The Benevolent Dictator is the new book by Michael Feuer, who was the founder and CEO of OfficeMax until it was sold to Boise Cascade in 2003. Feuer now runs Max-Wellness, a company that sells medical and personal care supplies. The company has 4 stores but Feuer has plans to grow it into a national retailer.

This book is not a biography. It does not tell the tale of the founding and building of OfficeMax in its entirety. Instead, Feuer uses examples from his personal experience to illustrate 40 lessons for entrepreneurs. He sorts these 40 lessons into 4 phases:

1. Start-Up
2. Build Out And Put The Idea To The Test
3. Constant Reinvention
4. The Payday

Although the latter two phases cover areas of importance to large corporations, this book is really written for entrepreneurs. Feuer is one of the rare people who has the ability to found, build and manage a company as a large enterprise. From reading the book, it is evident that he maintained an entrepreneurial mindset throughout his journey.

One of the more interesting insights into Feuer’s process of building businesses was that a significant amount of research and planning was undertaken before making major decisions. He cautions not to become paralyzed by endless analysis but he credits a lot of his success to having a methodical approach to building businesses. This flies in the face of those who believe that an entrepreneur is a modern day gunslinger who makes decisions with his gut without regard for the risks involved. Feuer takes risks but they are calculated risks.

Another insight was how much time Feuer spends on the floor of his own stores and those of his competitors. He makes a big effort to make sure that he is getting information directly from customer facing employees. I am always amazed at how the bosses in the TV show Undercover Boss don’t seem to know what their own organizations do. I doubt Feuer has this issue.

There is a lot of good advice in this book. Some of the writing was a little rough in spots but I think reading the book is worthwhile. You may not have an interest in starting or building a national retailer but I think there is a lot that can be learned from entrepreneurs outside of your own industry.

In the interest of full disclosure, we received an advance copy of the book, free of charge. We were asked to give it an honest review, which we have.

Terry L. Sjodin has written Small Message, Big Impact: How To Put The Power Of The Elevator Speech Effect To Work For You. Sjodin is founder of Sjodin Communications, a firm that specializes in communications training for business.

When I first starting reading this book, I had my doubts. I’ve never been a big fan of elevator speeches. I’ve been in elevator speech workshops in the past and I can tell you it was painful to listen to dozens of people prattle on with some nonsense about how if you would only buy their services they could help you achieve all your dreams. The only saving grace was that they had to keep it to a couple of minutes each.

This book doesn’t do that. It is a book about communicating ideas in a short amount of time. Sjodin has a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Speech Communication and she was a self-professed “speech geek” throughout high school and college. Her education and debating experience really shows in this this book. Her approach is logical and built on a solid academic foundation.

The book will take your speech from a blank sheet of paper to getting in front of your prospect to present it. The book includes many worksheets to help you organize your ideas. One of my favourite parts of the book talks about how to make a speech “memorable, impactful and effective”. She writes that these speeches meet 3 benchmarks:

1. Case – A logical argument with evidence to back it up.
2. Creativity – The need to make it interesting for the listener.
3. Delivery – Present the message in your authentic voice

I think the third benchmark is often overlooked. Most elevator speeches I’ve heard sound like a politician trying to sell me something. They don’t sound natural and this leaves the impression the speaker is not being honest. While Sjodin talks about taking a scrappy approach to get in front of your prospect, she doesn’t promote anything unethical. This is keeping in line with using an honest voice. An elevator speech should communicate your idea in a short amount of time, it shouldn’t be an acting performance given by some character you are playing.

My only criticism of the book is that the first chapter tries to hammer home the value of the elevator speech. It is repetitious in doing so and it gets annoying quickly. However, the chapter is short and the excellent content in rest of the book makes this a minor irritation. If you are having the same issues with the first chapter that I did, I recommend that you just push though.

The communications lessons in this book will be useful for anyone who has to make a pitch for something in a short amount of time. People often think that because they are not in sales, a book like this wouldn’t be useful. In my experience, everyone at some time has to make a persuasive argument for something. This book can help you be prepared for those moments.

In the interest of full disclosure, we received an advance copy of the book, free of charge. We were asked to give it an honest review, which we have.

