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The one-sentence summary

In the digital age, a minimum of three media are advisable in a campaign to catch people as media and data flow through their lives (the most successful campaigns now average nine).

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• The title is a nod to Simon Broadbent’s 1970 book Spending Advertising Money
• It is a primer for all things media, based on how media and data flow through our lives (the book is subtitled How To Navigate The Media Flow)
• It contains stacks of research to explain today’s media landscape, and how to deploy communication funds in the most effective way on behalf of brands
• A review of the evolution of the media agency is followed by an overview of the UK’s media market, how to make media funds work more effectively, and a pitch for the strength of each medium from the people that head them up

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The strategic advice is spot on:

1.     Objectives: An objective begins with the word ‘to’ and a strategy begins with ‘by’

2.    Sacrifice: Working out what you won’t do is crucial

3.    Judgement and Intuition: Diagonal thinking combines lateral and linear approaches

4.    Executability: The strategy is useless if it is too fanciful

5.     Integration: the average number of media used by successful campaigns has risen from 2.4 to 9.1 since 1980

• The Theory of Three: consumers can usually trace back to three touch points that made them buy, such as ‘saw the book advertised, saw someone reading it on the train, saw a poster’. This could be any triangulation of stimuli.
• FAIPA is a new planning model:

Fame: awareness and salience

Advocacy: testimonials, reviews and word of mouth

Information: the brand’s functional performance

Price: cost, special offers, and value to the customer

Availability: where and when you can get the product

• Faris Yakob’s Transmedia Planning concept brings the whole thing up to date, explaining the benefit of encouraging audiences to share elements of the brand narrative by generating their own communities and conversations – this is non-linear and cannot be controlled by brands

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Although well-informed, from time to time it slips into sounding like a brochure for the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), who provided much of the data

The one-sentence summary

Gaps in knowledge, alignment and effects can be closed to create a closer fit between strategy and execution, by using learning from successful military leaders.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book is all about how leaders close the gap between plans, actions and results. It contains 10 GBOs (Glimpses of the Blindingly Obvious):
• We are finite beings with limited knowledge and independent wills
• Business is unpredictable-we should expect the unexpected and plan for it
• Within our knowledge constraints we should identify the essentials of a situation and make choices
• For people to take effective action, they must understand what they are to achieve and why
• They should explain what they are going to do and check back with us
• They should assign tasks and specify the boundaries within which they are free to act
• Everyone must have the skill and resources to do what is needed, and the space to take independent decisions when the unexpected occurs
• As the situation changes, everyone should adapt their actions
• People will only show initiative if the organisation supports them
• What has not been made simple cannot be clear and will not get done
• Friction and nonlinearity prevents things happening smoothly in three ways:

1. Knowledge gap – the difference between what we would like to know and what we actually know: leaders need to limit direction to defining and communicating intent

2. Alignment gap – the difference between what we want people to do and what they actually do – allow each level to define how they will achieve the intent of the next level up and ‘backbrief’ – repeat back what they think they are doing

3. Effects gap – between what we expect our actions to achieve and what they do – give individuals freedom to adjust their actions in line with intent)

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• There is a huge difference between stating your higher intent, and people actually doing it. Modern businesses need to set limited direction, and relinquish command and control
• Directed opportunism is mission command in business
• Swing a pendulum above three magnets and it gets pulled in all directions but the pattern is never the same twice – just like business activity
• Top level frustration and lower level confusion usually results in asking for more detail, but this is the wrong thing to do and only makes things worse
• Anti-goals are helpful: ‘whatever you do, do not allow this to happen’
• The best approach is: a short statement of intent; outline of specific tasks; guidance about boundaries

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is heavy on military history so you have to wade through that.

The one-sentence summary

We become blind to the truth because we are hard wired to stick to what we know best, and we then unwittingly use a range of techniques to persuade ourselves it’s okay.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book is all about why we ignore the obvious at our peril, much like the directors of Enron and many others in business, politics and family life.
• Wilful blindness takes many forms, and includes:
• Affinity – we tend to like people like us, which narrows our perspective
• Love is blind – as shown by the partners who don’t want to admit their partners have done something wrong
• Dangerous convictions – those pledged to a cause (a religion, a company) refuse to accept that anything might be wrong
• Mental limits – we can’t see the obvious if we are tired, or if we are doing too many things at once, such as texting and driving
• The Ostrich instruction – many of us ignore or underestimate the truth, such as taking sun beds that can cause cancer just because we want a tan
• Just following orders – this is the excuse usually given by soldiers when a massacre occurs
• Out of sight, out of mind – if we can’t see it, we convince ourselves it isn’t actually happening

