During the past couple of years working with Aridni we have accumulated and checked out our fair share of books. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. And quite frankly, some of them haven’t been read by us yet.

In the Aridni Library, we have…

“Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist” by Roger Lowenstein

“The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness” by Linda Kaplan Thaler

“Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead… But Gutsy Girls Do: Nine Secrets Every Working Woman Must Know” by Kate White

“The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition” by Robert G. Hagstrom

“The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith

“Beating the Street” by Peter Lynch

“Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons In Life” by Richard Branson

“Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time” Howard Schultz

“Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services” by Guy Kawasaki

“The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” by John Maynard Keynes

“The Art of the Start: The Time -Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything” by Guy Kawasaki

“The Master-Key to Riches” by Napoleon Hill

“Meatball Sundae” by Seth Godin

“Your Limited Liability Company - An Opeating Manual” by Attoney Anthony Mancuso

“Whoops! I’m in Business - A Crash Course in Business Basics” by Richard Stim, legal editor & Lisa Guerin, senior legal editor

Of course, We both have a collection of books themselves as well. Books, articles, bookmarks, conversations, and loose ideas have all helped shaped our business ideals. While it isn’t easy to categorize everything, doing it with books isn’t so bad. Here are some of the books that Katie and I own.

Todd’s books…

“The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason

“The Coffeehouse Investor” by Bill Schultheis

“At work with Thomas Edison - 10 Business Lessons from America’s Greatest Innovator” by Blaine McCormick

“Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management - The Founding Father of American Business Solves Your Toughest Problems” by Blaine McCormick

Quite some time ago I wrote a series of posts about Benjamin Franklin, and his business prowess. The series of posts was following the 12 rules of management from a book written by Blaine McCormick. In one of the posts, ‘A Simple Recipe for Lifelong Learning,’ I briefly mentioned a bit about using board games to gain ideas and try different ideas and strategies. I thought it might be a good idea to show you a couple of board games that you might like to try out.

1) Settlers of Catan - In this game, you are trying to control the island of Catan economically. Each different type of tile has the ability to produce a different resource that you will use to develop roads, build settlements, upgrade to cities, and use for bartering with other players. At the start of every turn, resources are produced for everyone who has a settlement in the right area. Following that you have the opportunity to trade and build.

The great thing about this game is that the board is based on tiles. Each time you play the game there will be a different island, and the resource production rates will also be different for each game.

2) Ticket to Ride - Connect the world! Well, rather connect the United States with your rails. (There is also a German version, a Europe version, and a Switzerland map) In ‘Ticket to Ride’ you are trying to connect cities across America. Doing so will get you points in two different ways. Every time you lay down train tracks and if you can complete your secret route cards.

The route cards are very simple. They have two cities and a point value. If you can connect the two cities on your railway, you get the points. Otherwise they will count against you. The farther apart your cities are, the more it will be worth. The turns move along fairly quickly as it is easy to come up with your next move before your turn happens again.

During your turn you will have three options - take more route cards, lay down track, and collect train cards (which you use to lay down track). What is your backup plan when somebody takes your route? What is the best way to get from point A to point B? It’s not always a strait line in this game.

3) Puerto Rico -In the game Puerto Rico, you are trying to stimulate economic growth on the island and build up San Juan. You have several different ‘roles’ that you can choose during your turn. But when you choose one, everyone can do the action. So you really have to determine when the best times are to trade goods in the market, ship them off to England, build buildings, and harvest crops. Once a role is taken, it can not be used again until the next round.

You will also have the ability to build buildings in San Juan. They will allow you to do things such as getting better prices at the marketplace, being able to store more goods, and of course the ability to process the goods. The only thing that I should caution you about this game is the time. It will take around 90 minutes to play this game, even more time during the first run through.

Hopefully you will get a chance to play these games; however they all require 3 players minimum and go up to 5. (Settlers of Catan only goes up to 4, unless you buy a 5-6 player expansion.) There are also some great 2 player games to rack your brain, I’ll talk about them in an upcoming post.

Can you create solutions when there are seemingly impossible problems? Great managers need to find solutions when other people aren’t necessarily even aware of the problem or room for the improvements.

Take for example the problem that once faced owners of payphones. Generally in the US, you put in a couple of quarters and can chat for as long as you want. Some people would take serious advantage of this and talk for long periods of time minimizing the company’s profits. In other countries there is a time limit associated with an amount of change. So how can a company increase the profits without losing a competitive edge?
(I’ll tell you how they solved this problem at the end of the article, see if you can figure out a solution.)

