The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively ReviewI don't usually review books on lobbying, but that has more to do with the fact that there are few good books written on this important act of advocacy. I have been a lobbyist for a trade association for over 25 years and I would have loved to have been given a resource like Pat Libby's book when I started out in the business. Don't get me wrong, there is considerable material out there on the political process, it is just that it is not very usable to the average person interested in promoting a legislative cause or agenda.
What I like about The Lobbying Strategy Handbook is that it gives a fairly sound foundation in the basics of law making, the governmental budgeting process and lobbying. The most important part follows with a clear, "how to", ten-step advocacy campaign procedure, with some real life case studies.
The author created and directs a university institute for non-profit education in California and previously ran several non-profits, lobbying for their key issues. She clearly knows what she is writing about from first hand experiences. The reader might not qualify for a degree reading this book, but they will certainly know how to develop and promote a legislative strategy.
Lobbying is not just for the "high rollers" working the corridors of power in Washington. Pat makes this whole advocacy procedure accessible to everyone, especially on the local level. And isn't that what our democratic process is really all about - giving every citizen the abilities to make changes in the way our government works.
The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively OverviewThe Lobbying Strategy Handbook shows how students with passion for a cause can learn to successfully influence lawmaking in the United States. The centerpiece of this book is a 10-step framework that walks the reader through the essential elements of conducting a lobbying campaign. The framework is illustrated by three separate case studies that show how groups of people have successfully used the model. Undergraduate, graduate students, and anyone interested in making a difference, can use the book to guide them in creating and conducting a grassroots campaign from start to finish.

Want to learn more information about The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace ReviewI read an awesome and inspiring book - Wiki Brands - Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-driven Marketplace by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover.
Mostly it was inspiring because I like marketing and social media and this book is at the intersection of those fields. It inspires me to remain active in Social Media. Sometime the Time Management Guy in me questions if it is a good use of time.
I love branding. Al Ries is one of my brand heros. He talks a lot about positioning. Wikibrands talks about the impact of social media on this positioning.
Wiki Brands reinforces that the web has given great power to the consumer. Consumers now can own the media through tweets and blogs. Companies need a keen awareness that what they do will be reported on. "Social media acts an accelerant for good news about the brand as well as for bad."
And online dialogue is now a two way street. The web speeds things up so responsiveness is key.
Companies do not own their brand, consumers in the internet age do. All companies can do is "help" guide and transparently contribute to help the brand move the right direction.
Marketing cannot fix a bad product. Working first on product and service excellence should be the primary goal of any company.
Wikibrands has a practical list of things companies can do to support an online community including:
"Ability to join a VIP circle
Access to an exclusive channel or influence
Access to exclusive resources
Chance for gaining wider fame
Reputation building
Recognition by the company
Recognition by pers
Sense of we-ness versus the rest of the population "
It is a good book. Worth reading.
WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace Overview

