In my role as CEO of Bookbuzz I have the pleasure of reading and discussing a lot of business books. I amazes me how few CEOs do the same. The speed of change, the shortening of business and product life cycles, makes it vital to be up to date with the latest business thinking and adjust (quickly) your business and business models to that thinking. Not knowing is not doing is not going anywhere.
Let me ask you a few questions to check how much of a boiling frog you are (analogy is that a frog can put in a bowl of water, the bowl is put on the stove, water is heated up, frog is happy until boiling point is reached, at which stage it is too late):
- What does “the long tail”, “buyology” and “free” mean to you business?
- Is your business concept inside or outside the pack?
- What is your view on generation Einstein?
- Which mix of the 33 strategies of war have you picked for your business going forward?
- Do you have a funky business?
- Are you an asshole, maverick, Calimero, spider, starfish, heretic, purple cow, emotional capitalist or wombat?
- Where are the black swans in your business?
- Is your business on the extinction of innovation timeline?
- How persuasive are you and your business model?
- How many of your actions are based on the collective wisdom of your organisation and/or stakeholders?
- How sticky are your stories?
- What can you learn from Apple, Sven, Rudy, Jack, Google, Dell and Shakespeare?
- Are you running a happy organisation?
- Are you smart or outsmart?
- Are you a Shackleton or a Scott?
- Are you running a good or great business?
The questions above are a bit unfair, as I am quite sure that wombats and Shakespeare will not be top of mind when you think business, but it should at least intrigue and hopefully trigger a response to find out more. Some of these questions, however are absolutely mission critical to your business.
Ron,
Thanks for the clever list. Looks like an assessment test went through the blender with the business bestseller list of the past 24 months. We should turn this into some type of a quiz. There are really two answers to each of these questions: the answer to the question it poses, and the name of the book (and corresponding philosophy) that it's drawn from.
- Dave
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