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I was immediately attracted to this title when I first read about it. I’ve had my share of trips to Disney properties and I’ve read some about their service culture and unique way of providing products for the masses. And as you’ve seen here before, I love a good story.

This is the story of Disney’s Florida attractions, starting with the dream and the film that was used to sell it, which through the magic of the Internet, you can now see for yourself.

The book is an absolutely fascinating read, and I appreciated the author’s interest in acquiring as many details about the Walt Disney World, EPCOT, and associated parks’ development and operations. This included a host of challenges, including difficulties in acquiring the land, construction, and ongoing maintenance headaches. Of particular intrigue to me were the chapters dealing with the various safety incidents that have occurred in the parks over time. I didn’t see these chapters as “tell all” or “expose.” I saw them as detailing what has happened in the course of millions of people attending the parks. Some of the stories are very tragic. Similar detailed treatments were given to describing the parks’ initial plans - everything from the attractions to the economics.

For me, the overall story was one of charismatic leadership and execution over time. In reading and watching about Walt Disney’s dream, it seems that he was unique person who made a difference in the company - pushing ahead every day. As I read about the leaders that worked to implement his dream over time, it seemed that they just weren’t Walt. And the impact is what we see today at EPCOT. Is it really true that a leader’s job is to create an organization that functions well without them?

Tim Ferriss is a great writer. I would say this is the best book I have read this year. I found out about this book when I read his piece on managing information overload on ChangeThis, which I am starting to learn is a place to pre-pitch your book before you publish it. And of course, who wouldn’t be drawn the idea about learning about information overload? So I checked it out.

When I actually got the book, within about 3 sentences I realized it was a change your lifestyle get rich kind of deal and thought, “Doh!” I was tricked. And, that Tim’s a smart guy. But I read it anyway. First off, he’s hilarious in the way he weaves together a story, with (actually) just the right humility and humor about himself. And, he’s revealing about what he’s done. It’s all out there for you to pick from. And it’s really interesting - the idea of taking mini-retirements throughout life as opposed to waiting until the end. I especially like the part that says “Boredom is the Opposite of Happiness.” It’s true.

And there is a section on managing information overload - it’s a lot about thinking about what’s really important. I agree with that. There are a few places where I think sometimes a little inefficiency is ok. I actually can’t tell for sure from the book if Tim is an extrovert or an introvert but part of life sometimes is to have those moments where someone is spending some time with you, even on something not important, even on something work related. There’s a journey, and that has to be fun. Even for the 4 hours. But that’s just me, and I’m good with that. It’s interesting to read about another way here, of course.

There’s a really funny and interesting chapter on the concept of the virtual assistant - a person you can hire from anywhere on the globe that will do just about anything for you that doesn’t require a physical presence. These days, that’s a lot. There’s also a good guide to packing up your life and being more mobile as you do the vagabond thing.

I know that I’m not a vagabond - that wouldn’t make me happy (I suppose you could say it would bore me) and I’m not looking for a lot of adventure travel. However, the lesson here is a good reminder for us to make our own kind of music, sing our own special song, and there’s nothing holding us back. Really. Nothing. What does it cost to take a trip (or a cruise) around he world compared to the time and emotional energy we spend not taking a trip or a cruise around the world?

I am probably in the camp that sort of thinks this way anyway, so the philosophy is going to appeal to me generally. And it’s a reminder to not stop trying new things. I am about to try a lot of new things, and that’s why life is good.

I eagerly sought out out this book when it was published, just like many other patrons at my local library. If they are like me, they are as fascinated by the power and the pitfalls of electronic mail. Who wouldn’t want to read about something that has become such a part of our lives? And honestly, when has anyone ever sat down with you and said, “Okay, here is how you can use e-mail well?” I have learned everything I know from experience, and tips along the way. In each case, it’s been so interesting to realize that every tip I have received I have incorporated in one form or another, I think because I was hungry for the guidance.

On to the book. I think if I were to rename it, I would call it “(don’t) SEND.” It does a very nice job of letting the reader know all of the pitfalls of e-mail. I’d probably own many of them in my past, or should I say I’ve learned about each best practice over time. I liked the part where it discussed the main types of e-mail that make people get up from their desk, and not in a happy way. There are a few tips, like, use contractions, don’t be so formal, and maybe some guidance on when being overly formal is not a good thing. There are a few good stories about “the e-mail that was forwarded around the world.”

