If you think the fall of BlackBerry could have been prevented because it failed to act quickly on new technologies and fend off Apple’s, iPhone, it’s time to turn back the clock and look closer at its fast rise to $20 billion in annual revenues along with the issues the two brilliant founders of RIM faced as its business model started showing cracks in its foundation. The best place to start is the book, Losing The Signal.
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Is Trust by Hernan Diaz a 3-Star Book?
As a long-time financial professional and a neverending lifelong learner, reading fiction has its place for any student of business. Most of the best novels are about anything but business. That means fiction lovers are relegated to works like The Goal, Lencioni’s fables, or The Phoenix Project. Finally, Hernan Diaz has released a novel in which a wealthy financier is a central character. But is it any good?
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Who Was Harry Guggenheim?
When I read a biography of someone I have not heard of, I want the words to jump out and grab me with the impact they had on others and the world they lived in. I want to learn from them and I especially want to be inspired. Harry Guggenheim is a larger-than-life historical figure who checks all of those boxes, and he’s far more than the godfather of flight, a publisher accolade given to this extraordinary visionary.
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The Business Case for Reading Fiction
Should business professionals read more fiction and if so, why? Dr. Christy Seifert is a professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, and she wrote the 2020 article, The Case for Fiction in the Harvard Business Review. After reading that article, I just had to hear directly from this gifted communicator. I was especially intrigued by her discussion about cognitive agility and acuity along with the concepts and ideas behind cognitive openness.
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The Bond King with Mary Childs
For someone who consistently reads more than one hundred books annually including dozens of titles on value investing, I knew nothing about Bill Gross, one of the co-founders of PIMCO. That changed after I read The Bond King by Mary Childs which is the most complete account of this iconic money manager starting with a Hollywood-like origin story and continuing with his creation of a new industry but ending with an exit he probably never envisioned.
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Revisiting WorldCom’s Financial Statement Fraud
With the passing of the 20th anniversary of WorldCom filing bankruptcy in the aftermath of the whistle being blown on its reporting of fraudulent financial statements, I wanted to revisit Cynthia Cooper’s page-turner, Extraordinary Circumstances. Former CFO Aaron Beam helps us to understand how and why this fraud was committed as he draws on his experience in the financial statement fraud at HealthSouth. Aaron is an author and sought-after public speaker at major universities nationwide.
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Should Your Business Have a Hall of Fame?
One of my favorite CFOs is Bob Lung. For the past 33 years, he’s been chauffeuring players and dignitaries at the NFL’s annual Hall of Fame weekend activities in Canton, Ohio. In this fast-paced interview, we talk about Bob’s favorite moments at the Hall of Fame ceremony, what it means to be a driver during this event, and a couple of special stories. We also discuss whether your business should have a Hall of Fame.
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Negotiation Simplified with Jim Reiman
What is the best book on negotiation you’ve ever read? Many readers might suggest Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. What if I said there is another title that’s far more practical with ideas that you can put into practice right now? That book is Negotiation Simplified by Jim Reiman. In this fast-paced conversation, we talk about the core four concepts of negotiating and the best discussion I’ve ever read about goals in the context of negotiating.
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More Than a Trillion Dollar Coach
Bill Campbell was a legendary business coach who mentored larger-than-life business leaders such as Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and many others. I agree with his biographers calling him a trillion-dollar coach. If that’s true, we need to call Joe Ehrmann and Biff Poggi trillion-dollar coaches too. Jeffrey Marx in his impactful and transforming book, Season of Life, reveals how these two coaches have made a difference in the lives of young football players, which applies to all areas of life.
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What Happened to the Vanderbilt Dynasty?
Imagine trying to capture the family history starting from your grandfather’s grandfather through today. How would you construct the narrative over those six generations? Would you take a timeline approach by filling in important details over the course of those hundred-plus years? Or would you try a different approach the way Katherine Howe did with her co-author Anderson Cooper in their book, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty?
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