16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good High-Level Advice, October 30, 2009
This review is from: Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action (Hardcover)
Simplicity is simple. Writing about simplicity is not. That was the big challenge facing John Spence when he sat down to write the book Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action.
The result is a well-laid out, well-written book that makes 56 key points, asks you to audit 77 things in your organization. It suggests 41 items worthy of thought and discussion and a like number of suggestions for turning those ideas into action. And that's without getting to the meat of the chapters.
This book will be a good buy for you if you're looking for a short, well-written book that will help you review your business and come up with good ideas for improving the way you do things. If you're looking for a high level view, with a few good details thrown in, this is a good book.
The book may not be a good buy for you if you're seeking ways to improve your team or individual performance. The book is written about the whole organization and mostly high level issues. That leaves you with advice to do things like "Fully align all major strategies and objectives of the organization."
The book is written as if you can simply stop operations for a year or so and follow the book's ideas. You simply don't develop a high performance culture quickly and you don't have the luxury of chucking your old culture overboard and starting from scratch.
If that high-level overview is what you want, read on. Here's a review of the content, chapter by chapter.
The first chapter tells you to develop a "clear, vivid, compelling, and inspiring vision for the future of your business." That's simple to say and hard to do.
In the next chapter you are told to "create a corporate culture that attracts, grows, and keeps the best people." Again, it's a simple idea that everyone would favor. It's just hard to do.
Culture is not the result of a design process. The cultures at Ritz Carlton or Nucor or Publix Supermarkets grew out of the values of the company leaders, fed by daily interactions, reward systems, promotions, and feedback. Culture is a slow growing and a fragile thing.
Talent is not a single thing. The world is not divided into people who are talented and people who are not. Everyone is good at some things and not others.
A person might be a great hire for some companies but not for others. Successful companies have strong cultures. But strong cultures work for some people and not others. In fact companies with strong cultures work at driving out the people who don't fit.
And, the advice (page 40) to recruit "highly competent people of impeccable character, who work really well with others, are great communicators and have a driving commitment to excellence" sounds good. It's just not realistic. It's a search for perfect people and there just aren't any of those.
Chapter three outlines ways to practice communication that is "open, honest, frank, and courageous." The chapter includes advice for organizational and interpersonal communication.
Chapter four, on "Sense of Urgency" has some of the best advice I've seen about creating a clear intended outcome. The chapter is about busting bureaucracy and flattening pyramids. There's some good advice about gathering information quickly. The big weakness in this chapter is that the concepts of "speed" and "urgency" are treated as synonymous.
The following chapter discusses what it takes to build a performance-oriented culture. To that end, the author outlines:"Nine Steps to Ensure Disciplined Execution." This is one of those places where the simple overview can be frustrating. You're told to "keep the entire organization focused on a handful of key strategies" The complicated details of how to do that are not covered.
The final chapter is about "extreme customer focus." It's the usual "listen-to-your-customer-and-deliver-more-than-expected" advice, but that fact that you've heard it before doesn't diminish its value here.
The Conclusion is a truly, awesomely simple review of what's in the book. It highlights the important points and covers them in about five pages. My suggestion is that you read the Conclusion before you read the rest of the book.
That will help you focus your attention on the key points. It will help you get the most from the experience.
Bottom Line
If you're comfortable with the normal business-book practice of treating every reader like a CEO, you'll find a good overview and many good ideas in this book.
If you're looking for a way to improve smaller team performance or your own, individual performance, this is probably not the book for you.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome Synthesis and Prioritization, June 23, 2010
This review is from: Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action (Hardcover)
John Spence may have a modern classic in his new book Awesomely Simple. Drawing on his years of consultation work and his study of the business literature, he has synthesized the best thinking in business strategy, leadership, and management. But the author doesn't stop here, he prioritizes the challenges for us.
I finished reading Awesomely Simple a few days ago and have found myself carrying it around with me as a reference. It's strange, but I feel almost proud to have it with me. I've cited it to my team and to the other managers with whom I work. I've copied a few phrases into email.
One feature I particularly love is that John Spence ends every chapter with a bullet point summary, a self inventory that helps apply the ideas to the reader's workplace, and a treasure trove full of examples and/or additional information. It's so difficult to translate what we read into action, but Awesomely Simple includes bridges to action for every key idea.
Awesomely Simple is a great example of a simple and clear view of what's important and what works in business. It assembles the best business logic of our time in one handy little guidebook. If everyone in my company would invest a single day to read it, my company might well achieve even more than it has.
Buy this book, read it, and then go back and work it. We'll all be better for the effort. And we'll owe John Spence a huge debt of thanks.
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