The Simplest Thing That Works

No Longer a One-Hit Wonder...

I'm thrilled to share that St Martins Press has just bought my next book, Being Strategic: Crafting the Hoped-for Future! They'll be publishing it in May of '09. I'm already a big fan of my editor, Phil Revzin, not least because he suggested that we use the principles from the book to work together to create the marketing plan for the book.

I'm also very excited that Barbara Cave Henricks and Dennis Welch, from Cave Henricks Communications, have agreed to serve as publicists. They're lovely, smart, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic, and I feel honored to be working with them.

Here's a look at what the book's about (from the proposal):

BEING STRATEGIC helps the reader understand why approaching one’s business – and life - strategically is worth the time and effort required, what's involved, and how to do it.

Unlike most other strategy books on the market, which focus only on organization-level strategic planning – BEING STRATEGIC offers a model and skills for strategic thought and action that are broadly applicable and thoroughly practical: explaining the core skills and practices needed at each point, and providing simple models, real-life examples and self-directed activities for learning and applying them.

If any of you, dear readers, have ideas about how to market the book, or anything at all you'd like to share with me about it -- please, feel free! (And yes, I do own "beingstrategic.com" - astonishingly, it was available.)

Happy Author Day

Link: Independent Publisher Online Magazine: Promoting Books, Authors and the Independent Movement.

A lovely way to end the week: just found out that Growing Great Employees won the silver medal in the HR/Employee Training category of the 2008 Axiom Business Book awards.

Hope you had something happen for you this week that made you feel proud of your efforts, your results, or your relationships with other people...

Have a wonderful weekend.

Bragging Rights

Link: Soundview Executive Book Summaries: Business Book
Summaries in print, audio, online & PDA.

If I can't brag on my very own blog...

So, here goes. I just discovered that Soundview now has a very positive summary/review of Growing Great Employees at the link above.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Soundview, this is how it's described on the Center for Creative Leadership website: "Soundview is the world’s leading source for summaries of the best business books on leadership, marketing and sales, career advancement, emerging trends, and other relevant business topics."

My favorite line: "Andersen provides a smart and easy-to-read management book that offers logical advice and step-by-step instructions for most situations."

Very nice little ego boost on a Friday night. Have a good weekend, and I'll be back talking about real management stuff next week....

And Thrilling Yet Again

Link: The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List: Management (Business Books).

There's an extremely smart and energetic guy named Josh Kaufman who's providing a wonderful service for aspiring businesspeople everywhere. It's called the Personal MBA, and here's Josh's description of it:

"Business schools don’t have a monopoly on worldly wisdom. If you're serious about learning advanced business principles, the Personal MBA can help. The Personal MBA recommended reading list is the tangible result of hundreds of hours of reading and research, and features only the very best books the business press has to offer. So skip the fancy diploma and $150,000 loan - you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books."

Josh has just updated his reading list for 2007, and he's included Growing Great employees as one of his 6 books on management! My book is in very distinguished company; I'm pleased and honored, and hope his PMBAers find the book a valuable addition to their business education...and fun to read besides!

Thrilling

Link: Review: Growing Great Employees.

There are few experiences quite as marvelous as feeling completely understood. This review of Growing Great Employees appeared earlier this week in Perdido Magazine, a management magazine that "strives to deliver cutting-edge management theory and practice in a reader-friendly package." The reviewer was extremely kind and positive, for which I felt very grateful. The truly unusual and wonderful thing, though, was that she so fully understood my intention in writing the book -- to offer a deeply useful, comprehensive, clear and engaging handbook for the craft of people management -- and that she felt I delivered on that intention.

Thank you Perdido, and thank you, Beverly Feldt.

8CR Again

A quick post before I head out into this beautiful summer day. Just found out from the 800CEOREAD folks that Growing Great Employees was in their top five best seller list twice in the past ten days: #1 on June 25th, and #3 on July 3rd.

Many thanks for buying my book, whoever you are -- and I hope you enjoy it and find it useful!

Chapter-a-Day

Just got back from vacation (it was wonderful, thank you very much) to learn from a friend that her email-based business book club sent her a chapter of Growing Great Employees this morning. After a little research, I find that there are many such clubs, all sending people chapters of my book today. Don’t know who chooses the books to be on this list, but – whoever you are – I’m most grateful. I hope people enjoy what they read, and are inspired to go out and buy the book!

kurtandersen.com - Home

Link: kurtandersen.com - Home.

Ok, I confess. Today's post has nothing to do with making work better. It's pure, unadulterated family pride. I'm writing to brag about my brother Kurt's great new book, Heyday (the link above is to his website).

It's everything a historical novel should be and almost never is: it functions as a true time machine, pulling you all the way into its time (1848), its characters, and their view of the world and each other. It's just wonderful.

Read it!

Eenie, Meenie, Mynie, 800ceoread

Lately I've read various estimates of how many business books are published in the US: it's something like 5-10,000 a year. That's a lot of books -- between 100 and 200 a week. And it's just a part of the increasingly overwhelming quantity of information of all kinds being produced every year.

How can you possibly know which books are worth the time it takes to read them? What's an intellectually curious business person to do?

Fortunately, there's 800CEOREAD. If you don't already know about them, I'm doing you a service by telling you. They're a wonderful group of smart, funny, warm-hearted people who have made it their mission to let you know which new business books are great and why. They're the internet-based business book equivalent of the guy you always call up to find out whether you should go see a movie that's just come out, or whether a particular restaurant is any good.

My enthusiasm might be not entirely objective - they like my book - but it's valid nonetheless. Perhaps the best thing about them is that the folks at 800CEOREAD genuinely and personally love business books and the ideas they contain.