1.It’s Your Ship. Management techniques from the best damn ship in the Navy   Captain D. Michael Abrashoff
2.Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking   Malcom Gladwell
3.The Paradox of Choice: Why More is less   Barry Schwartz
4.The Starfish & The Spider, The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations   Ori Brafman & Rod A. Beckstrom
5.The Dance of Change   Senge et al
6.The Tipping Point. How little things can make a big difference   Malcolm Gladwell
7.The Long Tail. How endless choice is creating unlimited demand   Chris Anderson
8.Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters   Jerry I. Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson
9.Chief Customer Officer : Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action   Jeanne Bliss
10.The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth   Fred Reichheld

		It’s Your Ship. Management techniques from the best damn ship in the Navy Author: Captain D. Michael Abrashoff UK Publisher: Warner Books ISBN: 0446529117 Phil Dourado: Captain Mike Abrashoff used to ask his crew these three questions every six weeks: 1. What do you like about working here? 2. What don’t you like about working here? 3. If you were the Captain, what would you change? Finding solutions through using questions to direct our attention goes all the way back to Socrates. And there is plenty of evidence that leading by asking questions is more effective than leading by telling. But, too many leaders don’t like questions. The problem leaders have with asking questions is two-fold and derives from two related leadership misconceptions: 1) the need to appear infallible and 2) the concept of the leader as ultimate trouble-shooter or solution-finder of last resort. There’s a common third reason leaders prefer to offer answers rather than questions: they fear that if they ask a question, they'll get an answer they don't like. In this very good book an exemplary leader shows you how to lead by asking questions, and turn around performance in the process. Customer-centred leaders ask great questions. That’s just one of the many leadership lessons in this book. I’ve just got his second book ‘Get Your Ship Together’. If it’s as good as his first, I’ll post it to ecsw.com as a recommended book of the week in the future. buy UK() buy US($)
		Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Author: Malcom Gladwell UK Publisher: Allen Lane ISBN: 0713997273 US Publisher: Little Brown ISBN: 0316172324 (From Amazon): Intuition is not some magical and mysterious property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments and particular rules and principles. For too long we have thought of intuition as a kind of black box at the very core of who we are and why we act the way we do. This book shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices and in everyday life. Just as he did with his revolutionary theory of the tipping point, Gladwell reveals how the power of ‘blink' could fundamentally transform our relationships, the way we consume, create and communicate, how we run our businesses and even our societies. You'll never think about thinking in the same way again. buy UK() buy US($)
		The Paradox of Choice: Why More is less Author: Barry Schwartz UK Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0060005696 Phil Dourado writes: If your product expansion strategy is based on horizontal extension - increasing the choice offered to consumers - you need to be aware of this paradox, as you do if you're a politician trying to push further choice into areas of our lives such as the health service and schools. (Hint: we want them all to be good, not to be able to choose between good schools and bad ones. You are passing the buck). Schwartz cites research (also cited in Malcolm Gladwell's talks and books ) showing that customers are more likely to buy from a choice of half a dozen jams on a supermarket shelf than they are from a choice of thirty, which they hurry past, confused. buy UK() buy US($)
		The Starfish & The Spider, The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations Author: Ori Brafman & Rod A. Beckstrom UK Publisher: Portfolio ISBN: 1591841437 Phil Dourado: This is a very timely book. By ‘leaderless organizations’ they actually mean organizations full of leaders at all levels rather than leaders gathered at the top of the organization. To be customer-focussed you have to push leadership out to the front-line so people can take the initiative in dealing with customers. Powerful book. Rightly challenges traditional notions of leadership. Recommended read by us here at www.ecsw.com From the publisher: This work provides an understanding of the amazing force that links some of today's most successful companies. If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Or even al Qaeda, which is so hard to destroy because its cells function independently. "The Starfish and the Spider", based on groundbreaking research into decentralised organisations, proves that this type of leadership is primed to change the world. Major companies like eBay, IBM, Sun, and GE are starting to decentralise, with great results. Decentralisation isn't easy for people who are used to the classic chain of commence organisation. But as readers will learn through this book's fascinating stories - ranging from the music business to geopolitics - it can be a very dangerous trend to ignore. buy UK() buy US($)
		The Dance of Change Author: Senge et al UK Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1857882431 Phil Dourado: With The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge created a worldwide movement as thousands of organizations took up the challenge of trying to create the learning organization. As time progressed and very few succeeded, Senge and his colleagues began producing a series of works that would draw lessons from successful change to help organizations develop a learning organization, in which your people drive customer-focussed change themselves, rather than have it imposed from on high. This book is one of those resources. Change from on high rarely works, Senge and his co-authors explain. The Dance of Change includes a list of the main factors that stop change from working and how to get around them. Senge sees organizations as human systems rather than engineering challenges. Instead of the dreaded BPR (Business Process Re-Engineering) and other supposed improvement-based change (that were often simply hollowing out and headcount reduction in disguise), Senge shows how to approach change using (human) systems thinking, the principles of nature and even gardening! Highly-recommended. buy UK() buy US($)
		The Tipping Point. How little things can make a big difference Author: Malcolm Gladwell UK Publisher: Abacus ISBN: 0349113467 US Publisher: Back Bay Books ISBN: 0316346624 Gladwell’s Tipping Point is primarily about how some ideas are tipped into going ‘viral’ – spreading like wildfire – while others don’t. There’s a sub-text, too, for readers based in customer-facing functions. Which is, of course, that there is no such thing as a little thing in customer service or CRM. Any minor irritation for a customer can be their ‘tipping point – the legendary last straw that breaks the camel’s back or, in our context, gets the customer to think “I’ve had it with them”, defect without telling you why, and become a negative voice dissing you to friends, family and colleagues whenever you come up in conversation or your TV ad appears – all without you knowing. Gladwell writes entertainingly and forensically, applying his scientific journalist’s mind to getting us to step back and re-think. buy UK() buy US($)