(Continue reading this article…)

Today I will continue to go over the concept of competition, enemies, and partnerships as described in chapter four in the book, “Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management” by Blaine McCormick. As I go through the chapters I will be extracting information that I find interesting or useful. [Read part 1 here]

Enemies are useful…
In today’s business world we think of other companies generally as competition. They are the enemy. Perhaps we should be thanking them or becoming their partners.

It’s hard to determine who our enemies really are. The book gives the example of Apple Computer going after IBM in the 80’s and part of the 90’s, meanwhile Microsoft was working under their radar. Microsoft kept a low profile until they launched Windows and this nearly wiped out Apple.

The analogy that I’ll give you is all about risk, not just risk, but the board game Risk. Let’s say you are concentrating on taking over North America. It is not unlikely that you could be in a constant struggle with an opponent going after the same area. Both of your armies will be considerably weaker and vulnerable to attack from somebody who has been sitting quietly in South America for the past five turns.

In a blurred second, the person controlling South America turns in a set of cards giving him an enormous amount of armies and plows through taking over the entire continent of North America and taking you and the other out of the game. So by focusing on one ‘enemy’ you have blinded yourself to the reality that the rest of the world exists.

Not everyone is your enemy. Sometimes you can accomplish a lot more when you team up and partner with others who will bring in new ideas, methods, and skills to the proverbial table.

Your enemies have good advice and feedback for you. It’s not something that will be directly given to you. If they are beating you, perhaps the feedback indicates you need better products or marketing. If you are beating them, perhaps it is to not get arrogant or cocky. The best way to stay in tune is to not insulate yourself with “yes-men” as many companies do.

Little Favors Lead to Big Favors…
This section of the book describes how favors can build up trust. The example given is that it is a lot easier to convince somebody to put up a sign in their yard after you have talked them into wearing a button for a certain political candidate.

Even with a post this long I have excluded quite a large bit of the chapter’s information. I would encourage you to run to the library, or the bookstore, or just click to Amazon and get a copy.

Today I will be going over the concept of competition, enemies, and partnerships. This post will be continued on Saturday. [Read part 2 here]

This is the fourth post out of twelve as I read through the book “Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management” by Blaine McCormick. As I go through the chapters I will be extracting information that I find interesting or useful.

In this chapter of the book we are shown that Influence is more important than victory. The underlying idea is that it is more important to create working relationships than it is to be a cutthroat competitor. More than one person or company can win, and creating trust is always win-win.

Tit-for-Tat…
We are shown four rules that governed a simple game for navigating treacherous social situations. The game was called Tit-for-Tat and was programmed to follow four simple rules.

1) Never be the first to pick a fight.
2) Be retaliatory when it is necessary.
3) Be forgiving when asked.
4) Be completely clear about your intentions.

This little model is very straightforward and will work in most business situations. The company must not attack anyone. The company must punish those who attack them. The company must forgive others when they are asked. Lastly the company must be clear about their intentions, which is probably to maximize profits.

Understanding the Socratic Method…
In case you aren’t familiar with the Socratic Method, it is basically using questioning to undermine another person’s argument. After a series of questions the person with the original statement will believe they have found their flaw by themselves and therefore won’t be upset at the person asking the questions.

[continued]

This is the third segment in the book review for Blaine McCormick’s “Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management.” In total I will be posting twelve as I discover the rules and extract tidbits from the book. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book and read along as I will be omitting portions in the interest of keeping the integrity of Blaine’s work.

Franklin’s third rule of management is ‘Seek to manage yourself, then to manage others.” The major idea behind this chapter is that it is important to set a positive example by managing yourself. After you have are able to do this, than managing others should be no problem whatsoever.

You are in charge of being your own manager. In life and work you are in charge. The book contains an excellent quote on the subject, “If you never learn to manage yourself, somebody else will always be managing you.”

While this chapter is much lighter than the first two, the message is still equally as valid. Seek to improve what you do on a regular basis before trying to motivate those under you. The chapter ends with a great statement on benefit of getting self managed people on your workforce. “Rather than eliminating the need for managers, self-managing workers actually change the role of the manager’s job. Managers are liberated from the role of motivator and scorekeeper and can concentrate more on such activities as growing the business and building up external contacts”