Todd Sattersten of 800CEORead is growing out his facial hair until the book he and Jack Covert are working on is turned in to the publishers. He posted a picture of himself in his current condition. Unable to mark directly on the photo at the CEORead blog, I've done the next best thing...I think.
Dan Pink's newest book is titled The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need. And it is the first manga business book published in the U.S. (Not absolutely totally positive about that fact, but pretty sure.) Here's the Johnny Bunko website. And Dan and his publishers are charting new territory in the way they're promoting the book. Check out the video:
Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.
God Bless the World
Originally uploaded by erikorama.
I scanned this spread from Ali Rap: Muhammad Ali, The First Heavyweight Champion of Rap, edited and designed by George Lois. Great book filled with Ali's poetry and many fabulous photos. And I particulary like the sentiment expressed here. Why don't we say "God Bless the World"? I've always been uncomfortable saying "God Bless America" since that seems to exclude the rest of the world. Isn't it now time for all of us to think globally all the time?
From page 89 of "Writing to Change the World," by Mary Pipher. She writes: "The therapist Carl Rogers was the wisest of change agents. He did not suggest 'Be like me,' or 'Do this,' or 'Improve yourself.' He communicated, 'I accept you totally.' When he conveyed that message, his clients began to transform themselves."
I was asked by the folks at Coudal Partners to contribute to their Field-Tested Books feature and I wrote about reading Jack Kerouac's Vanity of Duluoz while I was hanging out on the southern coast of Crete in a little village called Agia Galini. in 1974. To do the review I felt I needed to look at the book again, so I ordered it from Amazon. That's the new one on the left in the picture. And then after I had reread parts of it and written the review, I happened upon the older, British version pictured on the right. Was that the book I read on Crete? You know, I'm not sure. I find it hard to believe that I'd still have some second-hand paperback from 1974 trailing me around and hanging out on my bookshelf. Oh well. So now I've got two copies.
So here's my dilemma. I started reading American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips, his discussion of America's reliance on oil, the politics of oil, how everyone in politics seems to be involved in oil and on top of that how the evangelical movement that seems so strong in the U.S. now has a long history behind it. But, well, it's not a compelling read for me. Informative. Important. But not compelling.
So I found myself ordering Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart and getting right into that. Good writing. Absurdist/realist situations. Though I'm not convinced about this either. It's hard to love the main character, who is massively overweight and seems always to be eating some greasy food and handling his man-breasts. Yecch! Though I can see I'm going to like the story.
But then I've just barely gotten into Absurdistan when I see that Alan Furst's latest, The Foreign Correspondent, is available, so I order that right away. Alan Furst's books are so good. Tom Peters turned me on to him a couple years ago and after reading one of his books, I went through all of them, in order. What a treat. Pre-WWII espionage, people who aren't spies drawn into the spy business. And the descriptions and the details and the historical research is just delicious. You savor these books. So, I don't want to start in on this unless I know I won't have any distractions. I want to luxuriate in the time and the place and among the people Mr. Furst conjures. And already, even before I've begun, I don't want it to end. My dilemma.
I was interviewing Robert Scoble about his new book (co-authored with Shel Israel), naked conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers, and I asked him about listening. Because one of the authors' Five Success Tips is: You get smarter by listening to what people tell you. It just so happens that they're referring to companies listening to their customers, or not listening to them as the case may be, but I had somehow construed that they were talking about people learning to listen to other people. But how are companies comprised of lots of people going to learn to listen to individuals when those same individuals don't know how to listen to each other.
And this put me in mind of another book I read recently, Patricia Ryan Madson's improv wisdom: don't prepare, just show up. I think this is a great book. She's taken a lot of material and condensed it into thirteen maxims that are all dead on. I'm keeping this book out on my desk for daily reference. (Off the point, but one of the maxims is "say yes." Try one day just saying yes to everything. And you quickly realize how often we're saying "no." By saying yes to whatever comes your way, you have got to seriously reconfigure your brain cells. In a good way.)
Regarding listening, Madson suggests that "Once a day devote your attention 100 percent to someone who is talking to you." Once a day? Which means that at present we're not ever completely listening to others. So start with once a day. Just listen. It's not easy.
One of the other things that gets in the way of us listening, apparently, is our need to prepare what we're going to say. Like those meetings where a bunch of people have been thrown together in a meeting and someone says, "Let's all introduce ourselves." But then you're so intent on figuring out something fabulous to say about yourself that you never actually listen to what the others are saying. Madson says, just listen to them, you'll figure out what to say, and what you say will be better for having listened. I'm going to try that the next time I'm sitting around a conference room table with a bunch of strangers.
