The Tom Peters Weblog: Cool Friends

Cool Friend #145: Garrison Keillor

2009-12-11T09:20:49-05:00

The host of Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor has written his first-ever Christmas book, and the book tour fortuitously brought him our way. We welcome him to the Cool Friends! He and Erik discuss the book, A Christmas Blizzard (briefly), as the conversation meanders through the creative process. Keillor offers advice to writers ("The first page almost always can go"), artists ("Artists are supposed to be useful"), and speakers ("The audience is going to give you the benefit of the doubt for at least a minute or two. Don't waste that"). We think you should read our first-ever Christmas Cool Friends interview. Happy holidays!

Addendum: In its 21 December issue, Time magazine is publishing 10 Questions for Garrison Keillor, available now on Time.com along with a video version.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #144:Bob Waterman

2009-11-17T04:13:15-05:00

If you're a fan of Tom's first book, In Search of Excellence, don't miss reading this interview with his coauthor, Bob Waterman. We're glad to add Bob as a Cool Friend, and we all enjoyed working on this interview. (Yes, he does share a few secrets about what went on during the writing of the book.) I think the most fascinating aspect is examining another path taken from the same jumping-off point. Bob was no less successful than Tom, just not as publicly. He describes to Erik how ISOE/In Search came to be and what he's been up to since then. Bob also talks about his involvement with the Restless Leg Syndrome Foundation. Funny, both Tom and Bob ended up vacationing in New Zealand, as you can see in the picture above. Divergent paths veered close again after more than 25 years. Welcome to the Cool Friends, Bob!

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #143: Hal Movius

2009-10-08T11:33:13-05:00

Think you're prepared to negotiate? Think again. New Cool Friend Hal Movius, author of Built to Win: Creating a World-Class Negotiating Organization, warns you that you should change your approach. It's not about getting the biggest piece of the pie, it's about making sure the pie is big enough so that the other side doesn't walk away feeling robbed. Educate yourself about all the interests involved and you'll be able to not only get what your organization needs but create value for the other side and leave the relationship in a better place. Read his Cool Friends interview and find out more about what Hal Movius and coauthor Lawrence Susskind are up to at the Consensus Building Institute.

Posted by Shelley Dolley |

Cool Friend #142: Tara Hunt

2009-09-08T16:50:50-05:00

Are you making Whuffie? It's the currency of reputation. Are you adding value to the community? Can you be trusted? Tara Hunt is the co-founder of Citizen Agency, which she later left to establish herself as a free agent whose mission is to teach clients how to better foster relationships with the communities they serve, especially through effective use of social media. You can find her blogging at HorsePigCow, on Twitter as MissRogue, on Facebook, in pictures on Flickr, and locate her on Dopplr. Or you could read our Cool Friends interview, where she and Erik discuss her book The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business. Oh, and here's her website, TheWhuffieFactor.

Posted by Shelley Dolley |

Cool Friend #141: Kathleen Colson

2009-08-21T08:03:53-05:00

There is debate over the most effective way to eradicate poverty in Africa. Our new Cool Friend Kathleen Colson believes listening to Africans is the first step. She's listened for years, and, as a result, founded the BOMA Fund to put what she's learned into action. Through three programs, the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP), Agents of Change, and Cows For Kids, BOMA helps groups in northern Kenya learn how to run businesses, become leaders, and start on the road to self-sufficiency. In her interview, Kathleen discusses how foreign aid disrupts African markets and how helping to bring viable new trade to Kenya could lead to a brighter future for people there. Learn more by reading her Cool Friends interview or visiting the website of the BOMA Fund.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #140: John Kador

2009-07-10T08:44:39-05:00

This new Cool Friend interview with John Kador will have you re-examining every apology you’ve ever made or heard. Author of Effective Apology: Mending Fences, Building Bridges, and Restoring Trust, Kador explains the most effective ways to apologize as well as some surprising financial implications. When Tom read the book he was getting the apology message from several quarters, and he declared apologizing to be a core competence for everyone who would be effective at business, so fundamental that he included it in the Success Tips as #155. You can read John Kador's Cool Friends interview, or learn more about apologies at his blog, personal website (www.jkador.com), and book website, (www.EffectiveApology.com). John can also be found on Twitter at Twitter.com/jkador.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #139: George Whalin

