An Ode to the Thief of Time

strategy+business, May 11, 2018

by Theodore Kinni

In late 1934, a department store magnate named Edgar Kaufmann engaged Frank Lloyd Wright to design a weekend home in the woods an hour or so southeast of Pittsburgh. It was a huge boon for Wright — his reputation had waned, commissions had dried up in the Depression, and his home and studio were threatened with foreclosure. The architect visited the Kaufmann site, asked for a survey, and then, the story goes, didn’t do a damn thing.

Nine months later, Kaufmann unexpectedly visited Wright’s studio to look at the design for his new home, which, he had been told, was progressing beautifully. Wright reportedly put pencil to paper for the first time. Two hours later, he presented Kaufmann with a plan for Fallingwater, an acknowledged masterpiece of residential architecture.

“The only way to explain the nine months Wright spent not working on Fallingwater is by procrastination’s perverse logic. Nothing was the only thing that could be done in such a situation,” writes Andrew Santella in Soon, his engaging, meandering, and, of course, overdue exploration of the behavioral tic...read the rest here

Self-Publishing or Trade Publishing: Which is Best for Your Business Book?

LinkedIn, July 29, 2017

by Theodore Kinni



As a business writer and editor, I talk to lots of people who want a business book with their name on it. CEOs and other senior executives who are transitioning to new careers. Consultants who are establishing thought leadership platforms. Entrepreneurs who are building businesses. Speakers who want bigger audiences and something to sell at the back of the room. At some point or another, they all ask me the same question: Should I self-publish my book or find a publisher?

There is no pat answer. It depends on the book and what you want to achieve with it. But here are the three questions to ask to figure out the right answer for you. Read the rest here.

Margaret Heffernan’s Required Reading

strategy+business, November 9, 2016

by Theodore Kinni

By 2100, we are going to eradicate disease and colonize Mars. In a time when it can be hard to tell corporate leaders from sci-fi writers, Margaret Heffernan speaks more to achieving lofty visions than announcing them. The author, speaker, and executive coach is particularly interested in how to identify and empower talented people — a key trait of effective executives, whether they are bound for Mars or not.

Heffernan, a journalist by training, has written extensively on the theme of talent. In The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters (Jossey-Bass, 2004) and Women on Top: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Rewriting the Rules of Business Success (Viking, 2007), she examined the costs of undervaluing women in the workplace. In Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril (Walker & Company, 2011), Heffernan explored how having the right team can save leaders from catastrophic blind spots. In A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the Competition (Public Affairs, 2014), she explained why more inclusive, collaborative cultures outperform competitive ones. Most recently, Heffernan reprised her popular TED talks in Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes (Simon & Schuster/TED, 2015), a short book that describes the powerful, positive effects that result from minor alterations in how we work together.

Heffernan began her career in television production at the BBC and subsequently led IPPA, an English film and television producer trade association. When the Internet disrupted media, she turned serial entrepreneur, serving as CEO of iCast, ZineZone, and InfoMation for CMGI, one of the first Internet company incubators. Currently, in addition to writing and speaking, Heffernan serves as a Merryck & Co mentor, teaches at several business schools, and serves on the boards of three organizations.

When I invited Heffernan to talk books, she quickly agreed. “I mentor a handful of senior and chief executives, and the ones that read a lot have so many more choices in their heads than those who don’t. So, I say read, read, read, read, and read some more,” she said, and offered up the following four titles. Read the rest here.

Tom Peters Wants You to Read

Photograph by Allison Shirreffs

By Theodore Kinni

strategy+business, May 26, 2016

Tom Peters. You know the guy. He branded himself with an “!” after his name. He and Bob Waterman wrote one of the best-selling business books of all time,In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies(Harper & Row, 1982). 

Peters is one of the handful of people who helped transform the business book genre from a staid backwater into a mass market — with 1.8 million titles in print, it’s the fifth-largest book category on Amazon. He has written 29 of those titles and sold more than 10 million copies of them. In the process, Peters helped define the term business guru and inspired more wannabes than Madonna. At age 73, he enjoys an engaged, multigenerational audience, including 135,000 Twitter followers. 

