Book review

Marketing is a struggle Our clients are struggling with marketing. It has become incredibly complex. The marketing mix, the communication mix, the channels available, measurement, the pressure on budgets, proofing the ROI, understanding social media and understanding technology are all hot topics. Marketing gets bad press And marketing sometimes gets a bad press. Not accountable, […]

Strategy For me, it all started with “Thriving on chaos” by Tom Peters and “The mind of the strategist” by Kenichi Ohmae. Quite a few years later “Funky business” really triggered the need for understanding strategy. Constant flux. In a world of constant flux, chaos, Moores law, hyper-competition and data overload, planning and strategy become

How do executives make decisions? My Bookbuzz colleague Alan Jordan has done a lot of work with executives on the way they think and make decisions. The key book is Kahneman’s “Thinking fast and slow”, but we have used other books such as “This will make you smarter”. The internet   With clients we have

“It’s either about out thinking the competition, or even better, about finding new, even greater opportunities” so says Max McKeown in “The Strategy Book”. Opportunities “Opportunities the competition hasn’t found yet or opportunities the competition doesn’t understand because it hasn’t done the kind of thinking that you have. There are always better ways of doing

All the management idea we assume are solid, are in effect false. Don’t trust analysts, boards, high profile CEOs and consultants. Management systems such at TQM and ISO don’t work. In fact you need mistakes for innovation. And true innovation is about changing the taste of the customers; don ask what they want, give them

Teams Why is it so difficult to successfully manage teams today? The author cites two main reasons: Teams are using the wrong model to organise themselves Teams are not keeping pace with the rapid changes in their business environments Command and control The underlying model in almost all teams today is command and control.  It

The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success by Ori Brafman, Judah Pollack. From the author of “The Starfish and the spider”, which is one of my favourite books on organizational development. Chaos is good The crux of the book is that chaos is good for you. You need to create

Forget socialism, capitalism, just in time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest of it and concentrate on building organisations that accomplish the most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning. Maverick “Maverick” tells the story of the transformation of Semco into a radical and high performing

The 3 rules of corporate success are: 1. Better before cheaper, 2. Revenue before cost. 3. There’re no other rules Success study The impetus of the research for the book, was the increasing popularity over the past 30 years of “success study” business books and articles. Perhaps the most famous of these are Thomas Peters