BizBook Nuggets

Are You Behind Your Peers?

If you haven't read these 15 business books, then you are behind the learning curve!

Hey, don't say I didn't warn you. It's not my list, although I have to say I agree with them.

Here's what three enterprising and well-read professionals are saying about what you should be reading: The Essential 15 Download Page, comes to you from 15 Minute Business Books.

Ken Wilbur's A Theory of Everything

I always get a little afraid of books with titles like A Theory of Everything...how can they possibly know about everything? But Ken Wilbur has a reputation for cutting edge ideas. And I have a curiosity about anybody who tries to bring everything together in an attempt to integrate. I encourage you to read this book.

Furthermore, I have such great respect for the book review services being provided by Coen de Groot and Anthony Warren over at Mentor Coaches International that I will ask you to go read their excellent review of Wilbur's book A Theory of Everything over on that site.

While you're there, you might want to subscribe to their book review service, it's excellent.

Secrets of Running a Home Business

If you're like me, you're blessed with being able to work from home, thanks to computers and the World Wide Web. More and more people are able to make the transition to having their home base truly a home base, something we weren't able to do 5-10 years ago.

Of course there are challenges: it requires discipline and focus. Many times I struggle with this. When that happens, other things at home look more inviting. Even doing laundry is appealing when I am faced with writing an article I feel is dry or pedantic.

The worse time for me is when the weather is beautiful (and it happens a lot here in Del Mar, CA!). The call of a friend for a tennis match often takes priority. After all, exercise is important for both the body and soul, I rationalize.

When anything looks better to me than writing, we call it "shaving the yak!" The expression comes from Seth Godin, in one of his posts too long ago, which means that when you have a piece of work to do, you start doing something else around the house, and before you know it, you're down at the zoo shaving yaks.

Alas, I digress. All this to tell you we've got answers to the home-based business dance. Our friend and expert Des Walsh from Thinking Home Business blog, is going to talk Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET on our Conversations with Experts telecall. You don't have to pay a penny to hear his secrets, but you do have to register.

Here's what it's all about:

Are You Running a Business, or Running Around?
Wednesday, July 27, 2005, 8:30 p.m. ET - FREE
Guest Expert: Des Walsh of Thinking Home Business and featured in the Build a Better Blog System

Home based business will in the not too distant future be the preferred model for providing the income to achieve an abundant, fully self-actualised life. For many of us it is already just that or fast becoming so. However, a lot of people who work from home do not feel the sort of pride and exuberance you might expect if home based business is that great a model.

A real business owner thinks strategically, not just responding to crises, and is hungry for profit (some home based ‘business owners’ find this a shocking phrase). A real business owner understands that consistency and service will be rewarded. (I am not talking about people whose ‘home business’ is actually just a hobby and they’re happy with that.)

Des Walsh is a business coach and blogging evangelist. A former senior executive in the Australian government service and a home based consultant and training adviser for business and government since 1988, Des helps business owners and entrepreneurs excel in playing the ‘inner game’ on their path to success.

In his popular blog – Thinking Home Business – Des shares experience and practical tips for the thinking home business owner. He is writing a guide for first time business bloggers. Home is Australia’s Gold Coast.

Register:  www.ConversationsWithExperts.com

Conversations with Experts: How to Build Your Business On and Off-line
Hosted by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff.

Conversations with Experts is sponsored by Build a Better Blog System.

The First 90 Days

The actions you take during your first three months in new job will spell success or failure. So begins the introduction to the book The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins. This book is important to anyone at any level who is changing jobs either within an organization, or coming into a new company.

Business professor Watkins, co-author of Right From the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role, lays out a "standard framework" for leadership transitions, based on "five fundamental propositions," "ten key challenges," and a four-fold typology of situations that new managers find themselves in. He balances theory with practical steps you can take including questions you need to ask to get off on the right foot.

This book is not only relevant on the individual level. This transition process for new managers happens so often that it should be handled with more attention and focus by organizations. Often, there is a sink or swim approach that can be devastating to careers and to the organization.

This book has sold over 100K copies in just over a year on the market, was on the BusinessWeek bestseller list for 7 months in 2004, and is one of Harvard Business School Press' best selling books.

Recommended reading for anyone who coaches leaders. Consider this: each year over half a million managers enter new positions in Fortune 500 companies alone. Managers spend an average of four years in a given position. High potential leaders in the midsenior ranks have a shorter average time in position: 2 1/2 to 3 years. All leadership development programs should include systems for approaching job transitions. This book is a valuable manual for those processes.

Biz School Summer Reading List

Here's what Business Week reports biz school students are voting best summer reads:

• The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
• The Travels of a T-Shirt In the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change At Work by Debra Meyerson
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffery Sachs
• A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

I don't know about the Harry Potter thing, but love these other selections. 

Your biz book worm isn't taking any holiday time off this summer, as living in beautiful Del Mar CA is vacation enough for me. Instead I am immersing myself in a bunch of books on the brain, including Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind, and some even better ones by Daniel Schacter, The Seven  Sins of Memory, How the mind Forgets and Remembers, and Richard Restak's The New Brain.

