Greatest Hits

New address for Greatest Hits Blog

Please visit the Greatest Hits new blog site: www.greatesthitsblog.com and subscribe (or resubscribe) via email subscription or reader.

 

Brand new summaries coming soon.

 

 

New Greatest Hits Blog

The Greatest Hits blog has a new home – www.greatesthitsblog.com.

The blog now includes more user-friendly search options (by author name and book title), links to Amazon to pre-order the physical books (out in September), and an update on Training permutations. I'm also currently working on the Greatest Hits iphone apps – to follow shortly.

So please visit the new site and subscribe now (or re-subscribe if you followed the old blog). Brand new summaries will be posted shortly - starting with the excellent Rework by Fried and Hansson.

Greatest Hits Update

The Greatest Hits blog is taking a short break over the summer to have a re-fit in time for September, when the project kicks off in earnest. That month sees the launch of the full package:

• Marketing Greatest Hits the book (summarises 40 books) – available for pre-order on Amazon

• Business Greatest Hits the book (summarises another 40 books) – available for pre-order on Amazon

• Iphone/itouch/ipad apps for both. Each app will be split into two parts

• A revised blog that will send you new material if you sign up

• An infinitely flexible training programme that you can customize by subject, author, or choose a mixture

In the meanwhile you can still access all the material on the existing blog.

So…buy the books, buy the apps, and sign up!

Lovemarks – Kevin Roberts

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• The idealism of love is the new realism of business. By building respect and inspiring love, business can move the world
• Once there were products, then trademarks, then brands, and now lovemarks
• For great brands to survive, they must create "loyalty beyond reason"
• The secret is to use mystery, sensuality and intimacy
• Consumers, not companies, own lovemarks
• Some truths about love: humans need it; it means more than liking a lot; it is about responding, about delicate intuitive sensing; it takes time; and it cannot be commanded or demanded
• A picture may be worth a thousand words, but terrific stories are right up there with them. A great story can never be told too often
• Great ideas, like humor (sic), come from the corners of the mind, out on the edge. That's why humor can break up log-jams in business and personal relationships

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The book is attempting to redefine brand thinking, and is thought provoking
• The warning signs of brands descending into generic stuff are: consistent, interchangeable, impersonal, abundant, homogenous, lowest price
• "Brands are out of juice" is an interesting notion: worn out from overuse; no longer mysterious; can't understand the new consumer; struggle with good old-fashioned competition; have been captured by formula; have been smothered by creeping conservatism
• Human beings are powered by emotion, not by reason. The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions
• Primary emotions: joy, sorrow, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust can be outstripped by more complex secondary emotions: love, guilt, shame, pride, envy, jealousy

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The action points at the end are all pretty hackneyed stuff: be passionate, involve customers, celebrate loyalty, find, tell and retell great stories, accept responsibility
• Pretty much all the examples are from Saatchi clients, and at times it just sounds like a self-trumpeting agency brochure

 

Simply Brilliant – Fergus O’Connell

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• The best ideas aren't always complicated and the incredibly straightforward stuff is often overlooked in the search for a complex answer
• Many smart people lack the set of essential skills which could roughly be described as "common sense"
• There are 7 principles here that can be adapted for attacking most everyday problems

1. Many things are simple – despite our tendency to complicate them

2. You need to know what you're trying to do – many don't

3. There is always a sequence of events – make the journey in your head

4. Things don't get done if people don't do them – strategic wafflers beware!

5. Things rarely turn out as expected – so plan for the unexpected

6. Things either are or they aren't – don't fudge things

7. Look at things from other's point of view – it will help your expectations

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• In a world of over complication, asking some simple questions can really make your life easier. For example:

~ What would be the simplest thing to do here?

