Greatest Hits Blog

The one-sentence summary

It’s all about the people, not the technology – small pieces loosely joined into a conversation of equals.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book is a manager’s guide to the social web. It’s not about the technology – it’s how people behave and how companies should respond.

• It has 45 pithy chapters that you can read in any sequence, and it plucks out themes that nail exactly what the social web is all about. These include:

1. It’s the ultimate in democracy – anyone can have a view
2. You leave a trace – that’s great for storing knowledge, and bad if you don’t consider what you’re saying
3. It’s like evolution on steroids – ideas and knowledge disseminate faster
4. We are writing ourselves into existence – forcing yourself to write online crystallizes thought and helps to rediscover literacy
5. You can’t stop people saying what they want but you can operate a volume control on mob rule
6. The more you give, the more you get – an “ooh that’s interesting” moment is to be articulated and shared
7. Conversations can only take place between equals – dictating or controlling doesn’t work online
8. It’s creatively messy – don’t try to categorise things too much and let them grow naturally
9. The web is essentially small pieces loosely joined
10. The best way to be safe is to be open – true for life in general

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It gives helpful advice on dealing with a boss who doesn’t get it.
• Being strategically tactical involves letting things develop iteratively.
• You can do this by unleashing your Trojan Mice – small initiatives that cost little and can grab a foothold in or on something.
• There is no such thing as staff as conscripts – they are all volunteers now, and ironically can become a company’s best advocates.
• Back to Front ROI: ask what is the ROI of this not happening?
• Radical transparency means assuming that anything generated on a computer is effectively public – being open is actually easier, cheaper, and safer, assuming your company isn’t crooked, in which case the web has served its purpose.
• Social media users are often edglings – people at the edge of things that want to connect.
• If you work in a big corporation, how about using the social web to be an intrapreneur?

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Nothing. This is pithy and on the money.

The one-sentence summary

Most of what you hear about economics and how economies work is rubbish.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book destroys the myths about economies and explains how the world really works. His points, or ‘things’, are:

1.     There is no such thing as a free market (all have some regulations)

2.    Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners (because they all want short-term gain, which is usually detrimental)

3.    Most people in rich countries are paid more than they should be

4.    The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has (by reducing the time needed for household chores and allowing women to work)

5.     Assume the worst about people and you get the worst

6.    Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable

7.     Free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich

8.    Capital has a nationality (transnational corporations always have a national base and mentality)

9.    We do not live in a post-industrial age

10.  The US does not have the highest living standard in the world

11.   Africa is not destined for underdevelopment

12.  Governments can pick winners

13.  Making rich people richer doesn’t make the rest of us richer

14.  US managers are over-priced

15.  People in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than those in rich countries

16.  We are not smart enough to leave things to the market

17.  More education in itself is not going to make a country richer (education makes people live better lives but doesn’t increase productivity)

18.  What is good for General Motors is not necessarily good for the United States (businesses need to be regulated properly)

19.  Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies

20. Equality of opportunity may not be fair

21.  Big government makes people more open to change (a well-designed welfare state can encourage people to take more risks because they have a safety net)

22. Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient (modern efficiencies have made the market more unstable)

23. Good economic policy does not require good economists

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It is in a short, pithy format. Each thing is introduced with  a paragraph on What They tell You followed by What They Don’t Tell You.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Nothing. It’s a good read even for the layperson.

The one-sentence summary

Managing well is about getting things done, and displaying the right behaviour and emotions.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This is what you actually need to do to manage and succeed – the art of making things happen. Managing well is about getting things done, and displaying the right behaviour and emotions.
• You need to be able to evaluate your own management potential, assess team members, and help them discover how they can improve.
• These skills can be divided into three areas:

IQ: rational management (tasks and functions – solve the problem)

EQ: emotional management (individuals and groups – empathise)

PQ: political management (control, power and change – align agendas)

