I have been reviewing books on Amazon for years and when I went to explore this new book by an author whose poetry book I am supporting, I found that I could write a review, post the review and then virally (or so I hope) spread the review immediately! This is BIG and I wanted to share it with you.

For any of you who have books you loved to read then here is a great way to support your favorite authors!

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That’s one of my recent sayings. So, of course, I test the market. And since my focus is all about book–e-books, hardback, softback, books that turn into movies and more, I focus on learning everything I can about successfully marketing books. But there’s more. I focus on books that I believe make the world a better place because people read them and shared them and learned from them and helped others learn from them.

So I was extremely grateful to work with Aaron Goldfarb who I met from The Domino Project last year working with Seth and his team. This year I brought Aaron in and to become part of my Networlding Street Team as I call it. Aaron has been amazing. He hit the ground running by working on three projects with me (hint: more will be revealed soon) with one of them, below, being the marketing of my most recent Kindle book release,

It took time and thought to create a successful marketing campaign on this book, but Aaron has done this before, very successfully, with the sale of his book on Kindle, “The Self Hurt Guide.” Check it out.

Well, Aaron shared with me his success and, as a result, I was able to go to number #1 on Amazon for my latest Kindle book

Cover via Amazon

under the heading, Job Hunting and #3 under the heading Motivational Business Management.

Now that’s exciting! Thanks Aaron! What you taught me was that:

1. I can’t go it alone. We all need help.
2. We all need the right help. I see that you need to really work at finding the right people to help you.
3. I should not give up. It’s not easy but one can achieve goals if you don’t give up and have a good plan.

You are never too old to learn something new. Thanks to Aaron, I am now excited to see what comes next!

The Hummer and the Mini: Navigating the Contradictions of the New Trend Landscape

In this sequel to The Trendmaster’s Guide, Waters explains the “what” of Trend. Throughout much of the book’s narrative, she cites examples of how paradox “illustrates what’s going on out there in the world while at the same time cautioning that things are always as they appear at first glance. When examined with an open mind, paradoxes will help you read between the lines and reframe your perspective.” In this instance, I am reminded of the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who suggests that the nature of reality is best understood as a multiple of paradoxes. For example: “Expect the unexpected or you won’t find it” and “You can’t step into the same river twice.”

This is precisely what Waters has in mind when asserting that there is no single “next best” whatever. Rather, there are many. She quotes Charles Handy: “The more turbulent the times, the more complex the world, the more paradoxes there are.” Therefore, she suggests that today, “success belongs to those who learn to embrace complexity by reconciling the contradictions.” In terms of providing superior service, “There are many different ways to satisfy the same customer.” Waters believes (and I agree) that many of the best new ideas are really just old ideas reinterpreted, that customers will continue to demand a more personalized shopping environment and the ability to customize products to suit their individual needs, that more and more people will “trade-up” (as Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske assert) to “luxurious commodities,” that consumers will (in Leonard Koren’s words) be attracted to products that “pare down to the essence” but which do not “remove the poetry,” that a new nomenclature is needed to describe the newest trends (e.g. “luxurious commodities,” “counterfeit authenticity,” and “extreme relaxation”), and that consumer demand for goods that are ethically produced will continue to increase.

Throughout her book, Waters identifies and discusses hundreds of examples of products which illustrate how various companies have not only learned to live with but have responded effectively to “the push and pull of opposites, to balance the contradictions and inconsistencies, and [embraced] the paradoxes – the trends and countertrends – that exist at a macro level in our world.” These products include the Hummer and Mini Cooper, of course, but also Ralph Lauren apparel, Tupperware, the iPod, M&Ms, Build-A-Bear, Whirlpool Duet, In-N-Out Burgers, 3 Vodka, “Virtual Venice” and “Fiberglass France” casinos in Law Vegas, Rainforest Café’s, Dream Dinners, and Metronaps.

