Note: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher / PR firm.

I’m not an Apple ‘fan-boy’ and don’t much like Steve Job’s personality, but I like The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation (amazon affiliate link).  There’s nothing earth shattering here from a leadership standpoint…but its a good ‘inside Apple’ book that highlights some of the key things Jobs has done at Apple to help push the company to the leadership position it has today.

Don’t let the title fool you though…this is not a treatise on Steve Jobs leadership style, philosophy or his theories on leadership.  You won’t find a ‘recipe’ for building the team that builds the next Apple or iPod or Mac but what you will are some really interested stories about Apple’s internal workings, how Jobs built the initial Mac team and what it was like working with/for Steve Jobs.

There are some really interesting stories in the book…but again….don’t think that you’ll pick up this book and, after reading it, lead like Steve Jobs or Apple did.  It doesn’t work that way for any book.

The book is split into four main sections that cover product, talent, organization and sales/marketing and each provide a very interesting insight into how Apple & Jobs approached each area.  There are many lessons to be learned in each section – such as hiring good, passionate people and put them to work with other good, passionate people.  Like I said, nothing earth shattering here but a good read.

My only real concern / gripe about the book is this:  the title makes me think the author is providing insight into Apple & Steve Jobs entire history up until the modern day. The ‘iLeadership’ word makes me think about the modern day Apple.

This seems a bit misleading since lliot hasn’t been directly involved in Apple since the mid to late 1990′s. As far as I could tell, he left Apple before Jobs returned the 2nd time. Nothing wrong with that of course…and there’s really a lot to learn from Apple’s founding and release of the Macintosh…but the title of the book made me think that I’d be reading about stories and learning insights from the modern day Apple. The author does talk about Apple during Jobs’ second stint as CEO but its not quite the same as the the insight garnered  while Elliot was still intimately involved at Apple.

Regardless…this is a good book. It won’t really be on the shelf of leadership scholars – but its a good read for those interested in corporate history, Apple’s history and/or Steve Jobs.

I normally receive a few offers from agents, PR firms, and authors to review their books, and for the most part I accept those offers….and normally I’ll post a review on here.  Thankfully, I’ve enjoyed most of the books I receive…and I enjoyed this one as well.

That said, this book isn’t for everyone.

Quick Review of the book

So…what is this book about?

From the dustcover of the book:

Moving successfully to the executive level requires knowing which behaviors and beliefs to let go, as well as which new ones to pick up.  This confidence building book outlines a program for success based on frank advice from accomplished senior executives around the world on what to do and, just as important, what to avoid.

I’d say that synopsis is accurate.  The book provides a good walk-through of what skills are needed to be successful by senior level executives.

But…are these skills just for senior level executives?  Nope…anyone can pick up these skills to use in their current role…whether that role is as a consultant, senior executive, entrepreneur or student.

For example…Chapter 2 is titled:

Pick up Confidence in your Presence; Let go of Doubt in how you Contribute.

Pretty powerful statement in that title, don’t you think?  Have confidence in your abilities and push out the doubt.

Overall, this is a good book and worth picking up by anyone looking for advice / coaching on things that can be done to improve your career.

If you’ve had a good role model in your career, this book might be a repeat of what you’ve learned from your mentor and/or role model….but there might still be some good nuggets of information in here for you.

If you don’t believe in ‘ business / personal coaches’  and think you’ve got all the skills you need to be a senior level leader / manager in a large organization…move along.  This book won’t have anything of substance for you.

Of course…if you think you’ve got all the skills you need, you’re deluding yourself.  Everyone can learn something new.

The review was a short one but peaked my interest as it points out March’s main question presented in the book.  The question is a simple one…but has a very difficult answer.

This simple question is:

What is, or should be, the role of experience in creating intelligence, particularly in organizations?

Simple question right?

Now…I’ve always been of the mindset that experience is a good thing.  I’ve argued before that I’d normally hire someone with experience over education.  This book makes me rethink that approach in some ways. I’ll still hire for ability over experience any day though.

The book is a short one – only 120 pages of content in a 5″ by 8″ book.  While short, there’s quite a bit of ‘stuff’ in it.

As mentioned above, the main focus of this book is to question whether experience really is the best teacher.    In this book, March argues that experience can be a good teacher if that experience is used as a means to build context for stories and models of history.

The problems with ‘experience as teacher’ is that these experiences can be easily warped, misconstrued and interpreted in many ways.

March does agree that experience can be a good teacher, but isn’t always the best teacher.  Using experiences alone as a learning mechanism can lead a person / organization down the wrong path.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book was that there were no answers put forth by the author.  March realizes that the issue of experience as teacher is a difficult one and there is no ‘right’ answer on how to approach using experiences as learning method.