Because Peters is a voracious reader, I thought he would make an ideal subject for my monthly “Required Reading” column for strategy+business, in which business notables call out a very short list of books they think leaders should read. But a brief call to New Zealand, where Peters goes to beat the New England winters, to discuss his four favorite books somehow turned into a one-and-a-half-hour marathon.

“I have to tell you a story about a neighbor of mine in Massachusetts who would be on anybody’s top 10 list of [Warren] Buffett–like people,” Peters opened. “I was at a dinner with him 18 months ago and, out of nowhere, he said, ‘You know what the number one problem is with big company CEOs?’ I said, ‘I can think of at least 70 things, but damned if I can narrow it down.’ And out of his mouth pops, ‘They don’t read enough.’” ...read the rest here

Daniel Pink's Required Reading

by Theodore Kinni

strategy+business, Sept 16, 2015

For the better part of two decades, Daniel Pink has been skewering conventional business wisdom and transforming complex ideas into practical approaches that his readers can put to work immediately. A best-selling author, popular speaker, and one of the world’s leading management thinkers, Pink is a practitioner of what has become — in no small part through the skill with which he plies his trade — a familiar format on the business bookshelf: the application of behavioral research to the world of work.

Pink applied this formula to employee incentivization in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books, 2009), which described the largely untapped power of intrinsic motivators, such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose, in the workplace. He took on thinking skills in A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (Riverhead Books, 2005), which tracked the rising need for cognitive traits, such as inventiveness, empathy, and meaning-making, in business. And he extended his reach into sales in To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others(Riverhead Books, 2012), which described a simple and powerful “ABC” for sales success (attunement, buoyancy, and clarity). In 2014, Pink began broadcasting his behavioral insights to broader audience as host and co-executive producer of “Crowd Control,” a 12-episode series airing on the National Geographic Channel.

Given the influential reach of his work (more than 2 million copies of his books have been sold), I asked Pink to name several books that had made a lasting impression on him. He called out four titles... read the rest here

Four book recommendations from Guy Kawasaki

My new book post on s+b is up today:

Guy Kawasaki’s Required Reading

 

If you’re old enough to remember Apple 1.0, you surely remember that Guy Kawasaki was the company’s “chief evangelist” (one of the first of the weird job titles that don’t seem so weird anymore, with people today getting jobs as digital overlords, creators of happiness, and retail Jedi). In 1987, Kawasaki left Apple to found, lead, and invest in high-tech companies.

Now a name brand in his own right, Kawasaki is an author, speaker, consultant, and social media star. He’s got more than 6.7 million online followers and more than 480 million views on Google+. He also serves as the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. No wonder he’s always smiling.

 

In 1990, Kawasaki published his first book,The Macintosh Way: The Art of Guerilla Management (Scott Foresman). And since then, he’s written 11 more, including The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (Portfolio, 2004) and, most recently, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users(with Peg Fitzpatrick, Portfolio, 2014).

 

I often see Kawasaki’s books on lists of other people’s favorite books, and that led me to wonder what his all-time favorite business books might be. Here are his top four picks and his comments about them:

 

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (Putnam, 1938), by Brenda Ueland. “This book, by a writer and journalist from Minnesota who passed away at age 93 in 1985, explains how to unshackle yourself from doubt and naysaying, even when the source of these hindrances is internal. Although it was written for writers, you can apply its philosophy to any skill: programming, designing, cooking, whatever. This book changed my life because I doubted my ability to write. In short, it empowered me, and I’ve never looked back.”

 

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers (HarperBusiness, 1991), by Geoffrey Moore. “Moore pierced my naive belief that the best product wins. The best product doesn’t always win—if this were true, Macintosh would have 95 percent market share. Just because you can get early adopters to buy your product, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the market will. Since the book was written, the speed and flatness of the Internet has changed how information spreads, but the lesson that every product faces a chasm is timeless.”