~ Describing an issue or a solution in less than 25 words

~ Telling it as though you were telling a six year old

~ Asking whether there is a simpler way

• Try writing the minutes of a meeting before the meeting – then you'll know what you want to get out of it
• It highlights the difference between duration and effort. "How long will it take you to have a look at that?" "About an hour." But when?
• It explains the reasons why things don't get done: confusion, over-commitment, inability – usually busy people never say there's a problem!
• Plan your time assuming you will have interruptions – the "hot date" scenario

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The orientation is very much based on a project management perspective, which is fine if you are one, but others may prefer to cherry-pick the most applicable ideas
• Anyone who flies by the seat of their pants would have to be very disciplined to apply these ideas. It's a bit like dieting

 

The Logic of Life – Tim Harford

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• If humans are so clever, why do we smoke and gamble, or take drugs and fall in love? Is this really rational behaviour? And how come your idiot boss is so overpaid?
• In fact, the behaviour of even the unlikeliest of individuals complies with economic logic, taking into account future costs and benefits, even we don't quite realise it.
• Rational choice theory affects most things, and can sit happily even with the most passionate emotions.
• Most things can be explained: overpaid (apparently useless) bosses, proximity to neighbours, racism, and divorce decisions.
• Rational people respond to incentives: when it becomes more costly to do something, they will tend to do less. In weighing up their choices, they will bear in mind the constraints on them, and their total budget. And they will consider the future consequences of present choices. This applies just as much to prostitutes and criminals as it does to anyone else.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The idea that everybody responds to incentives and consequences may have wider application than we think.
• Game theory (Von Neumann) uses rational decision making to analyse every decision in a way that should lead to calmer, more beneficial decisions, but it is hard for the layperson to implement. Most of us just follow the 'wisdom of crowds' principle, but don't adjust our guesses.
• Human interactions are so shot through with ambiguity that they are better viewed as focal points (Schelling): where and when would two people who can't talk meet each other in New York?
• Tournament theory means that workers sabotage one another to win the top job: the bigger the boss's pay, and the less they have to do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for everyone else to aim for it.
• 'Egonomics' is mental civil war: should I smoke or not? All humans wrestle with such conflict.
• For every year that a woman delays having her first child, her lifetime earnings rise by 10%.
• The 'death of distance' doesn't make the world flatter, it makes it spikier, with evermore activity taking place in cities – centres of innovation and idea exchange.
• The rate of technological progress is proportional to the world's population – currently we should have a world-beating idea every two months (1 per billion people per year).

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Nothing, but don't expect any charts or easy sections.

 

Liar’s Paradise – Graham Edmonds

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Eighty per cent of companies think that they are fraud free, but a recent survey actually revealed fraud in forty five per cent of them
• There are seven degrees of deceit:
• White lie: told to make someone feel better or to avoid embarrassment
• Fib: relatively insignificant, such as excuses and exaggerations
• Blatant: whoppers used when covering up mistakes or apportioning blame
• Bullshit: a mixture of those above combined with spin and bluff to give the best impression
• Political: similar to bullshit but with much bigger scale and profile
• Criminal: illegal acts from fraud to murder, and their subsequent denial
• Ultimate: so large that it must be true. As Joseph Goebbels said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it"

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It confirms what we all suspect – that the workplace constantly bombards us with lies, fakery and spin
• Case histories of Enron, Boo.com, the European Union and others provide the proof on a grand scale
• Deconstructions of other levels of lying help the reader to navigate their way through the day-to-day types. You can then decide how to react.
• It has tips on how to suck up to the boss, pass the buck and endure meetings
• Everybody should read the chapter on Lies and Leadership

"The truth is more important than the facts." Frank Lloyd Wright

"Those that think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow colour blind." Austin O'Malley

"Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy." George Carlin

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The book essentially condemns most corporate cultures and so needs to be viewed lightly by those who have to work in them
• There is a moral dilemma lurking within: do you tell the truth and get trod on, or join the liars?

 

Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite – Paul Arden

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This quirky book explains the benefits of making bad decisions, why unreason is better than reason, and shows how risk is the security in your life. It's about having the confidence to roll the dice.
• The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else. They are dull, predictable, and lead you nowhere. Unsafe decisions cause you to think and respond in a way you hadn't thought of.
• I want is better than I wish
• It's better to regret what you have done than what you haven't.
• Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you've got, and fix it as you go.
• There is no right point of view. There are personal, conventional, large and small ones. You are always both right and wrong. Advances in any field are built upon people with the small or personal point of view.
• What is a good idea? One that happens. One that doesn't isn't. If an idea is not taken up as a solution to a problem it has no value.
• Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Authenticity is invaluable. Originality isn't. "It's not where you take things from – it's where you take them to." Jean-Luc Godard

