Purpose: Provide employees with the knowledge that what they are doing is greater than just meeting quarterly profits.

DRiVE is divided up into three sections with the final section being a field guide for how you can test the waters with the ideas he presents in the book. What makes this section particularly useful is if you’ve gotten this far you’re probably convinced that what he’s saying has some merit and you’re motivated to put the axe to the grindstone.

For me, Pink was preaching to the choir with DRiVE. I’ve had lots of conversations with my close friends about what motivates us and less and less the answer is money. Even status and prestige are taking back seats to personal growth and giving back. DRiVE is the roadmap for any organization that wants to excel in 2010 and beyond and its clear and digestible style makes it an easy playbook to follow.

Posted via email from Mathieu’s posterous

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To be clear, Cone defines Powerlines as “a compelling story about an event, person, place, product, or a part of human nature that has lasting impact. Sometimes these lines are just a few words, sometimes several sentences, and once in a great while, must one word.” This definition in itself is not very powerline-ish but it is a definition … just one that I couldn’t remember off the top of my head and had to go look up just now. He also says powerlines must “ring true” and they should not overreach.

I like books that have lots of great examples and then actions you can take immediately to start enacting the change the book is advocating. Powerlines has lots of great examples but I didn’t find the tips came early enough in the book. Either I’m not seeing them or they just aren’t there. He had tidbits here and there but he didn’t dedicate as much text to steps you can take to improve the powerlines you create.

What there is a lot of is examples. In fact, there are way too many examples. In one chapter he lists almost every single presidential campaign slogan from the beginning of the republic. He takes time to explain why it was good and some background to put the slogan in context. I found it to be way over the top, I could have done with about half as much.

I also found Cone used the same examples over and over again to stress his points. For example, Ronald Reagan’s “It’s morning again in America,” was repeated several times throughout the book. He was also fond of citing FedEx’s “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

Both of these are great powerlines but they didn’t do much to help me create my own powerlines by using them again and again.

The author does give some great tips on creating your own powerline, albeit closer to the end of the book. They are:

• Convey a genuine truth or depict an experience—real or imaginary.
• Build them to last and should rarely, if ever, be changed.
• Convey a benefit, show how they will improve our lives, recommend an action or offer some other satisfaction.
• Are made more memorable if they can be set to music or made to rhyme.
• Should be made to move on the screen on television or online.
• Should be a prominent touch point with the consumer, i.e., large and pervasive throughout the campaign.

There’s no doubt Cone knows his stuff and I would love to have him over for dinner to discuss advertising and marketing. In the case of Powerlines, I’m not certain Cone set out to actually create a step-by-step plan to come up with great powerlines. In fact one point that has stuck with me is he says powerlines are never created by group of committee but rather by individuals who have a deep understanding of the brand.

Powerlines gets a high rating on Amazon but in terms of Powerlines being a textbook for learning to create you own powerlines, it falls short.

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One of the biggest challenges we face at the newspaper is recruiting and retaining volunteer writers. I’ve been studying reward systems from a consumer perspective (e.g. how to use programs like Air Miles to encourage customer behaviour) for a few years but haven’t thought of a specific strategy for employees.

The idea popped into my head this past summer and I sought out a book I could learn from. that’s where Steve Kerr’s Reward Systems: Does Yours Measure Up? came into play.

Steve Kerr has been the Chief Learning Officer and managing director at Goldman Sachs and before that spent time as GE’s CLO heading up their prestigious Crotonville corporate university.

The book is a quick read, smaller than your standard hardcover in height and width and only 130 odd pages. However, it’s jam packed with insight and very light on hyperbole and theorizing. Instead Kerr uses examples from his experience to illustrate the lessons.

The early part of the book deconstructs some systems that might be installed at your workplace that are faulty. The one that sticks out the most in my mind is the ranking system. Kerr says ranking systems are failures because they rank people against each other instead of against a system. It’s also a failure because if one manager trains his direct reports really well his bottom 25% might still be far superior than another manager’s top 10%.

Instead of using a ranking system for employees you should review them based on the following criteria.

For Perfomance

1. How good a job did the person do during the past performance cycle?
2. How important to the organization is the job that was done?
3. How difficult was it, given both internal and external job conditions, to do a good job?

For Setting Compensation

1. How difficult would it be to replace the person in that job?
2. Ho does that person’s compensation (and for promotion purposes, organizational level) compare to others inside and outside the organization
3. Are there other factors (e.g. historical inequities, diversity considerations) to consider?