Surviving Your Serengeti

The new book, Surviving Your Serengeti, teaches 7 essential skills for success in life and business through the metaphor of African animals on the Serengeti. Written by businessman and real estate expert Stefan Swanepoel, the book draws from the author’s experience growing up in Africa and applies the lessons he learned from the animals to our everyday lives.

The book is written as a novel in a style reminiscent of The Goal, where the protagonist is at a crossroads with his business and is mentored by a old friend that has reentered his life. The book follows Sean & Ashley, a couple on a trip to the Serengeti who are mentored by Zachariah, an old college friend of Sean’s. Zachariah takes them to see the animals in their natural habitats and he explains the main survival skill that makes each one of them successful. He draws parallels between the skills of the animals and the skills necessary to thrive in life and business.

This is an easy to read book that can be completed in a few hours. Although there is nothing really new here and this material has been covered in different forms in many different books over the years, this book is worth reading. The book makes an excellent point by saying:

“Often, our comfortable existence lets us become complacent-and we fail to identify or grow our skills.”

For this reason, it is worth reading this book if only to get a refresher of the skills that are important to success and a reminder that we need to continually work on them to become better at what we do. The storytelling and the picturesque African setting make this process a pleasant experience. Each chapter contains a helpful summary of the lesson learned, which is useful for quickly going back to reconfirm one’s understanding of each concept.

The publisher has put up a site called What Animal Am I? It has an online quiz that allow you to identify which African animal you are most closely identified with by comparing your dominant survival skills. It’s a fun quiz that will take less than 10 minutes and it will get you thinking about how you can work to improve your less dominant survival skills.

If this book been 400 pages of ponderous repetition, I couldn’t recommend it but as the author gets to the point quickly and covers universally important concepts, the book is well worth reading.

In the interest of full disclosure, we received an advance copy of the book, free of charge. We were asked to give it an honest review, which we have.

Are you sick and tired of dealing with disrespectful clients? Wouldn’t it be nice to have customers who value what you offer, pay on time, and do their part in the client/seller relationship? Well, according to John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, “when you properly target your clients, you will discover that you no longer have to work with jerks.” This might sound unrealistic but I think its something that can be accomplished if done right. Here are some tips from Duct Tape Marketing, on finding your ideal client.

1. The first thing you need to do is to create a picture of your ideal prospect. If you don’t know whom you’re selling to, you decrease your chance of attracting your ideal client. A good way to start is to take a close look at the type of customers you’ve dealt with in the past. What are their similarities? What are their differences? Create a database of these customers and jot down detailed characteristics of each individual or company. You might notice that a group of your customers have a lot in common.
2. Understand how your customers make their buying decisions. This might be difficult to do, but if you’re able to learn a little bit more about buying habits, you’ll be able to better target your clients.
3. Try to find the most effective ways of communicating with your ideal prospects. What promotion methods have you used in the past? Did you reach them through radio ads, billboards, personal networking, etc? What worked? What didn’t? This information will help you uncover effective ways to reach your ideal client.
4. Get people to know you, like you and trust your business. Customers prefer to buy things they know, like and trust. That’s the power of branding. Try to build relationships with your customers and earn their trust with your products and services. Differentiate yourself from others by carrying your personality and values out through your employees. Be consistent and pay attention to what your customers want. If they know that you care, they will like and trust you better.

These techniques should help you get started in finding your ideal client and target market. At the end of the day, if you’re not able to reach your customers, you have no business. It’s time you started to get to know them better. Good luck in your search.

