Kent Blumberg

Jason Alba on Building Relationships

Jason Alba, Founder and CEO of JibberJobber.com (and my friend), has contributed "10 Things I've Learned About Relationships" to Carl Chapman's blog.

As Jason says, "relationships are key," and he offers ten tips for building stronger relationships.  No matter what you do for a living, I believe it all comes down to relationships.  When you are trying to make that sale, it's about your relationship with the buyer.  When you are trying to find a great candidate to fill that big hole on your team, it's about your network of relationships.  And, at the end of it all, it's still about relationships.  (One of my life goals is to die [eventually!]surrounded by friends and family.  That won't happen unless I have built a network of strong relationships.)

Getting a great start as a new leader

Many of us will face the challenge of a new leadership role in 2007.  Whether joining a new organization, receiving a promotion, taking on additional responsibilities in the same role, integrating new members into our leadership team, or facing major external change, the challenge is the same.

Nearly half of us will fail in the new role, according to George Bradt, Jayme Check, and Jorge Pedraza, authors of The New Leaders 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results (John Wiley & Sons, 2006, 230 pages).

Bob Sutton's diagnostic questions for teams

Bob Sutton presents his list of "Questions to think about when designing or repairing a team."  Worth reading and keeping for future reference.

I'm a lucky SOB

Liz Strauss, the blogosphere's greatest conversationalist, has just called me an SOB (Successful and Outstanding Blogger)!  Each week Liz chooses five bloggers to add to her SOB hall of fame.  SOBs "...take the conversation to their readers, contribute good ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger."  I'm honored to be one.

Check out the hall of fame for some truly great blogs.  There are three pages:  A through H, I through Q, and R through Z.

Holiday Reading

Kevin Meyer writes a blog about Lean Enterprise leadership.  Earlier this month, he wrote a post about several books not to bother reading and one worth reading:  Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton.  That's a book I've written about several times (most recently earlier this week), but Kevin has a nice take worth reading.

Enjoy your holiday reading!

Drucker on Acquisitions

Mark Howell and I both seem to draw inspiration from The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done (HarperBusiness, 2004, 429 pages), a collection of one page ruminations by Peter F. Drucker.  The page for December 10 (called "Resource-Allocation Decisions") inspired Mark to write about our investments in people, and how we might evaluate them.  A series of articles (for December 11-17) about the "Six Rules of Successful Acquisitions" inspired me to write today's post.

"Hard Facts" named Top Business Book of 2006

Harvey Schachter named his top ten business books for 2006 yesterday on globeandmail.com.  Top of the list is Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton (Harvard Business School Press, 2006, 276 pages).

Business books to read slowly

Larry Hendrick commented on my post about the Mind Map Organic Study Technique:

"This looks like a great way to come to a quick understanding of a book, and most business books are informational only. However, sometimes I want to read slowly and re-read slowly just for the enjoyment. Business books can be that good, when well written!"

I think Larry's right.  So here's my list of books to read slowly - just for the enjoyment.  Please add your favorites in a comment - let's make a great list.  And please check out Larry's site - I've just added it to my feeds.  Looks great!

How to understand a business book in under four hours

Are you overwhelmed by all the books you think you should be reading?  If so, try this approach, developed by Tony Buzan.

Lessons from a 2 year old on how to make things happen

Having trouble getting something done because you are waiting for someone else to do their part?  Checkout this story by Dan over on FRACAT.