Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

Review
"Gerber loves to exhort people to develop powerful visions for theircompanies." -- Fortune

"Thanks to Gerber l have freed up over three hours a day, significantly increased my sales, more than doubled my bottom line, and been able to take my first vacation in four years." -- Trish Lind, T. Lind Graphics, St. Paul, Minnesota

"Without a doubt, the most important message for our company over thenext decade." -- The John Hancock Insurance Group

In this first new and totally revised edition of the over two million copy bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. Next, he walks you through the steps in the life of a business -- from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed -- and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether it is a franchise or not. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.

Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

Written by John C. Bogle–the legendary founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund–Enough. offers his unparalleled insights on money, the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings, and what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives. Inspired in large measure by the hundreds of lectures Bogle has delivered to professional groups and college students in recent years, this book will help you discover what it really means to have "enough" and how close you are to really having it.

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If you are wondering about the cause of the current market crisis, then you haven't been reading enough of Jack Bogle.

Because he certainly knows not only where, but why and how. For decades Jack has been communicating his disquiet in previous books, speeches, and public testimony. Years from now, when historians and investors dissect the economic and market meltdowns of 2008, they'll consult this slim, well-written volume.

In order to understand the intellectual and moral platform from which he surveys the economic wreckage, you need to know a little of his story. Bogle founded one of the world's great investment companies, the Vanguard Group. Most men in his situation would have levered such success into a multi-billion-dollar net worth; instead, he "mutualized" Vanguard, converting it, in effect, into a nonprofit organization whose only goal was to benefit its fund holders. From an ethical perspective, Vanguard is the only "investment company" worthy of that name. (As opposed to most financial firms, which are in fact "marketing companies" whose main purpose is to milk unwitting investors of fees and commissions.)

The answer to the conundrum of 2008 lies in the book’s title, "Enough," which is the punch line from a delightful Kurt Vonnegut/Joseph Heller story. Simply put, our nation has been suffering from decades of unchecked financial excess, for which we are now paying the piper: excess in investment company fees; excess in financial speculation masquerading as diversification and innovation; excess in the salaries of top executives; excess in salesmanship; and most importantly, excess in the role played by the financial industry in our national economy and national life.

Each of these excesses gets its own chapter, and each one is a tightly written gem. Chapters 2 and 3, which dissect out the frenzy of derivatives, structured vehicles, and layers of intermediation behind the recent collapse, alone justify the book's purchase price.

As Bogle states in the book's beginning, in the spring of 2007 the financial services sector--which, after all, produces nothing of substantive value--accounted for one-third of the earnings of the S&P 500. By the time you read this, this outsized influence will have shrunken drastically. Let Enough be your welcome to the brave new world; it will satisfy your curiosity, give you a sense of moral balance in this most materialistic of ages, and even plump up your investment portfolio.

--William J. Bernstein

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Organization Development Tools

The Consultant's Big Book of Organization Development Tools

: 50 Reproducible Intervention Tools to Help Solve Your Clients' Problems


The Consultant's Big Book of Organization Development Tools provides consultants with tools, interventions, and activities they can use to solve individual, team, and organizational performance problems.

This book offers incredible value for the consultant looking to use structured interventions as a vital part of the consultation approach. Many of the tools consist of a simulation or other structured activity consultants can use with leaders in the client organization to address the soft issues in a nonthreatening way. And most include downloadable, customizable handouts that they can freely reproduce and use with clients.

About the Author

Dr. Mel Silberman (Princeton, NJ) is a best-selling author of training and development books and professor of adult and organizational development at Temple University.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

Peter Senge, founder of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, experienced an epiphany while meditating one morning back in the fall of 1987. That was the day he first saw the possibilities of a "learning organization" that used "systems thinking" as the primary tenet of a revolutionary management philosophy. He advanced the concept into this primer, originally released in 1990, written for those interested in integrating his philosophy into their corporate culture.

The Fifth Discipline has turned many readers into true believers; it remains the ideal introduction to Senge's carefully integrated corporate framework, which is structured around "personal mastery," "mental models," "shared vision," and "team learning." Using ideas that originate in fields from science to spirituality, Senge explains why the learning organization matters, provides an unvarnished summary of his management principals, offers some basic tools for practicing it, and shows what it's like to operate under this system. The book's concepts remain stimulating and relevant as ever. --Howard Rothman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A director at MIT's Sloan School, Senge here proposes the "systems thinking" method to help a corporation to become a "learning organization," one that integrates at all personnel levels indifferently related company functions (sales, product design, etc.) to "expand the ability to produce." He describes requisite disciplines, of which systems-thinking is the fifth. Others include "personal mastery" of one's capacities and "team learning" through group discussion of individual objectives and problems. Employees and managers are also encouraged to examine together their often negative perceptions or "mental models" of company people and procedures. The text is esoteric and flavored with terms like "recontextualized rationality," but the book should help inventory-addled retailers whom the author cites as unaware of their customers' desire for quality. Macmillan Book Clubs selection.