• IQ + EQ + PQ = MQ: your Management Quotient (MQ)
• Pattern recognition helps good operatives to recognise familiar scenarios and know what to do, faster.
• Clever people make things complicated. Really clever people make things simple.
• When managing budgets, apply the 48/52 rule (spend 48% but achieve 52% in the first six months of a year), and sandbag (know where you can cut).
• Type X managers exercise close control and are tough
• Type Y managers delegate and are trusting
• Most people are biased to one type or the other, but the very best managers can apply either style depending on the context.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Nema-washi is Japanese for consensus-based decision making.
• Squeezing the balloon creates the impression of change and/or gain – transfer costs between departments or fiscal years.
• There is no point at which flattery becomes counterproductive.
• An elder of the Bambara tribe in Mali explains the rhythm of life: the first 20 years are about learning, the next 20 about doing, and the last 20 about teaching the next generation. A metaphor for how to manage?
• Change is the land of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
• The random walk of learning from experience can be great or awful, depending on what circumstances occur and how you cope.
• 99% of managers fail to use books or courses to increase their wisdom, usually because they claim to be too busy. This is a mistake.
• There are lots of checklists so you can enact what the author suggests.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Not much. It’s a good handbook written in a clear style.

The one-sentence summary

We can bring more meaning to our lives and help change the world at the same time by turning capitalism upside down – shifting from a profit focus to caring for people, communities, and the planet.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• We can bring more meaning to our lives and help change the world at the same time by turning capitalism upside down.
• This means a shift from a profit focus to caring for people, communities, and the planet.
• Capitalism 24902 is his name for this new approach – that’s the circumference of the earth in miles – something of a euphemism for putting your arms around the world.
• There is no Planet B, so we need to look after what we’ve got.
• It’s not so much about doing good, as doing better.
• Whereas most businesses concentrate on affluent customers, there is a ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’, in which giving poorer people access to products and services at sensible prices represents a massive market.
• Meanwhile, business suffers from a ‘missing middle’, in which small entrepreneurs lack investment because they are too small for large investment and too big for microfinance.
• Social intrapreneurs can have a huge effect by driving socially responsible initiatives inside large companies.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Branson is nicknamed Dr. Yes by his team because when he latches onto an idea he wants to get on with it right away – a good business approach.
• The author is a fan of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory (named after the Greek goddess of the earth), in which the earth is viewed as a living organism. In its current condition, it is sick, so we need to amend our approach to it urgently.
• He disagrees with the old adage that “It’s not personal, it’s business.” Instead, he says that all business is personal, all the time, and we should act accordingly.
• Virgin has a foundation called Virgin Unite. Their philanthropic methods are not simply to give out money willy-nilly. Instead they run it like any other business, making sure that their investments have the best possible social and environmental return, and trying to help ventures be self-sustaining as fast as possible.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is effectively all about Virgin and its activities, so the subject matter can become a little samey after a while.

The one-sentence summary

Companies use lots of tricks to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Companies use lots of tricks to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy.
• These include knowing that babies can hear sounds in the womb, using fear to sell, understanding how addiction affects people, how sex sells, and how peer pressure and celebrity endorsement work.
• There is lots of evidence to show how ‘needs’ are generated: half of six-to–nine year old girls in the USA regularly use lip gloss and lipstick.
• Research shows that fear mixed with a high level of blame, regret, guilt or even a dare translates emotion into action.
• Many people are so addicted to their electronic devices that they feel as though their very identity has been stripped from them if they lose them.
• Oniomania is compulsive or pathological buying, and many people are shopping addicts. The thin line between obsession and addiction is crossed in stages: routine, then the dream stage in which we associate emotional signals with things we don’t need, then habit when we have let it become embedded.
• Nostalgia makes us attached to things we’ve grown up with. Our window of openness shuts by the age of 23, by which time we are set in our ways.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Wabi-sabi is the Japanese term for finding beauty in nature, where we are drawn to small imperfections. Brands exploit this by generating inauthentic authenticity – pretending things are authentic when they have actually been contrived to appear that way.
• Somatic markers are mental shortcuts or bookmarks that link physical cues to emotional states, and brands know how to exploit them.
• In competitive altruism people do socially responsible things not to do good but to show off.
• Data mining companies often know what a consumer is going to do next better than the individuals do themselves.
• Most apps and search engines now provide data direct back to the brands that provide them. These help generate trigger lists that bombard us with offers just when we are about to renew our insurance, for example.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The title sounds dramatic, but when you get into the detail most of what brands do isn’t that heinous or surprising – the author is himself probably guilty of using fear to sell.

Footnote

I have to declare an interest here. A search agency representing the author contacted me pre-publication asking if I would host a video about the book on Greatest Hits. I said maybe, if I could see the video and read the book before deciding. Neither were forthcoming so I declined the offer.