Mark Gandy

Hermann Simon’s Confessions of a Pricing Man is easily the best book ever written on this topic. The author is the Chairman of the global strategy consulting firm Simon-Kucher. He’s also one of this generation’s most prolific business thinkers, whose writing parallels Peter Drucker’s. In this conversation, our topic is Hermann’s 2021 book, True Profit. Topics include profit maximization, why price increases trump volume increases or cost reductions, and profit elasticity.

I predict that Number Go Up by Zeke Faux will be considered the most fascinating and entertaining book in narrative non-fiction for 2023. If you know little about FTX and its infamous founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, this readable account of its demise is a perfect starting point. The book’s scope extends well beyond FTX as Zeke chronicles his ventures around the globe, sharing what I call binge-worthy episodes suitable for a Netflix docuseries.

Dan Murray is the Director of Strategic Innovations at Interworks and is the author of Tableau This. He recently completed a blog series entitled BI Cantos, which is about how to successfully deploy a business intelligence system, which is the topic of this conversation. We discuss the critical thinking, tools, and consultants needed before, during, and after business intelligence implementation. We also address several myths surrounding these projects.

Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian, libertarian, capitalist, and lunatic farmer. I think of him as an economist, philosopher, brilliant marketer, excellent financial analyst, gifted public speaker, a master in debate, and certainly a Thomas Jefferson farmer. During this conversation, we focus on his book, Folks, This Ain’t Normal. We address open-book farming, the mechanical food worldview, and the frustrating death tax for those inheriting farms. Joel’s satire and storytelling make this conversation go far too fast.

The Halo Effect is one of the best 25 business books I’ve read, and it’s a title I read annually to keep me grounded in my thinking. In this conversation, Phil Rosenzweig explains the halo effect, along with several other delusions business leaders are bombarded with daily from the press, business authors, and consulting gurus. After this conversation, you may have different opinions about the best-selling books Good to Great and Built to Last.

David Farber’s Everybody Ought to Be Rich is now one of my favorite books in the business history genre of narrative non-fiction. Who helped the DuPont family take their business public? Who introduced DuPont to Billy Durant and General Motors? Who built and found the funding for The Empire State Building? It was the $10-a-week clerk who became the first CFO of the modern business era, John Raskob.

I never knew there was a consulting niche for advising directors of public company boards of directors until I met Denise Kuprionis at a Strategic Coach workshop. She is the founder of The Governance Solutions Group (GSG) based in Cincinnati, where she helps boards apply effective governance practices and achieve their most pressing objectives. For private companies, Denise shares valuable nuggets for CEOs in finding and obtaining advisory board members to fill knowledge and capability gaps.

After reading a book by a successful commercial developer who moved his family to France for two years, I wanted to learn more about setting up shop in a foreign country. That’s because the real estate developer faced obstacle after obstacle because he wasn’t used to the vast cultural divide between his home country and France. Accordingly, I hit a home run when I found the book The Accidental Business Nomad by Kyle Hegarty.

One of my favorite business authors has just released his 15th book. The title is Own Your Work Journey by Ed Hess. Fans of Ed Hess will be treated to a mini-memoir in the introduction of the book, and we spend the first ten minutes of this conversation talking about some of the influential mentors in Ed’s life who saw something special in him at a young age. Other topics include a quiet ego, emergent thinking, and inner peace.