2009-06-16T07:15:33-05:00

Author of Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores In America, new Cool Friend George Whalin points us to the most remarkable places to shop in this country. Each has its own fascinating story, which Whalin details in the book. In his interview with Erik, he also recounts a story about George Harrison, a stolen guitar, and a Federale in Guadalajara. George Whalin is the founder of Retail Management Consultants, which provides business-building services to retail companies and industry suppliers all across North America. He has worked with companies in every area of retailing from single-store merchants to leading national chains, as well as retail trade associations, franchise organizations, and some of the world's best-known consumer products manufacturers, distributors, and suppliers. You can see what Tom said about Whalin's book in a blog post titled "Guarantee!," or learn more at his Retailer Blog. We welcome George to our group of Cool Friends.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #138: Diane Hessan

2009-05-29T05:13:04-05:00

Our latest Cool Friend Diane Hessan is the CEO of Communispace, a social networking company that is a "pioneer in creating online communities to help marketers deeply engage customers." The company has built and managed more than 350 private online customer communities for an impressive collection of Fortune 500 companies. Erik and Diane discuss the company's business, social media, and Tom, whom Diane knows well. Given the business she's in, naturally there are many ways to find Diane online: Twitter, Twitter.com/CommunispaceCEO; blog, Blog.Communispace.com; and website, Communispace.com being only three among them. And, be sure to read her Cool Friends interview.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #137: Matthew May

2009-05-19T04:33:05-05:00

Matthew May spent eight years consulting to Toyota, during which time he assessed how they got 250,000 employees fired up to come to work every day. At the heart of it was small changes with big impact—"the notion that they're always trying to do more with and for less." Thus he began the studies that led to his latest book—out today!—In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. He discusses the concept of leaving something out with Erik, in his Cool Friends interview. You can read more at Matt's book website, InPursuitofElegance.com. And, with "less is more" as part of his philosophy, naturally Matt is on Twitter at twitter.com/matthewemay.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Update from a Cool Friend

2009-05-19T04:00:15-05:00

Everywhere he goes, Cool Friend Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist, meets people desperate to understand what is going on with the economy and why we were blindsided. In response to this demand he has updated his book Predictably Irrational. On the shelves May 19—today!—you will find Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

In over 25% of fresh material, Ariely addresses questions we all have, such as:

• Why did people take mortgages they couldn’t afford and why did lenders grant them?
• What caused bankers to lose sight of the economy?
• Did the government underestimate the importance of trust as an economic asset?
• Why didn’t we plan better for the possibility of bad times?
• If a rational approach doesn't protect us, what are we supposed to do in the future?

If you missed his book the first time around, this may be the time to take a look.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Oops!

2009-05-19T03:16:43-05:00

Another new book from one of the Cool Friends is Oops! from Aubrey Daniels. Its subtitle says it all: 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money (and what to do instead). Check it out and let us know your impression.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #136: Daniel Coyle

2009-04-29T10:10:58-05:00

Our latest Cool Friend, Daniel Coyle, tells us that people think about talent as a possession, but that's not quite right. He studied hotbeds of talent and found similarities, from which we can learn in order to develop our own skills. In his Cool Friends interview, he and Erik discuss his latest book, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. The book is just out (yesterday!), though Tom blogged about it in February (the subtitle has changed since then). You can learn more at his website, TheTalentCode.com, on his blog and Facebook page, or follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/DanielCoyle.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Happy Anniversary!

2009-04-17T08:09:23-05:00

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are celebrating an anniversary on April 28, 2009. It's been ten years since they published The Experience Economy. Hard to believe! But when you stop to think about how their book has changed the dialogue for businesses—how common it is for people to discuss the quality of customer experiences—it makes sense. Congratulations, Joe and Jim, on raising the bar for all of us.