For Promotions

1. How well does the person’s performance in his or her present job predict likely performance in the new position?

These points are all moot, of course, if you haven’t defined performance. As Kerr says in the book, you cannot evaluate performance if you don’t define performance. A mid-point theme in the book is the need to have concrete and measurable metrics that everyone knows about in order to have a successful reward system.

Worse, he says is when you don’t measure important aspects of performance you label them as unimportant.

Once you determine what’s important to measure you don’t have to measure them all the time. Kerr uses the analogy of police assignments; after a game at the stadium, lots of police are dispatched to the area to help with crowd control and traffic but a sleepy suburban neighbourhood may only have a patrol car drive through every two weeks. Measure the really important stuff all the time and the less important stuff less frequently.

Creating the metrics is a vital step in creating a reward system but Kerr warns against creating metrics that can be gamed. I’ve seen this in my own experience. A friend of mine worked for a multi-national consumer goods manufacturer and every quarter they had to meet a specific sales goal. If they were going to be short of the goal they would sell off huge amounts of inventory at a reduced price to wholesalers. This strategy got their numbers for each quarter and they got their bonus, but it also saturated the market for the next quarter.

Be careful what you’re measuring is the lesson here – but more on that later.

Types of Rewards

Prestige Rewards

Prestige rewards may cost the company money but do not put cash in the recipient’s pocket. These can include things like a new job title, access to private clubs, a larger office, invitations to posh corporate functions and so on.

Financial Rewards

These are of course cash of some sort or another, a bonus, pay increase, etc. It’s actually what I thought of when i started thinking about rewards programs. Kerr says any financial reward is like the company making an investment so the company wants to be sure that they’re getting a return on their investment. For example, if you deposit $500 into a savings account once and it returns 5% one year and then it neither gains or reduces ever again, you have made a one-time investment and received a one-time return. Now imagine the next year you deposit another $500 and then the next year another and so on never to receive a return on that investment beyond the first year. That’s what Kerr likens a pay raise to. When you give someone a pay raise, are you confident you’ll see a return on that investment year after year?

Job Content Rewards

Job Content Rewards really excite the author and for good reason. This type of reward includes the following things:

• feedback
• increased responsibility
• challenges
• recognition
• autonomy
• opportunities to participate in decision making
• to grow professionally
• to do important and interesting work

Kerr’s favourite thing about this type of reward is you can create your own supply and the amount of rewards you give are limited by your own imagination. Kerr says traditional rewards are valued because we’ve wrongly made only a few of them available – they are scarce. But job content rewards can be some of the most rewarding of all but there is no reason you can’t give a group of people feedback several times a year.

Make them public and reversable

The secrecy surrounding rewards is another thought from the old school that needs to go the way of the Dodo bird. If you give an employee a $1,000 bonus you either make 1 person happy – the recipient who’s glad they were recognized – or 0 people happy – the recipient who thought the should have received more. When giving rewards, share with everyone who is getting it and how they got it. How they got it is very important because rewards need to be attainable by everybody. If they don’t see how they can attain it then what’s the point of having the reward in the first place?

You probably will make mistakes. When you do it’s important that you haven’t done it with rewards. Sometimes these reversible rewards are called a bonus, incentive pay, variable compensation or something along those lines. Whatever you call it, you need to be sure you don’t make it a permanent fixture. This can as simple as putting “bonus pay” on the pay stub or if you mail it home, mail it in a special envelope.

Final Thoughts

The author wanrs against across the board rewards (e.g. pay increases for everyone). Firstly it’s not an equitable solution, it’s only efficient. Across the board pay increases sends the message to low performers that it’s okay to perform at their level and they’ll actually push the boundaries and drop their efforts slightly. It also sends a message to the top performers in the form of demotivation and their levels will drop closer to where the low performers are.

It’s similar to saying “We want long-term growth,” and then punishing an employee for not coming in every day on time. If you want long-term growth, reward for it, don’t send them the message that attendance is the most important metric.

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I’m a big fan of Starbucks and the way they make you feel when you buy product there. In fact I like the way they make you feel even when you don’t buy product there.

I began reading The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary in the bookstore and couldn’t put it down. In fact I made it through the rather lengthy introduction and half of chapter one before I put it under my arm and headed for the cash register.