 

Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born (Penguin, 1990), by Denise Sherkerjian. “Sherkerjian examined how the MacArthur Award winners achieved their genius status in this book. The bottom line is that they worked long and hard, so this book taught me the value of gutting it out and being resilient. Are there more important lessons in life than learning that hard work has value, and that geniuses are made, not born?”

 

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (William Morrow, 1984), by Robert B. Cialdini. “Cialdini explains how to influence and persuade people using principles of social psychology. The book should be required reading for every entrepreneur because of the lessons it can teach about reciprocation, and because too many entrepreneurs have insufficient appreciation of how interpersonal relationships work. I guarantee that you’ll be a more influential and persuasive person if you read it.” 

Is investigative journalism dying out?

My weekly book post on s+b's blog covers two books--one that bemoans the dearth of muckrakers and one by a muckraker


Muckraking Is Alive and Well

Investigative reporting is the pinnacle of journalism, and has been ever since the early 20th century when writers like Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker exposed systemic corruption in the United States and changed the nation. They helped bring down business trusts, provided the impetus for much-needed regulation and oversight (in Steffen’s case, the establishment of the Federal Reserve System), and created political platforms for reformers, such as Teddy Roosevelt, who named them muckrakers. Is there a business reporter who doesn’t aspire to follow in their footsteps?
 
And yet, less and less investigative—or accountability—reporting is being published, according to Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) editor and fellow Dean Starkman. In his fascinating, if somewhat flawed book, The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Starkman points to the subprime lending meltdown of 2007 as a primary example of his contention.

Although there has been no lack of high-profile investigative reporting since subprime lending imploded and caused a global recession, an examination of reporting on the subject in the years before the crisis tells another, rather curious, story. According to research that Starkman conducted at CSJ between 2004 and 2006—the period in which the worst lending excesses occurred—“mainstream accountability reporting [was] virtually dormant. The watchdog, powerful as it was, didn’t bark when it was most needed.”

But there’s more to the story... read it here

Killer quotes #5

"I ain't no monkey but I know what I like"

                                             -- Bob Dylan 
                                                     

The Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year is...

And the envelope, please. Cue drumroll. The winner of The Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for 2013 is The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Little, Brown), by Brad Stone.

I'd love to tell you all about the book, but I haven't read it. In fact, I passed it over in publisher's catalog

even though it was billed as "the definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos," and even though it was based on "unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon." 

The reason I passed on the book was that Stone, a senior reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and a terrific writer, didn't have access to he who laughs loudest. To date, Jeff Bezos has refused participate in any book about Amazon, claiming that it is too soon to tell the story.

I've always thought this was a silly decision on Bezos's part. After all, we're not talking about Snapchat here: Amazon hauled in $60 billion in revenue in 2012 and is one of the planet's leading retailers. But maybe it's not as silly as it seems on the surface. Amazon did manage to lose $39 million on that $60 billion. It's also likely that Bezos's story is a long way from over (unlike Steve Jobs, whose cooperation with Walter Isaacson in the final year or so of his life yielded an amazing biography that was shortlisted by FT/Goldman last year and probably would have won the top prize in this year's not-quite-as-distinguished field).  

In any case, as "unprecedented" as Stone's access was, the head honcho himself is missing. As MacKenzie Bezos pointed out in her one-star Amazon review of the book, this forced Stone to make educated guesses as to what was going in her husband's mind (which he seems to have felt comfortable doing). So I'm not sure what distinguishes The Everything Store from the other books that have been written about a guy whose every move is already reported by the business press--or how we can justify calling it definitive. 

Scott Adams on ghostwriting

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, has a new book out--How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (Portfolio, 2013)--which is a funny take on the memoir-cum-personal-success-manual genre. Paging through it brought to mind a Dilbert strip that my cousin clipped out of a newspaper and mailed to me, in an envelope through the US Postal Service--just like in the olden days. The strip cracked me up so much that I emailed Adams to see if I could buy a signed copy. (No answer. Bet he's never gotten one of those emails before.) Anyway, here it is: 

Elmore Leonard said...

