QVIews

A blogger touting his love for journalism is like a high school choir girl saying she loves opera via jolieodell.wordpress.com

The Art of the Start, 2004, by Guy Kawasaki You should always be selling—not strategizing about selling. Don’t test, test, test—that’s a game for big companies. Don’t worry about being embarrassed. Don’t wait to develop the perfect product or service. Good enough is good enough. There will be plenty of time for refinement later. It’s…

For most of us, it's very hard to remember how different our customers are from ourselves. This recent article does a good job of driving the message home. I challenge you to create a snapshot of a customer who is VERY different from yourself and hang that in your work area. You have to satisfy…

Whenever a company owner says he or she needs to improve the staff's creativity, I always know that the company is doing something to suppress it. People are naturally creative all the time until someone discourages them. You don't have to be making art or designing products. You are creative every time you overcome an…

Execution, 2002, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan: Execution will help you, as a business leader, to choose a more robust strategy. In fact, you can't craft a worthwhile strategy if you don't at the same time make sure your organization has or can get what's required to execute it, including the right resources and…

Mark Granovetter's book, Getting a Job (1995), revolutionized how I saw the value of the people I've met casually. (Warning–the book is a sociological analysis, not a how-to guide). I was going to post a quote from the book, but then I found this wonderful speech given in the midst of our current unemployment agony.…

Ten Principles of Clear Statement by Gunning-Mueller Clear Writing Institute Inc. 1. Keep sentences short. 2. Prefer the simple to the complex. 3. Prefer the familiar word. 4. Avoid unnecessary words. 5. Put action in your verbs. 6. Write like you talk. 7. Use terms your reader can picture. 8. Tie in with your reader’s experience. 9. Make full use of variety. 10. Write…

New Rules for the New Economy, by Kevin Kelly, 1998: In the highly turbulent, quickly reforming environment of the new economy, the competitive advantage goes to the nimble and malleable, the flexible and quick. Speed and agility trump size and experience. Fast to find the new is only one half the equation; fast to let…

Bill Jensen, The Simplicity Survival Handbook, 2003: Every day, you must communicate to tens or hundreds or thousands of people who are instantly deciding whether they buy into whatever you’re saying, and whether they should act. Most will give you only seconds to grab their attention and convince them. Lack of clarity and focus has…

Jim Collins wrote the forward for The Daily Drucker, edited by Joseph A. Maciariello, based on Collins frequent visits to Peter Drucker during the last years of his life. Jim Collins.com: The Daily Drucker, 2004-Aug-3 At the end of my day with Drucker in 1994, we pulled up to his home after a meal at…