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The booked is packed full of inspirational and contrary thoughts – just the place to start if you are bogged down or suffering from inertia.
• Until the Mexico Olympics of 1968, high jumpers faced the bar, and the record stood at 5' 8". Dick Fosbury turned his back on it and leapt 7' 4", by thinking the opposite of everyone else.
• In 1889 George Eastman invented the Kodak brand. It means nothing but was chosen because it was short, was not open to mispronunciation, and could not be associated with anything else.
• "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw
• Meetings are for those with not enough to do. They are performances, acts to convince people of their own importance.
• The world is what you think of it. So think of it differently and your life will change.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Not much. This book is all about jumping off points, so don't expect to be guided by hand through the creative process.

Flicking Your Creative Switch – Wayne Lotherington

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS  

• Everyone can be creative, regardless of whether they think they are
• Creativity is variously described as "the spark that ignites new ideas", "the infinite capacity that resides within you", and "shaping the game you play, not playing the game you find"
• Good ideas arise when we take something we already know (light bulb no.1) and consider it in relation to another thing we already know but which is unrelated (no.2). Merging them creates light bulb number 3 – the new idea

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It explains the origin of the phrase "thinking outside the box". The Gottschaldt figurine, or nine-dot game, requires you to join all the dots without taking your pen off the paper. You can't solve it if you view it as a box
• ROI is used to stand for relevance, originality and impact. Your ideas won't work if they do not have all three
• Barriers to creativity have been placed in our way since childhood: don't be foolish, grow up, work before play, do as you're told, don't ask questions, obey the rules, be practical, and so on
• There are six techniques which you can use in any awayday to generate ideas:
• Random Word: take a noun randomly from somewhere and apply it to the subject. You can also use pictures
• Eyes of Experts: choose three respected experts from other fields and consider how they would deal with your issue. There is a variation called Industrial Roundabout where you view it through a different category
• What's Hot?: use popular current things to appeal to your audience
• Curly Questions: use analogies, speculation, role reversal and imagination to re-phrase the issue at hand so that more original answers emerge
• Exaggeration and Depravation: over-exaggerate the benefits of a product, or push to ludicrous extremes what happens if it isn't present
• Exquisite Corpse: based on surrealist thinking, different people randomly select five words to create a sentence in the pattern adjective/noun/verb/adjective/noun. Eg. The peculiar bicycle swims a brilliant banana. Each word is then scrutinised to review the problem

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• You need to control the exercises so they don't seem trivial
• You need to be open-minded

 

 

Brand Manners – Hamish Pringle & William Gordon

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Companies need to align their internal and external brand values to build a self-confident organisation
• Customer perception of quality is a function of their pre-existing expectations of the brand, coupled with their experience when interacting with it
• Brand reputations can be ruined by a poor interaction
• The Brand Manners Improvement Cycle has five stages:
• Individual Behaviours. It's not enough to talk about missions and values – they have to be manifested in the concrete reality of individual actions
• Encounters. Stay close to customers and staff, and engender an atmosphere of trust
• Brand Promise. Technology and automation must not be allowed to remove humanity from brand interaction
• Happy Surprises. Direct human interface generates defining gestures, pledges to customers, and moments of truth that should reflect the brand
• Feeling Good. The art of ensuring continually satisfied customers is to define your version of outstanding service, realising the importance of under-promising and over-delivering, and recruit in line with the brand's values

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The Brand Manners cycle makes good sense and enables you to start a strategic debate with clients that goes way beyond marketing communications
• The philosophy of the book is a useful antidote to macho marketing styles
• Case histories include Orange, Tesco, Coca-Cola, Ronseal, HSBC, and Pret a Manger – many of which could be directly applicable to your business
• The format is in user-friendly chunks, with lots of diagrams that may help to inspire the content of other presentations

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Face-to-face interaction with customers may be one step too far removed from the briefs for most marketing campaigns
• You could end up having a lot of theoretical debate about the behaviour in an organisation without making any particular progress on marketing issues