Elmore Leonard passed away today at age 87. I haven't read any of his westerns, but I read many of his crime novels and always got a lot of pleasure from them. He was a crisp, clear, no-BS writer. He also published a short how-to book on writing back in 2007 that was based on the following 10 rules:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" …he admonished gravely
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Stephen King on opening lines

There's a very cool one-question interview with Stephen King in The Atlantic. Joe Fassler asked him about his favorite passages in a couple of his books and King mentioned two opening lines. That lead to King talking about the art and craft of a great opening line. Where are you gonna get better advice than that?

Stephen King: There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It's tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don't think conceptually while I work on a first draft -- I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

How can a writer extend an appealing invitation -- one that's difficult, even, to refuse?... read the rest here

Chandler on the detective story

Since I have a longstanding reading jones for mysteries of every kind, I really enjoyed Raymond Chandler's take on the genre, "The Simple Art of Murder," which he wrote in 1950. Chandler is, of course, one of the great masters of the detective novel - the author of classics, such as The Long Goodbye and Farewell, My Lovely.

Being a fan of hard-boiled crime novels, I got particular kick out of Chandler's criticism of Dorothy Sayers and what he saw as the flaws in the mystery "formula."

Taking issue with Sayers' assertion that mysteries could not "attain the highest level of literary achievement, he says:

I think what was really gnawing at her mind was the slow realization that her kind of detective story was an arid formula which could not even satisfy its own implications. It was second-grade literature because it was not about the things that could make first-grade literature. If it started out to be about real people (and she could write about them–her minor characters show that), they must very soon do unreal things in order to form the artificial pattern required by the plot. When they did unreal things, they ceased to be real themselves. They became puppets and cardboard lovers and papier mâché villains and detectives of exquisite and impossible gentility. The only kind of writer who could be happy with these properties was the one who did not know what reality was. Dorothy Sayers’ own stories show that she was annoyed by this triteness; the weakest element in them is the part that makes them detective stories, the strongest the part which could be removed without touching the "problem of logic and deduction." Yet she could not or would not give her characters their heads and let them make their own mystery. It took a much simpler and more direct mind than hers to do that.

He also complains about American writers who picked up the English style, skewering both with this classic back-handed compliment:

Personally I like the English style better. It is not quite so brittle, and the people as a rule, just wear clothes and drink drinks. There is more sense of background, as if Cheesecake Manor really existed all around and not just the part the camera sees; there are more long walks over the Downs and the characters don’t all try to behave as if they had just been tested by MGM. The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

You can read the entire essay here...
 

Vonnegut on writing well

Who says ads are a waste of time? Well, I usually do, but then I came across an International Paper Company ad from the early '80s. The company asked Kurt Vonnegut to write an ad titled "How to write with style." Here's what he wrote:

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful - ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead - or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way - although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

4. Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable - and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school - twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify - whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White (Macmillan, 1979). E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

How to alienate a country

Have you seen the letter that Titan International CEO Morry Taylor - who so delights in his nickname "The Grizz" that he features it in his bio on the Titan corporate website - wrote to the French minister of industry on Feb. 8? It's quite an addition to annals of corporate communiques:

Dear Mr. Montebourg: 

I have just returned to the United States from Australia where I have been for the past few weeks on business; therefore, my apologies for not answering your letter dated 31 January 2013. 

I appreciate your thinking that your Ministry is protecting industrial activities and jobs in France.  I and Titan have a 40-year history of buying closed factories and companies, losing millions of dollars and turning them around to create a good business, paying good wages. Goodyear tried for over four years to save part of the Amiens jobs that are some of the highest paid, but the French unions and French government did nothing but talk. 

I have visited the factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way! 

You are a politician so you don’t want to rock the boat. The Chinese are shipping tires into France - really all over Europe - and yet you do nothing. The Chinese government subsidizes all the tire companies. In five years, Michelin won’t be able to produce tires in France. France will lose its industrial business because its government is more government. 

Sir, your letter states you want Titan to start a discussion. How stupid do you think we are? Titan is the one with money and talent to produce tires. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government. The French farmer wants cheap tires. He does not care if the tires are from China or India and these governments are subsidizing them. Your government doesn’t care either: “We’re French!” 