Author Joseph A. Michelli details Starbuck’s five principles of being they use to separate themselves from the pack. They are:

1. Make it your own
2. Everything Matters
3. Surprise and Delight
4. Embrace Resistance
5. Leave Your Mark

Starbucks is one of those places you go and just have a good time. It’s rare you go to Starbucks and leave feeling worse than when you came. I find the lineups longer than other places I go to to order food and beverage but I don’t mind waiting nearly as much as I do at other places.

It’s not one single thing that makes the wait bearable. I go to Costco every year around Thanksgiving to buy a pumpkin pie. I love pumpkin pie and I especially love the 17-inch bad boy from Costco. Costco lines are the worst but I stand in one because I love the pie that much. Nothing else about that experience is worth waiting in the line.

With Starbucks it’s not just that the product is good, it’s the way the order taker will ensure your order is to your liking and the way the barista will remake your drink if it doesn’t turn out just the way you expected. It’s the big comfy chairs you can sit in all day with one cup of drip coffee and never be asked to leave.

Michelli filled the book with wonderful stories and anecdotes that illustrate the five principles. I found they actually served a dual purpose; not only did they help tell the story of Starbucks but they were all really interesting. Some were quite moving, my favourite is from the Principle Two chapter, Everything Matters:

Barista Bernadette Harris confesses, “I didn’t like making Frappuccinos. I wasn’t always happy to leave my line of hot drinks to make a drunk that took twice as long! One customer helped me gain a different view of the blended beverages. This woman would come in every evening and order a mocha Frappuccino blended beverage. She was always in a hurry, and we would barely converse. One evening she came in and mentioned that her husband was in the car. Then she thanked us for always delivering the drink in such a nice way and said that though she personally never drank Starbucks, it was the only thing her husband could stomach after his chemotherapy.

The first time I read this I got a lump in my throat and had to take a pause. Later that day I shared the story with several people in the office. And that’s what you’ll want to do with this book, share what you read about with people at your workplace.

Starbucks is a company that seems to get it. It’s not a sin to want to emulate what they do.

What makes this book a great learning tool are the “Create your own ideas” and “Ideas to sip on” at the end of each chapter. Michelli does a great job of illustrating what that chapter’s principle means in real life and then starts you on the path to implement them in your own workplace. It’s a very helpful way to take the theory and put it into action.

Michelli confesses at the end of the book that for all the great stories he heard while research the Starbucks Experience, he also heard some horrible stories. From employees not showing up to being rude to customers but he says those types of stories were few and far between. The same can be said for his book. What I found odd is every time he would name a Starbucks drink, the registered trademark symbol would follow. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a marketing piece opposed to a business book. I’m not sure why they’re there, perhaps it was part of an agreement to get more access to company execs or perhaps Starbucks paid a fee to have the book written. Joseph Michelli, if you read this, let us know in the comments!

The other facet I struggled with when reading the book was how Michelli seems to gush over every aspect of Starbucks. He did mention there were bad stories to he told at the end of the book but he never put the premium price you pay to enjoy the Starbucks Experience. That being said – I gush over Starbucks too and it’s part of the reason I picked up this book in the first place, because I wanted to learn how I can make my work environment more like the coffee giant.

At the end of the day, I’m really happy I read the Starbucks Experience and I’ve already bought a copy for my boss (which she apparently took with her to read on holiday). I’m hoping she did because it would be great to have someone to discuss some of the ideas from this book with.

If you’re a fan of Starbucks or have admired the way they’ve conducted business or wonder why they do business the way they do, I definitely recommend buying a copy.

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Miles and I had talked about this company for a few years. He had heard about them and the way they do business, discussed the radical way things are accomplished there so it was nice to read about it in a book written by Ricard Semler, the CEO of the company.

Semler took over Semco from his father when he was 20 years old. Based in Brazil, Semco had prospered under the government’s five year plans that included building up Brazil’s shipping business. Being a supplier of marine parts the company had done very well.

However as the economy sagged and Semler Sr. handed over the reigns to his son, Ricardo went about transforming Semco into a democratically run manufacturing business where workers set their own hours and salary and the office space is redesigned as after as the seasons change (sometimes even more).

Maverick offers a how-to guide to turn your workplace into a shop that puts the decisions right in the hands of the people that it will effect the most. Semler details the different steps he and the company took in order to open up the environment for a healthy relationship between workers and management (they don’t even use those titles, though).