Waters makes an important distinction between a trend guru or futurist and a Trendmaster. Her unique “trend from the inside out” perspective is this: “Trends are signposts pointing to what’s going on in the hearts and minds of consumers. These days, if you want to be `on trend,’ it’s more important to figure out what’s important, not just what’s next.” Futurists look outside to the marketplace, and at statistics and numbers to suggest what’s next whereas a Trendmaster looks inside the hearts and minds of the consumer, to figure out what really matters. She believes that paradox is a reliable tool to get at the “heart of things ” precisely because every human being is, at heart, a paradox. We all want to belong, and we all want to be unique. As Margaret Mead observed, “We are all unique, just like everyone else.”

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

Shine

How to “find and mine the gold that resides in everyone”

I agree with Edward Hallowell: “Put simply, the best managers bring out the best from their people. This is true of football coaches, orchestra conductors, big-company executives, and small-business owners. They are like alchemists who turn lead into gold. Put more accurately, they find and mine the gold that resides in everyone.”

Of course, that is also a worthy objective for managers: to find and mine the “gold” within themselves as well as within others…and then refine it. There is an additional dimension of engagement that should also be mentioned, suggested by the fact that parents raise future wives and mothers as well as daughters and future husbands and fathers as well as sons: In a role in which they do resemble alchemists, the best managers help those entrusted to their care to become effective managers.

Hallowell suggests a five-step process “to ignite peak performance.” He devotes a separate chapter to each step: (1) Select high potentials and align their strengths with the work for which they are best suited, (2) establish and then continue to strengthen connections with those who are managed as well as between and among them, and meanwhile (3) ensure that the work environment is one that stimulates and nourishes “imaginative engagement” (i.e. play); (4) create conditions in which people are encouraged to “grapple and grow” by taking prudent risks that are exciting learning opportunities, and (5) do anything and everything possible to help people “shine” with pride in what they have achieved, joy in having done it with pleasure, and confidence that that this “Cycle of Excellence” will be self-perpetuating.

With rigor and eloquence, Hallowell carefully reviews and discusses the latest research on brain science to get the best from one’s self and others; however, he focuses most of his attention on explaining HOW to do that. For example, he suggests 11 “simple, concrete steps…to get the sand out of the gears of the Cycle of Excellence and to promote the feeling of connectedness that lubricates the gears so well” (Pages 105-107), then he offers ten practical suggestions to encourage “the deep and exciting state I call by the deceptively simple term `play.” (Pages 127-132); next, on Pages 152-156, Hallowell identifies ten steps to take to help employees “grapple with the demands of the job and achieve consistent progress”; and my final example, on Pages 172-173, ten steps for promoting shine among associates.

Checklists such as these will help facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of important material later, as will the “Key Ideas” section that Hallowell provides at the conclusion of each chapter. I commend him on this brilliant book, a shining achievement that will, I am certain, help his readers to produce countless others.

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

Disciplined Dreaming

Dreaming on “the other side of complexity”

The title of this book refers to what its subtitle promises to provide: “a proven system to drive breakthrough creativity,” one that requires highly- developed mental and emotional discipline. Josh Linkner introduces a methodology, a five-step process, that he calls “Disciplined Dreaming.” He interviewed more than 200 people who have apparently whose creativity has driven their success. What he learned is shared in this book. After making the case for creativity in the first chapter and then explaining the Disciplined Dreaming system, Linkner organizes his material within a sequence of five steps: Ask (Chapters 3&4), Prepare (5&6), Discover (7), Ignite (8&9), and then Launch (Chapter 10). He adds an Epilogue, followed by two appendices. In the first, he invalidates “six common myths that inhibit creativity”; in the second, he provides “Additional Warm-Up Exercises to Jump Star Creativity.”

