When a colleague asked me whether I wanted to review David Siteman Garland's new book I did what every Web-savvy marketer would do: I went to Amazon to read the reviews. I got no further than the author's own video introduction. In other words, he found a smart, fast,...
Independent Thinking Blog
Reviews (Books/Articles)
5 Steps to Pivot Your Business for Growth
In Energize Growth Now, author Lisa Nirell discusses five stages of growth (startup, growth, advanced growth, plateau, and decline) and the challenges entrepreneurs face as they move from one stage to the next. The book aims to help founders and other CEOs identify...
The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social
Social media for business is a big topic of conversation these days. And there’s no question that companies that are able to pivot their operations to respond to both challenges and opportunities in real-time are ahead of the game. But how do you get there? Jay Baer...
The New Small: How Smart Companies are Leveraging Emerging Technologies
What happens when companies leverage emerging technologies to better understand their customers, help their employees collaborate more effectively, crowdsource, or otherwise improve their core business functions? They become companies with a competitive edge—and part...
Jumpstarting Your Workshifting Day
People seem to envy those of us who don't work out of corporate offices because we get to set our hours and select our work settings. But what often gets lost is that we, too, have to have a routine. Otherwise, how would we ever get anything done? My latest post for...
How Failure Can Be Good for Business
Are you celebrating failure? While business successes are great, we tend to learn far more from our failures. The stuff that goes wrong and makes for business case studies and lessons learned, and adjustments, innovation, and change. Ralph Heath's Celebrating Failure...
Zappos CEO on Passion and Happiness
Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness* is a good reminder that sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and follow your passion. Part autobiography, part tale of success-wrought-from-hard-work, part customer service bible, Delivering Happiness is a good read for...
Do Referrals Matter to Your Business?
Because John Jantsch writes well, The Referral Engine* is a deceptively quick read. Deceptive because, if you're like me, you'll want to pause, bookmark, and/or go back and make sure you've absorbed all the information Jantsch's book contains. At the start of his new...
Second Look: LinkedIn, Doing Good, and Putting Your Social Media House In Order
Each week I’m highlighting 3 or 4 posts, surveys, and other news that I have read and/or tweeted about that you may not have seen. As the name implies, I think they deserve a second look. 6 Reasons to be a Good Company: The always thought-provoking Umair Haque poses...
Second Look: Philanthropy, Flight Attendants, and Happy Interns
Second look is back. I’m highlighting 3 or 4 posts, surveys, and other news that I have read and/or tweeted about that you may not have seen. As the name implies, I think they deserve a second look. Small Talk Matters: We talk about the importance of networking, but...