Customer Reviews

businessThink: Rules for Getting It RightNow, and No Matter What!

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

What a great new book. What caught my eye was how many heavy hitters (Tom Peters, Warren Bennis, and Ram Charan)recommended it. It is good.

1. Business Think emphasizes that thinking matters. We've gone way too far with the ready, fire, aim. Poorly thought out presentations, projects, meetings, reorganizations. Businesses that succeed don't get more done, they get more of the right things done.

2. Business think teaches employees how to gain political traction rather than whine. While they think they are making helpful suggestions, most employees bring complaints and gripes to their boss because they think about ways to improve their job, not the business. So when they bring suggestions that help their team but would hurt other departments or the company's bottom line,the executives don't listen. Before you can talk your bosses language, you have to think like the CEO. It's sad because most employees have good ideas but thinks no one listens.

3. Business Think shows you that you have to listen first to your boss or board or the finance department before they will listen to you. And it shows you how to do it.

The book has a Fast Company style of writing that is snappy and edgy for a while and then wears a little thin. But it keeps a serious subject from getting boring.

I'm going to buy it for my entire department. We do way too much training for managers. It's time to train the people to think like their manager.

If you ever got rated down for not thinking strategically, this book is the best I have seen for laying out how to be seen as a player.

Some time ago I read the excellent "Let's Get Real Or Let's Not Play" by Mahan Khalsa. Seeing him listed as one of the authors of "BusinessThink" I bought it. Only then did I discover that Khalsa appears to have had very little to do with "BusinessThink" (in a long list of acknowledgements he doesn't even feature) and, more seriously, that "BusinessThink" is essentially just a rewrite of "Let's get Real" - indeed whole swathes of "BusinessThink" consists of word for word plagarism of "Let's Get Real". Had there been some acknowledgement of this fact by the authors or Franklin Covey this practice might, just, have been okay. But there is no hint in the introduction, or elsewhere, that "BusinessThink" is just a slightly reworked "Let's Get Real". Shame on the authors, on FranklinCovey, and on the publishers for this exercise in cynicism.

Summary:
Do not read businessThink, unless you want to learn how to write hundreds of pages of common knowledge and hype it as revolutionary thinking. The book does contain useful thoughts but they are definitely not new and are wrapped in disgusting self-propaganda for the businessThink "methodology". The authors do not demonstrate any significant knowledge of business best practices or the relevant literature, consequently the examples used to underline the points are far from enlightening.

Details:
Normally I stop reading such books before the end of the introduction, but being on holiday and the weather being rainy, I got as far as the beginning of Chapter 5. Then I decided that businessThink was not even worth the $6 bargain price I paid for it.

I do not expect every business book to contain breakthrough ideas (for instance, I enjoyed reading "Thinking Inside the Box" even if it claimed to contain only the old, commonsense rules of business). However, what Marcum and Smith did in this book; pasting together trite from business literature, calling it "revolutionary" on every second page of the book, lacing it with irrelevant or imprecise examples, and using a conceited and patronizing style in the meantime is way too much for me.

Being mostly a compilation of common business knowledge, businessThink does give you some good general advice, but much better business books exist, with more relevant and practical examples and written by more modest authors.

Let me share with you what I have read in the first four chapters and then you can decide whether you are interested in the rest. (My comments are in parentheses.)

Foreword by Stephen R. Covey: Powerful breakthroughs need a paradigm change, not just a change in attitudes. He believes that businessThink "presents a provocative, principle-centered paradigm shift for rethinking the way we do business". This book is "every person's MBA for the real world". And this goes on for 8 pages... (By the way, if I hear or read "paradigm change" or "paradigm shift" I get immediately suspicious. This is one of the favorite phrases of empty-headed corporate parrots.)

Introduction: Despite of an "innovation explosion" and a confidence among entrepreneurs, most businesses fail. This is because most businesspeople just "do" business and not think about it. (This is the first of many not-so-solid conclusions of the authors. A business can fail for many reasons, inadequate thinking being just one important aspect.)
But do not worry, all you feeble-minded, unable-to-think-coherently businesspeople around the globe, because here we are to help you out with our eight rules that "will be the seeds of a much-needed revolution in business". We offer a complete, fail-proof solution to the "dysfunction of the real business world". Live by these rules and "you will develop a business instinct or seventh sense".
If you learn how to think correctly - that is, if you adopt businessThink - then it will be better for both you and for your company. Since you may find this idea difficult to comprehend, let us elaborate the upsides of thinking versus not thinking. (And they actually list the advantages of using your brain at work! This is probably necessary because the moronic reader has not learnt businessThink yet. By the end of the book, he might be able to assemble such a list himself, but for the time being he surely needs instruction by the bright authors on this point.)

Chapter 1: Today thinking is the most important activity of businesses. But most decisions fail, while decision confidence is high. (The authors cite research results, some of them without proper reference.)
Let us see an example of a company making bad decisions - Webvan. (A verbatim quote from Fortune magazine follows, with what I believe to be a rather shallow analysis of Webvan's failure. Surfing on the Net, I found a better article on the topic in 5 minutes. If Marcum and Smith could not come up with an original example, at least they should have chosen their quote wisely.)
In today's business white-collar productivity is all-important. Thinking is everybody's job. (I believe, I've also heard this before...)
Currently in most businesses "there is no common approach or common criteria for making decisions". But here are the Eight Rules of businessThink listed and shortly explained.
Neither EQ, nor IQ is enough for proper application of businessThink, you need a fusion of the two.