Back to Disciplined Dreaming. Consider the differences between (a) allowing your mind to wander aimlessly and (b) filling your mind with a wealth of information relevant to answering a question or solving a problem and then allowing it to absorb and digest the information. (I call the latter “mulling” and it can either be active and aggressive or passive and patient. In this book, Linkner explains how to

• Define a “creativity challenge” (e.g. answering an important question, solving a serious problem or taking full advantage of a major opportunity)

• Prepare (mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and environmentally) for the process by which to create or reveal a correct answer or effective solution

• Discover various “avenues” by which to reach that answer or solution

• Ignite forces (i.e. ”juices”) with various techniques to generate an abundance of creative ideas

• Launch the process by which to realize (literally, to make a reality of) each of the best ideas within a framework provided in Chapter Ten.

Those who are curious to know the nature and extent of their readiness to embark on the Disciplined Dreaming process will be delighted to know that Linkner includes “Building Your Creativity Chops: The Self-Assessment” on Pages 31-38, an exercise that includes detailed explanations of the results. I also commend him on his eloquent as well as rigorous examination of immensely complicated issues associated with terms such as creativity, innovation, co-creation, integrative thinking, and inspiration. Whenever possible, he anchors information, insights, and even recommendations in a real-world context with which most readers can identify.

Readers will also appreciate what he calls “The Eight Commandments of Ideation” (Pages 164-166) as well as the aforementioned invalidation of “six common myths that inhibit creativity” and “Additional Warm-Up Exercises to Jump Star Creativity” in the two appendices. Josh Linkner brilliantly integrates what he learned from more than 200 interviews with what he has learned his own observations and (yes) disciplined dreaming. He has prepared his reader well for a journey only the reader can take. I join with him in expressing “Bon voyage!” to those who embark on it.

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Note: I wish to acknowledge my debt to Oliver Wendell Holmes who inspired the title of my review. Long ago, he observed, “I would not give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference

The great value of Thaler and Koval’s book is derived from their pragmatic approach to all manner of situations and circumstances in which recognition and accommodation of the right details can indeed have a significant, beneficial impact. They cite basketball coach John Wooden for whom no detail was insignificant. Throughout his career, devoted all of his first pre-season meeting with each squad to explaining how to put on socks properly. The tradition continued until his last season at U.C.L.A. when his team that year won the last of ten NCAA titles during his last 12 seasons, including seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. By the way, not one of his players ever had any problems with blisters. I really appreciate the informal, almost conversational tone that Thaler and Koval immediately establish with their reader before they work their way through an especially lively and eloquent narrative. The chapter titles are clever (e.g. “Go the Extra Inch”) but not cute.

They take the subject (i.e. the power of small) seriously because of the potentially enormous implications and consequences of neglecting or ignoring “the right details” but, that said, I think they should have provided an occasional qualification to temper an otherwise strident comment. For example, some (but not all) “little mistakes spell disaster”; there are times when it is possible to “make it big by thinking small” but there other times when thinking small makes “it” even smaller; and when “small changes the world,” the results are not necessarily beneficial. I think the subtitle should have been “Why Little Things Can Make All the Difference.” With both skill and passion, Thaler and Koval urge their readers to be alert for the important details that others miss, to become an effective problem finder, to make “going above and beyond the call of duty” their standard operating procedure, to be a more inquisitive and attentive listener, to take advantage of every opportunity to tell others how much they are appreciated, and in countless other ways to apply and leverage “the power of small” whenever and wherever appropriate. Well-done!

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen

The best ideas are out there…or inside you…just waiting for you to find them.

The premise of the book is this: There are valuable lessons to be learned from those who have highly-developed skills that enable them to “find the best ideas and make them happen.” Better yet, these are skills that almost anyone else can develop in combination with (a) an insatiable curiosity to understand what works, what doesn’t, and why; (b) an eagerness to communicate, cooperate, and – most important of all – collaborate/co-create with others; and (c) determination to sustain the “hunt” (Thomas Edison’s term for his search for solutions) despite whatever resistance, ridicule, and setbacks that may be encountered. With assistance from William Bole, Andy Boyton and Bill Fischer explain in this book what they The DeepDive(tm), a combination of brainstorming, prototyping and feedback loops merged into an approach they devised that executives can use with teams to help develop solutions for specific business challenges.

