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Book Review: The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

June 10, 2012 //
0

“When I make a mistake I’m recognized 100 percent of the time; when I do something great, I’m not recognized 99 percent of the time.” – A complaint from a hotel industry employee identified  in The Carrot Principle.

At times it seems like books on leadership and management are a dime a dozen. Yet it is rare to find a book that deals with the traditionally warm and fuzzy areas of recognition and people management that actually tout the results of studies and delves into statistics. That is what makes The Carrot Principle different.

“I’ve come to realize success doesn’t come from being a powerful leader; it comes from leading powerful people.” – The Carrot Principle.

Based on a 10-year study of 200,000 managers and employees, The Carrot Principle’s central theme is that managers who provide frequent and effective recognition generated significantly higher levels of employee engagement, productivity, and retention. Of particular interest, however, is that recognition levels also have an impact on operating margins. This takes The Carrot Principle out of the fuzzy box and into the profit and loss one. What is quite startling about the results of the 10 year study is that the need for recognition by employees from their employers is a global requirement but that the nature of that recognition changes from country to country.

In a bid to seem like a serious business book, The Carrot Principle can at times be a bit on the dry side – we are talking statistics after all for the first couple of chapters, but the book more than makes up for it in the later chapters. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the carrot principle is that the book actually gives useful ideas and tools for implementing its suggestions.Charts, templates and lists and lists of suggestions are all here. My particular favorite section of the book deals with all the usual excuses that managers give for not recognizing their employees and knocks them down one by one – including budgeting and complaints from upper management.

If I have to pick a fault with the book it would be that it is very much written with the large corporation in mind. This, perhaps is not surprising given that O.C. Tanner, the appreciation consultants behind the  research for the book and its supporting documentation, are writing for their clients. However, this is a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent book and a superb set of tools.

(Clicking on the cover above will take you to the book’s Amazon page and contribute to my book buying habit / problem.)

Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management

The Cost of Servant Leadership

March 10, 2012 //
1

“There is great joy in leading with authority, which is serving others by meeting their legitimate needs.”

– James C. Hunter, The Servant

For a large part of my management career I have been a strong believer, practitioner, and proponent of Servant Leadership. Servant Leadership is pretty much self explanatory. In a nutshell, a servant leader leads by serving those for whom he is responsible for – employees and customers. In last month’s post we talked about what I call “the Steve Jobs Effect.” Servant Leadership, depending on your point of view, could be called the opposite of “The Steve Jobs Effect.”

However, recently I’ve encountered a darker side to Servant Leadership…

As a servant leader, I believe it is my responsibility to ensure that fairness, standards, and openness are at the center of what I, as a manager, do. I believe it is my job to try and bring out the best in people. To remove the road blocks that staff members might encounter in performing their jobs or specific tasks, or empowering them with tools so that they can overcome those road blocks themselves. To me, Servant Leadership means that, fundamentally, I believe in people. It means that I have faith that people want to do a good job and respond better to encouragement, and a fair process, than threats, shouting, and summary dismissals.

But what happens when certain employees don’t, despite your best efforts, respond to this process? What happens when employees actually consider the process, and therefore you, fundamentally flawed? What happens when trust, fairness, and even faith, turn out to be misplaced?

The answer, of course, is simple – nothing.

While individual failures are disappointing, and extremely disheartening, they are part of the process and they are the cost of servant leadership. Nobody is perfect – including servant leaders – and not everyone will necessarily understand what you are trying to do, or why. However, if you have surrounded yourself with people who you have treated with respect, fairness, and who tried to make a success in both their lives and their jobs they themselves will be the ones to remind you – verbally or by their actions – of a simple fact:

Doing the right thing, whether it is ultimately right or wrong, is never a bad thing.

Certainly we should learn from our mistakes, but individual failures in a sea of success should not make you give up or consider the odd failure anything other than an unfortunate side-effect of the process. To all those disheartened, discouraged, and disappointed, servant leaders out there please don’t loose the faith. If servant leadership was easy, it wouldn’t be special, they wouldn’t call it leadership,  it wouldn’t cost anything, and it wouldn’t have value.


For those who wish to know more about Servant Leadership I strongly recommend James C. Hunter’s The Servant.

If you have any leadership crisis of faith stories or issues please feel free to comment below.

Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management

Managing the Unmanageable

January 31, 2012 //
5

We’ve all heard the excuses:

“They just care so much…they are very passionate.”

