The governing concept within this book is that businesses can operate either in a red ocean (competing in a commoditised zero-sum environment) or move to a blue ocean (so be unfettered by competition as their proposition is sufficiently unique for competitors not to matter.) With that, the book gives a detailed strategic framework to help businesses achieve this, where the first major principle the book introduces for businesses looking to move from being in a red ocean to blue, is that of ‘value innovation.’

The authors describe the concept of value innovation as placing equal emphasis on value and innovation. Value without innovation tends to focus on value creation on an incremental scale, i.e. something that improves value but not in such a way as to create space in the marketplace. Innovation without value tends to be futuristic, so beyond what people are prepared to accept and pay for right now. Value innovation occurs only when companies align innovation with utility, price and cost positions. Therefore, central to understanding blue ocean strategy is that it involves both innovation and cost control.

To achieve this, the authors outline eight fundamental principles, from the formulation of the strategy through to its execution.

As part of that, the book is full of diagnostics and frameworks to help identify the necessary steps to pivot successfully where central to this is the strategy canvas. This is a diagnostic designed to identify what customers & clients receive from the business versus any competitors, in terms of the product variables they compete on. For any senior person in management, this is a brilliant diagnostic as straight away it illustrates what the business is focusing on, just as importantly what competitors are focusing on. The more aligned the two are, the more likely it is to be a red ocean. Therefore, creating meaningful blue ocean starts with analysing the strategy canvas and identifying opportunities to differentiate.

Indeed, central to the idea of blue ocean strategy is to grow through offering a solution where there is latent demand, which is yet to be realised. As an example of this, they use the case study of south western airlines, which shunned the traditional airline model of offering a 360 ticket, encompassing meals, lounges etc, and instead focused on lower-cost tickets, no-frills, exceptional customer service and fast turnaround times. By innovating in this way, they expanded the customer pool to being not just the traditional airline passenger, but people who traditionally would have been priced out of flying and would have driven instead. Explosive growth followed.

With that, the first half of the book goes into a lot of depth into how best to formulate the strategy. However, just as important is successfully implementing it and this is where the second half of the book focuses. Speaking for myself, this part of the book is packed full of invaluable insights, none the less, I found chapter eleven the most pertinent, which is focused on avoiding red ocean traps. In this chapter, they really do explain in depth the ways in which people’s strategies can fail and how blue ocean strategy can be both misapplied and misunderstood leading to failure. Indeed this chapter is new to this edition and was written exactly because they felt that their original writings were being misunderstood, hence this is the one to take extra close attention to when reading.

This book isn’t going to be for everyone, but for those who do need to think about strategy as part of their role, be it either as a senior executive, consultant or entrepreneur, this book is essential reading.

Book review

If you’re in a leadership role, you’ll want to read this classic book. The author outlines 21 laws of leadership, dedicating a chapter to each law to explain what it takes to be a great leader and how to improve in that area. This book is more of a practical workbook than a source for a eureka moment. It helps business leaders identify areas for improvement and implement changes that lead to success.

The chapters are distinct, providing unique insights. Even if you are already an accomplished leader, you’ll find valuable lessons in this book. For example, the law of sacrifice, outlined in chapter 18, explains that as you take on more responsibilities, you’ll have to sacrifice something to advance further. The law of explosive growth, another interesting concept, talks about developing and leading leaders to achieve explosive growth.

Chapter 3 is an excellent resource for anyone who aspires to become a leader. The author explains that leadership is developed daily and that every day presents an opportunity for self-improvement.

The book contains several noteworthy and thought-provoking passages. For instance, “Great leaders always embody two seemingly disparate qualities: they are both highly visionary and highly practical.” The book explores how to develop both qualities simultaneously, making it a worthwhile read.

The author admits that the law of intuition, outlined in chapter 8, is difficult to quantify compared to the other laws. Nonetheless, this chapter is a fascinating read. It explains how great leaders have the ability to identify opportunities accurately through intuition, and it cites Steve Jobs’ decision to develop the iPod as a prime example.

If you aspire to be a leader, this book is a must-read. It offers valuable insights on how to become a great leader and identifies areas for improvement. Even if you’re already an accomplished leader, you’ll find valuable lessons and concepts to apply to your work. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to develop their leadership skills or seeking inspiration for their personal and professional growth.

Book Review of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie is an iconic book that has sold over 30 million copies and become part of the common lexicon. Originally written as a textbook aid for seminars, it has since become an essential read for anyone interested in the business book genre. Carnegie’s principles are easy to grasp but take a lifetime to master. His thesis is that those who do master them will find success easier in every way.

