Break Out of Your Stalled Thinking with Godin's Challenging Ideas!

books:


	• Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas Seth Godin Portfolio Hardcover, 2006 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 44 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Kindred spirits...

In this collection of articles, Seth Godin not only gives many creative insights in what good business is all about, he also shows his love for customers.

Very insightful!

One of the best Marketing Book Ever

I pre-ordered this book the moment I found about this. I have read this book thrice already. Seth has once again come out with his book which is a compilation of his blogs. There are lot of ideas which you can straight apply to your situation be it marketing, business, finding a job or a girlfriend. I particulary like one quote "You can't to well off in a job that is described and measured by someone else. Highly recommend this and every single book by Seth Godin.

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Take the unique idea challenge

I read an awesome book on strategy by Seth Godin on the flight here called "Small is the New Big and 183 other riffs, rants and remarkable business ideas".

I seem to be drawn to strategy books lately. Strategy is what I am thinking about. Being in a low margin business makes me think.

Seth's challenge is to be truly unique, edgy, new, add value. He give many examples of companies who have done this. Part of what he pushed is the next big idea. I like that but also know ideas are cheap, excellent implementation is what is difficult. I am a big believer in acting small but being big. Take the best from both worlds.

Seth's challenge on CEO blogs are they need to offer at least 4 of the following 6:

Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness
Controversy
Utility

To that, I would consider adding humour. People never mind that.

Thinking about how I stack up...

I loved his comments on lawns. Why have a lawn? Just because everyone else does. Of course those who know me well know I have no lawn and grow strawberries, squash, potatoes etc on the "front lawn". Probably drives the chemlawn neighbours crazy. Just FYI, this is definitely not a time saver. It takes more work to care for a garden.

Overall - an excellent highly recommended read.

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You'll get many valuable ideas!

Thanks to Seth Godin, author of SMALL IS THE NEW BIG, I'm going to be more receptive to a practice
known as "zooming" . . . as he defines it, the term "is about
stretching your limits without threatening your foundation. It's about
handling new ideas, new opportunities without triggering the
change avoidance reflex."

And to do this, I'll give thought to following his five-step zoom
start checklist:

For dinner tonight, try a food that you've never tasted. Then
try another one tomorrow night.

On your way to work tomorrow, listen to a CD from a
musical genre that you hate or that's new to you.

Every week, read a magazine that you've never read before.

Once a week, meet with someone from outside your area
of expertise. Go to a trade show on a topic in which you have no
interest whatsoever.

Change the layout of your office.

Godin's excellent book is actually a collection of over 180 blog pieces
that he has published over the past eight years . . . though presented
in alphabetical order with no seeming flow, they almost all got me
thinking--always a good sign . . . also, I found myself taking all sorts
of notes with respect to both what I want to do in the future, and I have
already shared many of his ideas with both my friends and colleagues.

Among the many valuable tidbits I gleaned were the following:
* Most organizations are staffed with people waiting for the alarm
to ring. Instead of going out to the community and working
to prevent new fires, the mind-set is that firemen are working
to put out the fires that have started. Hotel desk clerks don't write
letters or make calls to generate new business--they stand at the desk
waiting for business to arrive. Software engineers are often overwhelmed
with an endless list of programming fires--and rarely get a chance
to think about what they ought to build next.

* The next time you review resumes, try ignoring all of the perfectly
qualified applicants. In fact, disqualify everyone who is clearly
competent to do the job at hand. Do what Southwest Airlines does:
Don't hire people with experience at another airline unless you're
sure that they can unlearn what they've learned there. "Competence"
is too often another word for "bad attitude." Instead, find the serial
incompetents--the folks who are quick enough to master a task and
restless enough to try something new. The zoomers.

* Cursive is a fundamentally useless skill in this century, and if we
were inventing the curriculum from scratch, it wouldn't even show
up in the top one thousand things children need to learn. Typing,
on the other hand, is way up there, at least until the "scientists"
perfect voice recognition. Educators must realize this, but because
they don't actually test the efficacy of what they teach, because they
don't have an obvious way to figure out what's worth the time and
what's not, they still teach cursive.

Godin, author of seven other business bestsellers, concludes
SMALL IS THE NEW BIG with two free e-books that he has
published . . . the first is about web design, and the second
is about blogs . . . just these two pieces alone make his latest
effort worth reading!

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Break Out of Your Stalled Thinking with Godin's Challenging Ideas!

Small Is the New BIG is Seth Godin's attempt to translate blogging and brief magazine essays into a book without losing the immediacy of the original contexts. Unlike most books that bore you would pages of uninterrupted type that say very little, this book is broken up into 184 brief segments that challenge the world as it is . . . to become like the world as it should be: Full of respect, common sense, helpfulness, thinking responses, and meaningful work. Unlike a blog which is in reverse chronological order, these materials are alphabetical by subject -- But drat . . . I would have liked to read in reverse chronological order.

The writing is at its best in pointing out today's nonsense in word pictures, much as Scott Adams does with cartoons. Less often does Mr. Godin move onto suggesting what to do . . . other than to suggest you DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT! I was most impressed with his thoughts that making experiments and changes should have the presumption of going forward, rather than the status quo.

I'm not sure everyone is going to be persuaded that being a free agent is going to be a better life . . . until they learn how to prosper in that unaccustomed role.

For those who are less familiar with the Internet, his suggestions about which Web sites he uses . . . and for what . . . will be welcome. You cannot help but dig deeper into the blogger world after reading his enthusiasm for blogging's potential to spread ideas and make connections as a conversation.

If you're already a free agent, are prospering, and can navigate your way around the Internet, blogs and obnoxious service providers, you'll get chuckles . . . but not much practical advice.

This book is for those who are nameless cogs in large organizations and haven't broken out yet. Be Free!

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9

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