		The Long Tail. How endless choice is creating unlimited demand Author: Chris Anderson UK Publisher: Random House Business Books (3 May 2007) ISBN: 1844138518 Donald Mitchell, Amazon Reviewer: When you want to eat ice cream outside your home, do you go to a store that offers only chocolate and vanilla . . . or do you go where there are many more choices? Most people will do the latter. That's the basic point of this book. If you're satisfied with knowing that point, you don't need to read the book. Instead, you could settle for Mr. Anderson's article in the October 2004 issue of Wired. But if you are like the growing legions of people who enjoy knowing more about the quirks of micro-economics (such as those who were intrigued by The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and Fooled by Randomness), The Long Tail will provide much entertainment. Let me explain what a long tail is. If you plot the popularity of various products (say, books on Amazon) with the most popular products at the left, the left part of the curve will be very vertical (the head) and there will be along list of items to the right that will have relatively few sales (the tail). Mr. Anderson's point is that as it becomes economically viable to produce and distribute more low-volume products (such as print-on-demand books and e-books), there will be more items available to purchase at any outlet . . . and the length the tail to the right will grow. As more outlets can afford to make these items available, the thickness of the tail will also grow. A physical store will only distribute a small percentage of the items, stopping where the offering no longer adds to its targeted rate of profits. An on-line store will have far more items (such as Amazon), appeal to more customers and sell lots of its volume in relatively unpopular items. The author estimates that 25% of Amazon's book sales volume, for instance, comes from outside the 100,000 top selling books. Here's where Mr. Anderson begins to lose his way: He tries to describe the sociological implications. He sees, for example, a loss of common cultural items of the sort that talking about the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan once provided. He imagines a world in which everyone drifts off into various different niches and the size of the head becomes less vertical. While that may be true, it doesn't correctly forecast the amount of commonality in the culture. The sales of any given item over time may well be in both the head and the tail. Or an item could be a sleeper and always be in the tail, but if enough people buy it, the item will become part of the common culture. In addition, some elements of common culture don't appear in sales curves. I'm sure that yesterday's arrests in the alleged plot to bomb a number of airplanes have already become part of the common culture. I won't go on to point out his other errors. I'm sure you'll notice them for yourself. The other disappointment was that he doesn't do a very good job of describing strategy choices for product producers. It seems to me that the long tail is simply another argument in favor of intense individual product and service customization of the sort that Dell has been giving us for years in computers and related equipment. My grade of 3 stars for the book is 5 stars for long-tail trivia and 1 star for sociological and producer analysis. If you haven't read any of the following books, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and Fooled by Randomness, I recommend that you read those long before you get around this one. They are much better books about micro-economic implications. buy UK() buy US($)
		Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters Author: Jerry I. Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson UK Publisher: Prentice Hall ISBN: 013228751X 2007 is fast-approaching as I write this and Porras’ new book makes good reading for focussing you on how you want to ‘be’ next year: the improvements you might want to make to how you live your life for the benefit of yourself and others. ‘Other-centredness’ as the gurus call it, is increasingly important in helping yourself and the people you work with put yourself and themselves in the customer’s position and to see life from their point of view. This ‘outside-in’ view of your organization is what it takes as a start point to then put the customer at the heart of business. Porras and his co-authors can help you reach that perspective. buy UK() buy US($)
		Chief Customer Officer : Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action Author: Jeanne Bliss UK Publisher: Pfeiffer Wiley ISBN: 0787980943 From the publisher: A step-by-step plan for delivering an extraordinary customer experience. Customer relationships expert Jeanne Bliss draws on her experience with Microsoft, Allstate, Land’s End, and other firms to explain why "customer-centric" initiatives fail and why companies continue to ignore their customers. Using numerous case studies and CEO interviews, she tells how to break the cycle of mediocrity and provides a blueprint for changing customer relations at the core of the company. Bliss outlines the job description of the "Chief Customer Officer" (CCO)–providing readers with a CCO toolkit–and shows why every company needs one. Jeanne Bliss (Redmond, WA) operates Customer Crusaders, Inc., a consultancy that assists companies in improving the customer experience. She was formerly general manager of Worldwide Customer & Partner Loyalty at Microsoft. And she chaired our North American Conference on Customer Management in Orlando in 2005. Links: Buy the book at Amazon.com NOW! buy UK() buy US($)
		The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth Author: Fred Reichheld UK Publisher: Harvard Business School Press ISBN: 1591397839 Amazon reader review: “One Question Can Determine Your Business’s Future. Do You Know the Answer? CEOs regularly announce ambitious growth targets, then fail to achieve them. The reason? Their growing addiction to bad profits. These corporate steroids boost short-term earnings but alienate customers. They undermine growth by creating legions of detractors—customers who complain loudly about the company and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity. Now loyalty expert Fred Reichheld shows how to reverse the equation, turning customers into promoters who generate good profits and true, sustainable growth. The key: one simple question—Would you recommend us to a friend?—that allows companies to track promoters and detractors and produces a clear measure of an organization’s performance through its customers’ eyes. In industry after industry, this "Net Promoter Score" is the single most reliable indicator of a company’s ability to grow. Based on extensive research, The Ultimate Question shows how companies can rigorously measure Net Promoter statistics, help managers improve them, and create communities of passionate advocates that stimulate innovation. Vivid stories from leading-edge organizations illustrate the ideas in practice.” buy UK() buy US($)