I'm putting together my Christmas holiday reading list right now, and these two books are right at the top...
Thanks to the Tom Peters blog for alerting me to “Enough. True Measures of Money, Business, and Life”. It’s by a guy called John Bogle who founded the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group in the US. Tom lists the chapter headings to summarise the book…it sounds bang on…
"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
"Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"
The overarching theme, "Enough", is captured in this anecdote…
"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.'"
Thanks also to my colleague Philip McDougall for recommending a book he's currently reading, "The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm". The author, Kenneth W. Gronbach, describes his central premise...
"Large and small generations, alternately moving and aging through the marketplace, determine many a company’s success or failure...The core idea of this book is quite simple: Smaller generations buy less stuff; larger generations buy more stuff. When a large generation, such as the Boomers, leaves the market and is replaced by a smaller generation, such as Gen Xers, sales are going to drop...[but] people (executives, entrepreneurs, salespeople, marketers, advertisers, etc.) just don’t accept this clear-cut concept until you beat them over the head with it."
Interesting stuff. And also interesting is this list from the Guardian of the best viral ads of the year.