Winning At Retail by Willard Ander and Neil Stern

The subtitle for this book is "Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success". The ideas are straight forward. Don't try to be all things to all people. Be the best at one thing: price, fashion, selection, speed, or service. In fact, the authors challenge retailers to become "EST" at something and make that a core strategy and value around which all the decisions are made. The book has lots of annecdotes about major American retailers like WalMart and others. It is a simple goal with very far-reaching consequences for management and goal setting and it could be applied to any kind of organization. Nonprofits, for example, have a great deal of difficulty crystalizing their mission into a short statement but if they were to adopt an "est" i.e. "we are the best at doing ____________ (providing short-term housing, preventing high school students from dropping out of school, etc.) for __________ (these people), they would have a hook on which to hang their fundraising and program planning.

This is a fairly fast read and it challenges creative thinking throughout by posing the alternative to articulating the "est" strategy for your business as falling into the "black hole" of mediocrity- good is the enemy of the best, right? Or, as Simon Crowell is fond of saying, "It was a good enough performance, but frankly, you're forgettable..."

Ander, Willard N. and Stern, Neil Z. Winning At Retail. c. 2004. John Wiley & Sons Inc. New Jersey.

Won't Let You Go Unless You Bless Me by Andree Seu

Wisdom packed into four page chunks viewed through the prism of a widow's everyday activities and melancholy reflections - this is what Andree Seu has created in her book of short essays. They pierce the veil of religiosity by juxtaposing a world-view based in a literal grasp of the Bible with the ups and downs of authentic honest emotional instincts that don't always fit in the prescribed theological boxes - in my experience, hardly anything authentically faith-based fits snuggly into any earthly container. The book was a gift from a dear friend which I started yesterday morning and finished in the afternoon, sated, somehow, with the knowledge that I am not alone in my struggles and paradoxes. The essays feel like prose poems as image leads to image in surprising - even startling - streams of consciousness transitions. I highly recommend reading them.

Seu, Andree. Won't Let You Go Unless You Bless Me. 2006. Word & Life Books. Ashville NC.

Where Have All The Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca

Age permits a wide-view so that what seems like Iacocca's eclectic who's who name-dropping rant is really permeated with a wisdom that reminds me of Ecclesiastes. He wrote this to call the nation to apply a leadership test to the candidates that would eventually feature in the 2008 presidential election. It measures a prospective leader according to nine words all beginning with "c": curiosity, creative, communicate, character, courage, conviction, charisma, competent, common sense. Then he adds a tenth, crisis. Each point is illustrated anecdotally like a contemporary version of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People. The book is autobiographical, reflective, provocative, and confrontational and well worth reading even (perhaps especially) after the election is past.

Iacocca, Lee. Where Have All The Leaders Gone? 2007. Scribner. New York.