When looking at ways to improve businesses, managers have resorted to many methodologies over the years. People around long enough remember Total Quality, Just In Time, Manufacturing Resource Planning and their modern counterparts: Six Sigma, Lean and Enterprise Resource Planning. While we have heard of the companies that have benefited greatly from these efforts, it’s more common to hear about firms implementing them with disappointing results. Why would these powerful techniques work for some but not others?
In addition, people debate whether Theory of Constraints (TOC) or Lean is the way to improve their business. The answer you get depends on whom you ask. Lean practitioners will tell you that Lean is the best system and will give a great list of successful implementations. TOC professionals will tell you that much of the effort expended on Lean is wasted because it never impacts the bottom line.
Velocity is a book by TOC professionals Dee Jacob and Suzan Bergland, along with the original co-author of The Goal, Jeff Cox. Velocity tackles the question of TOC versus Lean combined with Six Sigma in the form of a business novel. It describes Hi-T Composites Company, already using TOC being bought out by Winner Inc., a company using Lean/Six Sigma.
The authors describe how the Winner Lean/Six Sigma team began to implement their programs in Hi-T. They saw the extra capacity around the constraint and the extra workers in the constraint area as waste and began reducing this waste. When results were disappointing, the implementers said that results would come when the implementation was complete. After a year of floundering, the President of Hi-T found herself in jeopardy of losing her job. When she was given three months to turn the company around, she assembled a team that used current reality trees and the five focusing steps to reestablish protecting the constraints. Once they did this, they saw the benefits of the Lean/Six Sigma efforts – the non-constraints now had more surge capacity and they were able to solve a chronic product quality problem that led to increased sales. The title of the book, Velocity, is what the new system was called. In physics, velocity is defined as speed with direction. The Lean/Six Sigma was the speed component while TOC determined the direction.
Below is a table describing some of the key differences between the two methodologies.

So what is my answer to the question Lean or TOC? Why not both? TOC on its own is great at setting priorities for the firm but can fall down in the implementation stage. Lean/Six Sigma are great tools, but lack the focus to find the best projects. If you use TOC to determine the constraints and use Lean/Six Sigma to improve them, you can get the best of both worlds.

Imagine yourself a major league general manager. Now consider this: your top three players from last year have left the team for free agency because you cannot afford to match competing offers. Your owner wants to run the team like a business and set the payroll at $40 million (the three free agents that left signed for a total of $33 million). The Yankees payroll is $126 million. What do you do? Give up? This is the scenario that Billy Beane faced in 2002. In his best-selling book, Moneyball, Michael Lewis got to the bottom of how Beane got his Oakland Athletics to not only hold their own, but to beat teams with vastly higher budgets. There are many lessons applicable to business and success in general from this book.

Billy Beane
Billy Beane grew up a naturally gifted athlete. His abilities in any sport he tried plus his physique caught the eye of professional and college organizations alike. After a few workouts, Stanford offered him a joint baseball/football scholarship. He was to replace John Elway as Stanford’s quarterback even though he didn’t play since his sophomore year in high school. He was in the same draft year as Darryl Strawberry and was widely considered the better athlete. He was drafted by the Mets and started his professional career. However, his natural ability and physical talent didn’t translate into success.

Billy Beane in the Mets organization with future protege J.P. Ricciardi.

His biggest problem was his inability to deal with failure. After he struck out, he was famous for destroying the dugout and clubhouse with his outbursts. This led to a number of stops in the minors and he never came close to fulfilling his potential. After his pro career, he was left with a strong impression on how not to recruit a major league ball player.

Blue Ribbon Panel
As free agency and no spending limits on players took hold in the late 1990’s, a number of major league owners felt that they weren’t able to compete with the big spenders. In addition, if something wasn’t done to even the playing field, the poor teams would fold and the entire league could be in jeopardy. Bud Selig, the Commissioner as well as the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, headed this panel. The problem for the panel was if the situation was so dire, how could they explain the success of Oakland? Selig’s response was Oakland was an “aberration.”

How Beane Did It
Baseball is unique in that it lends itself to statistics and statistical analysis. Beane hired Paul DePodesta, a Harvard grad who never played baseball. DePodesta brought the insight from this statistical analysis, and was not swayed by subjective opinions of the scouts.
In order to succeed in the unfair competition of Major League Baseball, they had to look at the game in a new way. They thought of a baseball game as a process. On defense it was getting outs as quickly as possible. On offense it was preventing outs and extending innings as long as possible. It also meant that individual achievements were secondary to team goals. Beane’s teams ended up playing differently than other teams. Stolen bases and bunts were almost unheard of because they weren’t worth the cost of the outs they caused. Athletics hitters were expected to take more pitches than other major leaguers because their hitting percentage went up with favourable counts and increasing pitch counts wore down the starting pitchers and got them to the less-talented relief pitchers sooner.

Jeremy Brown, a catcher that was on nobody's draft list, was selected by Oakland in the first round.

