Newsletter, November 25, 2012 

I don’t read many business books (that’s my current reading pile below, and there isn’t one business book in there).My personal experience is that most of them are not very good. Either there is no compelling content, or the useful content has been covered by chapter three, with the rest just padding. (Yes, I know how glass-house-stone-throwing that sounds, coming from a business book author.) However, there are a few exceptions, and in December I’m going to update my list of 10 must-read business books and publish it here. I’d love to hear your suggestions, too. Email me and let me know what would go on your ‘must-read’ list of business books and I’ll produce a second list of “readers’ favorites” (you can omit ‘Predictable Success’ and ‘The Synergist’ – we’ll take them as read 🙂 Enjoy this week’s updates – and the rest of your weekend. I hope we talk soon:

Meet our new COO – and hear how my life is about to change I mentioned in an earlier newsletter that on January 7th my son, David, is joining me as COO of Predictable Success. This is a very big step for us both, and as you might imagine, we’ve been talking about, and planning, the process for some time. I thought you might appreciate hearing us discuss some of Dave’s thoughts about how his arrival will impact Predictable Success, his personal goals, and how some of the changes will take shape over the next year. You’ll also hear Dave preview our most important new initiative for 2013, a Certified Practitioner / Train the Trainer Program, which we’ll be formally launching in January. Listen to our discussion here.

Radically change your business (oh, and…meet our new COO) Starting with the Seattle workshop on March 7th, the 1-Day Predictable Success Intensives will have a different flavor.  With Dave on board, I will be freed from responsibility for the actual mechanics of the workshop itself, giving me more time to focus on your needs as a participant. This means I can at last introduce two elements I’ve not been able to find time for until now: A detailed pre-event workbook that means you arrive fully primed to get the best from the day, and optional post-workshop check-ins to monitor progress with your Predictable Action Plan. Oh, and of course, you’ll get to meet Dave 🙂 Details and registration for the 2013 workshops are here.

Here’s the story behind the Starbucks story Behind every charismatic, spotlight-grabbing CEO is someone who makes the trains run on time. For Howard Schultz at Starbucks, for many years that person was another Howard – Howard Behar. As you’ll hear in this interview, I personally prefer hearing the tick-tock of how the trains run on time to the pr-skewed hagiography bestowed on celebrity CEOs. Listen to my interview with Howard Behar here.

You too can be like Apple and Microsoft For business-watchers, the recent departure of two key executives at Apple and Microsoft has been illuminating. The media have been keen to paint the events as essentially self-destructive blow-ups by out-of-control mavericks. As I point out this week at Inc, the companies themselves, especially the CEO’s, Ballmer and Cook, are at least co-equally at fault- and there’s a lesson there for all of us. Read the article here.

A simple step to restoring accountability It has taken me a long time to work out that sometimes complex problems have a simple solution. If you’ve read Predictable Success, you’ll know that one of the causes of Whitewater is a breakdown in communications, leading to a severe drop in accountability. In a series of short audio recordings I detail the (relatively) simple causes of this breakdown, and 3 (very) simple ways to fix it. Listen to the first one here.