Carnegie’s first principle is that criticism is pointless and counter-productive. People on the receiving end of criticism are likely to reject it and harbour ill-feeling as a result. Instead, he suggests being empathetic and trying to understand why the other person has done things the way they have, without jumping to conclusions. Communicating without criticising is easier said than done, especially for business managers.

To effect change in people, Carnegie suggests making the other person want to perform the actions in question. This starts by taking the time to understand the contributions people make and giving sincere appreciation. From there, talk to them about what they want and show them how to achieve it. This arouses within them an eagerness to act. The key to success, according to Carnegie, is the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from their angle as well as from your own.

Carnegie also outlines techniques to build stronger relationships with people. This includes becoming interested in the details of the other person’s life, being positive, remembering names, being a good listener, talking in terms of the other person’s interests, and making the other person feel important in a sincere way. He packs this section with examples and case studies to illustrate his points.

In the next section of the book, Carnegie outlines how to win people to your way of thinking. He suggests that in a confrontation, even if you are right, the other person is unlikely to be interested in your point of view. Instead, focus on their point of view and find common ground. If you are wrong, just admit it. Humility is key.

Finally, Carnegie talks about how to engage with people as a manager or leader. He recommends being open about your own mistakes, asking questions to provoke engagement, and using encouragement to build confidence and make challenges seem easy to overcome.

In conclusion, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie stands as a timeless masterpiece in the realm of personal development and leadership. Its enduring popularity and relevance, decades after its first publication, attest to the universal applicability and effectiveness of Carnegie’s principles. The book’s insights go beyond mere business tactics; they are life lessons in empathy, communication, and human relations.

Carnegie’s emphasis on understanding and valuing the perspective of others, coupled with practical strategies for positive engagement, makes it a crucial guide for anyone aspiring to lead, influence, or simply improve their interpersonal relationships. While the concepts may seem straightforward, their implementation requires patience, practice, and a genuine interest in the welfare of others. This book is not just about achieving success; it’s about cultivating a life of respect, influence, and meaningful connections. Whether for a budding entrepreneur, a seasoned executive, or anyone in between, Carnegie’s teachings offer a roadmap to a more fulfilling personal and professional life, making this book an invaluable addition to any library.

Out of all the books in the business genre, the 4-hour work week surely wins the award for the most entertaining. Tim Ferriss is an engaging writer who draws you into his story, making this book compulsive reading. In fact, this is probably the only business book I have ever read which has made me burst out laughing. Specifically, the section where he describes how he became Chinese Kickboxing champion is hilarious. I won’t ruin it for you, but this section alone makes this book worth the read.

Not everyone can follow the same exact path as Tim Ferriss, for context this is someone who lived paycheck to paycheck, earning $40k per annum, to suddenly making $40k per month, while working when he wanted, how he wanted to. None the less, behind the witty prose, lie some serious points around ways to change the way we think and organise ourselves to achieve more for less.

In the first instance, he talks about achieving more, so breaking through the limits we set upon ourselves. As a case study he talks about being a guest lecturer at Princeton and setting a challenge to the students, to contact high profile celebrities and CEO’s and get responses to questions they had always wanted to ask. For the refusniks, for whom such a task is beyond comprehension, the outcome forces them to challenge their own assumptions, as classmates get responses from people such as former president George Bush, along with the CEO’s of Comcast, Disney, Google & HP, along with dozens of other supposedly impossible to reach people. The point is to embrace this notion that the impossible can be made possible. We just need the right approach.

In the next part of the book he starts talking about productivity and with that, introduces Pareto’s principle, where in this context, he argues that 80% of the value we create is generated from 20% of our efforts. In his case, he fired non-performing clients and focused on those generating value, profiling them and seeking more matching the profile. The end result? Within one month he had doubled his income whilst reducing his working hours by 75%. The lesson he gives? “Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

With that, he takes Parkinson’s Law (A task will swell in importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion) and applies it all to Productivity. So:

• Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20)
• Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law)

Combined, this leads to us identifying the few critical tasks that really matter, and scheduling them with clear and short deadlines.

From here, the book continues at tempo, covering everything from improving delegation and automation, through to embracing a mobile lifestyle. In truth, while not everyone is going to be an entrepreneur and work a four hour week, the steps he advocates are worth paying attention to for anyone who feels they want to have more control over their lives and have a better work-life balance, where overall this book provides great insights to challenge the way we think about our lives and our careers.

The Chimp Paradox starts with a simple premise, that within each of us, we have an internal struggle between two sides of ourselves between our human, who determines our rational behaviour and our inner chimp, who uncontrolled, dictates our emotional responses.

Written by Professor Steve Peters, a leading psychiatrist who has decades of experience working with elite sports stars and senior executives to help them improve their performance through better managing their behaviour, this book, first published in 2012 and now over 1 million copies sold, is considered must reading for anyone who wants to an applied model to understand how they think or act as they do.

