Business Books
From Fozzee.net
Contents |
Overview
Over the last few years, I've taken to reading various "business" books, starting with things like Good to Great and more recently Blink and similar.
Books
The Starbucks Experiance
While I'm not done with this book yet, I figured I'd write about it, while it's fresh in my mind. This book explores the 5 core values of Starbucks, as defined by "5 ways of being", an internal training guide aka "Green Apron Book". In short, the Big Idea of Starbucks' management style is "do the right thing", from the store counter all the way back to Columbia, where they buy their coffee. Basically, the book goes through each of the 5 points, one chapter each, and cites references gleaned from interviews with Starbucks Employees, gathered from everyone from Barista to Vice President to Customer. It's really powerful to see how Starbucks makes these things work, but it's often difficult to see how to apply them in your own life or business.
Online Essays
Six Principles for Making New Things
Six Principles for Making New Things - This essay tells the story of YCombinator, and how the best ideas are often overlooked, because on paper, they don't seem to make a lot of sense. Their ideas are pretty simple:
- Simple Solutions are usually best
- Find a problem that other people haven't found yet
- Make sure that the problem deserves to be found
- Package your solution as unpresumptively as possible.
- Get to a workable solution as quickly as possible, even if it's a bit crude.
- Work rapidly to improve your product.
As the essay goes on to say, problems that meet these criteria are often overlooked, because simple solutions aren't impressive, or undiscovered problems are viewed as less important.
Anyhow, it's a pretty neat article, and will certainly make you think about almost everything you do.
