Evil Plans

I've always believed that most business books never should have been written.  Instead, the ideas in the book could have been summed up in a couple of blog posts or a long-form article.  I prefer to digest business content in the form of a blog rather than a book.  Too often business books are stuffed with superfluous examples and repetitive fluff in an effort to turn a somewhat simple concept into a 300 page, $14.99 book.  Like most people that are apt to read a business book, I don't have the time or the desire to read a lot of fluff.

Hugh Macleod, the blogger, artist, and writer must share this opinion.  He's an excellent business writer.  He writes a bit like he's paranoid that the reader is going to get bored.  He knows how to write books for people that are busy.  He makes short and simple points (often with a real life example) and moves onto the next thing.  He almost forces you to read faster than you normally would.  He did this extremely well in his first book, Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity.  Ignore Everybody was one of the best business books I've ever read.  It's full of insightful ideas that are communicated concisely, without the fluff.  I wrote a post on Ignore Everybody a while back where I called out some of the best tidbits.  I highly recommend reading Ignore Everybody.

Over the weekend, I finished reading Hugh's latest book, Evil Plans: Having Fun on the way to World Domination.  While not as insightful as his first, it's just as inspiring.  In short, Hugh asks his readers to develop and act on an Evil Plan.  What's an Evil Plan?  Hugh sums it up well in this line from the book:

"It has never been easier to make a great living doing what you love. But to make it happen, first you need an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs to get away from lousy bosses, from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate, and ACTUALLY start doing something they love, something that matters. Life is short."

The book is written with a sense of urgency that suggests that the writer has some personal interest in getting you to move on your plan.  Now.

The book is a great reminder that with nothing but a laptop and an internet connection, we all have the power to shape our lives and careers and link up what we do each day with what we love and are passionate about.

If you're looking for a bit of inspiration to get off your butt and start moving on what you love, I'd recommend picking up a copy of Evil Plans.  It won't be a waste of time and I guarantee that it'll at least make you challenge whether or not you should be working on what you're working on.

Poke the Box

I just finished reading Seth Godin’s new book, Poke the Box.  Much like the book, I'll try to keep my thoughts concise -- it's only 96 pages.

Like most of Seth’s books -- I’ve read most if not all of them-- Poke the Box promotes a very simple concept.  Seth probably could’ve communicated what he was trying to communicate in a couple of blog posts; actually, he could’ve summed it up in a word: “Go!”

Poke the Box means make change, make it happen, start, don’t wait, ship!  Shipping is what matters.

It was a  quick read and I’d recommend it if you have a few hours to kill on a plane or if you're feeling like you could use a good kick in the pants.  The book wasn’t all that insightful -- most of what Seth had to say most of us already know,  but it was filled with good reminders that can help motivate.

For me, the two most notable reminders were:

1. Get started and iterate like crazy.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is simply move.
2. Most initiatives don’t work so don’t be afraid of failure and don‘t get frustrated when they don‘t work.  Real failure is when we don't start.

Of course sometimes the hardest thing about starting is knowing when to quit.  Seth tried to answer that a few years ago in The Dip.

All in all, a solid, quick read.

The Management Myth

The management consulting business has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Something just doesn't add up. Matthew Stewart just wrote a book about this called the Management Myth, where he chronicles his time as a management consultant at a major firm. I think these two quotes from the book sum up my confusion nicely.

Can you think of anything less improbable than taking the world's most successful firms, leaders in their businesses, and hiring people just fresh out of school and telling them how to run their businesses, and they are willing to pay millions of dollars for their advice?

With my overpriced advisory services and profligate spending on luxury travel, I was a grossly inefficient efficiency expert, a parody of economic virtue.

Ignore Everybody

I ordered Hugh Macleod's new book Ignore Everybody from Amazon and read it cover to cover in one sitting after getting home from work tonight.  Great book.  There were a lot of really cool ideas and observations that I felt I could really relate to.  Some of his lines about New York were right on. ..

Anyway, here are the lines I liked the most and I hope I don't forget.

• ...most team members are far more concerned with the power relationships going on inside their immediate professional circle than with what may be actually interesting and useful to the customer.
• Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.  You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven.  But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed and all you will feel is emptiness.
• Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me.  Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on a antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me.
• Art suffers the moment people start paying for it.
• Never try to sell a meteor to a Dinosaur.  It wastes your time and annoys the Dinosaur.
• Quality isn’t Job One.  Being totally f***ing amazing is Job One.
• It’s hard to sell if nobody has bought in.
• Stay ahead of the culture by creating the culture.
• Nobody moves to Ne w York in order to survive.  Of course that’s what most of them end up doing.
• A lot of people in business say they have twenty years experience, when in fact they only have one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.
• The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
• "I don’t need a lot to be happy," said Eric.  "Just enough to pay the rent and enjoy a beer with my friends.  I don't think that’s asking for too much."  Eric was obviously a deranged lunatic.
• Work hard.  Keep at it.  Live simply and quietly.  Remain humble.  Stay positive.  Create your own luck.  Be nice.  Be polite.

Bloglines

I visit Bloglines more than any other website. Probably 3 or 4 times a day.

Bloglines is a free service that aggregates all of my favorite blogs onto one page for easy reading. They're plenty of these sites but Blogines is a very user friendly site that can be easily navigated on my laptop or BlackBerry. I'm not sure how they make money (my guess is they're charging for premium services or will be soon) but if you read a lot of blogs like I do they're definitely worth checking out.

Meatball Sundae - Initial thoughts

I just finished reading Seth Godin's new book, "Meatball Sundae."  It was excellent and I have a lot of thoughts on it that I'm sure I'll post over the next couple of weeks.

The book brought to mind a great podcast the other day from the Harvard Business Review.  It was an interview with a professor from Columbia's business school (I think).  Anyway, his thesis seemed to be an attack on Seth's thesis -- though I'm certain this wasn't his intent.  For the record, Seth's thesis goes something like this...

Forget about interruption-based marketing.  Instead build what he calls a "permission asset."  That is, build a list of people that want to hear from you.  How do you build this list?  Basically through word of mouth.  How do you get word of mouth?  Build a product that is "remarkable" -- i.e. something that people will make a remark about.

I love this theory.  I love it.  I have to admit, though, that this seems a little bit too easy.  And that is the point that this professor trying to make.  That is, while Seth's theory is nice, it's not necessarily that easy.  For every example that Seth gives in his new book, from iPods to Send-a-Ball's, there are probably 1,000 ideas that didn't spread.  The Columbia professors theory combines a little bit of interruption-based marketing with an easy way for people to spread the word to dramatically increase the chances of a win.

More on this in the coming days...in the meantime, I should include a link to Seth's blog.  He's a large inspiration for this one.