Bullish On Books

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG by Julie Clow, author of "The Work Revolution: Freedom and Excellence for All."

Source: Amazon.com

Jonathan Rosenberg, a former Google executive, once wrote: “If we both agree, one of us is redundant.” The first time I read that, I vehemently disagreed. And then I laughed.

The workplace is an environment in which we train people to perform their tasks and jobs according to exacting specifications, or, at the very least, according to “best practices.”

Managers drive for conformity and consistency, so much better for ensuring on-time delivery of quality products and services and forecasting quarterly earnings. Dutifully, we show up to work the same time each morning in khakis and polo shirts, conforming to the “business casual” dress codes.

But is this really the best way to run our businesses?

Maybe we have it exactly wrong.

Maybe we should all be wildly different from each other in every way, down to the way in which we get our work done.  » Read More

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: "The Good News about Greg Smith’s New York Times resignation letter from Goldman Sachs" by Greg Link co-author of "Smart Trust: Creating Posperity, Energy, and Joy in a Low-Trust World."

Source: Amazon.com

Greg Smith’s resignation letter from Goldman Sachs

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[GS  Loading...      ()   ] published in The New York Times

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[NYT  Loading...      ()   ] has happily opened a dialogue about the significance of trust in the workplace—whether toxic, transformational, or somewhere in between.

It draws attention to the disparity in perception by various stakeholders of the observable behavior of organizations. This disparity is caused by each stakeholder having a unique view of an organization’s level of trust based on their specific experience.

For example, while Smith illuminates many egregious signs of a toxic low trust culture, Goldman’s defenders point out that the sophisticated customers of Goldman are not naive neophytes. They must trust the benefits of Goldman’s expertise and feel their direct experience of the way they are treated is acceptable. They do not see the behind-the-scenes disrespect of an overzealous sales force abusing customers described by Smith. They experience the self-serving coddling of sales people determined to make another sale. Smith’s alleged breach of trust by selling products known to not be in the customers best interest is invisible to the customer--in the SHORT run.  » Read More

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: Engineering Happiness by Rakesh Sarin co-author with Manel Baucells of "Engineering Happiness: A New Approach for Building a Joyful Life."

It was an equation that allowed us to travel to the moon and changed the world. We will describe an equation that has the potential to change the human condition by paving the way to a happier world.

To be happy is a basic human desire. Happy people tend to be healthier, live longer, and have better social relationships. Happy employees tend to be more productive. Happy customers are likely to be more loyal and ultimately buy more.

So the question is: how do we become happier?  » Read More

BOOK EXCERPT: The following is an excerpt from David Casullo’s new book,"Leading the High Energy Culture: What the Best CEOs Do to Create an Atmosphere Where Employees Flourish" (McGraw Hill).

Source: Amazon

In my 27-year career in business, and even before this, growing up in a small town, I’ve always been drawn to leaders who energize me—truly great leaders who share a seemingly intrinsic quality that envelops their being with pure energy in such a way that people around them find themselves energized as well.

This book is for you whether you are a highly accomplished leader, perhaps the CEO of a large company, or an emerging leader who wants to understand how the best leaders infuse valuable energy into their organization.

This book will tap the power of the resonating energy inside you—an asset that when leveraged will propel you personally to new heights of leadership success. As important, when your amplified energy flows through your organization, your business and your people flourish.

This book is a step-by-step process that explains how to drive your amplified energy into your culture to make your organization a “high-energy culture.”   » Read More

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: The Apple Store’s Five Steps of Service by Carmine Gallo author, "The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty."

Since it opened its first store on May 19, 2001, Apple has redefined the customer experience and built unprecedented customer loyalty. A big part of Apple’s success is its commitment to training all of its employees to follow the “five steps of service” in every interaction. These five steps are so effective they will work for almost any business in any category.

The steps are outlined by the acronym A-P-P-L-E.  » Read More

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: 'Want to Offer Great Service? Stop Trying so Hard' by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss are the authors of "Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of your Business."

What does it take to deliver great service? That’s the question that fuels our work, and that has challenged us for more than a decade.

We live in a service economy. We give more of our money to companies that get service right. We make serious commitments to take care of our customers, and yet we’re still, for the most part, falling short. Service excellence is rare.

Source: Cave Henricks Communications

Here’s our take on the disconnect: it’s not about trying harder or deciding the customer is always right. It’s about setting up employees to produce great service casually, as a daily routine. It’s about embedding exceptional service into the very blueprints of a business model.

We break this process down into four categories, which we call the Four Service Truths.

Outstanding service businesses have internalized these truths on their way to producing reliable excellence:

1. You can’t be good at everything. There are tradeoffs in every great service offering. Take the Mayo Clinic. Mayo excels by giving its patients what they want most: immediate access, often same-day access, to world-class care. Ah, but there’s a catch. In exchange for access, patients are asked to give up control over which physician they see. Mayo’s customers are happy to make this deal because they value access much more highly than control. That’s the essence of this truth. Excellence requires underperforming on the dimensions your customers value least so that you can overperform on the dimensions your customers value most. It requires the willingness to be bad in the service of great.  » Read More

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: Precarious Perch by Barbara Kellerman, author of "The End of Leadership."

Source: Amazon

Our fixation is on leaders.

We assume that they have the keys to the kingdom, that they have most if not all of the power and influence, and that they make the decisions that most matter.

Wrong.

The fact is that leaders are increasingly vulnerable to forces beyond their control – and that followers are increasingly more entitled, emboldened, and empowered. Leaders, in short, are in decline, followers are on the rise.

It seems a paradox. On the one hand it’s contrary to conventional wisdom.

In fact over the last forty years we have built an entire industry – I call it the leadership industry – on the proposition that learning to lead is a path to personal as well as professional fulfillment, and a medium, the medium for achievement. But on the other hand not a day goes by that fails to attest yet again to the shifting balance between leaders and followers – leaders growing weaker and followers stronger. It is everywhere in evidence: at home and abroad, in business and government, leaders buffeted by others who threaten their position.

What accounts for this change?  » Read More

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: John R. Lott, Jr. Co-author of "Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future."

The recovery has been painfully slow, and Americans naturally look for the silver lining in new economic numbers. Yet, thirty-three months since the "recovery" officially started, and the unemployment rate still hasn’t fallen below 8.3 percent. Unfortunately, the recent “good news” on the drop in initial unemployment insurance claims and job number increases don’t mean what reporters think they mean.

Source: Amazon

Consider the statistic on initial unemployment insurance claims. It held at 348,000 recently, remaining consistently below 400,000 since the beginning of December.

Now, there has been a rule of thumb that jobless claims below that magic number means more jobs. For instance, the Wall Street Journal recently wrote: “Analysts generally believe the economy is adding jobs when jobless claims are consistently below 400,000.”

But forecasting the number of people employed by focusing on new people filing for unemployment insurance is like guessing a pool’s water level by measuring how much flows out but ignoring the rate at which water is being added. It only makes sense if the amount of water flowing into the pool hasn’t changed.

Sadly, that isn’t the case. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has estimated the number of new hires each month since December 2000. From that date to when the recent recession that started in December 2007, 5.1 million Americans were hired on average each month. During the recession, that number dropped substantially, with the average falling to 4.4 million hires per month. In December 2008, just before Obama took office, only 4.1 million Americans were hired.  » Read More