The focus of the book is on a process called I.D.E.A. whose foundation consists of four principles: Interested (i.e. insatiable curiosity), Diverse (i.e. locating or generating as many different ideas as possible from as many different sources as possible), Exercised (e.g. constant, relentless, sharply-focused observation of mental, emotional, and intuitive activity as well as whatever the senses experience in the physical world), and finally, Agile (i.e. developing cognitive and analytical skills that are razor-sharp, flexible, and resilient). Actually, every one in an organization (including, especially, C-level executives) should continuously strengthen the skills each of these principles requires because all organizations need

• Idea Hunters (with in satiable curiosity)
• Idea Finders (who recognize possibilities no one else does)
• Idea Evaluators (who have high-standards and are baggage-free)
• Idea Marketers (to create demand, both internally and externally)
• Idea Refiners (who understand that improvement is an on-going process, a journey rather than a destination)

Note: I presume to suggest that when a “Best Ideas” team is formed, that its members possess cross-functional talents (essential to evangelism during barrier removal) and that the model be appropriate to the given organization’s needs, interests, resources, and goals; also, that formulation of the model be based on this book as well as on what Pixar and IDEO do and how they do it. Caveat: Adapt rather than adopt best practices.

Boynton and Fischer brilliantly explain which habits are most important during the “hunt” (Pages 90-94), what “Idea Flow” is and does as well as how to sustain it (101-119), and how to create great conversations (129-141). I was especially interested in their insertion of four sets of “IdeaWork” observations and recommendations. The first: Selling [actually Setting Aside] the Best Hour of the Day at [for] Yourself” (39-43), #2: “The I’s and the T’s” (65-68), “Assembling an Idea Portfolio” (91-97), #3: “Assembling an Idea Portfolio” (91-97), and #4: “Ready-Set, Launch” (121-127). Value-added benefits are plentiful. For example, Boynton and Fischer include a “Self Assessment” (1`46-150 that, all by itself, is worth far more than the cost of the book. Also an outstanding “References” section comprised of the books, articles, and online resources they recommend.

In addition to the books that Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer recommend, I presume to add two by Tom Kelley (The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation) as well as two more recently published books, David Kord Murray’s Borrowing Brilliance and Josh Linkner’s Disciplined Dreaming.

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

Escape Velocity

How to free your organization from “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom”

The quotation in the title of this review is from Leading Change in which James O’Toole brilliantly explains why most of the resistance to change initiatives is cultural in nature. Over the years, Geoffrey Moore has written several books in which he explains how business leaders need to cross the chasm created by disruptive technologies, to survive inside a tornado of constant change, and to deal with a process of natural selection that eliminates many (most?) companies that defend the status quo (or at least their status quo) rather than escaping from its appealing but lethal limitations and insufficiencies. In his latest book, Moore suggests that there is some “hidden force” that is working against most companies’ efforts: “the pull of the past, most concretely embodied in [a company's] prior year’s operating plan.”

One especially significant result of that organizational vulnerability is that it precludes exposure to what Moore characterizes as “secular market change.” That is, a “not to be repeated” expansion of the market that occurs whenever a new category or a new class of customers is brought on board. That expansion “stands in contrast to cyclical growth, which refers to the ongoing returns from an established market, one in which the customers and the category remain the same and power shuttles here and there among various vendors and their latest offers. The key point here is, you can make a mistake with cyclical growth and still have plenty of chances to get yourself back in the game. That is not the case, however, with secular change.” Missing out on the opportunities it offers “is a disaster.”

Those who have read one or more of Moore’s previous books already know that he is a visionary pragmatist with exceptional analytical and writing skills. I think that Escape Velocity will prove to be his most important book thus far, given the timing of its appearance during an extended period of economic turbulence and organizational disruption. I agree with him that leaders must ask the right questions (please see Pages 10-11) and then obtain the correct answers to them. In order to free themselves and their organization from – and then remain free of — the “pull of the past,” they must formulate and then execute an escape-velocity strategy. How? Focus on three separate but interdependent initiatives:

1. Innovate sufficiently to achieve competitive separation in the domain of invention.

2. Institutionalize what achieves the separation so it can be scaled and sustain in the domain of deployment.

3. Drive the transition from invention to deployment to a tipping point “such that the world will go forward as newly aligned and not fall back into its old ways.”