Understanding how our behaviour is influenced starts with the simple rule that when we feel threatened our inner chimp looks to takes over, where the focus of the book is to help identify this and help with both self-awareness and control as a result.

To do this to start with he introduces some practical mechanisms we can use, where the key Is to treat the chimp (your inner emotional primate) as a different person who you need to respect and behave accordingly. As an example, if your inner chimp is raging, let it ‘exercise,’ expressing its concerns, but do so in a safe place and way. This segment of the book is full of useful insights to help us overall with this.

The next part of the book introduces us to the idea of our inner computer. The best way of understanding this is that over time we learn behaviour programmatically, where as a result, in certain instances which we are programmed in, our response is a default. Key to this is understanding that both positive and negative behaviours can be learned programmatically.

Positive behaviours which have been learned programmatically, he refers to operating on auto-pilot, where negative programmatic behaviours are described as either goblins or gremlins. An example of a programmatic autopilot would be riding a bike or being staying calm when something goes wrong.

In contrast, goblins and gremlins are unhelpful or destructive, where the distinction is mainly about the age the behaviour is learned. Goblins are typically formed at an early age, so are hard-wired into the computer, whereas gremlins are soft-wired, so can be removed. Even then, either way, once detected, these negative behaviours can be managed.

Another key insight the book gives is when it analyses our behaviour within the context of groups and why our inner human and chimp look to engage with people around us differently. Our inner human is fundamentally logical and rational, so engages widely whereas our inner chimp sees threats everywhere, so instead looks to have a troop or tribe to be a part of. With this, the troop then has the ability to influence our behaviour, where we then have to manage this, to avoid gremlins being written into our computer.

Indeed, the whole book is full of insights and well worth reading. He spends a lot of time outlining causes of stress, how they influence our behaviour and what we can do to reverse this, both in terms of causes and the symptoms of it. However, the final chapters are my favourites as he outlines a roadmap for how we need to manage ourselves emotionally and engage with others in order to maximise our success and happiness.

This is truly a must-read book.

“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is a self-help classic that provides valuable insights for anyone looking to make positive changes in their personal or professional life. With over 30 million copies sold worldwide since its 1989 release, the book focuses on transforming negative mindsets to positive and moving from dependency to interdependency.

The author introduces the concept of P/PC, emphasising the importance of balancing production capability with excessive focus on production. The seven habits outlined in the book aim to help readers achieve their full potential, with each chapter addressing a different aspect. For instance, the first habit highlights the importance of being proactive and creating a culture that fosters engagement to achieve success.

The book also explores time management and the different ways we spend our time, emphasising the need to work on things that are important for personal development but not necessarily urgent. The model provided in this segment helps readers take back control of their time, resulting in a better sense of control and reduced burnout.

The second half of the book focuses on achieving virtuous interdependence and inspiring others to improve their productivity, highlighting the power of values and teamwork. The author emphasises the importance of a win-win framework, starting with empathy and active listening to understand others’ needs, resulting in improved motivation to engage.

Despite its age, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” remains relevant today, offering practical models and insights for personal growth and development. The book’s final insights regarding how people’s experiences shape their behaviour and the importance of reversing negative programming to achieve full potential are particularly noteworthy. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to change their life path and achieve success.

The book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ is a timeless classic that provides a roadmap for anyone to follow in order to become wealthy. Written by Napoleon Hill, the book is based on interviews with over five hundred of the richest and most successful people of his time, including Andrew Carnegie, Ford, Barnes & Edison, and Charles Schwab. Despite being written for a different generation, the book is still relevant today and provides valuable lessons on ambition, knowledge, planning, and most importantly, persistence.

One of the key takeaways from the book is the importance of persistence in achieving noteworthy achievements. Hill lists the key weaknesses that must be mastered by all who accumulate riches, along with the steps you can take to develop persistence. He also highlights the fact that what prevents us from being successful is not necessarily a lack of ideas or vision, but our inner demons. As such, the book includes whole segments dedicated to overcoming these demons and achieving success.

While the book may be tough reading, given its stylistic differences from modern books, it is still a must-read for entrepreneurs, business managers, and executives. The book’s lessons are timeless and applicable to anyone, regardless of age, gender, or nationality. What’s more, the book’s examples, while from another era, are all familiar names, making it easy for readers to relate to the stories and apply the lessons to their own lives.

In conclusion, ‘Think and Grow Rich’ is a book that stands the test of time and is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to achieve wealth and success. The book’s lessons on persistence, overcoming inner demons, and developing key skills are just as relevant today as they were when the book was written. If you’re looking for a roadmap to success, this book should be at the top of your reading list.