Business Evolutionist

I've moved to a new blog: jstrande.typepad.com.

You can click the link above or you can wait and you will be automatically redirected there in 10 seconds.

I was trying to add comments, through BlogSpeak, but it looks like the site has been down for two days. Oh well, I am probably going to add a typepad blog in the next day or two as opposed to the limited features here.

If you were able to post a comment - it looks like they are gone, my apologies.

In the meantime, if you are interested in "Lean", check out The Northwest Lean Manufacturing Network - the mailing list if fantastic! I've been subscibing for the last 8 or so months, great stuff.

Just wanted to thank you Jeremy Wright over at Ensight.org for the VERY kind words about The Cash Register Principle.

Jeremy is hosting Carnival of the Capitalists this week and pointed people to the site. I am blown away by his comments - I am speechless, totally speechless.

I am, or should I say was, taking the day to clean up my office... wow, it is amazing how much stuff I have accumulated. I can tell it has been about eight months since the last "cleaning" because that is how many issues of Wired, Fast Company, HBR, Inc., and Business 2.0 there are in the pile.

Oddly enough I was having lunch with an old friend, Ross, on Thursday and we were talking about information management systems. Seems Ross built this neat little piece of software that allows him to search across disparate data-sources. From what he was talking about it seems very cool.

But, my question is this, how do you manage the ALL the content in your life?

I have about 11 magazine subscriptions, countless books, about 50 or so web sites that I visit, 2 dozen email newsletters, several mailing lists, etc, etc.

How do you manage information? I would love to hear!

Got a really great email last night from Todd at A Penny For. He posted something on his blog about The Cash Register Principle.

You should check out his blog, and be sure to check out: The Business Blog Book Tour he has going on... How cool is that?

So, The Cash Register Principle eBook is available, people are hitting the site, and I am getting some nice feedback. I couldn't be happier... but the reason that I am happy is that I wrote a book. The feedback is nice; it validates the importance of the topic and perhaps some of my ideas. But my happiness is the direct result of me accomplishing some of my goals...

I had several goals in writing the book:

1. Writing a book is always something that I have wanted to do and now I have proven to myself that I can do it.
   
2. The topic of employee motivation and productivity is huge - my hope is that I have added to the conversation in a meaningful way
   
3. I'll consider it a enormous success if one person comes back and says that it made a difference.
   

If you're questioning why I released it for free, as my wife did... here's why:

One of the best selling books of 2001 was called 'Unleashing the ideavirus'. It was written by a pretty famous author and marketing expert, Seth Godin. He did something very simple: He wrote an article about the subject, gave away a copy of the book for free in digital format, asked people to give their email address if they would like to know more, and then contacted them when the book was published. He did something very similar with his next book as well, 'Purple Cow', again with GREAT success (both on the NY Times bestseller list).

By reducing the "friction" to spread his ideas, he is able to speed up the rate at which they are adopted.

Of course, that only works if your content is worthy of spreading.

A great example of this is Eric Raymond. In case you're not familiar with the name, Eric wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". This essay/paper/book brought an understanding to the Open Source software movement. His "essay" changed the entire business model at Netscape... he is oft-quoted and has a book deal with O'Reilly.

I have had about 15 articles published over the last couple of years, and I can count on one hand the number of email comments I have received from people. But when I wrote the intro article to The CRP and offered a free eBook, I got 30 replies... that is astonishing. To give you a contrasting number, my last article in the Central PA Business Journal, which was sort of a review of 'Purple Cow', I offered to give away 25 free copies of 'Purple Cow' - I got seven replies.

I have 30 people, some of whom I have engaged in wonderful conversation with, that wanted to learn more about The CRP. Those folks, lets call them my "early adopters", now know about the content and will help me to spread the idea. I may work more on this book and get it ready to print - if enough people show interest. Otherwise, I will begin work on the next book. I am using the internet to its fullest potential - as a testing mechanism for what content I should be focused on.

Okay, this post may show my political bias... and I apologize, sort of.

So I'm watching Fox News last night and saw a clip that Wesley Clark had raised enough money to qualify for matching funds - to the tune of about $4 million. Yikes.

According to a story in The Boston Globe, Dean turned down his matching funds, probably because in order to qualify you have to adhere to a $45 million spending cap. Same for President Bush (specualtion is that he has raised $120 million).

My guess, and please correct me if I am wrong, but this is our tax dollars that he is collecting. Why should my tax dollars go to help the political campaign of someone who holds a different ideology than me?

But that is a story for another day....

If I were Clark, I would do one of the following with the money:

1. Return the money - say that the country can't afford to help political candidates while were fighting a war (or any of the other problems were going through).
   
2. Take the money and do something creative with it - like start writing $10,000 checks to families whose husbands, wives, sons or daughters lost their lives in Afghanistan or Iraq.
   
3. How about start a national training center for displaced workers - all those folks who lost their jobs during the recession. Perhaps it is matching funds for training up to $5,000. Think of all the people that would help.
   
4. How about donate the money to the SBA - give even more small businesses a chance.
   
5. Create an innovation grant - $100,000 block of cash for helping get an idea off the ground. This country was built on innovation, you want to help ensure it's future, encourage innovation.
   

Anyway, I think you get the idea (Think Robin Hood and the redistrubtion of wealth).

I'm picking on Clark here because he is the one getting our tax dollars. But, this sort of applies to Dean and Bush as well. What else are they going to do with those HUGE sums of money? Run ads bad-mouthing each other? If you want to help us voters, do something to help us. Don't waste our time by running meaningless ads. They don't work.

I had high hopes for my reading over the holidays - that has not materialized due to all the normal holiday stuff and some assignments I am working on.

The top of the stack is X-Engineering.. which I am taking my time with and writing a summary as I read it. So far, so good. It is nothing new, but it is producing a lot of good thoughts.

Next up, which I hope to get to tomorrow is Lean Six Sigma, then Darwins Dangerous Idea, and lastly Anti Patterns. If all goes well, I'll get through at least two of the books.

Also, I might add one to the list, John Moore suggested I read GUTS! - so I may move that into third. It is on the list for sure, it looks very interesting.

Well - back to reading...

The site is up and the ebook is available! Finally...

CashRegisterPrinciple.com

I will be posting some comments about the book over the coming days... also, I will probably be moving this blog over to that site and changing to moveabletype.

Hope you had a great holiday!