Throughout his lively and eloquent narrative, Moore explains how to create, apply, and sustain four types of power and devotes a separate chapter to each: Category (i.e. reengineering portfolio management), Company (i.e. making asymmetrical bets), Market (i.e. capitalizing on markets in transition), Offer (i.e. breaking the ties that bind), and Execution (i.e. engineering the escape). It should be noted that, in the Introduction, Moore duly notes that under certain conditions, an established player’s standard operating procedure (e.g. operational gains from mature markets), “does not result, in and of itself, in bad economic results.” However, a key point, the “players” (be they new or established) do not sink “into a fixed legacy position.” Each adopted one or more of the 13 different models or frameworks that, Moore points out, are “nestled inside one or another level in the Hierarchy of Powers” he thoroughly examines in Chapters 2-6 and then reviews in the final chapter.

In my opinion, this is one of the most important business books published in recent years and its relevance will increase exponentially for years to come. Bravo!

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

Being the Boss

Who you are will determine what you do and how you do it

The book’s subtitle refers to three imperatives for becoming a great leader and all are essential: Manage yourself, manage your network, and manage your team. The material is organized within three Parts, each devoted to one of the imperatives. Note the sequence. Linda Hill and Kent Lineback are quite correct when suggesting that those who cannot manage themselves effectively cannot manage anyone else effectively. It should also be noted that they are world-class pragmatists. The material they provide in their book is based on a wide and deep body of research on managers’ real-world behavior. They skillfully invoke the “journey” metaphor when examining two processes: self-discovery and becoming a great leader. In fact, there is also a third process: helping others to become a great leader.

Credit Hill and Lineback with making skillful use of several reader-friendly devices such as checklists of key points that are inserted and then discussed throughout the narrative. For example, these are provided in the first four chapters:

• The eight “inherent paradoxes” of management (Pages16-20)
• Why the paradoxes define the fundamental nature of management (20-21)
• Most common misconceptions about management (38-43)
• Self-audit questions: knowing when and how to use authority (45-48)
• Why being both a boss and a friend can be incompatible (52-56)
• Competence and Character: The elements of trust (59-70)

Hill and Lineback also provide a Summary at the conclusion of each of the three Parts that serves as a self-assessment with regard to where the reader is at this point in the journey to become a great manager. The questions in each Summary as well as those posed elsewhere serve two separate but interdependent purposes, both of them critically important: They challenge the reader to determine progress re both the journey of self-discovery and the journey of leadership development.

The reader is thus actively involved in the dual process, rather than merely reading about it.

To me, some of the most valuable material is provided in Chapter as Hill and Lineback help the reader to “define the future” to derive nine substantial benefits (147-151). They explain how and why to formulate a written plan to encourage their reader to communicate goals and involve others. They also recommend an unwritten plan exists in the reader’s mind “as a living, evolving understanding” of what to do, where the journey’s destination is located, why the reader seeks it, and how to reach it. “Think of your written plan as a partial snapshot of your unwritten plan at a given moment. That written plan will differ from your broader, more fluid, and more disorganized unwritten plan in key ways.”

Readers will appreciate the fact that Hill and Lineback explain in detail the three key elements of a written plan and then provide a series of direct questions to guide and inform its creation. Some questions address immediate issues, others intermediate issues, and still others issues that are “one year and three or more years out.” It is imperative that the reader be clear about her or his current situation, equally clear about where she or he wants to be in the future, and then specific about how to get from the current situation to the ultimate destination. Individuals as well as members of a team must answer these questions. Great leaders ensure that the right questions are asked and, of equal importance, that answers to them are correct and complete.