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Blue Ocean Strategy

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Built to Last became an instant business classic. This audio abridgement is read by the authors, who alternate chapters. Collins is a bit breathlessly enthusiastic, but clear and interesting; Porras, unfortunately, is poorly inflected and wooden. They set out to determine what's special about "visionary" companies--the Disneys, Wal-Marts, and Mercks, companies at the very top of their game that have demonstrated longevity and great brand image. The authors compare 18 "visionary" picks to a control group of "successful-but-second-rank" companies. Thus Disney is compared to Columbia Pictures, Ford to GM, and so on.

A central myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies start with a great product and are pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. Usually false, Collins and Porras find. Much more important, and a much more telling line of demarcation between a wild success like 3M and an also-ran like Norton, is flexibility. 3M had no master plan, little structure, and no prima donnas. Instead it had an atmosphere in which bright people were not afraid to "try a lot of stuff and keep what works."

If you listen to this audiocassette on your daily commute, you may discover whether you are headed to a "visionary" place of work--and, if so, whether you are the kind of employee who fits your employer's vision. (Running time: two hours, two cassettes) --Richard Farr --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From Library Journal

What makes a visionary company? This book, written by a team from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, compares what the authors have identified as "visionary" companies with selected companies in the same industry. The authors juxtapose Disney and Columbia Pictures, Ford and General Motors, Motorola and Zenith, and Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, to name a few. The visionary companies, the authors found out, had a number of common characteristics; for instance, almost all had some type of core ideology that guided the company in times of upheaval and served as a constant bench mark. Not all the visionary companies were founded by visionary leaders, however. On the whole, this is an intriguing book that occasionally provides rare and interesting glimpses into the inner workings and philosophical foundations of successful businesses. Recommended for all libraries.Randy L. Abbott, Univ. of Evansville Lib., Ind.

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

From Publishers WeeklyKim and Mauborgne's blue ocean metaphor elegantly summarizes their vision of the kind of expanding, competitor-free markets that innovative companies can navigate. Unlike "red oceans," which are well explored and crowded with competitors, "blue oceans" represent "untapped market space" and the "opportunity for highly profitable growth." The only reason more big companies don't set sail for them, they suggest, is that "the dominant focus of strategy work over the past twenty-five years has been on competition-based red ocean strategies"-i.e., finding new ways to cut costs and grow revenue by taking away market share from the competition. With this groundbreaking book, Kim and Mauborgne-both professors at France's INSEAD, the second largest business school in the world-aim to repair that bias. Using dozens of examples-from Southwest Airlines and the Cirque du Soleil to Curves and Starbucks-they present the tools and frameworks they've developed specifically for the task of analyzing blue oceans. They urge companies to "value innovation" that focuses on "utility, price, and cost positions," to "create and capture new demand" and to "focus

on the big picture, not the numbers." And while their heavyweight analytical tools may be of real use only to serious strategy planners, their overall vision will inspire entrepreneurs of all stripes, and most of their ideas are presented in a direct, jargon-free manner. Theirs is not the typical business management book's vague call to action; it is a precise, actionable plan for changing the way companies do business with one resounding piece of advice: swim for open waters. .

Review

"Blue Ocean Strategy will have you wondering why companies need so much persuasion to stay out of shark-infested waters." -- BusinessWeek, April 4th 2005

"Blue Ocean raises pertinent questions… and delivers valuable answers." -- American Way, March 2005

"Companies struggling to stay afloat in the market's...red oceans would do well to look into Blue Ocean Strategy." -- Fort Worth Star Telegram, 14 February 2005

"The book is clearly written, offering many examples of blue-ocean strategies and the techniques to develop such a scheme." -- Globe and Mail, June 8, 2005

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From Wikipedia

Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy book written by Professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD, a leading global business school, that promotes creating new market space or "Blue Ocean" rather than competing in an existing industry. It contains retrospective case studies of business success stories the authors claim were Blue Ocean Strategies. The book has sold more than a million copies in its first year of publication and is being published in 41 languages.

Red Oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. Hence, the term red oceans.

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.

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