“You should have seen them a few years back – they are really mellow now in comparison to then!”

“They have a lot on their plate at the moment.”

The bottom line is that a lot of people, in a lot of businesses, get away with being badly behaved because of who they are. Maybe they bring in more business than anyone else, maybe they have been around for a very long time, maybe your business genuinely does depend on their work. None of this, however, overcomes the fact that behavior that would not be tolerated from most members of staff is quite often considered part of who these “superstars” are.

This phenomenon can be called “The Steve Jobs Effect.”

I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Jobs. For all that I admire the man for his dedication to the user experience, and to creating great products (I’m writing this on an iPad, while listening to an iPod, and checking Twitter on my iPhone), I can’t help feeling that I would have had nothing to do with the man had I met him while he was alive. That is not a very popular opinion these days, but even if you ignore all the dubious dealings, and less than perfect life choices, it is difficult to argue that Jobs was anything other than a horrible person to work for.

Tantrums, routinely losing ones temper, and humiliating those who report to you, are not how most people want to be treated, and at the end of the day, as a management or leadership strategy, it does not work and it is not acceptable.

There are essentially three ways to deal with people who’s idea of management is to induce fear and to shout louder than anyone else.

1: Accept it.

2: Fire them.

3: Work with them to improve.

It is interesting to note that Steve Jobs experienced all three.

As mentioned above, just accepting bad behavior from any employee is the road to ruin.

Firing them is a viable option, but since they are a superstar, you will have to think very carefully as to the ramifications of termination.

Working with them on their behavior is really the only option unless you feel it is either you or them.

In reality, most businesses are going to accept bad behavior from their “superstar” employees, but ultimately this does no one any good as the employee will probably end up being fired for going too far. Not to mention opening up the business accusations of creating a hostile work environment. It is important to understand that this kind of behavior is about the person themselves – not the people that surround them and are the aledged triggers. Bad behavior makes the badly behaved feel good. It is a way of telling themselves that they are doing something without actually having to do anything other than shout or throw things.

The challenge, of course, is to try and work with these individuals to limit the worst of the behavior and solve the underlying issues that set them off in the first place. This does require a certain amount of “pandering” for want of a better expression, but since the alternative is to fire them you do what needs to be done. It is important to note, however, that the disciplinary action, up-to and including termination has to be an available option, and as a manager you have to be prepared to use this should the situation demand it.

I believe, that the tools you use to work with the badly behaved “superstar” are pretty similar to those of working with an under performing employee. Coaching sessions, inserting yourself into issues before they turn into explosions, and winning enough trust and respect from both sides to come up with workable solutions. If you can show your badly behaved “superstar” that praise, cooperation, and the basic social niceties (please and thank you go a long way) actually work, and makes their lives better, then hopefully they will adopt some of those tactics as their own.

I am however a realist. I can complain that the Arizona Sun is hot, and I can do things to modify the environment to lessen its impact on me, but I cannot change its nature. Many badly behaved “superstar” employees will fall back into bad habits if you do not stay on top of things and call them behavior that crosses the line. It is important not to back down – but also not to fall into their way of handling conflict. They are wrong, you are right, and you have to have the courage of your convictions.

Ultimately, the badly behaved “superstar” employee may have be a superstar somewhere else. The chances are the superstar of your business is not Steve Jobs. If they are, maybe you need to be somewhere else.

The great Malcolm Tucker from the BBC’s superb “The Thick of It” showing how not to people manage. WARNING: Very strong language!

Do you have any experiences with  the badly behaved superstar – Care to share?

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Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Uncategorized

Being a Customer Sucks!

January 3, 2012 //
2

Why does being a customer suck?

Does it at your business?

Are you being honest?

How would you know if it did?

What happens when you walk into a restaurant you’ve never been to before? Do you stand there for a moment wondering whether you need to seat yourself or wait to be seated? Do you go up to the counter and order? How open are they going to be to changing one of their dishes to meet your needs?

O.K., enough question marks.

As a restaurant owner, or any business owner for that matter, it is obvious how your business works to you, but your clients almost certainly don’t walk through those doors every day -mores the pity.

Education of the client is often held up as a key component in a lot of service industries to solve these issues (yes veterinarians, I’m looking at you). Our job, as delivers of services however, should be to hold our clients hands through this process and make it as painless as possible. Clients should not need to become experts in how to deal with us, or the industries in which we work.

