In 2008 Coke paid $43 million for a 40% stake in Honest Tea and acquired the other 60% in 2011 for an undisclosed amount. The founders are still running the company and (so far) it’s stayed true to its mission.
But that’s not what today is about.
If you aren’t a reader, and even if you are, you’re probably tired of plowing though business books.
Even the good ones are often over-written; publishers want a certain number of pages to warrant the price, so there is often a lot of same thought/different words repetition, while customers’ assume there’s a direct correlation between length/weight and price.
It’s even harder to find business books that provide solid advice for startups that are focused on sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible along with financial success.
Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, founders of Honest Tea, are hoping to fill that gap with a 302 page comic book due out in September.
We’d like to think this isn’t your typical How I Built My Business book. For starters, it looks like a comic book. We designed the book this way because we wanted the story to come alive. You get to share in our journey, meet some colorful characters, and not take us too seriously.
Different company, different business advice, different marketing.
The pair, with a budget they did not disclose, are focusing on online and social media efforts, and have created a Web site, missioninabottle.net, where, for $25, a customer can buy a book, a signed bookplate and a T-shirt.
I haven’t read the book, but the first chapter (all of four pages) makes at least three important points painlessly in very few words. (My kind of writing!)
And skipping a few trips to Starbucks will pay for the signed book and T-shirt.
Each five-page summary is presented in a crisp magazine-page format. You can read it in less than 10 minutes – the perfect length to deliver the book’s key ideas. The no-fluff summaries are logically structured to get the maximum out of your reading time.
I agree that there’s too much fluff in many business books, but that fluff serves a purpose.
It’s often the fluff that helps people learn, because the differences are in the fluff and it’s the differences to which they relate. In other words, while someone may be deaf to one presentation another might resonate deeply leading to substantial change.
Think about it; how many times have the lessons you took away from a certain book been so different from a colleague as to make you wonder if you both read the same book.
So how valuable are the summaries? Probably about as valuable as online cheat sheets if that’s all that is read.
Professors warn that these guides are no substitutes for reading great works of literature, but concede, grudgingly, that as an adjunct, they can stimulate thought and deepen insight.
Granted, I haven’t read any of the abstracts, but my experience says that you will lose much of a books’ real value—especially the subtle ideas that play directly to your own MAP—by relying on just a five page summary.
But perhaps this is the future; a world where all ideas and learning come predigested, so they can be sucked up through a straw and thoroughly homogenize the workforce.
Utilizing an outside-in approach means focusing on delivering something of value to customers, as opposed to focusing on products and sales.
Gulati discusses 5 key levers from both “why” and “how”:
Coordination: Connect, eradicate, or restructure silos to enable swift responses.
Cooperation: Align all employees around the shared goal of customer solutions.
Clout: Redistribute power to “bridge builders” and customer champions.
Capability: Develop employees’ skills at tackling changing customer needs.
Connection: Blend partners’ offerings with yours to provide unique customer solutions.
Gulati is blunt and his approach isn’t for those who prefer incremental change to revolutionary, but it is MAP that will stop many leaders from embracingReorganize for Resilience—because you can’t implement that in which you don’t sincerely believe.
Since the advice to be customer-centric isn’t new, following it isn’t easy and may actually require difficult, even painful changes to your MAP, so why bother with Reorganize for Resilience?
Because it carries the biggest bottom-line payoff, both short and long-term, in any economy and for any company—from Fortune 50 to the neighborhood copy shop.
A post on Harvard Business Blogs entitled Every CEO Should Write an Annual Memo To The Board caught my eye, not for CEOs, but for you. You may not be CEO of a company, but you are CEO of your life—your vision, your plan, your effort. You deal with the same problems as every CEO and you owe it to yourself to do the same kind of appraisal of the current and the coming year. Read the article and if you have problems tweaking it to fit you I’ll be happy to help.
Last is a story that will make you see red—at least I hope so. There is great controversy over the hiring of illegal aliens, but that’s not today’s focus. Given the reality of businesses hiring them the real question is do they deserve the same treatment as legal employees or does the fact that they are illegal give managers carte blanche in how they are treated? This isn’t a hypothetical question. Watch this video and share your thoughts on the manager’s actions.
In this book, targeted to execs at mid-to-large businesses, Ms. McGarvie surveys the plethora of challenges and opportunities that companies face in the new century. She details the diversity in three major areas: cultures, nations, and generations.