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and it’s a decent length but I would have appreciated another 50 pages in which Semler could have expanded on the set backs, explained some of the obstacles to the changes he wanted to implement a bit more and give some in-depth advice the way he does with his time management tips at the end of Maverick.

What I found particularly fascinating in Maverick is the natural way the company grew into a place where employees hire and evaluate their bosses, dress however they want, participate in major decisions, and share in 22 percent of the profits.

Semler obviously has great business genes but his early hires (for senior positions) were not the ones that really helped the company turn the corner. They were the ones that helped lift Semco from the brink of bankruptcy to a profitable business. It was only when the company was on sure footing was he able to bring in the real change agents.

Important to note, and Semler does in fact, is that he was born into privilege in Brazil. It was much easier for him to turn this company around than it would have been for even the workers to organize and bring about these changes. He recently published another book called the Seven-Day Weekend (smells a bit like Timothy Ferriss’ Four-Hour Workweek) that advocates workers set their own hours, salaries and do away with job titles.

I believe these ideas can work in every company but I do think it would require the leadership of the managers and executives to initiate them. Unlike ideas Dr. Stephen R. Covey discusses in his books that anyone at any level can implement, Semler’s ideas require leaders to take action.

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My suspicions were way off base. Covey Jr. does an excellent job of discussing “the one thing that changes everything.” He provides excellent examples of how building trust – both personally and within an organization – leads to better results, faster paths to excellence and greater efficiency.

Covey Jr. presents a 360 degree action plan for building trust, first with yourself right through your organization. He doesn’t sugar coat the process pretending that’s as easy as flipping a switch but he does provide proof of concept that it can be done.

Just as his father has seven steps to become highly effective, ‘lil Covey presents four broad subject headings that are then broken down into smaller steps beginning with:

The Five Waves of Trust

1. Self Trust: It’s about building the 4 Cores of Credibility that make you believable, both to oneself and others.
2. Relationship Trust: Imbuing the 13 Behaviors to develop consistent behavior.
3. Organizational Trust: Utilizing the 4 Cores and 13 Behaviors to build alignment in an organization.
4. Market Trust: It’s all about brand and the principle of reputation.
5. Societal Trust: Is contribution.*

* notes after the colon are from another excellent review from this Web site.

Oftentimes simple ideas and concepts are made into very long and confusing books. While some sections of Covey’s book is long and a tad boring I didn’t find the different sections to be fluffy.

Four Cores of Credibility

1. Integrity: Being the same individual inside and out (no gap between intent and behavior).
2. Intent: Having a good plan, or purpose.
3. Capabilities: Creating both personal and organizational credibility.
4. Results: Classify an individual as a producer and performer

Covey Jr. puts a large emphasis on starting with oneself. The Four Cores of Credibility really focus on building trust with yourself – being able to do what you say and or think you’ll do – and building out from there.

Thirteen Behaviours

The largest part of this book is spent on the Thirteen Behaviours which Covey Jr. presents as a checklist to building trust. Most of these seem like common sense but if there were really such a thing as common sense it would be … well … much more common and clearly it’s not.

1. Talking Straight
2. Demonstrating Respect
3. Creating Transparency
4. Righting Wrongs
5. Showing Loyalty
6. Delivering Results
7. Getting Better
8. Confronting Reality
9. Clarifying Expectations
10. Practicing Accountability
11. Listening First
12. Keeping Commitments
13. Extending Trust

Smart Trust

Throughout the book the message being delivered seems to be that if you extend trust to someone your relationship will improve, productivity will go up and everyone will be happy. Fortunately he clarifies this position under the heading of Smart Trust. He contends that a certain level of trust is warranted for each individual. He’s not suggesting your loyal coworker shouldn’t really be as trusted as the consistent client, but rather should you trust that loyal coworker to lead the next meeting. Perhaps their skill base isn’t at a level where they would be successful in that meeting.

However, after building trust with the loyal coworker, they will agree and appreciate your frankness with them when you tell them the can’t lead the meeting. That’s how Smart Trust works and why it’s an important part of this book.

In Conclusion

If you enjoyed The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey or Good to Great by Jim Collins then you’ll definitely enjoy this book. I listened to it on audio book and then referenced the print version and while Covey Jr. narrates the book himself and has s distinct voice it’s not hard to listen to.

