Weekly Bookmarks –
169th Edition – November 4, 2024
… this book offers no formula for success. The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.
Thiel, Peter; Masters, Blake. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
1. The Top Book Genres
According to Pararde, fantasy, historical fiction, and thriller are the top three book genres. Out of 37 genres, business ranks 14th. Are you surprised? I thought the business category would have cracked the top 10.
2. Plain Talk Remains One of My Favorite Books by a CEO
Ken Iverson ends his book on the rise and success of Nucor by stating he does not like MBAs:
WE HAVEN’T HAD much luck with the MBAs we’ve hired out of the top business schools. They’ve come to us, degree in hand, saying: “I’m ready to conquer the world.” So we hired them and found they couldn’t conquer the basics of managing a department.
Ken Iverson. Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick
Ken offers the following suggestions to those in charge of MBA curriculums:
- Revamp the core business school curriculum to allow for the development of new management skills, especially in communicating with employees.
- Require at least a one-year, full-time management internship, preferably completed in a small business.
Do you agree? I especially like that last idea.
Ken Iverson shares his ideas, observations, and lessons about growing a highly competitive, world-class organization.
3. From MBAs to True Professionalism
David Maister was the consultant’s consultant, and he has the best description of the professional’s mindset:
Professionalism is predominantly an attitude, not a set of competencies. A real professional is a technician who cares.
Professional is not a label you give yourself—it’s a description you hope others will apply to you.
Real professionalism implies a pride in work, a commitment to quality, a dedication to the interests of the client, and a sincere desire to help.
David Maister, the world's premier consultant to professional service firms, vigorously challenges professionals to examine this essential, yet under-addressed question: What is true professionalism?
4. Cost Cutting vs. Being Cost Conscious
I did not know that UPS drivers do not make left turns. According to Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS, package flow technology keeps drivers out of left-hand lanes where idle vehicles can waste fuel.
To give you an idea of how economizing these package-flow innovations are, in Sacramento, California, this new technology shaves a quarter million miles each year (out of 4.5 million), saving about 30,000 gallons of fuel. Once the package-flow technology is fully implemented, it is expected to cut 100 million miles annually, saving almost 14 million gallons of fuel.
Niemann, Greg. Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS (p. 134).
For the first time, a UPS “lifer” tells the behind-the-scenes story of how a small messenger service became a business giant. Big Brown reveals the remarkable 100-year history of UPS and the life of its founder Jim Casey—one of the greatest unknown capitalists of the twentieth century.
5. A Retail Trivia Question
There is now just one Kmart store remaining in the United States. They opened their first store in the early 1960s and went on a twenty-year growth rampage, hitting their glory years in the 1980s. They survived for another twenty years, fending off Walmart and Target. The next twenty-year journey found them dying and going through bankruptcy.
Do you know the discount retailer they knocked off in the 1980s? You can learn more about this story in Attention Kmart Shoppers, a sobering reminder that nothing is certain in business.
How did Kmart grow to become one of the nation’s most dominant retailers and then lose it all in just a few decades? Attention Kmart Shoppers has the whole story, from the chain’s founding as an arm of the Kresge variety store company in 1962, all the way down to the five Kmart stores that are still in business today.
Random Bookmarks: 109 | 93 | 41
Thank You
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Take care, and have a great week. Always be learning.
