Customer Reviews

Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action

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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.

Not only was Awesomely Simple an enjoyable read, but it was well worth the time invested. In incredibly clear & simple terms, the author pointed out a number of basic tactics and approaches that I should have been implementing in my business. Quite honestly, it was somewhat frustrating for a "type-A" business owner like me to realize the number of mistakes I was making. Ultimately I was able to implement many of the concepts the author discussed. Six months later, increased sales and profitability along with a decrease in stress are testaments to value of the book.

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.

I highly recommend this book to anyone in a leadership position. If you have a team of any sort, buy it for them and read it together. The six principles may be awesomely simple, but the execution and follow through are the true challenge. This book provides real life examples that everyone can relate to; that really help drive the points home. As I read this book, I couldn't help but relate my experiences and current challenges to the examples and ideas contained within. This really allowed me to refocus my efforts based upon the six principles. The interactive self-audits make this book an actual tool to use; for individuals, or for entire teams. This is a powerful book with simple, but powerful concepts. Read this book before you read any other business book. It can transform you and your business - it has for me.

John really does keep it simple. He takes complex ideas and describes not only the what but also the why in easy to understand terms. His stories are also great and really bring the point he is making to life. I found myself referring back to this book as well as John's first book as situations arise in the workplace to determine how John would approach the situation to help frame up my approach. I would say this is a must read for any level manager.

There are so many books on strategy and execution - do we really need one more? Yes. With John Spence's book Awesomely Simple, this difficult, time consuming, exhausting and sometimes intimidating process can be translated into a much easier way to think about your business. The book lays out what you really need to consider and has all relevant questions one needs to ask to create and implement a dynamic strategic plan. All you and your team need to do is give your unique answers to his questions. His website has the best tools I've ever seen and really complement what's written in the book. Read the book, download the tools and you've got a great start to getting your most important initiatives done!

John is really a guy who delivers what he promises. He makes things look simple, very very simple.

This is a small book - so you spend just a small amount of time reading (or listening as I did), and you get tons of great advice in a very short period of time.

This is a book you can extract knowledge on every page. And you can start applying to your business right now.

The book gave me a few great and practical ideas in different fields of management.

Thanks John, and I hope more businnes writers make shorter books, full of content, as yours.

Miguel Cavalcanti, from Brazil

Quick and easy read. Great for anyone (everyone) who has little time to read. There are helpful summaries and audits that can be re-visited again and again. I've passed it on to my Operations Manager!

I read a lot of business books and find that most of them are "over-written". They bury a few nuggets of wisdom deep in a plethora of unnecessary words. I want the information up front, presented in a practical and concise manner. John delivers and makes every chapter count. His support website provides fantastic resource materials that facilitate the application of the principles in the book. This is not just another book with theoretical advice, but a workbook providing a concrete plan for improving any business. Bravo!

John Spence shared a story in the introduction of his book how he used "In search of Excellence", the #1 national bestseller by Tom Peters, at the outset of his career as his mantra (this first business book he ever read). As it turns out, many of the lessons and suggestions in this book did not hold up in the face of time and many of the great companies are no longer today.

After reading thousands of business books, John has mastered to simplify and unify the messages of many texts and he presents his findings and experiences in an interactive, suggestive way where every reader is guaranteed to gain insight from his book.

"Awesomely Simple" has become my new mantra for work, business and home and I would bet that John's strategies, approaches and suggestions have the potential to become a #1 bestseller, leaving a permanent imprint on the business community.

A must read for everyone, applicable to anyone, not just in the business world.