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I agree with her and I think what this book is trying to accomplish is give you the tools when dealing with a Gen Y workforce. Some Gen Yers are really motivated and won’t need nearly the amount of heavy usage of the tips in this book that others well. But some will need A LOT of you using the suggestions from this book with them.

What I’ve found since implementing some of the strategies is I’m getting better accountability from my Gen Y direct reports. At just way over half way through this book I can safely say I’m satisfied with it over all.

Teach Them How to Make a Plan

The assumption here is that Gen Yers already know how to take a project and break it into short-term goals and long-term deadlines. However, what author, Bruce Tulgan, has found through his research is that Gen Yers don’t really know how to make these plans and in fact their schedule for completing goals is really just best guesses.

Tulgan says you should teach Gen Yers how to start with a big project and then break it into manageable tasks. They need to set a realistic estimate regarding how much time each task will take and then set a timetable of short-term, definite deadlines for those tasks.

He says sometimes Gen Yers will resist making plans because in their opinion things change all the time anyway. The benefit of making a plan is that there will be real life interruptions to their best laid efforts and they need to know that they can deal with those interruptions and then get right back to their plan.

Teach Them to Take Notes and Use Checklists

Tulgan says in his research he’s heard many Gen Yers complain that they’ll ask for step-by-step directions how to do something only to be met with “I can’t do your job for you,” from managers. Of course the Gen Yer respond with “How am I supposed to do my job if you don’t show me how.”

This part particularly frustrates me because I learn by watching, reading, researching and of course asking people what to do but I don’t ask nearly as much as I find Gen Yers do.

The key here is to get Gen Yers to make detailed notes and be rigorous with checklist keeping in order to stay on task and do it with few errors.

Checklists are really useful tools. Pilots of airplanes, accounting firms and people responsible for launching nuclear missiles all use checklists for their job so why can’t you? Experienced managers suggest instructing Gen Yers to make very detailed checklists and to ensure they’re using them and actually putting checks beside their completed tasks.

If the Gen Yer isn’t completing tasks properly and using a checklist then that checklist needs to be more detailed.

Teach Them the Values of Good Workplace Citizenship

The author begins this portion of the chapter with the musings of an executive who says he used to be able to pick the good ones out of a crowd but not anymore. He says the clean cut one is just as likely to always show up late and bad mouth his coworkers as is the long-haried one with earphones in his ear is to always say “Yes sir,” and “No ma’am.”

Tulgan says the point of this is you shouldn’t be looking for what gives Gen Yers their deep down motivation, you shouldn’t try to figure out from an interview or a test what their values are. He also says it’s not your job to teach them values and you shouldn’t try anyways because their value system is none of your business.

I could be reading Tulgan wrong here but I think teaching them values – not by forcing them to go to church or attend etiquette classes – but by being the example is exactly what a boss should be doing in today’s age. However, Tulgan says you should focus on teaching them how to behave at work, not the values.

Define What It Means to be a Good Citizen in Your Company

Basically you need to set the rules what is and isn’t acceptable in your company and then live those rules. For example, Tulgan writes of one company who had a “no jerks” rule. Apparently the rule was a bit ambiguous but the premise was to do things like smile at people and be nice on the phone. Tulgan suggests you define what is really important to your company and then keep it simple. Then define what those important things look like. What does courtesy look like? How does honest sound? Finally you need to describe it, spell it out and break it down for the Gen Yers.

The hard part is navigating Gen Yers BS radar. While everyone can have an off day, Gen Yers will be watching closely to see if you live and breathe the rules you’ve laid out for them. So if you can’t avoid being a jerk on a regular basis – don’t have a no jerk rule.

Part 3 of Chapter 7

Yes, this is a long chapter so I’ve broken down into three parts. Next post I’ll discuss:

• You can’t teach good judgement but you can tach the habits of critical thinking
• Expose them to new experiences
• Teach them to be strategic
• Teach them to look at past experiences – there own and others’
• Self-evaluation is the begginging, middle and end of self-management

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Chapter seven focuses on helping Gen Yers learn to how to manage themselves at work. Bruce Tulgan says lots of Gen Yers come into the job having an advanced set of skills having developed their specialties at a young age. He cautions today’s managers who insist they didn’t have their hands held when it came to doing things like showing up on time, dressing appropriately or refraining from cussing on the job. Managers will have to do what they can to help Gen Yers fill in these gaps of maturity they also bring along.