As I discussed at some length in this post about marketing and branding, what you sell is not necessarily what your clients are buying. The customer experience should reflect this. I had a recent customer service experience that brought this all into sharper light. Because the owner of the business is a friend, I’m not going to go into that particular experience directly, but it did cause me to re-evaluate what I do, how I respond to clients who do have issues, and do some thinking at length about what “customer service” actually is. Instead, let me tell you about my bathroom…

A while back I had a bathroom tiled. I spent a significant amount of time picking out exactly the right shade of tile that I wanted and the size. At the end of day one of the installation however, I come to find out that the tiles are actually two slightly different shades. I talk with the installer and the answer is “Well that is how they come – It is to give the effect of real marble.” Well, I did not want two tone tiles, I wanted them all the same color. Who is right here, and who is wrong? The store, and the installer, are both perfectly right – the tiles are manufactured that way and I’m sure that for most installations it would have made lots of sense, but that was not what I was purchasing! I was purchasing my bathroom tiled in a particular shade!

Interestingly, I was was in a locally owned and operated store a little while later and happened to look at their tiles. Their display was actually setup so that for tiles of the type I was looking at, all the shades of the same batch of tile were shown together as a single piece rather than just an individual tile. This removed the “different shade shock” that I had experienced when I had bought tiles for my bathroom.

Other than showing my bad taste in tiles, what does this experience tell us? It tells us that it is very difficult to forget information or view things as if we don’t know about that information. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book “Switch – How to Change things when change is hard,” have an excellent exercise that you can use with staff – or even just friends – that shows this in action. Give a volunteer a piece of paper with the name of a very common tune written on it and get them to ‘knock’ out the rhythm of the tune on a table and see if the others in the room can guess what tune it is. Try it with a number of different tunes and people. Those knocking the tune out will find it really hard to understand why everyone else in the room can’t guess correctly. The reason for this is that they are hearing the tune in their own heads along with the knocking. They have knowledge which everyone else in the room does not. Not only are they unable to communicate that knowledge, but they don’t understand how or why everyone else in room does not have that knowledge – it is an alien perspective to them.

This is just like my tile sales man and installer who could not understand why I did not know what they knew about tiles. It is also the same phenomenon that has you hesitant and unsure in the lobby of a restaurant you’ve never been to before – the big sign saying “please wait to be seated” can be a huge relief. I’d also argue that this is one of the reasons why chains are so successful. Familiarity is easy!

So what does this all tell us?

Well perhaps we need to start really listening to our clients and thinking about their experience and how it is not our experience. It might sound trite but customer service is about serving the customer. If we have a lot of education deliver to a client, perhaps the problem is that we have not made things simple enough. Of course, if the client wants more information they need to have it, and we need to have the resources to hand to help deliver. But we also know, from numerous studies, that very little information is actually retained when we deliver large amounts of it in person. We also know that lots of choices actually result is less decisions being made.

Clients are not stupid, but they don’t have, and shouldn’t need, a manual to use our businesses or get the services we are trying to deliver to them. One of the reasons why Apple’s iPod, iPhone and iPad are so successful is that anyone can use them from day one with the minimum of instruction. Our businesses and services should be the same way.

Being a customer can suck – but it is our job to ensure that it doesn’t!

 

A check list for removing suckyness from the customer experience

  • If we have have to explain things over and over how can we stop the need for explaining?

  • Do we get frustrated with our clients lack of knowledge – perhaps they are not the problem?

  • What do our clients complain about?

  • How successful are we with our recommendations?

  • Do we have compliance issues?

  • When issues arise, how could they have been avoided?

If you have any additions to this list, or have any customer service stories to share, please let me know in the comments!

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Veterinary

The Bayer Brakke Study & Me

December 4, 2011 //
13

2011 has felt like the year of the Bayer Brakke Study. Most of what has been written in the world of practice management, seminars, and conversations between managers, have ended up talking about the Bayer Brakke study.

This was finally summed up for me when attend a one day workshop held at VSCoT by Butler, Bayer, and Jessica Goodman Lee, CVPM of Brakke consulting, on the study itself and what to do about it’s findings.

I felt it might be interesting for me to give my personal view point on some of what I took away from this presentation, the Bayer Brakke Study in general, and what it means for the veterinary profession, clients and pets, as a whole.