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• We become blind to the truth because we are hard wired to stick to what we know best. We even like our own initials better than other letters, which explains why we love having monogrammed clothes.
• Pandora internet radio (banned in the UK) introduces you to music just like the stuff you have already selected. This is helpful or narrowing depending on your view (see The Filter Bubble).
• Research shows that the more like-minded people are, the more extreme they become
• Using a mobile phone when driving affects judgement more than being drunk – the activity occupies too much of the same faculties you need
• With too many vested interests, organisations can become ‘structurally blind’
• To overcome this, leaders need the ‘unvarnished truth’, and need to encourage ‘structured dissonance’, where people can air their anxieties without fear of recourse – otherwise they become zombie companies
• Cassandra are whistleblowers – they won’t take wilful blindness, and are often rejected as a result of pointing out the uncomfortable truth
• “Do we mean this?” and “Did I understand correctly?” are powerful questions that often expose wilful blindness

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• This is not a business textbook so you have to roll with the narrative to find the headlines and the suggested remedies

The one-sentence summary

We need to reassess the concept of talent, change executive remuneration and performance management, and redefine what it means to be an effective leader.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Modern business is obsessed with leaders, but although everyone talks about leadership, its real meaning is becoming more and more obscure.
• Today we define leaders more by how they seem, rather than the quality of their judgement or what they are able to do.
• The net result has been a failure of leadership precisely when we need all the good leaders we can find – in business and life generally.
• We urgently need to rethink the role of leadership to rebuild trust and confidence. That means redefining the talent and revaluing the experience and remuneration associated with the roles.
• The L’Oreal generation are obsessed with rewarding themselves ‘because they’re worth it’, and that includes leaders who feel they are owed a significant living and the lifestyle to go with it.
• The modern leader is egoistic, blind to their own faults, surrounded by people created in their own image, and committed to actions that enhance their self-image.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The leadership advice industry is worth over $10bn in the USA alone.
• Leadership and management are not the same thing, but they are usually confused – most of what’s involved in managing companies is nothing to do with leadership.
• There is a damning list of what leaders do wrong: abuse of power, inflicting damage on others, over-exercise of control to satisfy personal needs, rule breaking, and more. Types of failure include:
• Leaders (values do not correspond to organisation)
• Companies changing (the challenge is too big)
• Companies failing entirely (accepted norms of behaviour undermine the creation of value)
• Moral authority comes from being authentic, demonstrating integrity, having self-belief, showing self-awareness, and demonstrating deep understanding of the business.
• The author believes we need to reassess the concept of talent to make it inclusive; change executive remuneration and performance management; and redefine what it means to be an effective leader to make it more collaborative.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The proposed changes would require changes to the law and the majority of ambitious leaders to stop being greedy. Is this ever possible?

The one-sentence summary

Great companies thrive despite uncertainty, chaos and luck by deploying fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Some companies thrive despite uncertainty, chaos and luck. This nine-year study from the Good To Great man explains how.
• 10Xers (pronounced Ten Exers) are companies that have beaten their industry by a minimum of ten times over 15 years. Their fortunes are compared with paired companies in the same sector who failed.
• The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, nor more creative – they were actually more disciplined, more empirical and more paranoid.
• The great companies changed less than you would think in reaction to a changing world – in fact fast decisions often lead to poor outcomes. The best question is: “How much time before the risk profile changes?”
• Being more innovative doesn’t always help – 1 successful idea is more productive than 99 unfertile ones.
• 10X companies did not necessarily have better luck. The critical question is what you do with the luck you get, whether good or bad.
• Choosing to be great involves:
• These three characteristics form the 10X triad.

1. Fanatic discipline – considered decisions with clear constraints
2. Empirical creativity – as opposed to uncalibrated cannonballs
3. Productive paranoia – this is not the same as being paranoid (see next)

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The 20 Mile March is a good concept. Amundsen beat Scott to the pole by consistently marching 20 miles a day. In bad weather he did it anyway, and in good he stopped at 20 to save energy for the next day. Scott either stayed in his tent or overshot and wore himself out. Companies should go for similar consistency (fanatic discipline).
• Fire bullets, then cannonballs is good too. Instead of blowing all your resources on one initiative, try a small (low cost, low risk, low distraction) bullet shot at something first, make adjustments from learning, and save ammunition for a better-informed attack (empirical creativity).
• Leading above the death line. This involves building cash reserves (oxygen canisters) and remaining hypervigilant by constantly zooming in and out (detail v. big picture). This level of attention reduces surprises and the impact of unhelpful developments (productive paranoia).

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The book is only half as long as it looks. This is good because you can grasp it fast, but a swizz if you expected 300 pages of content for your £25.