Win a Free Book: The Money Makers
February 24, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
The Money Makers: How Extraordinary Managers Win in an Upside Down World is an exceptional new book by Anne-Marie Fink that takes a very unique look at how you can thrive in this crazy world. The Money Makers tears part conventional thinking and provides checklists and frameworks to make your world better.
Frameworks borrowed from her publisher’s site:
- Shrink to grow: Why expanding a bad (low-return) business means you just have more of a problem, and how a step backward is often the best way forward.
- Good performance requires inefficiency and duplication: How maximum efficiency produces suboptimal results by stifling innovation.
- Don’t be a customer fanatic: How to know when to listen to and when to ignore your customers.
- Economics always trumps management: Ignore bedrock economic laws–such as supply and demand–at your peril; it is akin to ordering the tides to stay in place.
- Why happy employees don’t make for high-performance workplaces.
- Problems in business are like cockroaches–there’s never just one: How to catch problems before they infest your company.
- Avoid the trap of profitless growth: Additional profits an illusion if it consumes too much capital.
- Megatrends start as ripples: How to position your business to ride long-term waves, not be drowned by them.
If The Money Makers sounds like a book you want to read, then what about winning a copy of the book for FREE!
How can you win a copy of The Money Makers?
Pick one of the above frameworks, and share how you agree, or disagree, with what Anne-Marie says. Leave a comment, or link back so that I can see you linked back. I’ll randomly select 2 winners, and publish the winner Tuesday March 3rd, 2009.
Contest is open to US residents who enter by 6 PM central time on Friday February 27th, 2009.
If you don’t want to wait, pick up a copy of The Money Makers today!
Good performance requires inefficiency and duplication: How maximum efficiency produces suboptimal results by stifling innovation.
I agree in certain contexts. In a data center, pursuing efficiency can drive innovation. Consolidation, service implementation, virtualization, optimizing design for power, space, and cooling constraints. A manager may push his directs to research and test new ideas but instigating duplicate work instead of teaming up seems counterproductive.
I agree with not being a customer fanatic. The old adage goes “The customer is always right”. I do not believe that to be true. The customer always wants a bargain. As far, as profits are concerned, if you strictly just listened to the customer you would go broke.
Also, if you always listened to the customer, one would have to ponder who has the skill set? The customer comes to us for a service that we provide. The fact that we have something they want should in fact clue us in that we shouldn’t always listen to them.
Sometimes? Yes. Always? No
“Shrink to grow” – Many executives think that in order to be seen as successful they must grow, take over, and expand by any means. I agree to the thought of “Shrink to grow’ because there come a point where you thin your resources. In todays exonomy, one must focus on your core expertise.
“Good performance requires inefficiency and duplication.” I disagree with this line of thinking! Granted that acidents can create new inventions such as Scotch-Gard and Post-it notes from 3M. 3M now allows their employees time to “invent” on company time. Is this “inefficiency?” – no! It’s smart business!
“Don’t be a customer fanatic” I wouldn’t say “ignore” your customeers. What I am thinking what the author may be trying to say is that the customer is not always right! If the customer is wanting something that is out of your scope of expertise or ability then the customer may be wrong and you can direct the customer elsewhere.
“Why happy employees don’t make for high-performance workplaces.” Sorry but this is a sore point for me! Happy is relative but if you have employees that can’s stand each other you will end up with a disfunctional workplace!
“Problems in business are like cockroaches” I recall a quote (don’t know where but the person was in the military) “When they (employees) stop coming to me with problems I cease being a leader.” Granted that there will always be problems. It is a matter how you react to the problems! Some can be ignoredand other problems delegated (empower) to employees.
Problems in business are like cockroaches: Every company faces many smaller operational problems every day. Many of these problems are their own creation. In most of the cases the reason being lack of awareness and teamwork. As a team they should develop the clarity to identify and prioritise the work. If one understands importance of the task,time frame and the priority, many small problems could be solved. Unattended smaller issues only lead to bigger problems. The best wayto destroy the cockroach is to Act now. There will not be any urgent and unattended issues. Believe in today.Remember it is a continuous process.
” Don’t be a customer fanatic: How to know when to listen to and when to ignore your customers. ”
I DISAGREE, kind of. One must always be *focused* on your customers. The issue is how you respond to what you hear and observe. Sometimes, you need to do specifically what the customer requests. Other times, you need to do something else entirely. Or, you might need to ignore what they say and fix and underlying (or more important) issue.
Why happy employees don’t make for high-performance workplaces… Um. No. I ran my own business before retiring a few years ago. I found that happy employees managed with the attitude of ownership in the process and business makes a very high performance. I treated each employee with respect and made them feel comfortable while still maintaining the edge we needed to compete. It does work, but takes a fair amount of self-less action on the management. When they were happy the business grew and was profitable in less than a year.