1: The profession needs to change and it needs to take the change seriously.

The 1998 Brakke study made 19 recommendations and the only one that was adopted by almost all veterinary practices was to raise fees. Now that was a good thing – fees need to rise, but the other recommendations we’re also important. Inventory management and reducing expenses, for example, were the recommendations with the next highest adoption rate and they were adopted by less than 50% of practices.

Just raising fees is fine when the economy is doing well, but does not bode well recessionary times and helps explain why visits are down and some practices are have had a significantly hard time over the last couple of years.

What was valid five years ago is not valid now – never mind 10 years ago.

2: Normalcy is not an excuse for inaction.

One of the elements that the study points out is that many practices believe that all they have to do is “weather the storm” and everything will get back to normal. What is currently being misunderstood is that the industry has changed. New competition, with different business models, have arisen partly in response to these challenging times, and who is to say that these will end anytime soon? Only 20% of practices expressed serious concern about the changing market place.

The other major issue is that business itself has changed. As Jim Lecinski points out in his book “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” buying, consuming and even reviewing habits have changed. As a business you ignore these changes at your peril.

3: We Live, or Perish, by Communication with our Clients.

59% of dog owners and 56% of cat owners would bring their pets in more often if they could prevent problems and extensive treatments later on. The figures are almost identical when owners believe that their pet will live longer by bringing them to their veterinarian more often.

In addition, 56% of clients feel that their veterinarian does give them clear instructions as to when they should bring their pet in.

4: Cats – the Great Opportunity.

As I personally experienced while helping with the pet evacuation due to the Monument Fire in Sierra Vista, cats are woefully undeserved by the veterinary community. The bottom line is that cats do not get brought into the vet enough or sometimes ever. It is difficult for the owner, difficult for the cat, and difficult (from the client’s perspective) for the veterinary practice.

If a veterinary practice sees 25% cats and 75% dogs, and there are 13% more cats that dogs in the U.S. the opportunities are enormous both for the business of the practice and in improving feline health.

5: It is all about money – except when it is not.

Getting inventive about payment options, whatever they might be, are seen by clients as needed services. That does not nessecerally mean that veterinarians have to become banks, but it does mean that we can’t wash our hands of the financial issue. The practices that are able to provide options will find clients flocking to them. It is also important to note that choice is not always a good thing. It can send a a mixed message to clients who are looking for a recommendation. Pet insurance is an obvious area where having a practice provider of choice in terms of recommendations can make a big difference to clients.

Trumping the financial issues, however, is communication as mentioned above. If we do not explain the value of what we do and why we do it (exhibit A: the lack of feline visits) how can we ever expect clients to?

I can sum a lot of what I have written above by one word: Management.

The industry needs to embraise management (this may seem like a self serving argument as a practice manager, and to an extent it is, but it does also does not make it any less true) as a key ingredient for practice health. It is no accident that the Bayer Brakke Study shows that the variables most constistant with increased visits were: seeing the same veterarian every time, wellness exams considered the most important service, marketing and advertising as important to practice success, and the active use of social media. The variables most consistent with decreased visits were: advertising undermines credibility as a veterinarian and lack of referral arrangements with shelters, groomers etc. These are all areas where good management can make a significant difference. Managers have to be allowed to manage, but they also need to manage well.

Proper practice management is not just the responsibility of the managers. Of course, managers must manage, but there has to be a sea-change in understanding that proper practice management actually effects patient health and outcomes.

Just ask all those cats!

These are just my take always, any others or any other ideas? Lets here from you in the comments. Abuse, as always, very welcome.

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Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Social Media, Veterinary

The Best “Friday Follow” Ever!

October 15, 2011 //
0

For those who do not use Twitter, you might not know about Friday Follows. The idea is that on Fridays, Twitter users recommend other Twitter users to follow.

It has fallen out of favor of late a little, the Twitterverse can be fickle, and I’ve never been a big believer anyway – preferring to retweet (repost others messages) on a regular basis. But it has always been nice to get one.

Yesterday, however, I got the best Friday Follow ever from Jim Dougherty who goes by the name @leaderswest on Twitter.

Jim’s Friday Follow took the form of a short – talking to camera – video, explaining to users why they should follow me, and others, on Twitter. The genius of the idea is that each subject gets their own short video making it very easy to view and share by the subject.

This is great content marketing.