One caveat  before you run over to Amazon or your local bookseller, know that this book is a bit difficult to read.  It is written much like an academic paper and, as such, as a lot of academic language in it.    Not a bad thing…but it isn’t necessarily a book that you’ll breeze though.  You’ll have to work at reading this book.

That said, I like this book and have added it to my bookshelf to bring down and read again in the future.

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 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)

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.

On the kindle:

• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – Currently Reading
• Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength
• Freakonomics [Revised]
• The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well

Note: I just finished Outliers: The Story of Success on the Kindle…I love the Kindle…Outliers was OK.  I’m not going to do a review on the book…check out these great book reviews for more info on the book.

On my bookshelf:

• Get Slightly Famous: Become a Celebrity in Your Field and Attract More Business with Less Effort, Second Edition
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
• Leading IT Transformation: The Roadmap to Success

I’m hoping to make it through these over the next month. I’m sure my time will be well rewarded. If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to hear your thoughts on them.

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Have you ever realized that your perception was completely wrong about something and felt like a fool?  Well..that’s what happened to me while reading this book.

I’ve always been wary of the book and the message it portrayed…at least the one I thought it portrayed.  Over the years, I’ve read many reviews (good & bad) of the book and heard many people talk about the book in a negative light. I allowed these negative sentiments about the book to keep from reading it.  I wish I’d picked the book up sooner…not because it delivers a resounding message but because it is much different than many of the critics have tried to make it.

Many critics claim the book trys to say ‘do these things and you’ll be successful’…I disagree.  That’s not what I got from the book at all. What I got out of this book was a affirmation of what I’ve been arguing for all along:

People are the most important asset an organization will ever have.

Many critics slam the book (and others like it) because many of the companies listed as ‘great’ aren’t that great these days.  The critics claim that this is ammunition against the book’s message…I disagree…sort of. I agree that many of the organizations outlined in this book are now ‘not so great’, but that isn’t proof that the message of this book is wrong.  Perhaps these organizations lost their way.  Perhaps they stopped focusing on the people and started focusing on the competition or maybe they started worrying about how investors would see them.

I like this book and its message.  I do think the idea of ‘do these things and you’ll be great’ is ridiculous but that shouldn’t stop an organization from looking at how other companies have been successful.

This book, and the many others like it, tend to oversimplify what companies and/or people have done to be successful.  There isn’t one solution that will fit every organization.  There isn’t a ‘recipe’ for success.  You can’t emulate your competitor, you’ve got to be true to yourself and your mission.

That said, the book was a good read and had some very interesting insights.  I may not agree with the entire premise of the book but i think there are some very interesting topics covered.

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That’s what happened when I ran across Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution by Geoffrey Moore.

I heard about this book when it was released in 2005 and always meant to read it…but just never did.  Whilst perusing the local Half-Price Books, I decided I’d pick it up and read it…because I’m a book nerd, there is a dinosaur on the cover and I saw what I thought were fractals in the book!

I got the book home and started reading…and I made it to page xii in the preface to the paperback edition before realizing I may have made a mistake buying this book.  What happened?

I read this passage:

The key message is simple. In order to achieve competitive advantage in a commoditizing market, one must innovate so dramatically as to create definitive seperation between your offers and those of the low-cost commoditizers. That means selecting a vector of innovation that can set you apart and investing intensely along that vector…

Huh?  The key message is simple but the author makes the message difficult to understand.

Why didn’t Mr. Moore just say: To gain competitive advantage, you need to separate yourself from your competitor by choosing an innovation path and investing in that path.

After reading this passage, I was very very skeptical about the rest of the book.  Especially after this passage immediately following the above one:

Extract resource from context to fund core.

What does that mean?

There are some great ideas in this book but those ideas are often overshadowed by verbosity (as shown above) and/or using contextual language that makes little sense outside of the context of the book.

The book does do a good job of outlining the different types of innovation (e.g., disruptive, product,platform, etc). The author does a good job of describing the process of looking at the marketplace to determine how to attack innovation. The framework that Moore lays out is very useful and intriguing and is worth studying in further detail. Again, the author does know his stuff.

That said, the book is a difficult read.  If you are serious about innovation and competitive advantage, you should read this book..but be prepared to re-read many pages/sections.  I found myself stopping every  few paragraphs and trying to comprehend what I just read.

Is there anyone out there that has read this book and thoroughly enjoyed it?   Am I being to harsh on this book?  Could it be that I’m getting cranky in my old age?

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This book is an easy read and is worth picking up if you’re interested in writing.  The book is less of a discussion of ‘how’ to ‘write to learn’ and more of an overview of ‘why’ you should ‘write to learn’.

The book is full of examples of good writing in many different topics.  The majority of the book is passages from authors in various fields surrounded by Zinsser’s commentary on why the passage is worth including.

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book like I did On Writing Well, but it is worth reading for those of you who are interested in the subject.