Simply put, companies no longer have the luxury of ignoring any of these diverse constituencies. Even if a company is not competing internationally, then it is defending its domestic market against a multi-national competitor.
Likewise for multi-generational workforces and multi-generational customer bases. For the first time ever, many companies have up to four generations in their workforces, and possibly four or even five generations in their customer bases. Illustrating this trend, a recent survey identified the fastest growing age-group of employees in the US as people in their seventies.
The book amply documents the simultaneous interconnection and fragmentation of businesses, people and markets across the globe. It identifies various segments and constituencies in each major area, providing a good overview for readers wanting an introduction to the topic. The book concludes with three key messages:
“First, we need to understand how the world is interconnected and that all people in it are interdependent… We need to transcend our nationality.
Second, we must face the financial realities that created this need for going global.
Third, we should become aware of the six forces shaping personal courage if we are to go global. Namely, we experience different cultural norms as evident through beliefs, family, and time horizons; communicate with youth in new ways; tap into the talents of women; understand shareholder interests; capture the entrepreneurial drive for innovation; and respect individuals’ value systems.”
Most interesting are the personal vignettes which Ms. McGarvie uses to illustrate particular topics.
As a reader, I look forward to another book by the author, possibly in a case study format, in which she explores specific situations in much more depth, based on her personal experience.
“In both cases [the Great Depression and the current recession] an inflationary credit boom brought about by the Fed’s lowering of interest rates led to massive resource misallocation and a distorted capital structure. The Fed tried in vain to inflate each of these booms back into existence, and grew frustrated with banks that refused to lend out the new money it was pumping into the banking system. In both cases the federal government sought to prop up prices… rather than allowing them to fall to a level that made sense [in the market].”
Comparing this recession to the Great Depression and many other recessions in the 1800’s, the book identifies the common culprit in the boom/bust business cycles – government manipulation of the currency. Although this conclusion is no great surprise, the compelling analysis makes for good reading. He defends free markets, pointing out that the money supply is not a free market, but a government-controlled monopoly.
Mr. Woods makes a damning case against the Federal Reserve, condemning it for hidden dealings, a bias toward inflation, and backroom collusion with banks. His analysis demonstrates that government action not only causes the booms and busts, but that same government action significantly delays and cripples the eventual recovery.
As if on cue, in December the Fed strong-armed Bank of America to complete its acquisition of Merrill Lynch even when that purchase significantly weakened the bank and increased the risk to the economy. Of course these machinations occurred in secret, with no disclosure and no transparency for investors, customers, and employees of either company.
In his conclusion, Mr. Woods calls for the abolition of the Fed, proving that he is an incurable optimist. Failing that, Mr. Woods predicts significant inflation ahead, due to government debasement of the currency. Government tampering with money is not just a recent phenomenon, as the author illustrates with examples as early as the tenth century, of governments (then kings) cheating their subjects by debasing the currency.
Even in the age of the internet and electronic commerce, some things have not changed.
the approaches and solutions it offers are devastatingly simple; and
it’s a fast (just 150 pages), fun read—not always the case with business books.
Its focus is larger companies, although young companies that are planning on substantial growth can benefit from implementing the structures described when appropriate.
But the great difference is that Total Alignment is written as a story, complete with a hero and a villain and a guru. It’s fast paced, weaving the needed how-to’s into the story, showing how they work, how to draw people in, including the skeptics, and the results from implementing the ideas and philosophy presented.
No smoke, no mirrors.
In the end, it takes the thoughtful CEO to a new vision, one beyond the usual thinking and beyond just the success of his company.
“Total Alignment is aligning the [corporate] vision itself with the urgent needs of humanity.”
Once a company is completely aligned internally then true total alignment is achieved by “making a positive contribution to the local, national, and world community while maintaining the company’s financial and operational advantages.”
For those of you who aren’t in agreement with business’ social responsibility fear not, it’s only brought up on the last three pages and you can easily skip them.
Please add your thoughts on Total Alignment now or come back and do so when you’ve read it.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Enter 
A post on Harvard Business Blogs entitled 
by Blythe McGarvie (230 pages, John Wiley & Sons, 2009) addresses the fragmented, multi-polar world of global business.
Riaz Khadem’s 