They've made it possible for you to share ideas or stories at their website. Join the discussion there; let them know what impact The Experience Economy has had on you!

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #135: Chris Brogan

2009-03-26T06:28:04-05:00

Our new Cool Friend Chris Brogan is a social media expert. He uses tools like Twitter to help organizations build relationships. In the interview, Chris discusses the advantages of social media tools along with the responsibilities that are associated with having a large audience and how attention is a form of currency. His book, written with Julien Smith and to come out in August is Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. Here's his interview, and, of course, you can find Chris blogging at his own website and on Twitter at twitter.com/chrisbrogan.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #134: Nick Morgan

2009-03-04T15:12:43-05:00

If you've ever spoken in public or want to learn the pitfalls before you take that leap, you'll want to read our new Cool Friends interview. Nick Morgan explains the simple secrets that make all the difference in connecting with an audience. At one time he was a speechwriter for Virginia Governor Charles S. Robb, then he went on to eventually found his own communications consulting company,
Public Words. Now he's one of America's top communication theorists and coaches who's committed to helping people clarify their ideas and engage audiences when they present them. Nick Morgan's latest book is Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, which he discusses with Erik in his Cool Friends interview. He also shares his tips freely at his blog, publicwords.typepad.com/nickmorgan/ and on Twitter as nfrodom1.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

New Book from a Cool Friend

2009-03-03T10:10:40-05:00

Launching today, Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership by Steve Farber describes how leaders are most successful when they have as their goal to make others better than they are themselves. Through stories, lessons from his work, and suggestions for real-life actions, Steve lays out a plan for you to "change the world for the better, one person at a time."

A new website to accompany the book, GreaterThanYourself.com, adds to your learning potential by offering the story of Steve's own GTY project (with podcasts), an interview with authors Patrick Lencioni and Matthew Kelly (another of our Cool Friends), and a description of Up With People's eventually successful effort to put GTY into practice. Good luck with the book, Steve!

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friends Interview #133: Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten

2009-02-11T16:18:29-05:00

800-CEO-READ specializes in business books, so it's no surprise that its founder, Jack Covert, and its president, Todd Sattersten, eat, sleep, and breathe business books. They took the time to sit down and battle it out about which business books are the absolute best of all time, in their extremely experienced opinions. Together they wrote The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You. Read their interview to learn how they made their choices and common themes they found throughout the books. Also, see the 800-CEO-READ website and blogs—there are at least three of them—Daily Blog, Excerpts Blog, and Podcasts Blog for further reading. Jack and Todd have been friends of tompeters.com for a long time. We're happy to now have them as Cool Friends, too!

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #132: David Meerman Scott

2009-01-19T14:24:58-05:00

Why do some ideas spread like wildfire, while others never get noticed? Especially on the Web, news can go around the world in minutes, if not seconds. Our new Cool Friend, David Meerman Scott, has a book coming out in March called World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. In the book, and in his conversation with Erik, David prescribes specific strategies to turn your message into an online viral phenomenon. You can learn more by reading his Cool Friends interview, visiting his website, or catching up with his blog: www.webinknow.com.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #131: Martin Lindstrom

2008-12-11T10:07:43-05:00

We think this is a Cool Friends interview you won't want to miss. Martin Lindstrom's studies are in the field of Neuromarketing. He describes it as a marriage between marketing and science that uses non-verbal expression techniques to make people express what's going on in their subconscious mind. In other words, it predicts buying behavior a customer can't express verbally, because even she may be unaware of what's going on in her subconscious. Sounds useful, right? But, would you want advertising based on the techniques aimed at you? Through his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Lindstrom takes the discussion of whether this technique should be used, how much it should be used, and when it should be used (in politics, for instance?) to the consumer. He feels that getting the consumer involved in the decisions made in this stage of the discipline's application is of paramount importance. You can read Martin Lindstrom's Cool Friends interview to learn more, or visit his website, www.martinlindstrom.com.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #130: Guy Kawasaki

