I just put down SWAT – Seize the Accomplishment (Amazon affiliate link) by Timothy L. Johnson….and now want to pick it back up and read it again.  It’s that good.

I received the book as a review copy from the author…but don’t let that get in the way of believing me when i say that this business fable is an excellent one.

SWAT is an acronym for “Systems Working All Together”…but it also helps set the stage for the story in the book.

The storyline of this book is a good one and keeps the concepts moving forward quickly. In the story, a team lead has a difficult task to work through and turns to his best friend and cousin…who happens to be a SWAT commander.

The main character, Toby, spends time with his SWAT commander cousin and learns the systems thinking concepts that make SWAT teams successful.

The concepts are described perfectly and in a manner that makes it easy to comprehend and easy to understand how you might apply them to the problems your currently facing.

I’ve read quite a few systems thinking books but nothing as entertaining as this.   While this isn’t nearly as comprehensive as Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, Timothy Johnson’s put together a great little book that can help to introduce the systems thinking concepts quickly and easily.

Grab this book from your favorite bookseller today..Amazon has it for $14.95.

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• SWAT. Systems working all together. Timothy L. Johnson. (regnordman.com)

A few weeks ago I received Leadership Test: Will You Pass? (amazon affiliate link) by Timothy R. Clark, Ph.D. to review

The book is a small one (~99 pages in total) but packed with some interesting content.   Clark uses a business fable to describe leadership and what makes up a good leader.

I’m a HUGE fan of stories and storytelling as a means to convey knowledge and I love these types of books.   Obviously other folks enjoy these types of books as well (think Patrick Lencioni and his wonderful books).

The story in this book is an excellent one. It’s well written and the plot-line is pretty good and keeps you turning the pages. While the story is good, the lessons contained with the book are even better.  After reading the book, I didn’t feel as though I’d read a business book about leadership…I felt like I read an interesting story about someone learning to lead.

I’d recommend this book to everyone with any interest in leadership….and I’m not just saying that because I was sent this as a review from the author.  It’s a great little book.

I asked “What’s your focus?” last week and now I wanted to ask another question: What’s your passion?

I picked up Gary Vayernerchuk’s book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion over the weekend and, while the book isn’t a great piece of literature, it does provide a good kick in the pants.

This book is a good one for anyone trying to figure out how to make something more of their lives.   Reading this book won’t make you rich overnight.  It won’t turn you into a social media ‘god’.  It won’t do a lot of things.

What does it do? This book doesn’t provide a recipe for success but it does provide a roadmap for those people who know they want to go somewhere but aren’t quite sure how to get there.

If you want to do something different with your life but don’t really know how to get started, take a look at this book.  You’ll get a swift kick in the pants.  Read this book and think about the question I asked “What’s your passion?”   Find the answer to that question and then use the tools and methods described in this book and you might just be able to change your life.

If you’d like to see some other reviews of this book, take a look at the following reviews:

• A conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk (beingpeterkim.com)
• Crush It! A book review (wineconversation.com)
• Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk (kevineikenberry.com)
• Crush It! (800ceoread.com)
• Crush It – A Video Book Review (chrisbrogan.com)
• CRUSH IT! by Gary Vaynerchuk — A Review (mediabistro.com)

Just finished reading Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges

My review in two words: Excellent book!

Whether you are an expert in the Enterprise 2.0 world or just a beginner, this book has something for you. Whether you believe in Enterprise 2.0 or not, this book has some excellent concepts that can be used to help bring social tools into the enterprise.

The book is split into two parts with the Part 1 covering the tools of Enterprise 2.0 and Part 2 discussing how to successfully utilize social tools within the enterprise.

Part 1 provides a very good overview of the tools and techniques of Enterprise 2.0 as well as some real-world case studies of companies that have implemented Web 2.0 platforms.  These companies are extremely diverse running the gamut from government agencies to start-ups and the information provided by McAfee shows real-world usage of Web 2.0 within enterprises.

Part 2 is where the really good stuff happens.  This is where McAfee shines.  This is the stuff that every CEO, COO, CIO and CMO should read and digest.   This is the place where you get to see some strategies for using social tools within the enterprise.    When you read this book make, sure you pay attention to the Six Organizational Strategies starting on page 179.  Good stuff.

