Book Review : Tribes

Book : Tribes
Author : Seth Godin
Publisher : Hachette India

Price : Rs 375


Book Review #7

Tribes is one of the best books I have read in recent times. This book from the marketing guru Seth Godin is inspiring and insightful. It is a book with contains simple truths of leadership in the current era.

Tribes, as the term denotes, is a book on leadership. In the first page itself, the author cites the example of an ordinary person like Joel Spolsky who created a tribe of its own through the careful use of blogs , books and conferences.

Seth Godin defines Tribes as a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, connected to an idea. He argues that in this era , any one can create and lead a tribe. The penetration and popularity of internet has opened a unique opportunity for anyone to create and lead .

The book is also refreshingly different. The book does not have chapters. It is a collection of insights and anecdotes that will stir you to think about this opportunity.
According to Seth, the concept of leadership has changed . While the traditional leadership concept is built around power, the new age leadership is built around idea and passion and ability to tell stories that inspire. The election of Obama as the President of United States is the classic case that shows the power of ideas and passion.

Seth also wisely identifies the powerful inhibition that pulls back ordinary people like me and you from becoming leaders. It is FEAR. He paraphrases Peter's Principle as " In every organization, everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed by fear.. How True...

Internet has made boundaries irrelevant. If you are connected, then world will become your playground . With social networks like Youtube , Facebook , Twitter etc, it has become easy for us to spread our thoughts and become a leader.

But creating and leading a tribe is not an easy task. The leader should be able to clearly and passionately advocate his ideas . The leader should be able to devote his time in nurturing and monitoring the Tribe.
Towards the end of the book , the author tells that building and leading a tribe is more of an obligation rather than an opportunity. He says " To have all these advantages , all this momentum, all these opportunities and then settle for mediocre and then defend the status quo and then worry about corporate politics - What a waste"
He then says
' I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game , and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible".

Tribes is a must read for all of us . It is simple and tells you the obvious. But often ,most of us fail to see the obvious. That is the tragedy.

Book Review : Outliers

Book : Outliers
Author : Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher : Allen Lane ( Penguin Books)


Price : Rs 399


Book review # 8

I bought this book with lot of expectations . I was thoroughly impressed by Malcolm Gladwell's previous books - The Tipping Point and The Blink.
The main motivation for me to buy this book was the " tagline" of the book. Gladwell marketed this book as one which will explain the story of success and honestly I fell for it.

I am disappointed .
Unlike the earlier creations, Outliers is nothing to write about. It is an ordinary and often a very boring read, except for the first two chapters. I found the book boring may be because I expected too much out of it. I knew that it was not a self- help book that will give you a step by step approach to success but I expected a hell lot of insights into those beautiful minds that created successes.

The author defines Outliers as those who have achieved extraordinary success in their lives.

As a reader, my only take-away from this book is his 10,000 hours rule. It is a remarkable insight and may be that single insight makes the money spent on this book worthwhile.
The ten thousand hour rule is simple
If you want to be a genius in a chosen field , you have to put in 10,000 hours of practice/study.

That is it...

This is not a new insight . We all knew that hardwork is essential and hardwork = success equation has become a cliche. But nobody has put a quantitative benchmark to the amount of hardwork needed to become a success.
Malcolm Gladwell did a great service by putting a magical number to hardwork. I thank him for that. Now I can tell my daughter and students about the quantum of work they have to put in to become a genius.

To my surprise, after giving away a powerful insight, Gladwell tried to undo and negate this 10,000 rule in the rest of the chapters. By quoting outdated examples , Gladwell tried to establish that external circumstances play the major role in shaping outliers. So effectively he says that even if you put in 10,000 hours of study , you may not become an outlier ????????

Then he goes on proving his contradictions with examples from history and most of the examples were alien to me.

But in the marketing point of view, this book was marketed well. There will be lot of readers like me who may have bought this book thinking that Gladwell will reveal the secret key to success....
and the message given to us by the author was :

fool... try working hard.. nobody has become successful by reading a book...

Book Review : Customer Mania

Book Title : Customer Mania

Authors : Ken Blanchard,Jim Ballard & Fred Finch

Publishers : Harper Collins

Price : Rs 195

Book Review #9

Customer Mania is a small but a highly insightful book. I am a big fan of Ken Blanchard and his inspirational One Minute Manager Series. And this time too, he does not fail to inspire.

The book is the authors' account of Yum Restaurant's customer service strategies. Using the story of Yum! Ken Blanchard tries to hammer in some of the critical customer service principles.

I feel little wary about books focusing on a particular company because we cannot predict what will happen to this company in future. There are best selling books that glorified Enron when everything was hunky dory. So I was little skeptical when I started reading this book.

Gladly the message of the book transcended the example. Ken's insights were powerful enough that makes the ' one company ' focus irrelevant.

Customer Mania gives the readers four key principles that will help to build a customer-focused company. The authors firs illustrate the principle and then uses Yum! to give a practical insight. The four principle that this book put forth is as follows

Step one : Set your sights on the right target.

The principle asks the managers to identify the right set of consumers and then focus on the right way to pamper him

Step Two : Treat your customers the right way .

Here the authors stresses on strategies to create Raving Fans rather than ordinary consumers

Step Three : Treat your people the right way .

In a service business, employees are the key to providing world class customer service. The authors give some very important insights into recruiting and retaining the right kind of people.

Step Four : Have the right kind of leadership

I always believed that customer service initiatives will fail without the right kind of leadership. Infact customer service starts from the top.

Customer Mania is a very simple book but yet packed with powerful messages.

A must read for any marketer