Want to learn more information about WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change ReviewThis excellent book focuses on how social media have the power "to make a difference." In a way, that's what all the books about social media are about. However, the special focus of The Dragonfly Effect is to emphasize the behavioral components that drive the actual impact of social media campaigns, and "make them stick," to reuse the expression coined by Chip Heath, who wrote the foreword of the book. The dragonfly metaphor gives the authors the four wings of the model that governs the efficiency of a social campaign: Focus + GET (i.e. Grab Attention, Engage, Take Action): "A dragonfly travels with speed and directionality only when all for wings are moving in harmony," the authors note. Each wing constitutes a chapter, and each chapter details the specific design principles for building up the emotional contagion process.
The book starts with the powerful story of two teams who ended up joining forces, Team Sameer and Team Vinay. Contrary to most social media stories, we are not in a fairyland here: Sameer Bhatia and Vinay Chakravarthy both lost their battle against leukemia in 2008. But both teams achieved phenomenal success by making an impact, not only by raising awareness about donating bone marrow, but also by getting tangible results - i.e. changing mindsets and doubling the number of South Asians registered with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).
The initial condition of success in social medial is to have a focus; in other words, "to hatch a goal that will make an impact." This focus is driven by five design principles: Humanistic, Actionable, Testable, Clarity, and Happiness. Yet, focus, however clear it may be, is not enough. How are you going to stand out in an "overcrowded, overmessaged, and noisy world?" This is when the art of "grabbing attention" comes in, with its own design principles: send out a message which is personal, unexpected, and visual, triggers a visceral reaction, and subsequently enables people to connect with your goal -- engage. People will join your cause if you tell them a story in which they can believe, if you are authentic, address them when they can listen, and if, in turn, you respond to their engagement. Once this is done, you have all the basic prerequisites for people to feel empowered and take action. This is the sort of groundwork that gets 100,000 people to join your Save Darfur Facebook group. "Your goal is to inspire and enable your group to take action." In short, "movements that begin online must be backed by real-life action; otherwise, there is no point."
The book reads well (and is well-written), and again, has the merit emphasizing the social psychology side of leveraging social media both for the initiator and the followers of a social media movement. Multiple examples relevantly illustrate the point of the authors. We may take some exception, to a certain extent, with the use of the Obama campaign as a model. While it is true that the Obama social media campaign itself exemplifies the four wings of The Dragonfly Effect and showed efficiency in making people vote, it is also obvious that Obama failed to create an enduring movement capable of morphing into a lasting political groundswell supporting him as President. An additional chapter could have dealt with the art of stringing campaigns together with a more precise analysis of the complexity of the dialectical interactions between the online and the real worlds. While it is customary to emphasize the social media aspect of the Obama campaign, the actual efficiency of the campaign was founded upon a complementary relationship between the analog and digital worlds. The physical side of the Obama tribe fizzled out, which, in turn, made his team overlook the necessity of coining an efficient social media message moving forward. No Social Web can affect change without a "ground crew" on Terra Firma and, as Dan Ariely mentions in this afterword, an understanding of the predictable irrationality "of what motivates the people behind the social network."The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change Overview

Want to learn more information about The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

The Future of Management Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy The Future of Management? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Future of Management. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Future of Management ReviewWhen you write a book about the future of management, there are bound to be high expectations. When that book is written by one of the more celebrated management thinkers, those expectations go even higher. With that said and recognizing that it is hard to argue with success and stature. I have to say that this book left me flat. Hammel's Future of Management is a continuation on his 2000 work Leading the Revolution (LTR) which combined high impact statements with high design that reflected the height of the internet era. In many ways, the Future of Management is a more somber continuation of the ideas in LTR.
The first section of the book poses a powerful question in terms of what comes next for management innovation. That is followed by an explanation of the importance of management innovation over operational, product and strategic innovation.The section challenges the reader to first imagine, and then invent the future of management. A noble task and one that the author tries to address but unfortunately does not deliver on to the degree that you would expect.
The second section of the book highlights a few case studies such as Whole Foods, WL Gore, and Google. The cases are well written and unabashedly positive highlighting few of the challenges and setbacks people might face in this journey. A few, even anonomyous failures would have been much more illustrative of the concepts Hamel is advocating.
The third and final section is perhaps the best part of the book as it starts to set up some ideas on what future managers and management might look like. Here the results unfortunately are what you might expect, to paraphrase - the future of management will look much like the internet. OK, but I have heard that before from others. Some of the most insightful parts of this section include: the notion of separating what from how, the idea of management DNA and motivation, and the key challenges he poses in terms of the challenges for the future of management. These challenges hearken back to Leading the Revolution and include:
Challenge 1 - Creating a democracy of ideas
Challenge 2 - Amplifying human imagination
Challenge 3 - Dynamically reallocating resources
Challenge 4 - Aggregating collective wisdom
Challenge 5 - Minimizing the drag of old mental models
Challenge 6 - Giving everyone a chance to opt in
The fourth section concentrates on IBM's Emerging Business Opportunities or EBO process and how the company was able to reignite its growth engine by managing new growth initiatives and taking R&D to the market. It's an interesting case study and a good way to wrap up the book.
The future of management is an ok book, more like a toned down east coast consumable version of leading the revolution. This is a book for thinkers rather than practioners. This is one of the reasons why it is not a 5 star rating from me. Hamel attempts to be somewhat Druckeresque, if that is a word, but does not pull off the deep systematic thinking that Peter Drucker did so well. Pushing this analogy, the style of The Future of Management is 80% Drucker and 20% Tom Peters. For me, Hamel's groundbreaking work is still Competing for the Future. If you are a fan of Leading the Revolution or a fan of Hamel you will buy this book and like it. If you are a reader studying the issues and challenges of management you will find that Hamel raises more questions than he answers and that many of the answers are ones that are already out there in the marketplace.
The Future of Management Overview

Want to learn more information about The Future of Management?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...