Tulgan says managers need to teach them to care about the basics, teach them to be more aware of those gaps in their repertoires. and to fill those gaps one at a time.

Teach Them to Make the Most of Their Time

Generation Y are always in a rush to get things done right away and why shouldn’t they? They have grown up in an on-demand culture. Instead of thinking in days and months they think in terms of minutes and hours and while this might help them get smaller tasks done quickly, it won’t help them work on projects with longer horizons. Where this will really trip up Gen Yers is when a project that needs to be approached with time and care will end up being completed quickly with many errors leading to even more work than was originally intended.

So how does a manager teach the make the most of their time?

Teach Them to Set Priorities

In many of today’s corporations, Gen Yers will have a few managers assigning them tasks. When a this happens, the Gen Yer is forced to decide what to work on. For people of generations past, setting priorities was the very first step in project management, Tulgan says but that isn’t so with today’s young workers. He suggests setting very clear priorities when giving Gen Yers projects to work on and giving them explicit instructions as to what priorities one and two are and that the lion’s share of their time be dedicated to those priorities.

When you tell them what the priorities are, tell them why. Tulgan suggests you break it down like so: “I want you to work on X first because … and then Y because … and finally Z for this reason …” Over time they will learn to set priorities for themselves but until they do he recommends setting them for them or at least with them.

Help Them Eliminate Time Wasters and Help Them Live by a Schedule

It’s important to differentiate between what is a time waster and what is a distraction. Tulgan insists distractions may not be a bad thing like time wasters are. He makes the point that Gen Yers are used to doing their homework with an ear phone plugged into an MP3 player in one ear while a cell phone buzzing with text messages is going off in the other. He cautions managers who might find this unbelievably annoying to relax when they see Gen Yers do it as they’re used to multi-tasking and it may be nothing for them.

A big step to eliminating time wasters is to insist Gen Yers keep a detailed schedule of their day. In the book Tulgan gives a sample that includes very detailed listings like “8:10 a.m., went to the bathroom, 8:15 a.m., returned to desk, began work on e-mail response to client X.” He says keeping a detailed journal three or four times a day will help Gen Yers realize where they are wasting their time. If they need help eliminating their time wasters, use the small reward strategy as a carrot.

As noted in an earlier blog post, Gen Yers relish freedom at work, especially when it comes to setting their own schedule. But truth be told, this generation is one of the most over scheduled in the history of the Earth. The difference being, their schedules were set to their lifestyle.

Tulgan points out that if a Gen Yer had to stay up all night working on a paper, no one would get upset if they missed the first class in the morning. Similarly their schedules were kept by other people – namely parents.

The author writes:

“They need a lot of help getting lots of work done very well, very fast while they are at work. The trick to doing that is teaching them how to use a schedule to better plan their hours, minutes and seconds around their priorities – inside and outside work.”

One strategy discussed in the book was helping Gen Yers develop a work-back schedule from when their day starts at the job. For example

• 9 a.m. arrive at work
• 8:50 a.m. leave coffee shop
• 8:30 a.m. leave home
• 8:20 a.m. return from walking the dog

And so on.

There is only one way to harmonize work and non-work life and that’s to keep one schedule. The first step is to block off 56 hours a week for sleeping, ideally in eight-hour increments with an hour each day for down time. That leaves them with 105 hours a week for everything else. If they block in work and then fill in the rest with social time the likeliness they’ll show up on time and be productive at work goes way up.

Part 2 of Chapter 7

In the next part of Chapter 7, I’ll discuss the following topics author Bruce Tulgan lays out:

1. Taking notes
2. Keeping checklists
3. Making a plan
4. The value of being a good workplace citizen
5. Defining what a good workplace citizen is at your place of business

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1. All Marketers Are Liars
2. Meatball Sundae

Godin wrote on his blog a while back that all the information in his books are also available for free on his blog, all you have to do is sift through the posts to find it. While that is true, it’s like saying all the ingredients to make mushroom risotto are available in the grocery store and all I have to do is buy them and prepare it. Going to a restaurant is quicker and easier so for the same reason, I asked for these two books.

I only received All Marketers are Liars and I haven’t picked up Meatball Sundae yet but I think a combination of watching Seth on the TED Web site, reading numerous reviews and keeping up with his blog, reading the book wouldn’t add much value to what I’ve already discovered. All Marketers Are Liars is an older book and wasn’t discussed on his site as much as his newer titles so giving it a read seemed like a good investment. In all I read it over two weekends and his style of writing is very conversational which I enjoy.