The US government is not much better than the French. Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects the duties. We don’t get the duties, the government does. 

Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour and ship all the tires France needs. You can keep the so-called workers. Titan has no interest in the Amien North factory. 

Best regards, 

Maurice M. Taylor, Jr.

Chairman and CEO

The downside of this missive for Titan is pretty obvious: It alienates the French government, which can make it difficult to do business in the country; it insults the French, who buy Titan products; and it suggests that the company has an arrogant leader who can't curb his tongue, with all the problems that implies for investors, business partners, etc.

I assume The Grizz saw some benefit to sending such an incoherent rant, but I can't imagine why he just didn't write: "Thanks so much for thinking of us for this opportunity, but it isn't something we can pursue at the moment."

Approaching thought leadership

One of the major benefits of working as a senior editor for Booz & Company's strategy+business is the opportunity to work with its editor-in-chief, Art Kleiner. Art is a leading business writer and editor - he's worked with business thinkers like Peter Senge, Arie de Geus,and Noel Tichy.

When I first started working with Art, he told me about his simple, but hardly simplistic, approach to analyzing thought leadership, which uses four questions, or orientations:

• What is your purpose?
• What research is the work based on, and how credible is it?
• Who is your audience?
• What is the story?

The other day, Art elaborated on this analytical framework in a webinar for Leading News, an online leadership community created by Patricia Wheeler and Marshall Goldsmith. If you're associated with creating thought leadership or aspire to become a thought leader, the audio replay is well worth your time (listen here: http://ow.ly/8U4cp). Art was also kind enough to provide a great deck on thought leadership, which accompanied the talk (see http://slidesha.re/zAuu3v).

Be Our Guest - 10th Anniversary Edition

Here's a brief article from D23, the Disney Fan Club, announcing the publication of the revised and expanded edition of Be Our Guest earlier this month. The book has been amazingly successful (over 150,000 copies sold), which tells you something about Disney's expertise at delivering quality service and their ability to market their products.

Ten years ago, Ted Kinni’s book Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service pulled back the curtain to give readers a look at how Walt Disney Parks and Resorts does business.

Based on DI programs and extensive interviews with their clients, Be Our Guest showcases how Disney builds its entire organization around customers, or in Disney parlance, guests. Now, 150,000 copies later, the Disney Publishing Worldwide book is back on store shelves, freshly updated in time to help celebrate DI’s 25th anniversary.

“The interesting thing about this edition is that the Company itself has grown and entered a lot of different businesses since the first edition,” Ted says. “Because of this, there’s now a whole new range of examples and enhancements to the book.” He cites growth in retail stores, the Cruise Line, travel businesses, and a more global Parks presence. “This book represents a more refined quality service approach that DI has been able to develop these last 10 years,” he says. “When you think of customer service, Disney immediately pops into your mind. It’s really amazing how long Disney has excelled in customer service and how it’s built a successful organization around it.”

I'm working on a second book for Disney Institute now. It's really a dream gig working for a client that has so much great content and such a terrific track record. More on the new book when we get closer to the publication date later next year.

Orwell on writing

George Orwell - author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, you know the guy - took on the doublespeak that passes for political prose in a 1946 essay titled "Politics and the English Language." He offered six rules for writing clearly that all of us would do well to follow:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Killer Quotes #1

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

- Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

Speaking of pirates

The movie studios complain bitterly about piracy, but it's hard to sympathize with them when you read a story like this one from Bloomberg:

J.R.R. Tolkien sold movie rights to his “Lord of the Rings” novels 40 years ago for 7.5 percent of future receipts. Three films and $6 billion later, his heirs say they haven’t seen a dime from Time Warner Inc...read the rest here

Tolkien's heirs are suing Time Warner for $220 million and I hope they get it all plus double or treble damages. But I'll give Harlan Ellison, one of the great sci-fi writers who worked in Hollywood for many years, the last word on this kind of piracy. Ellison is the subject of an entertaining documentary titled Dreams with Sharp Teeth that every writer should see. In it, he tells this story, which lo and behold was posted on You Tube.