Overall, the advice steers toward good common sense and courtesy, and I would probably recommend this book for someone who was starting out in the business world. I also wouldn’t be opposed to a pamphlet form being used in new employee orientations (and I’m serious about that - everyone should have a measure of good e-mail hygeine). I think, though, that this book is meant more to be checked out from the library rather than being purchased - it’s a smaller volume that can be read pretty quickly.

One thing that’s interesting for me is the fact that I was drawn to the book because of my curiosity around business communication, and the book tends to focus on business communication. What does that say about our overall orientation to the business world compared to our orientation to the interpersonal world? I think everyone should get a course in both.

This is the latest book from the author that brought us “Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” If you’re familiar with Patrick’s style, it’s to discuss the topic as a story, featuring fictional characters in a business environment. I think it’s effective because (1) everyone likes to read a story and (2) As you read you say, “Oh, that’s just like Millie in Accounting!” Only until later on do you realize, “Oh, that’s just like me, too.” Gulp.

This fable finds us in the life of a young consultant trying to find his way, with a strong start, and then a struggle. He learns that he can really do good if he can solve the “silo” problem that almost every business faces. We all know this one - the “I’ll ask my people to work with your people” situation. And it’s big. Harvard Business Review recently published an article on this very topic. In the HBR article as well as in the fable, it really comes down to customer focus.

Everyone sort of knows this intuitively, but at times they are not practicing it. The book takes us through the attempts of our young consultant to draw parallels between situations where customer focus is paramount and changes the way that people behave for the better. I admit I was taken along quite nicely by the book, doubting any hope in the beginning (as it was designed), and then grooving with the work as it progressed and improved.

The challenge of this topic is that a discussion of busting silos in any format is only going to scratch the surface. How are you going to support others in having a customer focus? Not every consultant is invited into the Boardroom by the CEO to spell it out. It’s more of a very very delicate dance, that can take a long time (maybe too long a time) to execute.

All of that said, because the time commitment was so low to this book, as it is really written in a very easy to read format, it’s a worthwhile read. It’s not going to, in my opinion, explain the how to make this happen, but it’s going to lay out what the problem is and that there’s a way out.

The added benefit of the way it’s written is its recommendability - much better than recommending the Katherine Graham Autobiog (not that there’s anything wrong with that piece of work). Maybe worth a check out from your local public library.

I saw this at the bookstore and I couldn’t help myself. Well, I could help myself a little bit by getting it from the library for free. This is Donald’s latest book, and it is co-authored with Robert Kiyosaki, who is only a millionnaire, but is rich like Donald is.

Theirs is a philosophy that is not about saving passively and diversifying, it is about being financially intelligent. They state that the type of investing that they do is not risky, because they study what they do and are active investors. It’s a contrarian philosophy to everything we are told constantly by the financial services industry, which they imply exists to manage our money, and make a lot of cash from doing so.

All of that aside, I enjoyed reading about the life philosophy of these two gentlemen. I love a good story, and there is a good story in someone who has gained and lost as much as Donald has. Robert is a bit more open about some of the aspects of his upbringing, his experience in Vietnam, and later on as a real estate tycoon. But both of them talk about their failures and lessons learned. For whatever reason, I do admire Donald Trump, because beneath the ego, he does have a human quality to him (and he is a human being after all).

The stories about Robert’s Vietnam service were chilling, and this statement that he throws in:

“As a pilot in Vietnam in 1972, I realized we were not fighting to stop communism. I realized we were fighting for oil and for big oil corporations. Today, we are in the same war - different countries, same corporations”

At the same, he is affectionately not technologically enabled - “Not only am I obsolete, I am becoming more rapidly more obsolete with each new technological change that comes along. I once bought an iPod but could not figure out how to put information into it or how to get anything out of it.” Umm…don’t you just plug it in?

In any event, I thought this was an enjoyable read - advice about being rich aside, there’s a bit of education about how our financial system works in the macro level and how folks like Donald leverage it to its maximum.

I picked this book up based on my interest in the way that software is designed and the best and not so best ways that software is put together. The subtitle is “Why high-tech products drive us crazy and how to restore the sanity.”

The book is a bit of a diatribe against programmers and software developers, who in the post-green-screen era of computers are not really fit to be interface designers. This is reflected in the design of so many technologies we use, from the alarm-enabled key fobs we have for our cars now (even though no one needs the panic button - it was just added because there was space for another feature), to the veritable VCR.

