david hieatt

If you are going to start a business, read this book. If you are running a business, read this book. If you are hiring people, read this book. If you are expanding, read this book. If you are contracting, read this book. Basically, if you have any thought of running a business, you just gotta read this book.

Les McKeown has launched and managed over 40 businesses. And it shows. This is not a book written by a theorist. This knowledge comes from being at the coal face. It’s simple, practical and bloody essential.

Les spoke at The Do Lectures last September. I was looking around at the audience as he spoke and all the entrepreneurs were sitting there and they all looked a little uncomfortable. Les was holding a mirror up the them and me. And we all recognised ourselves in what he was saying.

When you are running a business you tend to think your problems are unique. It’s a lie. The things you are going through follow a set pattern. And once you know that, once you know where you are in that set pattern, then it becomes easier to understand what to do to get your business to be at the stage that you want. And not the one you are in.

The book has really helped me think about the businesses I run. I think it gives you an overview of each defined stage of your business. In a way it gives you confidence to know what you are going through is not unique to you. Once you know that, you can take the emotion out things. And make decisions that will get you to where you want to get to.

It tells you how to hire differently in the different stages, it tells you about the tensions between founders and managers, and it does all this by giving you real life examples which works for me. I relate to the examples given.

At the same time of reading this, I was reading Steve Jobs biography. I can recommend reading these books in tandem. They give you different things. But you need both to succeed in business.

Yes, If you are running a business you should read this book. And then read it again. Essential.

Predictable Success – Les McKeown.

Wall Street Journal  Bestseller.

I met Al Humphreys at last year's Do Lectures.

He did a wonderful talk that inspired me.

The reason I jump into rivers when I run is down to him.

He kindly put me in his fave blogs, which made me feel a bit guilty cos I had forgotten I had one.

So he got me writing again. (Cheers Al)

Here is his list.

He asked me to write my list of fave blogs too. (working on that).

Sign up to his blog. Watch his talk. Buy his book.

Cheers,

David Hieatt

I love reading books, and think that I always will. Thanks so much for all your suggestions on books for me to read back on Monday.

But the explosion of quality blogs in recent years means that I now also spend about 10 minutes each morning scanning through the list of blogs I subscribe to. (Still don’t understand RSS? You should. Click here for an explanation.) Blogs that teach me, bring important things to my attention, entertain me, and challenge me to think.

Today I am going to share a selection of some of the best blogs that I read regularly. But I am also asking for suggestions again. I’d love to broaden my reading and my education, so please do post links to any good blogs in the comments section below. Don’t be shy to promote your own blog too! Let’s try to build a good, broad resource that will be helpful for lots of people.

In  no particular order, here’s a list of the best blogs that I dip into regularly.

• Mark Twight. He’s a climber, he’s angry, he’s elitist. I’m none of those things. Perhaps that’s why I like the jolt his caustic writing gives me.
• Seth Godin. Writes about marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.
• David Hieatt. I like this blog for the same reason I enjoy Seth’s. It makes me think a little differently about my work and how I work.
• Make “someday” today. The best writing I’ve found about long bike journeys.
• Stuff White People Like. Makes me laugh every time.
• Flickr Blog. Photography and a whole world of different topics. I like seeing different photographers, different approaches, different ideas.
• The Big Picture. Astonishing images from the world’s big stories.
• Andy Kirkpatrick. Thoughtful, unusual, entertaining writing about climbing, making a living from climbing, and trying to fit a life around these two things.
• Kate Harris. Poetic and exultant adventures. Travel and expeditions do not need to be written about monotonously like a police report. After all, Annie Dillard and Antoine St Exupery knew what they were doing.
• The Adventure Blog. News, commentary, and insights on adventures, and adventurers, from around the globe.
• Rock Monkey Art. Cool expeditions and the kind of videos I am aspiring to learning to make.
• Philip Bloom. A great resource for learning about DSLR film making.
• The Barstool Romantic celebrates the wanderers, explorers, vagabonds, beats, carousers, rebels, hell-raisers and originals of the world. Those great ideas of freedom and the open road; drinking, laughing and loving like hell; getting out there and into it.
• The Creative Penn. Lots of stuff to get me thinking about life as an author.
• The Economist. Taut writing, comprehensive analysis.
• Escape the City. Stop dreaming. Start planning.
• The Roaming Dials. The definitive packrafting blog. I hope my life can become as cool as Roman’s.
• Those Who Dared. Two hundred years of adventure journalism.
• Time to Eat the Dogs. On Science, History, and Exploration.
• Vimeo HD. Movie-making inspiration.
• Kottke.org. I don’t really know what this site is about but it’s usually interesting!
• Strange Maps. A cornucopia of different things to delight or make you think. Like this one.

Clearly I would not have the time or the inclination to type in the www… for each of these sites to see if anything has changed on them. That’s the beauty of RSS feeds, and why you should subscribe to the RSS feed ormonthly newsletter for my site right now.

The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations is a 2006 book by 

Ori Brafman.

(Just starting reading it now.)

Key thought

The spider and starfish analogy refers to the contrasting biological nature of the respective organisms, starfish having a decentralized neural structure permitting regeneration.

The Mantras

1, Genuine interest in others.

2, Numerous loose connections, rather than a small number of close connections.

3, Skill at social mapping.

4, Desire to help everyone they meet.

5, The ability to help people help themselves by listening and

understanding, rather than giving advice ("Meet people where they are").

6, Emotional Intelligence.

7, Trust in others and in the decentralized network.

8, Inspiration (to others).

9, Tolerance for ambiguity.

10, A hands-off approach. Catalysts do not interfere with, or try to control

the behavior of the contributing members of the decentralized

organization.

11, Ability to let go. After building up a decentralized organization, catalysts move on, rather than trying to take control.

The ten "rules" are:

1, Diseconomies of scale- Big companies have power.

2, Network effect - every additional person makes the organization stronger.

3, Power of chaos.

4, Knowledge at the edge - information about the organization is open to everybody.

5, Everyone wants to contribute - self-motivated employees.

6,Beware the hydra response.

7, Catalysts rule.

8, *Values* are the heart of any organization or network.

9, Measure, monitor, and manage.

10, Flatten or be flattened.

This is a 350 year old martial arts classic.

It reads like lessons from a business management book.

It will teach you a lot on conflict and strategy.

'Ignore the bird shit' is always a good way to start a review of a book.

That said, Seth is one of the brightest thinkers/observers out there.

This book is about the power of a community when it comes together.

A world wide web of people.

(Clay Shirky)

 We spend a lot of our time on the things we are not good at.

But if we spend more of the time on where we are most effective, we can do more with less.

(Richard Koch)

A quick read. But a good one.

How and why you need to think differently to run a business these days.

(Jonas Ridderstrale & Kjell Nordstrom)