#21. Let's Not Screw It, Let's Just Do It: Richard Branson

I was really looking forward to this book after reading Richard Branson's first book, but it ended up being a bit of a disappointment. A lot of the material about his life was obviously taken almost straight from Losing My Virginity, and it seemed to have been written for a 12-year-old. Plus Branson comes across as a little patronising. The 'lessons' for business life and entrepreneurship it presents, while sound, are a little basic – but it's the kind of book you would turn to for inspiration, rather than guidance. And Branson is certainly one of a kind.
One thing I did find quite encouraging was that even though in some ways Richard Branson seems like an entrepreneurial force of nature, it still takes time for his various ventures to get off the ground... he plugged away for two years trying to get advertisers in his Student magazine (he was still at school, but even so), and it took five years for Virgin to get their trains up and running. So as well as boldness, courage and innovative thinking, persistence is obviously one of his greatest attributes – and I think that is something that gets missed in Branson's 'business cowboy' image.

#19. Good to Great: Jim Collins

Good to Great was one of these business books I had heard a lot of people talk about, and so decided to read myself. What surprised me when I picked it up was that rather than being the musings of some self-identified management 'guru', it was instead based on the results of a five-year study at the University of Colorado. Collins' previous book, Built to Last, was similarly based on a research project, looking at what it was that made enduring large companies successfully.
In Good to Great, he looked at what made good companies make the leap to being great companies. And these were not just 'flash-in-the-pan' successes – the selection process ensured that the 11 companies included in the study produced outstanding results for 15 years. The methodology for both the selection of companies, their analysis and the comparison with others in their sector was complicated and data-driven, and ultimately this is what makes the book good. Collins and his team of graduate student researchers puzzled over the data to truly understand what made these companies tick, and sometimes they had to deal with information that on the surface, didn't seem to make any sense.
In the end, they came up with a conceptual framework, based on the findings of this research, that shows how a good company can make the leap to greatness.
The components of this framework were:
1. Level 5 Leadership
2. First Who, Then What
3. Confront the Brutal Facts
4. Hedgehog Concept
5. Culture of Discipline
6. Technology Accelerators.
These six components work together through a buildup and breakthrough stage, and Collins also makes the comparison between what he calls the Flywheel and the Doom Loop – one where a company creates positive momentum, and the Doom Loop, as you might guess, where it is negative momentum.
Throughout the explanation of this theoretical framework, he uses examples of the 11 Good to Great companies to illustrate how they work in practice, and there are extensive appendices providing more detail of the analysis and research process. There is also a section which links the concepts from Built to Last with those discovered through the Good to Great study.
While overall it is grounded so much more heavily in verifiable fact rather than someone's opinion and as such contains excellent insights for business owners, as a book I found it hard going at times.
I also had a few question marks over some of the companies included under the heading of 'greatness' – for instance, in terms of performance Phillip Morris delivers, but should we really be looking to a company which profits from addiction as a model? Another of the 'great' companies was Fannie Mae – while in 2001, when the book was published, surely no one could have predicted its role in the unwinding of the US economy, but still, reading the comments about its innovative model of packaging mortgage backed securities and the role these played in its success left me a little bemused in the light of recent events.
Definitely worth a read for anyone aspiring to create a large, 'great' company – or if you're interested in a more empirical approach to business-building theory.