2008-11-19T17:28:21-05:00

Today, Guy Kawasaki joins our group of Cool Friends. He's been an evangelist for Apple, an entrepreneur who's the co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures and the "magazine rack" website Alltop, a writer with nine books to his credit, a popular blogger—blog title: "How to Change the World"—and an amateur hockey player. It seems that his was the first name on our blogroll, but it took us a while to have a conversation with him. We're glad to be doing it at this time, upon the publication of his newest book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. Erik describes it as a primer for starting a business. Read more in Kawasaki's Cool Friends interview, and at his website, GuyKawasaki.com.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #129: Debbie Weil

2008-11-03T17:59:18-05:00

Social media consultant Debbie Weil teaches CEOs about blogging, among other things, and she joins tompeters.com today as Cool Friend #129. Weil, the author of The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right, says it's time to ditch "the old marketing mindset of throwing polished morsels of marketing messages to the masses and expecting consumers to accept them." Instead, start a conversation with your customers by blogging. She calls corporate blogging "marketing with content." Weil's advice is that "if you've ever thought about writing a book—and what top executive hasn't—blogging is a great way to get started." Read her Cool Friends interview and don’t forget to check out her blog, BlogWriteForCEOs, of course.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Books, Books, Books from Cool Friends

2008-10-22T11:26:09-05:00

This year has been a prolific one for our Cool Friends. There's been a bumper crop of books from them—see the list below! One of the books is by a Cool Friend's coauthor (but Tom liked it), Sway, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman. Some of the books are by Cool Friends we haven’t heard from in a long time (such as Harriet Rubin), and others are from those whose names appear in bookstores more regularly (such as, say, Seth Godin). We’re glad to see these great minds at work.

Here's the list, in publication date order. Some of the books are paperback editions of hardbacks published in 2007, but they're included anyway. We left out books by people we interviewed in 2008, however. We apologize to anyone whose book we mistakenly left out. To all our Cool Friends, we wish you success with your latest works! To the rest of you, here's a reading list covering a wide range of Tom-esque topics:

Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy by David Maister (2 Jan 2008)

Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida (10 March 2008)

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need by Dan Pink and Rob Ten Pas (1 April 2008)

Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work by Sam Culbert (1 April 2008)

Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger (29 April 2008)

The Mona Lisa Stratagem: The Art of Women, Age, and Power by Harriet Rubin (29 April 2008)

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman (3 June 2008)

Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference by Tim Sanders (16 September 2008)

In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography by John Gartner (30 September 2008)

The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything by Richard Farson (1 October 2008)

The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham (2 October 2008)

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin (16 October 2008)

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Robert Sutton (23 October 2008)

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #128: Norm Brodsky

2008-10-02T04:50:10-05:00

We're posting a new Cool Friends interview today to join Inc. magazine in announcing a new book, The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up, written by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, long-time coauthors of the Street Smarts column for Inc. Brodsky also joins us today as a Cool Friend. His most important bit of wisdom from the interview is this: "I learned that business was just the means to an end. The question is, what kind of life do you want? You want to better your life for yourself and your family." Learn more by reading his Cool Friends interview. There's also a slides presentation on Inc.com to accompany The Knack:
10 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |

Cool Friend #127: Howard Mann

2008-09-15T11:16:01-05:00

Howard Mann is a founder of Sideshow Digital, an award-winning strategic design agency. Mann also works with a select group of entrepreneurs, business owners, and executive teams in highly focused workshops dubbed "a day in the brickyard." He tells Erik that we often lose our focus in business, but that doing things as simple as paying bills quickly can make work more fun. Here at tompeters.com, we’re all about having fun at work. As Tom says, if you’re not passionate about what you do, do something else. Howard Mann is our new Cool Friend and the author of Your Business Brickyard: Getting back to the basics to make your business more fun to run. Find out more by reading his interview, or visiting Howard’s book site, BusinessBrickyard.com. Have fun!

Oops! I almost forgot to mention, he offers the whole book as a PDF, if you'd like to download it.

Posted by Cathy Mosca |