I really like the analogy given about technology being like a dancing bear - we are amazed that the bear dances at all, even though it doesn’t dance very well at all. I actually experienced this myself when I installed this “panoramic photo software” that came with a digital camera I bought. I was familiar with a similar function that I used to use on Canon cameras that worked really well. This version, in comparison, was really clunky, but I am supposed to be happy because I can make a panorama at all. You get the point.

The solution(s) seem to revolve around getting true interaction designers involved and separating them from the programmers, and having the programmers subscribe to the design philosophy and code around that. Mr. Cooper gives a few nice examples of how he’s done this, and recommends others do it, by creating user “personas” and designing to them. This makes sense to me completely.

He and I depart ways, though, in the level of discomfort he levels at programmers’ role in designing software. The implication here is that programmer-types will never understand what it is to be a user of a system; they will always design for themselves. Therefore, we must hire an army of interaction designers to understand this for them, and they will specify the interface down to the nth degree in huge design documents.

I don’t think this is the answer either, in the era of methodologies such as Agile, which prioritize the customer and a cross-functional approach to software development. I think when we say “you are good at X, you do X and don’t interact with the customer,” I think we set ourselves up for intellectual couch potato-hood.

All of that said, for someone looking to find out how we got where we have around software, I think this is a worthwhile read, for historical significance.

I was attracted to this book by a review that cited the fact that it is written about a software project that has not yet been released (well, not really, see here for more information). Scott Rosenberg, the author, is also the cofounder of Salon.com, which gives him some interesting insights as a veteran of the Internet/recent software history.

The book follows the creation of the Open Source Applications Foundation by Mitch Kapor, the person responsible for Lotus 1-2-3, and the creation of their first product, code named “Chandler,” a sort of PIM that promises to free us from the “brain dead management of attached files,” among other things. It’s an ambitious project to be sure.

The story follows the group of software developers and managers through the process of creating Chandler, through many twists and turns, delays, comings and leavings of staff. Scott also takes you through a very nice interlude of the creation of the software industry, from its beginnings in theory, to some of the latest methodologies for creating software.

What I liked, or I should say, that the author did best, is take the reader to just the right point in the story where you say to yourself, “Even I could run a software project better than this.” I think he does a nice job of challenging the notion that software creation is really “engineering,” and for me, pointing out the challenge of leadership (e.g. the lack of) in many software projects, and I’ll just say, in business in general.

As you’ve seen on here before, I really like a good story, and this is a good one.

Click here to get this at Amazon.com

I actually both read and listened to this one on CD, courtesy of my local library. I am not a big books on CD person, and this one on CD annoyed me a little because the narrator was being on the dramatic side. I mean, this is Provincetown, which is quietly beautiful. It’s not World War II. Just my 2 cents.

In any event, the book itself is great. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll enjoy the descriptions of all the places you’ve been and the history behind them. By the end, I realized that Provincetown will be a part of so many of our lives, at so many parts of our lives.

Here’s my favorite quote:

Among the strollers and shoppers on a summer afternoon, it is not unusual to see, within a fifty-foot radius, all of the following: a crowd of elderly tourists who have come for the day on a tour bus on have disembarked from a cruise ship anchored in the harbor; a pack of muscle boys on their way to the gym; a vacationing mother and father shepherding their exhausted and fussy children through the shops; a pair of lesbians with a dachshund in a rainbow collar; two gay dads in chinos and Izod shirts pushing their adopted daughter in a stroller; a dreadlocked and ostentatiously tattooed young woman who works at the head shop; a man dressed, very convincingly, as Celine Dion….

Click here to purchase this book

In between the stories of business triumph and tragedy and learning how people work, it’s useful to take time out to think about the direction one is going in, even if they are happy with that direction. I think the premise of this book may be that the direction is not so desirable, or at least that a person is at a crossroads. That’s fine; we’re all there at one point or another, and as they say, it’s better to fix the roof when it’s not raining.

This 2007 version is updated to include references to the hottest new Internet trends, etc.

From my perspective, I would say that this probably fits a (dare I say) younger demographic than me, the person working to figure out what their flavor in life is. If that’s the place you are in as you read this, a book like this is worthwhile. I think any work involved in making your life better deserves some discipline, and this book will help with that. I think we (okay, I) should have a well stated purpose in life. And why not. It doesn’t hurt. It helps a lot.

