Season of Rethinking Nurturing
Book of Eights: 8 Books You Really Have Read in 2010
Industry Professionals Can't Get By on Blog Posts Alone
Published: Jan 28, 2009
Since it's the season of rethinking, I thought I’d drop a little knowledge on you. While you've been running yourself ragged going to conferences, socializing in social media and just trying to hang on, you may have missed these titles.
As the Information Age gives way to the Shift Age, we are entering a time of transformation and change that offers both great risk and incredible opportunity. David Houle identifies and explains the dynamics and forces that already have reshaped and will continue to reshape our world for the next 20 years. He comments from the front lines of the Shift Age on issues and topics that affect our lives. We have entered the final, global stage of humanity's cultural, social and economic evolutionary journey: The Shift Age --
Newbies flocked to "The Twitter Book" for its pictures and step-by-step guide to the basics. But "Twitterville" stood out for a select crop of case studies demonstrating the network's utility as a business tool, a news feed -- even a lifesaver. Shel Israel introduces the concept of "lethal generosity," a social-media phenomenon where the most-serviceable user forces competitors to "follow you or abstain from participating."
Of all the Google books out this year, including "Inside Larry & Sergey's Brain," this is by far the most comprehensive. Auletta took his unfettered access to the search giant's Mountain View campus and turned it into a compelling tale of two self-assured businessmen and their drive to create a $100 billion company unparalleled in growth.
Call it this year's "Back of the Napkin." Hugh MacLeod's cartoons, originally conceived on the backs of business cards, draw more than 1.5 million visitors a month to his blog, GapingVoid.com. "Ignore Everybody" expands on a much-talked-about 2004 post titled "How to Be Creative," and offers 40 tips on pursuing your passions, whether you're a struggling artist or a corporate lemming.
Land's End vet Bliss shares her five-point strategy for generating loyal, effusive customers: Believe in them, be committed to them, be straight with them, be there for them -- and when you need to, apologize to them. Lush and Trader Joe's are among the cult favorites Bliss borrows from to make her case.
Securing influence and reputation on the web is as difficult as ever. Brogan and Smith recommend a combination of DIY attitude, endless networking in small but powerful groups and a refined set of people skills and etiquette to distance yourself from the pack. The guys sum it up nicely: "Why we trust people is the same; it's only the ways we come to be trusted that have been changing."
Scads of books documented the recession's wreckage and woes, but few considered what happens next. Anderson's 72-page "Reset" is an expanded version of his "End of Excess" article that ran in Time magazine in March, which argues we've really had it coming to us since the speedy, greedy '80s. But instead of focusing on the grim, Anderson's message is upbeat: Now's the perfect time to build our future.
The perfect companion for those who must remember. acknowledge, appreciate and thank those who have served you when the right words fail you. Simply select the note you want, cut, paste and edit to make it your own, then send. www.nurtureinstitute.com
Good Nurturing
Jim