When something becomes expensive, it makes sense to scrutinize it to maximize value. In the case of baseball, certain player statistics were grossly overvalued in the marketplace and a few were undervalued. The undervalued statistics in hitting were on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SP). Beane and DePodesta found that they could draft and trade for players that ranked high in these statistics very cheaply because nobody else valued these measures. They also knew through market research that fans want to watch winning teams instead of stars on losing teams. Their business model then became to take nobodies with the right makeup, win with them, make them stars, and then trade them when they became too expensive to keep.

How Did They Do?
The following table sums up how they did in 2002.

This was in spite of baseball purists saying that they didn’t play the game properly. They didn’t “manufacture” runs by stealing bases and bunting.
They ended up losing the divisional playoffs to Minnesota in five games. This allowed these same purists to say “I told you so” and “Billy Ball doesn’t work in the playoffs.” Pure garbage. The reason why the playoff performance wasn’t as convincing as regular season is the small sample size of games to compare it to. Luck has a much bigger influence on a five-game series.
Since the publication of the book, Beane’s secrets aren’t secret anymore and the market has become more efficient. Bargains are harder to come by and the playing field has leveled.

What Can We Learn
Moneyball has taught lessons that are applicable in a wide range of endeavor. They are:

• If you are outmanned and outgunned by your opposition, you need a different strategy to succeed. If you try to beat your competition with the same strategy, you are dead. The right strategy can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

• Don’t be impressed by conventional wisdom. The Blue Ribbon Panel determined that Oakland had no chance of being successful under the current rules. How do you explain 103 wins on $42 million?

• The outliers in data – the things that don’t fit the model often hold the key to breakthroughs.  Don’t ignore them or dismiss them as “aberrations.”

• Breaking away from the pack and operating under your own strategy takes courage. Fear is a great motivator. If it doesn’t work, you will be embarrassed and out of a job. Beane overcame this uncertainty because his experience as a pro ball player convinced him that the established way of picking players doesn’t work. If you can overcome your fear and successfully execute, you can change the rules of the game.

Have you read Seth Godin’s Linchpin yet? If not, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. In fact, this is the best business book I have ever read. It gets to the core of why some are failing and some are thriving. It gets to deeper meaning, like how to get more out of life by transforming what you do into your individual art.
The bargain is over
The bargain that Godin writes about is the deal between owners and labour: a worker trades a day of work for a day’s pay. Also implied is a worker’s loyalty and labour will be rewarded with job security and a living wage. This bargain is becoming more and more rare, as competition and obsolescence are preventing owners to keep their side of the bargain. So what is a worker to do?

What is a linchpin?
Along with owners and workers, Godin identifies a third type of person: the linchpin. In mechanics, a linchpin is a fastener that keeps other parts of a machine together. If the linchpin goes missing, the whole machine breaks down. Godin’s definition of a human linchpin is somebody who works outside of the established rules to achieve unexpected results. They exert emotional effort into their work and create new and innovative products and services. These innovations can be called art, and rightly so.

This is what you need to be.

Why are they so rare?
When we were young, creating art was something that came naturally. You’ve never seen a three year old with crayons and paper with writers block. You never see them ashamed of their art either. Something must happen to them by the time they enter the work force. Godin places the responsibility on how schools are run. He explains that today’s schools are geared to produce factory workers. It rewards punctuality, attendance, reading and following rules. Expressing oneself is usually barely tolerated or even punished. While this is good if all is required is to follow the rules, but what happens when something happens that isn’t covered in the rulebook? The machine falls apart. It isn’t fair to blame schools for the entirety of the problem. Godin states that the reason why this is so effective is how our brains are wired and calls the result the resistance.

The resistance
During human evolution, the brain has grown to be capable of great artistry and complex thought. However, the brain did not get rid of its lower functioning aspects. The limbic system is the lizard brain-the part of the brain that is shared with animals. This controls fear, anger, and lust – the functions that are designed to enhance survival of the species. While the limbic system is very useful in protecting us from immediate physical danger, it can get in the way of our art. Fear of failure, ridicule and separation from the pack are very powerful motivators and prevent people from really creating art from their work. Because this is so powerful, it is extremely difficult to overcome.

Be a linchpin
So the old guarantee of a secure job if you follow the rules is gone. What are you to do? You need to become indispensible to your employer or customers. How do you do this? Godin describes emotional effort and artistry as the keys. Emotional effort involves making a personal connection with the users of your effort. This is combined with putting all of your energy into creating a solution to their problems, whether they recognize them or not. When this effort hits the mark, the result is art, and everybody benefits.