Beyond the “what should I do in my life?” there are useful tidbits about how to interact with prospective employers, including resume generation (make sure you send hard copy on nice paper, in addition to e-mail. Makes sense), handling an interview, and negotiating 101. It’s always useful to see things from the perspective of the hire-r if you are the hire-ee, and this book definitely helps with that.

I’m not sure I would say this is a must-have in a person’s book collection. On the other hand, it’s so well read that it’s likely to be in your local library available for pickup and worth a good skim.

Before I started reading this (and got sidetracked by accidentally leaving it on board a plane - better that than my iPod…), I referred to it as a good corporate soap opera. There’s some of that in there. It’s also a story about a woman in business, and I think it’s always important, and interesting, to hear the story.

Carly talks about her life from her upbringing, through college, here entrance into the business world, work at AT&T, Lucent, all the way through to her now-famous work as CEO for HP. It is fascinating and awesome to see what the life of a CEO is like, and Carly, in telling her story, talks about the responsibility and rigor that comes with that. She talks about the times that she was seen as cold and driven - “Chainsaw Carly” was one moniker. At the same time, she talks about having a clear focus and direction for the company and doing the things (I think) that any CEO, male or female, should do to support the organization’s investors and employees. Maybe it’s possible that she had some opportunities to reflect a human touch during her tenure. What’s right? There were times when she assented to courses of action that she didn’t agree with to maintain harmony.

The latter portion of the book is consumed with the end of her career as a result of her firing by the Board. I actually saw this as relief (for her) rather than a bad thing. It would be a mistake, I think by anyone’s account, to say that the Board is/was functional or carried itself with appropriate safeguards for the people it serves.

It seems to me that Carly is better off and will continue to do great things for society. This is one thing I appreciate - she stated many times that the purpose of a corporation is to make a difference in the world.

I think this is the most unfortunate part - at some level this is an $80 billion dollar company that a lot (a lot) of people depend on for their work, their life, their livelihood. It’s there to make a difference in the world.

The other thing I appreciate about her is that she’s living in Washington, DC, Georgetown to be specific. Two snaps for that. I hope one day I’ll run into her in the Puma Store on Wisconsin…

(Click here to get it now on Amazon)

My friend Chris turned me on to the concept of this book initially, which made me wonder what I could learn about the topic. I gave it a whirl anyway.

I think this book falls in the category of owners’ manuals for how to be an adult, and there’s nothing wrong with reading those once in a while. After all, how often does someone actually sit you down and counsel you on how to be one? We often learn by our last intense experience doing something well or not so well, and that’s not really the best way to learn things (all the time).

It was a quick read, and yes, I did learn something. I was a little taken aback that some of the things suggested as topics/approaches to avoid, especially in the workplace, and, well, I don’t typically avoid them. I’m not talking about off-color jokes or sexist comments. Things like genuine comments of appreciation in every conversation.

There are also some practical tips, like holding a drink at an event in your left hand rather than your right so that you don’t shake hands with a wet, cold hand. Or keeping your drink no more than a quarter full so that you can always end a conversation by telling someone that you need a refill. There are a bunch of other little tidbits in there. There’s also a nice section on how to be liked - and yes, at our tender ages, we probably have a good sense of how to be liked or not. This is like dressing on the salad, it just makes it taste better.

I have to share one tip for dealing with not knowing someone’s name that I really liked: “Tell me you once forgot the name of a very nice person.”

Isn’t one of the greatest things about Life the fact that we get to know some very nice people?

I love business books because they teach about humans and their condition (the most interesting thing) better than any novel or any science textbook.

I picked up 747, by Joe Sutter on my way to the Mexican Riviera on a boat. I wanted something that was interesting but not political. Unlike other business books I have read, this one is about a specific adventure rather than research into how people behave. And it’s a great story.

What I learned about the building of the Boeing 747 that was so interesting to me was that it was not intended to be Boeing’s flagship airliner. That was going to be the Boeing 2707, the Supersonic Transport (SST). The 747 was going to be a long-haul subsonic airliner that fit in between other subsonics and the up and coming SST. This meant that it was initially starved for resources and didn’t have the flagship status of the SST project. Yet it got built.

Continue reading Now Reading (October): 747, by Joe Sutter…

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