Chapters 2 and 3: The first rule is "Check Your Ego at the Door". That is, listen to others, do not be overconfident, show humility etc. (Of course, this rule is only applicable in business decisions but you can forget about it when you write business books - at least that's what Marcum and Smith seem to think...)
Some of the revolutionary ideas regarding the first rule include:
- Don't think black and white, but consider other options.
- Beware the absolutes like all, never etc.
For your convenience, these rules are also demonstrated in business scenarios, comparing the "old school" thinking with businessThink.
(Many of these thoughts are meaningful. The only problem is that the "old school" does not exist. At least I have never read any business book or methodology that would recommend that on a company meeting you should say things like "The idiots. I totally agree with you..." instead of "What kind of information could we get together...?". Of course in practice you will meet stupid reactions, but this is not because of some pervasive "old school". Smart people have avoided thinking black and white for centuries, while dumb people will continue to react stupidly. So it is a ridiculous claim of the authors that businessThink provides the reader with a completely new approach.)

Chapter 4: The second rule is "Create curiosity". Ask questions, refresh your beliefs and forget about hierarchy and titles.
(This is of course not bad advice, but the examples cited range from the inaccurate - Grace Murray Hopper inventing the COBOL language - to the unproven in practice - the company IDEO reinventing the shopping cart in a TV show -, indicating a lack of serious knowledge or adequate research by Marcum and Smith on this topic. This shallowness of the authors is also evident from other parts of the book, e.g. in the beginning of Chapter 5 they cite a research result but instead of referencing the original publication they refer to another book. I would expect that if you make an experiment a starting point of a chapter in your book, you would actually read the original report in full, not just some interpretation of it.)

Enough said... If you are really in need all these ideas then I doubt that you will profit from any book, including this one. I give two stars for the glitters of humor and for the honesty of the authors' own failure stories.

I bought this book becuase I read Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play by Mahan Khalsa and was very intruiged by it. Lets Get Real is a TERRIFIC book. Little did I know that BusinessThink is basicly the coles notes version of Lets Get Real with two other names plunked above his. There is little additional value added here. If you want to get the same material but more of it and better presented, buy Lets Get Real.

I read this book hoping to find some new information. The two concepts I enjoyed were "The soul of businessthink is curiosity" (Rule 2) and the example of the company, IDEO. The other concept was "Get evidence." Otherwise, I believe a book also endorsed by Dr. Stephen Covey, called Optimal Thinking -- How to Be Your Best Self by Dr. Rosalene Glickman is a superior title. Optimal Thinking is essential in individuals and organizations if they want to be their best, make the most of resources and opportunities and stop settling for second best.

BusinessThink is a fresh idea in a sea of business rheteric. This book provides managers with tools necessary to solve business problems in today's rollercoaster ride of business. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a way to refresh and enliven their business unit.

Having heard one of the authors speak recently, and I just finished the first half of the book, I think this book can help solve so many problems in business, especially when it comes to people, that we've chalked up to "that's just the way it is."

Who hasn't been in a meeting before where everyone disagrees with what's being presented, but doesn't say anything until after the meeting, and then kill the project in subversive ways? Who hasn't been in a performance review where neither person has a clue about the performance as it related to the key goals of the team or the company, but pretended to come up with some important "objectives" for the next year without even knowing the what the company really wants to do? Who hasn't worked for a company where the strategy changes every quarter, or every day! The thing I found most compelling was the fact that we all think we're doing great, and there's no research to back up our confidence. When the author asked us to vote on our own confidence, only one guy admitted we wasn't extremely confident. It ended up he was the only guy in the room who was willing to admit the truth.

This book teaches you how to swallow your pride, break down game-playing, and get focused on the real needs of the business.
Fortune magazine wrote an article last week, "Why companies fail." This book should be titled, "Why people fail." If you ever find yourself going home from work saying "I don't get it" then get this book.

There aren't many new ideas within this publication - hence 4 stars. I couldn't help but think of De Bono's six thinking hats as a framework for thinking that has many parallels with the BusinessThink publication.
However, that doesn't detract from what is a message that needs repeating and a message that needs to be absorbed by all of us to make the process of decision making (and thinking in general) more productive.
You're going to get value from this book where dysfunction is at its greatest. If you're already part of a productive team you're probably going to read this book and see recognition of what you're already doing rather than learn anything new.
Personally, this books remains a favourite. Whenever we make a few successful decisions (or believe we do) this is the first sort of book we disparage and neglect. But it's just when we start to believe our infallibility and skip steps within this framework that we start to make blunders.

The authors introduce some interesting statistics: successful decisions are fewer on the ground that what our beliefs might suggest.

Is Business Think the next groundbreaking book by a Deming or Drucker? No. It is, however, the first of its kind in getting people to work together, regardless of egos or politics, and gets people focused on the business, where it should be in the first place. I suppose that is, in its own way, at least breaking with tradition. When you read this book, you will find yourself saying, "That's EXACTLY how it is!" and then the authors give you ways to deal with all the strange stuff we usually do in business that causes us to fail. This is great corporate "basic training."

The days of jumping into the deep end of the pool and seeing if you sink or swim are long over. The key to success in today's business world is preparation and you do that by thinking. In this excellent book, the authors, through an easy to understand eight rule model, show readers how to rid themselves of the the "that's the way we've always done it" mentality and to develop a "seventh sense" for knowing what or will not work. As the authors' say, "predetermined, premeditated, premature solutions have no inherent value. Zero!