The main concept of the book is advertising is not marketing and in order to get people to listen to your message you must tell authentic stories. Seth argues people make up lies for themselves when buying a product or service. Like Starbucks will make you part of a social elite or buying a frozen meal you make in the crock pot is the same as preparing a home-made dinner yourself. Godin says marketers need to propose these lies to match their target market’s worldview. Basically you need to tell a compelling lie to the appropriate audience.

Of course Godin doesn’t suggest marketers should really tell lies, but rather stories. The title comes from a strategy of using an oxymoron to describe a product or service, something that will stand out by creating an absurd juxtaposition in their mind. The following, taken from user Robert Morris on an Amazon.com review that sums up what Godin is really getting at:

“Every consumer has a worldview that affects the product you want to sell. That worldview alters the way they interpret everything you say and do. Frame your story in terms of the worldview, and it will be heard.” (excerpted from page 60)

“People only notice stuff that’s new and different. And the moment they notice something new, they start making guesses about what to expect next.” (excerpted from page 68)

“Humans are able to make extremely sophisticated judgments in a fraction of a second. And once they’ve drawn that conclusion, they resist changing it.” (excerpted from page 76)

“Stories let us lie to ourselves. And those lies satisfy our desires. It’s the story, not the good or the service you actually sell, that pleases the customer.” (excerpted from page 84)

“The only stories that work, the only stories with impact, the only stories that spread are the `I can’t believe that!’ stories. These are the stories that aren’t just repeated: these are the stories that demand to be repeated.” (excerpted from page 132)

If there is one large takeaway from this book its to create your story and ensure it’s authentic. If you create a story about great customer service and then hire the cheapest labour and fail to train them, don’t be surprised if your business falters because consumers who came in for one purchase saw the hype didn’t match the experience and never came back.

There are two other books that accomplish what Godin attempted here in better fashion. The first is the 72 year old How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnige and the second, more recent, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. You’ll find just as great information and more examples that will help you put the how-to behind the theory.

All Marketers are Liars is a decent book, it’s a short read and you can’t help but get fired up by Godin who helps you believe what he is preaching because he himself is authentic.

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Author Vince Poscente’s overall theme is there are four type of businesses today, Zeppelins, Balloons, Bottle Rockets and Jets, but only one of them will lead to continued success.

Jets are the companies that recognize speed is a natural phenomenon of today’s society, grasp hold of it and align their business with characteristics of the speed economy will be the only ones who realize true growth and success.

Poscente’s description of speed can be best summed up by a few popular catch phrases: on demand, always on, more-faster-now. It’s not about how to file TPS reports quicker or how to make your shipping fleet more efficient, it’s about recognizing where you customers want something, whether it be a better check-out experience at the grocery

store or access to online help and moving your company in a quick way to make the necessary changes to make the improvement. By doing so you’ll be able to keep the customers you do have and attract new ones.

His approach to speed is it’s a mind set and not a physical action. He says there is a difference between being busy and being fast even though most people would associate the two as being the same thing. While there aren’t a lot of original ideas in The Age of Speed, he does take a different path in one area and that’s with respect to multi-tasking. He contends when you are focused on one task, you can use your whole brain for that function (makes sense) but when you start multi-tasking you simply cannot dedicate more than 50% of your brain power to any one task.

Author Vince Poscente

As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t find anything revolutionary in this book and while there are a few interesting case studies/stories there are no “ah-ha” moments and certainly anyone who would consider picking up this book would probably have already had the discoveries for themselves that could potentially be hidden in its pages.

Most frustrating is there is only one chapter in which the title indicates it might be dedicated to actually explaining how you can harness speed but after the five or so pages it failed to deliver.

Which brings me to my last observation about The Age of Speed. While it’s not really a great book at all, it’s smaller than your average hardcover, the font is a tiny bit larger than normal and every other page is an “illustration” (really just a line or two of white text with a black background). So the book reads very quick.

Oh – one bonus observation. I’m currently audio booking The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey (the son of the Seven Habits author, Dr. Stephen R. Covey) and while the two have little in relation there’s a recommendation from Covey on the back of The Age of Speed. The Speed of Trust is a great book (so far) and it is a bit quirky for Covey to be recommending this book and I wondered if it’s just because the titles are similar.

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