#15. Bloomberg by Bloomberg – Michael Bloomberg and Matthew Winkler

As we are on the verge of launching our own online content service, AssociationWire, I picked up this book as I thought it would be interesting to read the insights of someone who has built a billion-dollar company through providing information and media.
It was interesting to read about Michael Bloomberg's early career as a Wall Street hotshot for Salomon Brothers and how he was eventually 'set free' after 15 years, going on to establish a company built first on the Bloomberg financial information console, which would become an essential for traders the world over, but then added to the empire with news, TV, and other media. Written in 1997, it now seems a little outdated, and one wonders what he would make of the internet explosion that has happened since then, with its incredible impact on the media and transmission of information.
I guess the key difference between his company and a business like ours is that when he started up, he had received a lazy $10 million (in 1981, no less) as a payout from Salomon, so he was hardly on the poverty line. While he preaches about creating a lean and hungry company, in my view, any business that can afford to spend four years in development isn't that lean and hungry. But in light of Bloomberg's success, it was obviously time well spent.
I enjoyed reading about the development of the business - later chapters, expounding his views on management, business, technology, philanthropy, and perhaps most irritatingly, how great America is, are less engaging. The structure leaves a bit to be desired - for instance, the chapter on his early life and the influences of his parents is second-last, which seems a little strange. Mostly, I think the book suffers from a lack of light and shade - his endlessly positive, blustery tone leaves you in no doubt of his will to crush every obstacle he faces, but there is little sign of the moments of self-doubt, sheer terror and crushing disappointment that surely are part of every entrepreneur's journey to the top. He even paints the failure of his marriage as little more than a necessary development in the evolution of two people, but without any real emotion. For this reason, the book sometimes reads like a corporate brochure-cum-history of the Bloomberg business, and in it, Michael Bloomberg lacks the humanity that someone like Richard Branson, for all his own success, conveys. I have real difficulty with the American 'corporate warrior' act, and frankly sometimes he sounds like a complete tosser – but then when you think about it, it is no mean feat building a company of the size and complexity of Bloomberg, so maybe he deserves to blow his own trumpet.

#13. Small is the new big, and 183 other riffs, rants and remarkable business ideas – Seth Godin

Godin includes a warning at the beginning of this book – not to read it all at once, as it might give you a headache. He's right. As the title suggests, it is a collection of his blog posts and other writings from eight years, about business, the online environment and the world in general. What ties them together is Godin's unique way of turning accepted wisdom on its head and throwing new light on things, but at the same time, making you think, 'Why didn't I think of that before?'
At a time when the business environment has never seemed worse and fear and contraction is the order of the day, Godin provides comfort and inspiration about the possibilities for small business (after all, small is the new big and small businesses can zoom...), and challenges you to make whatever you do remarkable. It's the perfect antidote for all the downturn/recession talk.
As a special bonus, two of Godin's e-books have been included in the book - the one on website design gave me a totally new understanding of what a website is actually meant to do, and his booklet on blogs breaks this new medium down at a functional level, to explain the purpose of different types of blogs, which I found a lot more helpful than the usual hype.
It's the type of book I would want to keep going back to for more inspiration - fortunately, you can get daily updates from his blog for that instead http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

#8. Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs – Kaira Sturdivant Rouda

As a guide to developing your own 'real' brand as an entrepreneur, this was very practical and would be really handy if you were just starting out in business. As you work through the eight 'essentials', you build up a chart summing up you, your passions, your brand, positioning, culture and customers, which gives a comprehensive picture of how you see yourself and your business. There was much more to this book though, with 25 other 'life lessons', as well as stories from other female entrepreneurs, other books to read, questions to think about and action steps - and I think if you were going to get the most from it, you would really have to spend quite a bit of time working through all these questions.
It did come from that very American corporate marketing perspective, which grated on me a bit, and sometimes it didn't seem clear whether it was targeted at smaller businesses or women starting out, or women leading large corporate entities - in particular, the chapter on designing your premises really wouldn't be relevant for most new businesses! But generally, I found the message of following your own passions and being authentic in the way you run your business to be quite inspiring.

#4. Secrets of Small Business Owners Exposed! - Dale Beaumont

This formed part of my reading for inspiration for the new business year, but it was actually a little disappointing. I recently re-read Secrets of Female Entrepreneurs Exposed!, when I was in a bit of a slump as far as our business was concerned, and it really did give me a shot in the arm, partly because the interview subjects in the book had achieved much greater levels of success and some of them were household names. By contrast, the businesses featured in this book were a bit more run of the mill, and although it goes a bit more into the nitty-gritty of how to make smaller businesses successful (relevant for us at the moment), it wasn't as much fun to read.

#1: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber

So I had high hopes for this book, having heard SOOO much about it in business circles, and to get us off to a good start for 2009. But I have to say, I wasn't that impressed... Gerber's basic concepts around the entrepreneur, manager and technician and establishing a turnkey business make sense, and it seems to set out a fairly clear structure for following the model he proposes, but I didn't like the case study he used – I found it a bit confusing and cringe-worthy. Anyway, as most business books are not known for their literary merit, I guess the true measure of whether it has been worthwhile will come down to whether the model actually works for us – and that will require some work over the next few weeks (and quite a lot of it, by the look of it).
Fortunately I've got a few works of fiction on the go at the moment too so it's not all dry and dull.