Rob Lambert.com

I just finished reading What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works by Ray Charan.
Maybe I am just a sucker because it was one of the books recommended by Tim Sanders in his Killer App book that I just read. I bet that booksellers love Mr. Sanders because he recommends like 50 books in his book and stresses that you should read, read, read! Anyway…

Generally, business from a CEO type perspective, bores me. I had always thought of the CEO as the type of person who
dresses sharp and acts all important, but generally just only ACTS important. I thought of him/her as mostly a figure-head.
Those things may sometimes be true, but in many cases they are probably not, and I generally have more respect for the position now.

In plain language, the book discusses basic business concepts like margin, velocity, return on assets or investment, etc.
My eyes were opened a bit as I realized that there is a bit of an art and a science to running a business, big or small.

The author continually compares (and sometimes contrasts) the CEO's job with that of a fruit peddler in somewhere like India, and the similarities
between the two workers are more alike that I had thought about.

Finishing this book, I have more respect for MBA's and business degrees. At least I can see what kinds of things that those
programs might teach. Previously I had thought of people with those kinds of credentials as only folks who slicked back their hair,
wore fancy clothes, drove Lexuses (Lexi?), played politics in the office until they got what the wanted, and got paid with obnoxious stock options and salary.
Some of those generalities may indeed often be true, but I have a bit more understanding of what a GOOD business person is working on
and thinking about.

The book is divided into four parts: (1) Business Acumen, The Universal Language of Business, (2) Business Acumen in the Real World (3) Getting Things Done and (4) Your Personal Agenda.
All parts are good, but I found section three “Getting Things Done” the most interesting and practical. There were several points that he made that I could relate to in my work.

The book is a very easy and quick read (only 130-ish pages). I would highly recommend What the CEO Wants You to Know, especially if you are not a business-type person. It made me want to take a more active interest and maybe even a more active role in the actual business at my job.

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Merlin at 43 Folders has posted Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make. It is great and I especially like his #1 Mistake: Too much Flash. His Flash statement is pertinent for almost ALL websites, I have re-worked his quote (my changes in brackets) to apply to any site:

Too Much Flash


Okay, I get it. You're creative. Awesome. But you're totally wasting my morning
as I helplessly wait for your designer's dancing sausages to finish loading.
Perhaps worst of all, most all-Flash sites prohibit your [visitors] from creating
[shareable and bookmarkable links into your site].
[Your visitors are at your site to get information and hopefully to buy stuff],
but you insist on making them watch a puppet show before they can even enter the damned store.


Tip: Use Flash like you would cilantro, sparingly and for a single high-impact effect.
Nobody wants to eat a whole bowl of cilantro, and nobody wants an animated death
march when they have a “passionate task” to complete. Also, build your pages to
make it super-easy to link to anything. Use sub-page anchors, and clearly identify
why they're there.





I wish that more folks would get this concept. In my work I always use the term “dancing monkeys” instead of “dancing sausages” when I go on a tirade against these sorts of crazy Flash websites, but other than using “sausages” instead of “monkeys”, I totally agree!

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I just finished reading Love Is the Killer App. I cannot believe that I haven't heard more about it, because it is outstanding.




In a nutshell, Tim Sanders, “Chief Solutions Officer” of Yahoo! teaches that the most important things in the business/work world of the 21st century are

1. Knowledge – principally obtained by reading, reading, reading
2. Your network – you need to share almost unconditionally and grow your network and your personal brand
3. Compassion (or Love) – show it at the office and in all aspects of your career

Personally, and I would suspect others would agree, the author tends to be a little more touchy-feely than I tend to be. I would prefer his term “LoveCat” was replaced with something else; LoveCat sounds too … i don't know … I don't want to say queer, but that I guess that's what I feel. Nonetheless, I agree with him 100%. If everyone followed his “Knowledge/Network/Compassion” way of life, the work world would be more productive and way more fun and fufilling.



I highly recommend this book! Read more customer reviews here.

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Does this look like formatted code?…

public class Main
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    System.out.println("Hello World.");
  }
}

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I have written a quick article about using Spring AOP to write an OSCache interceptor. Check it out here: AOP example.

The article is pretty introductory on AOP but assumes a little bit of Spring knowledge. I may expand this into a whole series on the various parts of the Spring Framework. Enjoy!

Need pursuading? I can’t help…:)