
And I realized this: what the manager did was Give Up on the Possibility. The possibility that interview #2, 10 or 25 could have knocked his socks off even more. That someone else could have reshaped what he thought the perfect employee might look like. The possibility that better is out there.
An even better story would have been this: I interviewed “Ron” first and he absolutely blew me away. He was the guy I wanted to hire. But I wanted to be sure, so I interviewed 30 more outstanding candidates wondering if one of those could top “Ron” – and none of them even came close. The first interview ended up being the best and the right fit for us.
Now that’s a story worth telling.
When you give up on the possibility, what you end up doing more often than not is settling. Settling for good enough, when great is just around the corner. Settling is no way to win the game.
Please, please, please – never give up on the possibility.
There is magic in possibility. There is hope. Dreams. Perfection. Happiness. Greatness.
There is everything in the possibility.
But you’ll never experience it if you take what’s behind door number one.
- To my oldest son Nathaniel, thank you for giving me the gift, the ability, the capacity and the chance to care for someone else more than myself. While the majority of our life together was on a part-time basis, you never, ever made me feel less of father to you. You’ll never know how generous that makes you.
- To my youngest son Shane, thank you for continually showing me that one of the most beautiful things this world has to offer is the innocence of youth. I’m not sure I can ever repay the vast amount of smiles you have already given me.
- To my daughter Casey, thank you for the gentle nudges that reinforce the fact that to be a good father, I need to be a good man. If you see me as such, then I have won the game.
- To my wife, thank you for still being a mystery to me. After more than 15 years together, I’m still looking forward to the clues and pondering if I have what it takes to piece them together. Keep dropping those crumbs!
- To my mother, thank you for proving that a patiently yielded life can be anything but.
- To my father, thank you for showing me what it means to be a professional. When I find it hard to get up in the morning, I think back to you always being gone to work before we were even up.
- To my 5th grade teacher Mrs. Klinger, thank you for being the first teacher to make me feel like someone special. Her real gift was that everyone else in that classroom probably felt the same way.
- To Ken, thank you for being a living legend - and showing me that living a genuine and authentic life was the right thing to do long before social media pushed the buzz words.
- To Shawn, thank you considering me a liked-minded person. It is an honor to be among those in that circle.
- To people I really barely know, like Jody, thank you for being an inspiration and a hero to many. You have the gift of being a remarkable human being.
- To Andy, thank you for being an inspiration to me as runner. Whenever I’m feeling beat, I think of you in Kona and become instantly stronger.
- To my high school track coach, thank you for being what I consider a friend.
- To Dr. Heyen, thank you for introducing me to Walt Whitman. His words, his philosophies, his spirit have helped to shape many of the things I stand for and believe in.
- To Doug, thank you for the painting. It was one of the most generous things anyone has ever done for me. It’s hard to give away what we create….
Fear Exposed (Your Decision Making Sucks) -
Check out my guest post on the Middle Finger Project
What Do You Think of the New Gap Logo? -
Horrible. What are they thinking?