Will this book give you the recipe for successful use of Enterprise 2.0?  No.  Will this book make your Enterprise 2.0 project(s) successful?  Maybe. Maybe not. What this book will do is give you some ideas on how to introduce Enterprise 2.0 into your organization and give you some tips on make it successful.

So…let’s take a step away from the book for a minute and look at the topic itself.  Enterprise 2.0.  Great name but one that has been much maligned.  The topic has caused a lot of debate since being introduced.  For some examples, go read Dennis Howlett’s article titled “Enterprise 2.0 – the non-debate” and then read Mark Fidelman’s response on CloudAve titled “Enterprise 2.0 Caffeine: Let’s debunk the non-debate” to get some flavor of the various debate’s happening out there on the topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 in the comments.

With all of this debate, or non-debates as some would say,  let’s look at McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals.

McAfee continues with his definition when he writes:

Enterprise 2.0, then, is about how organizations use the newly available ESSP’s [emergent social software platforms] to do their work better

With those definitions in mind, let’s revisit one of the main arguments against Enterprise 2.0 –> The value of Social Media / Enterprise 2.0 cannot be determined.  In fact, there are many (Howlett included) that say social media tools are worthless to the organization.

My response to this argument is a simple one:

How valuable is the knowledge of an employee?  How valuable is the knowledge of 10, 100 or 1000 employees? Can you place value on that knowledge?  Maybe.  Maybe not. That doesn’t mean that trying to harness that knowledge is worthless.  So why would using tools to harness that knowledge be worthless?

I can understand some of the arguments of folks out there against Enterprise 2.0.  There are a lot of buzzwords floating about and a lot of hype around the subject, but if you take the lessons from this book to heart, you’ll do more than buy into the hype…you’ll give your organization an opportunity to succeed by really harnessing the expertise, experiences and value of your organizational knowledge.

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I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by IDEO CEO Tim Brown through the Amazon Vine program….and I’m glad I did.

If you take a look at some of the Pre-release copy reviews of this book on Amazon you’ll see a few folks bashing the book because it doesn’t tell the reader much Design or Design Thinking and spends much of its time promoting IDEO.

I disagree wholeheartedly with those comments.

While this book does promote IDEO’s rich history and successes, the book does a great deal to introduce the concept of Design Thinking to the reader. If you’re a long-time practitioner of design thinking, this book may not be for you…if you aren’t, this book is perfect.

What is Design Thinking?

Comparing Design to Design Thinking, Brown provides the following definition:

The evolution from Design to Design Thinking is the story of eveolution from the creation of products to the analysis of the relationship between people and products, and from there to the relationship between people and people.

Great stuff.  I love Design Thinking…I think I’ve been a design thinker my whole life.

Another passage that helps to describe/define Design Thinking is:

The mission of design thinking is to translate observations into insights and insights into products and services that will improve lives.

Design thinking is the interplay of people and product/process.   When you use a design thinking approach you take the entire environment into consideration when designing a process or product.  Rather than take a look at a few possibilities for a design of a bike (in the case of the Shimano bike story in the book) and build a bike, the design thinker looks at the broader picture and environment to few new choices and possibilities.

If you have an interest in Design Thinking or just want to know more about the topic, get this book now.  If you’re an academic who wants to see case studies of design thinking in action that show success and failure, perhaps this isn’t the book for you.

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I was lucky enough to receive a pre-release copy of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith but I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to get through it until now.

Have you ever wondered how Chris Brogan became Chris Brogan (outside of Chris’ parents conceiving him and birthing him)?  This book will give you the system that Chris has used (and perhaps Julien as well…I’m not that familiar with Julien’s background and experiences) to build up his community.

In addition to outlining the tools & a systems, this book does a wonderful job of explaining why trust is so important today (hint…it’s because we are all human).  The world today is full of marketers, pitchmen (and women), scammers and con artists and the ability of these folks to reach new people is magnified with the use of the Internet.   Building trust is key for any person or organization to be able to break through the noise of spam and scams to build up their community.

Any company in the world can benefit greatly from the information presented in this book. Companies today must provide much more intimate messages to their communities….the blast messaging of the past no longer works.   Chris & Julien sum this up beautifully with a passage on page 259:

Brands will need to earn a place in our heads with a sense of personal intimacy as well as the consistent messaging they’ve been using to get us to trust them.

Good stuff. This one sentence sums up the entire reason for organizations and people to read this book and practice the art & science of the Trust Agent.

