Best Books of 2011

/ Alec / 2 Comments

According to Amazon I made my way through 58 Kindle books this year and my best guess is about five hardcovers.  In no particular order here are ones worth reading:

Execution vs. Strategy

/ Alec

Sriram had this wonderful quote come across my Twitter stream, “You’re not Steve Jobs and your organization is not Apple. And your well-thought out strategy is probably terrible.”

I could not agree more. We all fall in love with our ideas, especially if your in a power point filled offsite. I find this all even more amusing as I’m the Chief Strategy Officer at 125 person SaaS company. I think a better title is Chief Trouble Maker as my role is really to push us to execute on the new while driving more of what is already working. Drive little experiments and kill the failures. One of those little experiments four years ago provides 55% of our revenue today.

It will always be about execution. Not the fancy strategy deck some agency/consultancy/CSO put together. I find the hardest point is to get your team use to the fact that it is ok to skin their knees. Regularly. Weekly. We all stumble. Just do it faster. Do more of it. Do it more often so you get use to it. Get promoted for it. Nose to the grind stone, capacity to execute your roll on the team, and a little blatant disregard for what can’t be done will take you much farther. As von Moltke said, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Which does not mean don’t have a plan just be ready to adapt it to the reality on the ground and not the J curve someone analysts put on a chart.

Land Rover LR4, Lemon Nightmare

/ Alec
LR4 Land Rover
I have a car problem. Always have. I’ve avoided British cars since I grew up with them as a kid and they never seemed to run properly. I was recently convinced to trade the  dependable Dodge pick up for an SUV. After a long search a 2011 LR4 HSE was the pick. It was back in the shop the first week: Leaky rear washer that sprayed inside the car rather than out and random electrical gremlins. Then I caught a rock on I89 and needed a new windshield. $1400 installed was the only option. Ouch.
I’m a car Nazi. I enjoy a clean, well functioning, cocoon of steel, to listen to my Sirius Radio as I crank to work. I won’t bore your with all the details but the Land Rover LR4 was at the dealer almost as much as it was in my garage. The seat moved randomly, the window leaked onto passengers, the stereo had a mind of its own, low pressure tire alerts came and went randomly, the satellite radio got worse with each up date. It was a nightmare of repeated visits to the dealer with few successful repairs. Luckily I have a great dealer in Automaster of Shelburne, VT and I got cozy with my loaner car.
The LR4 is a very functional car when it runs. When it is in the shop it is a very expensive repair. I pulled the plug last week and traded to a BMW X5. I credit the team at the Automaster for making this as painless as possible. They have won a customer for life by turning my LR4 lemon into lemonade. I won’t buy a Land Rover ever again and I would recommend you don’t as well. The clincher for me was when the Automaster told me that they could try to get the Land Rover representative up from NJ but that they had not seen anyone from Land Rover is several years! Problems happen, how you deal with them will make or break your business.