Linda Hill and Kent Lineback fully understand – and appreciate – how difficult it is to embark and then remain on the journey they propose. They wrote this book for aspiring leaders and offer additional assistance at the website identified on Page 255. If viewed as “gardeners,” great leaders “grow” other great leaders. That is perhaps the single greatest obligation – and satisfaction – of “being the boss.”

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.

Additional and even more valuable revelations about “the principles that distinguish great organizations from good ones”

For as long as I can remember, Jim Collins has been a research-driven business thinker. In each of his prior books, he and his associates (usually Morten Hansen among them) share what was revealed during many years of research to learn the answer to an especially important question. For Built to Last, it was “Why are some companies able to achieve and sustain success through multiple generations of leaders, across decades and even centuries?”; in Good to Great, “Why do some companies make the leap from good to great… and others don’t?”; then in How the Mighty Fall, “How and why do some once great companies fall and other companies never give in to the same challenges, problems, and setbacks?”; and now in Great by Choice, “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?”

Collins, Hansen, and their colleagues conducted a nine-year study (2002-2011) and share what they learned. Here are the findings that caught my eye:

1. For reasons best revealed within the book’s narrative, in context, some companies and leaders thrive in chaos. Those on whom the book focuses have out-performed their industry’s index by at least 10 times and (key point) under the same extreme conditions with which others in the same industry must also contend.

2. Characterized as “10X” companies, those selected were paired in a “near-perfect match” — for purposes of both comparison and contrast – with companies during “eras of dynastic performance that ended in 2002, not the companies as they are today. It’s entirely possible that by the time you read these words, one or two of the companies on the list [i.e. Amgen, Biomet, Intel, Microsoft, Progressive Insurance, Southwest Airlines, and Stryker] has stumbled, falling from greatness.”

3. The research invalidates well-entrenched myths (see Pages 9-10) with regard to the 10X companies and their leaders. For example, “the evidence does not support the premise that 10X companies will necessarily be more innovative than their less successful comparisons [during the same timeframe]; and in some cases, the 10X cases were [begin italics] less [end italics] innovative.”

4. Leaders of 10X companies display three core behaviors that, in combination, distinguish them from the leaders of less successful comparison companies. They also call to mind the behaviors of Level 5 leadership, examined in detail in Good to Great. Specifically, 10Xers exemplify fanatic discipline (“utterly relentless, monomaniacal, unbending in their focus on their quests”), empirical creativity (reliance on “direct observation, practical experimentation, and direct engagement with tangible evidence”), and productive paranoia (channeling their fear and worry into action, preparing, developing contingency plans, building buffers, and maintaining large margins of safety”).

5. In the Epilogue, Collins and his associates acknowledge their sense that “a dangerous disease” is infecting today’s culture, one that incorrectly suggests that greatness “owes more to circumstance, even luck, than to action and discipline.” Yes, they agree, good or bad luck plays a role for everyone, including 10Xers and Level Fivers. However, they offer an eloquent reassurance that many of us need to hear: “The greatest leaders we’ve studied throughout all our research cared as much about values as victory, as much about purpose as profit. As much about being useful as being successful. Their drive and stamina are ultimately internal, rising from where deep inside.”

Organizations do not make choices, their leaders do, and the fate of each of those organizations depends on the quality of the choices its leaders make, especially amidst uncertainty, chaos, and luck…three realities that even the best leaders can only manage rather than control. That is the challenge but also the opportunity to which the book’s title refers. The single most important difference between the 10X companies that Collins and Hansen discuss and those with which they are compared/contrasted is that those who lead them make better choices as they build and then sustain a culture within which everyone else does.

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Bob Morris is an independent management consultant based in Dallas who specializes in accelerated executive development. He has interviewed more than 100 business thought leaders and reviewed more than 2,200 business books for Amazon. Each week, we will add to the Networlding Business Bookshelf abbreviated reviews in which he discusses a few of his personal favorites. You can contact him directly at interllect@mindspring.com.