Everyone at Portfolio is really excited to be publishing UNCERTAINTY, the new book from Jonathan Fields (due out in September).
In anticipation of the book launch, Jonathan just released a great video where he talks about the inspiration for writing the book. Check it out:
And here’s the direct link
Portfolio author Bob Lutz appeared on Tavis Smiley’s show this weekend to discuss his new book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters. Here’s that great clip:
Watch the full episode. See more Tavis Smiley.
Bob Lutz, Portfolio author and former Vice Chairman of GM, was on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning to discuss his new book CAR GUYS VS. BEAN COUNTERS: The Battle for the Soul of American Business. Here’s that great clip:
And here’s the direct CNBC video link.
We’re thrilled to be publishing Bob Lutz’s book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business. The Wall Street Journal ran two great excerpts from the book over the weekend.
In the first, Life Lessons from the Car Guy, Lutz discusses leadership at GM throughout the years and why it was so important to him to create a sustainable culture of customer focus and product excellence. He writes:
Where the real work of making a car company successful suddenly turns complex, and where the winners are separated from the losers, is in the long-cycle product development process, where short-term day-to-day metrics and the tabulation of results are meaningless… One of the things I found I had to do was teach the basics of what constitutes a beautiful interior, beautiful paint and superb fits of outside sheet metal. Friday after Friday, I was in one engineering shop or another, surrounded by midlevel engineers, designers and manufacturing execs, going over a future model in tiny detail, showing everyone how the same part looked on an Audi or Lexus (we always had one of each for comparison), then asking why we couldn’t execute it like that, and listening to more or less valid answers.
In the second excerpt, Japan’s Advantage and How the Cadillac Lost Its Shine, Lutz talks about how Japanese car companies gained an edge over Americans and the impact on manufacturing and labor costs. He writes:
When the Japanese car companies began their push into the U.S., they were young, vibrant, small and extremely lean. Meanwhile, the Detroit Three were a good 60 to 70 years old. Many manufacturing facilities had been world class in the 1950s, with benchmark levels of efficiency, but had since been exceeded by the inevitable newer and better... Faced with this environment, General Motors embarked on a series of initiatives to overcome both the perception and reality of the growing import threat. The 1950s and ’60s marked the decline of the “product guy” at GM and the ascendancy of “professional management,” often individuals with a strong financial background.
There were lots of great blog posts this week from Portfolio authors, here are a few to check out…
Jonathan Fields on when competition stifles innovation
Amber Mac on your digital reputation
John Jantsch shares the 7 characteristics of a real life marketing strategy
John Warrillow shares 10 milestones for building a sellable company
Laura Vanderkam is looking for happy people to talk about money
One of my favorite interviews to come out of the IDEA MAN book tour is this one from Boing Boing. Rob Beschizza spoke with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen about several fascinating topics, including private space travel and his ongoing work with the Allen Brain Atlas. Here’s a brief excerpt, and I encourage you to check out the whole thing.
Rob: Is there any advice you could give to people who want to take the same path? How do you focus on new ideas without losing sight of execution?
Paul: To come up with ideas, you have to prepare. You get there by following tech news, a lot of websites, blogs such as BB, and many other things. Stuffing your brain with information. Hopefully, you get an idea for something after you’ve done that for a while: that’s what happened to me. Then you have to put together a team of people, and I was lucky to have Bill Gates, and other people, as my partners through the years to execute those ideas. And you’ve got to test your idea against what’s already out there, to make sure it’s not duplicative, that it really is a green-field idea. All those factors have to work together. And if you’re lucky you come up with something that has the potential to change the world. And that’s incredibly rewarding. But it’s not just the idea. It’s all the effort and the work that come after you have the idea.