Hire linchpins
One of my pet peeves about hiring is the over-dependence on credentials and experience. To me, employers are trying to manage their fear of hiring somebody unqualified. If they require a lot of certificates and experience, chances are, the successful candidate will have standardized approaches to work. The end result is a work force of rule followers unable to innovate. If you hire people with ideas on how to change your business for the better, you win. You might be challenged on your established practices, but how else are you going to achieve breakthrough results?

Get out of their way
Finally, it’s not enough to simply hire linchpins. If you strike down their ideas and punish them for working outside of the rules, two things will happen. You will lose your best employees. Linchpins will go where they can make their art and use their genius. The second result is worse. Other employees with innovative ideas will see how practicing art is punished and will hold back their best ideas out of fear. If you allow linchpins to do their thing, they can make other employees into linchpins. If these other employees see the rewards of emotional efforts, they have the possibility to overcome their fear.

I’ve only covered a small portion of the Godin’s message. Anybody looking to improve his or her organization or career should take the time to read this book. It is time well spent.

With a title like Delivering Happiness, you might think that this book contains enough fluff to supply a goose down pillow factory. Thankfully, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh fills the book with interesting stories and important lessons.

The book is divided into three sections: “Profits”, “Profits & Passion”, and “Profits, Passion, and Purpose”. In “Profits”, Tony talks about growing up, going to college, getting his first job and starting LinkExchange. This might be my favourite section of the book because it gives the reader a good idea of who Tony Hsieh is and how he views the world. The word that comes to mind is “hustler,” not in the Three-card Monte sense but in the Gary Vaynerchuk sense of the word. A guy who is out there doing it, making things happen while others never get past dreaming, “What if?”  Tony talks about the businesses he had as a kid and how he took jobs to earn money during high school.

The “Profits” section talks about how Tony and his friend, Sanjay, started LinkExchange. He tells the story in enough detail that the reader can really get a good picture of what happened. Many entrepreneurs tend to gloss over the start of their companies in these types of books, which doesn’t do much for the kid in his dorm room, who is just getting started.

In “Profits and Passion”, Tony describes the early stages of Zappos, the company’s move from San Francisco to Las Vegas, and how the culture developed along the way. I was a bit surprised to learn that Zappos came close to death a couple of times. In many ways, the success of Zappos is much more impressive than Tony’s first success with LInkExchange.

Tony writes that Zappos competitive advantage comes from brand, culture, and the talent development pipeline. He feels that any other advantage that Zappos currently has, can and will be copied.

These three advantages were all put to test when Zappos decided to lay off 8% of its employees. For a high commitment culture like Zappos has, this could be the beginning of the end. They handled it in the best way possible and they don’t seem to have taken any long term damage. I think the most revealing statement regarding this time is when Tony writes that they made a mistake by over-hiring. Most other CEOs would write some nonsense about strategic realignment.

Amazon’s recent purchase of Zappos is covered along with the reasons why the management team decided to sell the company. Tony includes his emails to employees about the sale. These speak volumes about the culture of the company and Tony’s leadership.

The final section “Profits, Passion and Purpose” is where Tony ties the previous two sections to the title of the book. He theorizes that the things that truly make an individual happy, serve to make a successful company as well. When the individual’s goals are aligned with the company’s, great things can be achieved. He approaches this from a scientific point of view, referring to some of the recent academic study into happiness. They have applied these findings at Zappos with a great deal of success.

The book reads easily. Tony apologizes in the Preface for any mistakes in grammar because he didn’t use a ghost writer and he wanted the book to read like he speaks. This makes it like someone telling you a story rather than someone who is showing off that they own a thesaurus. The book is genuine in trying to get its message across. There are a couple of self-indulgent parts about poker and Red Bull but these are easily forgiven.

I highly recommend reading this book. Although Zappos is an internet company, this book is written for a much wider audience. It focuses on things at a high level. He doesn’t talk too much about the technical details of running Zappos’ site. I think it teaches a lot about company culture, brand, and ethical business.

For more information about the book, please visit http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

In the interest of full disclosure, we received a few advance copies of the book, free of charge from Zappos. They only asked that we give it an honest review, which we have.