Easy to consume, relevant, and selfless – which of course reflects very well on the content creator like all great content marketing. It would be interesting to see if all recommendations will eventually be like this: personal, short, and on video. It has certainly got my wheels turning considering just how effective I find the video below. Interestingly, Jim used Keek for this project. Keek is hoping to be video Twitter.

Please follow @leaderswest on Twitter, after you follow me!

Video Friday Follow about @mike_falconer from @leaderswest

(Keek's embedding does not work very well in WordPress yet - just click on the image to take you to Jim's Keek page and his video post about me!)

Well, what did you think?

Let me know in the comments and take a look at Jim’s other Friday Follows in the same page.

Categories Content Marketing, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized

It’s not, but it is, Personal!

October 9, 2011 //
2

Bad feedback, subtle (and not so subtle) digs on Twitter, your mistakes pointed out for all to see, and then you go make it way worse…

In your online life, just like your business life, it can be hard to take criticism. We are not married, after all, to our peers – business is personal. But just like in person, going ballistic certainly does not help the relationship, how you are perceived by other people, or even your own equilibrium.

I seemed to attract a deluge of criticism online and off recently. In addition, I had a management issue that felt like backhanded criticism. Although my first instinct was to react as if these were attacks, by standing back, taking a deep breath, and actually trying to see what the other person was saying, I realized that they all had merit – and in some cases, there were things that needed addressing.

What is so odd, for me, is that, I consider it a key function of my job to address client issues when they come up about my practice. I survey every client who visits us, so thanking clients for positive feedback, and trying to address negative feedback, is part and parcel of what I do.

Learning the lesson that bad, even unjustified, feedback about your business is not a personal attack was an easy lesson to learn. Understanding, that personal business criticism should be handled in a similar vein is harder to learn, but ultimately even more important.

Comments welcome (please be gentle…)

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Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Social Media

Making Staff Care – Internal Marketing

August 22, 2011 //
3

So far in this series we’ve looked at how your brand and marketing strategy are perceived and reacted with by your clients – but what about your staff?

Without your staff on-board no marketing program will succeed. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that probably one of the most important elements of any marketing program is having staff buy-in. But how to get it?

Simplicity

This is not a dig at your staff, but rather those overblown and meaningless missions statements that seem the populate the corporate world. Your brand and your mission statement should be one. They need to work together and be given as much thought as each other. A mission statement should also be able to be understood by mere mortals and, in an ideal world, be able to be remembered.

A great example of this is talked about at length in Stick, a book by Chip and Dan Heath that I reviewed here. Southwest use the slogan “The Low Cost Airline.” This slogan, which is the central part of their mission statement, informs the decisions that both management and staff make everyday –

“Should we have sandwiches on this flight?”
“Does that make us the Low Fares Airline?”
No because the added cost of the sandwiches might increase the fare price.

“Should we joke about a flight attendant’s birthday over the intercom?”
“Does that affect us being the Low Cost Airline?”
No it doesn’t – so go ahead.

Having an overriding statement, that is the building block of your mission statement helps, give your staff a sense of mission and purpose. If you use it to define your decisions everyday, and tell them why it fits into that statement, they will soon see the benefits of this kind if thinking and hopefully adopt it as their own.

Keeping Staff Informed

It is a surprisingly common mistake, I’ve made it myself several times, but your staff should not be the last ones to find out about any kind of marketing program. Not only does it frustrate the staff, it upsets the client and creates the exact opposite impression in their mind that you were probably trying to create in the firs place. It is also a great idea to have staff involved in the planning stages of any marketing program. This stops it from being “your” marketing program and makes it “our” marketing program – a much better solution all round.

Explain What is Out There

It might come as a shock, but staff do not cruise their employers website, social media pages, and review sites at night, when they get home from work, as a method of relaxation. Take the time and effort to explain these resources to staff so that they, in turn, can be knowledgeable to clients when they ask.

Provide Reminders

If you are promoting particular products, ensure that staff have the tools, training, and reminders to be able to effectively do their jobs. What do I mean by reminders? Well it could be as simple as a poster or you asking about their progress on a daily basis and it could be as technical as power point presentations running where both clients ad staff can see them. As Seth Godwin says “Competence is the enemy of change.” In other words, when you give your staff new products, protocols, and ideas to work on, you are making them less efficient for the time it takes them to learn all the new things. Naturally, they might be a little resistant to that. All the help you can provide will make the transition to a new state of competency as straight forward as possible.