Happy summer reading to you, my BizBook Nugget readers!

Listen to Interview on PsychJourney

I was recently interviewed by Deborah Harper of PsychJourneys about marketing and why more professionals weren't using ezines or blogs to get clients.

You can listen to to the interview here: Download PatsiInterview-070805-0.mp3 (10586.4K)

Wondering about Podcasting?

Don't be afraid to ask. Podcasting mysteries will be revealed with Andy Wibbels of Easy Bake Weblogs fame on our Conversations with Experts call. Here's the scoop:

Podcasting Exposed!   
Wednesday, July 13, 2005, 8:30 p.m. ET - FREE
Guest Expert:  Andy Wibbels of Easy Bake Weblogs

What is podcasting? How does it work? Why would you use it? Blogger and podcaster Andy Wibbels takes you through the basics of how podcasting works and how businesses can use it to get a direct channel to their prospects and clients.

Andy Wibbels is creator of the Easy Bake Weblogs and has helped business all over the world use blogs to market and promote their business. He is also the leader of Podasting Bootcamp.

Register:  www.ConversationsWithExperts.com

Conversations with Experts: How to Build Your Business On and Off-line
Hosted by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff.

Conversations with Experts is sponsored by Build a Better Blog System.

The Way Your Mind Works

Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson is a great read for anyone. (Scribner, 2004)

Or to be more precise and in the words of the back cover, it "speaks to brain buffs, self-obsessed neurotics, barstool psychologists, mystified parents, grumpy spouses, exasperated managers, and anyone who enjoys speculating and gossiping about the motivations and behaviors of other human beings."

If you don't fit into one of those categories, then leave this blog immediately and go read something else. I for one fit into all of those categories.

What makes this different from other books about the brain (and there are so many right now as science has been revealing the inner-workings of this organ at a rapid pace in the last 10 years), is that Johnson relates the new neuroscience discoveries to simple everyday experiences. Granted, they are his own experiences, but we can all relate.

For example, he opens the book with his experience of seeing his brain waves charted by a neurofeedback machine. Then he cracks a joke. The brain wave spikes and subsequent adrenaline rush were charting his personal feelings of glee. Johnson continues his journey into the inner workings of his mind through researching what goes on when we experience near-death fear, parental bliss, and falling in love.

He is not academic, yet is well-researched. He has a gift for translating the somewhat complicated language of brain parts and chemistry into stories we can all understand.

What has this book got to do with Business Books? Simply that in order to succeed at work, or in life, we are required to have an understanding of our thinking, feeling and actions, as well as an understanding of people in our environments.

Making the leap from amygdala stimulus (for example, anger) to good sound judgment (a neocortical function) is relevant to any living human being who has ever wondered how they can experience two things at once and still make the right decision.

Steven Johnson is author of Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, which is next on my list to read! Great title for a book, and intriguing. He has written other books, (Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software; Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate) with titles that spark my interest.

To read more about his books, please visit my new blog, www.brain-fx.com. Or see the reviews on Amazon.com.

Great Review of The Fifth Discipline

Coen de Groot of Mentor Coaches offers a terrific review service called Books for Coaches, and in particular offers this thorough review of Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

To read the entire review go here. Here's a couple of paragraphs that Coen reports on the book:

Originally published in 1990, the Fifth Discipline is much honoured in management discussion and yet often ignored in management practice. Ironically it is because it's about big business that it is both known yet under-utilised. Running a big business is different to running a small business. A major difference is that of the difficulty of maintaining vision and disseminating learning of solutions throughout the organisation.

Instead what happens is that each part of the organisation creates a reactive solution to a problem and moves on. Consequently new problems are created and there is no learning going on to speed up progress. Since many CEOs are judged on quarterly results, there is a pressure to be constantly reactive. Organisations which evolve into Learning Organisations will have a better future.

The Fifth Discipline is a book that divides readers into for and against. Our view is that it stands the test of time and still has some important things to say. It may not be the first choice for personal coaches but executive coaches with corporate clients should view it as required reading. Why? Because it identifies areas that need attention in large organisations and many of the clients will have read the book or use concepts from it.

Coen is from the UK, which accounts for spelling organizations with an 's'... I probably needn't have clarified, but I know some readers are sticklers for spelling! I offer thanks to Coen and to his associate Anthony Warren. Evidently Coen reads, and Anthony writes the reviews based on Coen's input. Nice review service! I recommend BizBook Nuggets readers to sign up and subscribe to their book review service for coaches by sending an email to BooksForCoaches-request@forcoaches.com, and put 'subscribe' in the subject line. You know the drill by now, of course.

Here's Bill Gates' CEO Reading List

Posted 7-1-05, at http://www.800ceoread.com/blog/

What Bill Says CEOs Should Be Reading
Bill Gates held his annual CEO Summit last month.

There were five books recommended to the attendees:

The Trendmaster's Guide: Get A Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next by Robyn Waters

Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown

FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld

MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. Macmillan

Whenever I see a book title on several people's recommended list more than 3 times in a few weeks, I pay attention and try to get a copy. The one book that keeps coming up is Blue Ocean.

Anyone else ready to recommend my next Amazon purchases?