Review: Raving Fans
The first thing I noticed about Raving Fans was how short it is. 132 pages of large fonts and lots of whitespace makes the book appear longer than it is. Many pages are more than half blank. The authors use a parable to help explain their suggestions and, without it, the book could probably be condensed to just a few pages.
That said, the content of the book is good. The basic outline is:
- Decide what you want.
- Discover what the customer wants.
- Deliver the vision plus one percent.
Alliteration aside, I would rephrase these points as:
- Envision the perfect customer experience and compare it to reality.
- Ask customers for feedback and adjust the vision as appropriate.
- Promise only what can be consistently delivered and then make slow, stead improvements.
The most helpful part of the book was the point about envisioning the completed picture before talking with customers, and then using their feedback to make refinements. This idea meshes well with other things I’ve read. It is very hard for normal people (those who don’t spend all day thinking about your product or service) to imagine what is possible. So giving them a context within which to make comments is very helpful.
One bad thing is the examples and situations in the book often seem contrived or unrealistic. I would have liked to see an appendix with references upon which the situations in the book are based. Otherwise, it feels like the authors took their theory and just made up examples to help explain it without any supporting evidence from a real company where their theory had been put into practice.
Overall, I don’t think I’ll be rereading Raving Fans. It’s light on content and most of what I learned can be summarized in one or two short paragraphs.
Review: Good To Great
A few months ago, I joined a company called Imagine Learning that makes software to teach kids English. One thing I love about the company (it’s my second time working for them — yeah, long story :-) is that they choose a book each year, purchase a copy for every employee, and encourage them to read it. Last year’s book was Good To Great by Jim Collins which I was asked to read during my first few weeks on the job.
In short, the book is really good. The principles can be applied in non-work settings, to any group of people working toward a shared objective. The biggest downside is that, to be useful, those principles must be adopted by the leader of the group. The CEO of Imagine Learning is an advocate, which is one of things I like best about the company.
The principles, in the order in which they need to be applied, are:
- Leaders who are ambitious for the success of the company over themselves.
- Getting the right people into the company (and the wrong ones out) before making other decisions.
- Honest assessment of the present combined with optimism about the eventual future.
- Exclusive focus on a single idea at the intersection of passion, economics and being the best.
- Freedom and responsibility within a disciplined system.
- Selective use of technology to accelerate success.
Some excerpts should help illustrate why I like the book so much.
You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. (p13)
The purpose of compensation is not to ‘motivate’ the right behaviors from the wrong people but to get and keep the right people in the first place. (p50)
Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. (p58)
The entire management team would lay itself open to searing questions and challenges from [people] who dealt directly with customers. (p72)
Focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness. (p100)
The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline. (p121)
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure. (p156)
If you want to build an enduring and financially successful company, I don’t know of a better place to start than Good To Great.
Review: AppleTV
I’ve been using an TV (also known as AppleTV for those who lack Shift-Option-K goodness) for about a year now. It’s a great little device with a couple of really annoying flaws.
The Good
I like that It’s small, about an inch tall and eight inches on each side. It has an HDMI video output, and both optical and analog sound outputs. It can play almost anything in my iTunes library.
The best thing is probably the screensaver where pictures from your iPhoto library float up the screen. We hardly ever look through our “digital albums” on the computer, and it’s nice to have an easy way to see all those pictures.
The Bad
In order to play properly on the TV, movies have to be below a certain quality. iTunes will play high-quality movies that the TV ignores. The TV handles most mainstream movie formats, including H.264. But it is not upgradable unless you’re willing to tinker a bit. I’d like to see support for Netflix, Hulu and others built-in.
The parental controls option prevents purchases, but does not hide anything nor prevent previews. I assume the only reason to include that feature is for kids, so why not just hide filtered content completely? If I want to watch something else, I’d be happy to put in my passcode to see the filtered content. Since the filtered content is not hidden, the whole feature seems nearly useless for me.
The Ugly
The TV never sleeps. Which means it always seems hot enough to roast an egg. I would really like an option to “sleep after so many minutes.” Or at least have it turn off the hard drive. It’s hard on the drive and wastes energy. Unlike the TV, I do sleep at night.
The worst thing is how slow the navigation feels on occasion. Even with the most recent software update, there is way too much stuttering and jumping. I suspect this occurs because I am streaming content from my iTunes library on another computer.
I could avoid streaming if the hard drive in the device was bigger. Or if it was semi-easy to put in a new one. Or if it supported external drives connected via the USB port. It doesn’t happen all the time, but waiting even 3 seconds for it to respond is really annoying.
Conclusion
Overall, I like my TV. It’s really easy to setup, and gives me a simple way to watch or listen to media stored on my computer. A Mac mini would work too, but is more expensive. It also lacks an HDMI output. And I worry that my kids would be confused if it ever dropped out of Front Row, the TV-like software that comes with Macs.
On the other hand, a mini is a computer which makes it easy to customize. It would allow me to watch streamed movies and rented DVDs (the TV lacks a DVD player). I wonder why Apple doesn’t allow the TV to play DVDs that are in another computer sort of like they do with the Macbook Air.
If I had my purchase to do over again, I’d certainly get an TV or a mini. Just not sure which one. What I’d like is a mini with an HDMI port.
MacNN Review of Mozy
My job involves working on the Mac version of Mozy. It’s good to see very positive reviews of our work. I know there’s room for improvement too, but it’s great to see happy users.
Review: Rich Dad, Poor Dad
The book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, written by Robert Kiyosaki, was the first book I read on the subject of investing. I’ve never thought of it as an incredibly well-written book, but it did get me thinking about money.
The three most valuable lessons I learned from reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad are:
- Assets make you money. Liabilities cost you money. To be rich, buy assets and avoid liabilities.
- Most decisions about money are driven by the emotions of fear and desire. Learn to make rational decisions.
- The more I know about something, the less risky my decisions become.
I believe these are incredibly valuable lessons to have learned. Notice, however, that I didn’t say anything about real estate. There is quite a bit about real estate and owning your own business in the book, but there isn’t really enough to act on. In fact, this was somewhat frustrating. I purchased two more of his books and his CashFlow 101 game, which I really like. The books started to get repetitive, so I stopped buying them.
Today, I stumbled on a thoroughly researched criticism of the book and it’s author by John Reed. Reed argues extensively that Kiyosaki is making up some of the major stories in the book and giving dangerous advice in others. I found his arguments and evidence pretty convincing.
However, I needed to learn those lessons. And it was better to do it by reading someone else’s experiences than to learn it myself the hard way. I still like the book, but would like to find a better one to recommend — one that doesn’t have ethical issues.
In the meantime, Rich Dad, Poor Dad is still one of the best books on higher-level thinking about finances and money. When I find a better book, I’ll be sure to mention it.
Review: The Richest Man in Babylon
A few years ago, I picked up The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason because I was interested in learning about money. It’s an amazing subject really, and I wanted to know more about it. The book more than fulfilled my hopes.
Written in 1926, the book is a collection of stories set in ancient Babylon, chosen because many of the financial principles still in use today originated there. The book opens with the story of Bansir and his friend Kobbi. Both have worked hard for many years and yet seem to have nothing to show for it. As they discuss how they would like to possess some of the riches they see around them, Kobbi asks what I consider to be a question so obvious I was surprised it had never occurred to me, “Might we not find out how others acquire gold and do as they do?”