Be Emotional

If you care about an idea, concept, or product – show that you do. Tell stories about how this product, idea or concept will affect your clients, your staff, or whom ever. But if you cannot show that you care about something, how are your staff ever going to care? You don’t have to have them high fiving and lifting you on their shoulders, and there is an element of risk with putting yourself out there – they might not respond. But without that emotion and, for want of a better word, passion your pitch to your staff will become just as important as the text from an instruction manual.

How do you promote your ideas and strategies to staff? Have you found some other great ways to get people onboard? Leave a comment below to share with me (seriously, I don’t have all the answers) and other readers.

Next week: The Double-Edged Sword of Media Relations

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Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Social Media

Book review: “Switch – How to Change Things when Change is Hard” by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

July 20, 2011 //
6

A brilliant book on change and how to apply it in the real world. Over 250 real world examples and ideas underline the authors basic concept – getting people to change is like someone riding an elephant. Appealing to the logic of change is like appealing to the rider of the elephant. The elephant itself is the emotional connection to change. Finally, the path is the environment which can either help or hinder change.

Through numerous examples, the authors show that by appealing to the rider of a situation (the logical argument), the elephant (emotion), or the path (the environment) change can be effected by addressing these disparate elements individually, or together.

An excellent example of this is provided with nurses making errors in the dispensing of medications to patients. The hospital used in the example had an error rate of 1 in 1,000 – pretty good, but still a lot of errors. The nurses understood the need to not have errors, so the rider / logical part of the problem was not at issue. Likewise, nurses directly saw the effect of errors in medication had on their patients and so had a direct emotional connection – the elephant was on board too. The issue was in the environment or path. Nurses are constantly interrupted by doctors, and other nurses, while they are working and found it difficult not to help when asked, thereby distracting them from their main task. The solution? Tweak the environment / change the path so that nurses did not get distracted.

A bright orange vest was employed whenever a nurse was dispensing medications so that everyone else on the floor knew that they were not to be disturbed. The program was universally hated – the rider element thought it was unnecessary, the vests got lost all the time and hated that they could not help their doctors and colleagues. The elephant part of the problem felt that they might as well wear a dunce cap – the nurses felt demeaned and that the vest drew attention to the fact that they made mistakes.

This might have spelt doom for the program until the data came back. Over six months every department that employed the program saw a decrease in errors of 47%. Needless to say the change in the path / environment won over the rider / logical objections and the elephant / emotional objections because it worked.

The book is also a great champion of checklists which have gotten bad name precisely because they work so well. They can be seen as dehumanizing and giving rise to the idea the checklists mean “a monkey could do it.” Like most objections the book deals with this argument deftly. “Well, if that is true, grab a pilot’s checklist and try your luck with a 747.”

There are a number of other elements that I can’t do justice too here: black and white goals, precise clear instructions, the power of action triggers, and the how to harness the herd to improve culture. But these elements are really tweaks to the fundamental concept of the logical, emotional and environmental components of enacting change.

At the back of the book is, essentially, a manual for enacting change complete with a web link to resources and PDF of a one page overview that the authors encourage you share! It is here by the way. This alone is worth the purchase price of the book and will ensure that the book stays on my desk rather than on a bookshelf.

Wonderfully researched, well thought out, and very smart. “Switch” is essential reading for anyone who want to understand why change can be difficult and what it takes to implement change against the odds. It should also be a template for other business books – ditch the theory unless you can prove it I the real world and show how it applies to the real world. Authors please take note.

Can’t recommend this book enough and owe a huge favor to the person who bought it for me.

(Clicking on the cover above will take you to the book’s Amazon page and contribute to my book buying habit / problem.)

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management

Book Review: “101 Awesome Marketing Quotes” by “The team at Hubspot”

July 14, 2011 //
0

This great little (free) e-book is a collection of quotes from some if the great marketers of recent times. Coupled with some beautiful images, this PDF makes excellent use of the tablet format, but is also suitable for viewing at your PC or even printing our your favorite quotes.

Short, elegant and easy, this e-book is not so much about delivering information as it is about inspiring you to go do something or to help you inspire others.

Perfect for any marketers tool box!

The book can be downloaded from Hubspot, for free, here: http://www.hubspot.com/101-marketing-quotes/

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Categories Books, Content Marketing, Leadership, Marketing
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