Who are you reading?
As anyone that knows me well is aware, I keep two or three non-fiction books going at all times. (Saves me having to drag them around with me you see.)
I’m currently working my way through the following four:
Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Buying In by Rob Walker
Welcome to the Creative Age by Mark Earls
I’m of the opinion that it’s not so much what a book says that’s so important, but what it makes you think. Each one of these is making me think differently about my industry, the economy, and my opportunities. And frankly in trying to synthesize what I’m seeing, reading, and experiencing right now I’m coming up with more questions than answers. Here are a few of the excerpts that I’m wrestling with…
From the end of Chapter One of Reality Check:
“Instead of pursuing professional entrepreneurs, we should figure out how and why ordinary people can do heroic things. Dr. Phillip Zimbardo of Stanford University and Zeno Franco of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology wrote an article called ‘The Banality of Heroism‘…about this very subject.
The short explanation is that heroism requires the presence of a ‘heroic imagination,’ which the authors describe as ‘the capacity to imagine facing physically or socially risky situations, to struggle with the hypothetical problems these situations generate, and to consider one’s actions and the consequences.’”
From p-69 of Here Comes Everybody:
“Professional self-conception and self-defense, so valuable in ordinary times, becomes a disadvantage in revolutionary ones, because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession. In most cases, those threats are also threats to society; we do not want to see a relaxing of standards for becoming a surgeon or a pilot. But in some cases the change that threatens the profession benefits society, as did the spread of the printing press; even in these situations the professionals can be relied on to care more about self-defense than about progress. …evidence that the ecosystem is changing in ways they can’t control usually creates considerable anxiety, even if the change is good for society as a whole.”
From Walker’s introduction to Buying In:
“When marketing experts in particular talked about the birth of a new consumer, what they were really talking about was the re invention of their own business. Many popular business gurus have become fond of declaring that the advertising business is, as one announced not long ago, ‘on its way to extinction.’ What these people mean is the end of “traditional” advertising…”
And finally from p-76 of Welcome To The Creative Age:
“Everything has changed; all of the condition of the world which spawned the ‘Marketing Revolution’ and on which the current order was built have been demolished. Marketing is a product of its time and that time has gone. All swept away. All flotsam and jetsam.
Out goes the idea of a grateful attentive consumer. Out, the idea of a pliant punter, ignorant of our trickery. Out, too, the idea of the proud and powerful organization. And out the idea that we own our employees. Hey, like our customers, have a choice and know it.”
Four different authors. Four very different viewpoints. And yet the same themes of revolutionary change, the impending death of our existing models, the need for action, and new ways of thinking are peppered throughout.
Charlene Li of Forrester and Groundswell fame said something last week that bears repeating. Paraphrasing: “Pay attention to the relationships, not the technology.”
So I ask, who are you reading? What are you thinking? What are you doing differently than you were six months ago, three months ago?
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