At the end of the day, this book isn’t about the tools and systems that you can use…it’s a treatise on being human.  Treat people well, help them without expecting something in return and give back to the community at large.  Do this and you’ll become a Trust Agent.

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I received the book Two Weeks to a Breakthrough: How to Zoom Toward Your Goal in 14 Days or Less from Lisa Haneberg a few weeks ago as a gift from Lisa (thank you Lisa!).

This is an awesome book.  Go buy it now.

You still here?

Ok…I’ll tell you more.

Unlike many other books with similar titles that you find on the self-help aisle of the bookstore, this book is grounded in cold, hard facts and truths.

The two weeks that Lisa talks about is basically the length of time it takes for you to create a habit and stick to it.

The book provides a base of knowledge for the reader to help get your mind into the right frame to make a breakthrough. Not only do you think about things that you can do to reach that breakthrough, you take all the steps necessary to reach that breakthrough.

Absolutely great book.  Spend $17 and read this book…it could change your life.

I just finished Toy Box Leadership: Leadership Lessons from the Toys You Loved as a Child…somewhat flawed but a good book nonetheless.

Flawed may be a bad word to use for this book.  The idea is a great one (more on it later) but the narratives about the lessons could have been stronger.   In addition, I noticed some editorial issues (spelling, words out of order, etc) which I wholely attribute to the publisher / editor for not catching.

That said, I love the ideas presented in this book.

Think back to the toys you had as a kid. Think about LEGO, Play-Doh, Mr Potato Head, the Yo-Yo…all those great toys that kept us entertained for hours. The authors of the book argue that we can learn lessons in leadership from these toys.

For Example:

• LEGO – using the idea of LEGO bricks, the authors present the idea of connectedness.  Connecting the right people together in business is essential.  Connecting the right businesses together is also important.
• Play-Doh – This great toy can be shaped and made into anything.  The same can be true of organizations…a great leader can shape the organization to meet future goals.  There may need to be lots of different experiments done to find the right shape, but it can be done.
• Rubik’s Cube -  The author’s use the Rubik’s Cube as a toy that describes ethics. While I tend to disagree with that premise, it does make a great toy to demonstrate strategy & tactics.  You know where you want to get to (all sides with same colors) and you have to determine the tactics to get there (which turns to make and in what order).

If you are anything like me, you’ve probably played with all the toys in this book and can relate to the lessons learned…perhaps you’ll realize you did learn something while ‘goofing off’ as a kid

While not perfect, I’d suggest this book to anyone looking for new ways to think about leadership, strategy & business.

I just finished reading Succession: Are You Ready? (Memo to the Ceo) by Marshall Goldsmith.

While the subject was interesting, I think the audience for this book is extremely narrow for it to be of much interest to a large audience.

When I first noticed this book, I thought that there might be some information for non-CEO’s looking for succession planning tips but it is strictly focused on the CEO (as noted by the title). While CEO succession is an important topic, the ideas behind succession planning can be very similar regardless of the level of the person (CEO, VP, etc) but most of the advice would be hard to apply elsewhere.

I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more substance to this book. Most of the information would be hard to use in a different context, which is sad.

While its an interesting read, it won’t be very applicable to most readers.

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I just finished reading The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything and have to say that I really enjoyed it.

While the book spends a little too much time in the realm of ‘celebrity worship’ (i.e., there are LOT of celebrities that have found ‘the element’ apparently), the book is still a very good read.

The basic premise is that every person has their own ‘Element’ that they fit the best into.  What is the element?  Basically, the Element is the location where a person’s passion, interests and natural abilities intersect.

The Element is something that a person has to find for themselves. Schools can’t teach a child to find their element.  In fact, many schools and parents do the opposite…they try to drive children into the ’safe’ areas for careers and educational study.

The book contains a lot of stories of people that have found their ‘Element’.  Many of these stories are of people who’ve gone against the ‘normal’ educational route to become their own person.

That said, this book does not slam modern education and teachers. From all accounts, Sir Ken Robinson is very much pro-education and pro-teacher.  What the book does do well is provide examples and discussion around the current state of educational theory and what it is doing wrong.

What is current education theory and practice doing wrong?  Easy…we are teaching everyone the same thing and using standardized testing to examine what has been learned.  In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than killing the creativity of a child by forcing them to fit into an educational and cultural mold.

The book is an easy read and highly recommended to anyone interested in the ideas of creativity and passion and educational ideas.

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