Driving Excellence: Transforming your Organization’s Culture and Achieve Revolutionary Results

by Mark Aesch (Hyperion, 2011)

Our recession has pointed out to struggling businesses that in case you didn’t already know it, your business is broken.

You can’t do things the old way and survive. As Dylan used to say, “The times they are a changin’.”

We can’t fix our organizations without people and their willpower to set aside the status quo, take risks and do things differently. Generally, improvements in employee work is either selfishly motivated to save their jobs or organizationally motivated to operate more productively.

Mark Aesch’s fine book is about creating a new business culture for his business, basically a city-owned bus business. His basis of success lies in creating a culture of non-ego, eliminating competition within the team. My take on his actions is to turn the individual egos of the team members toward developing the team ego into a strong unit. The team should be focused on customer benefits rather than what I call “entitled neurosis” or the neurotic ego demands of employees.

When I picked up Driving Excellence, I never thought I would be interested in reading a book about a city bus transit system and I didn’t think that I would finish it. I was really surprised. Mark’s story is inspiring and his experiences can be influential if you want to transform your own business.

In April 2004, Mark Aesch was appointed the CEO of Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA) and was confronted with a $27.5 million deficit. Two years later RGRTA has a $19.7 million surplus and its fares are the lowest they’ve been since 1991. Ridership has increased by 20% and customer satisfaction has never been higher.

Mark’s story takes him to the front lines of war with the union’s self-centered demands and their lack of customer service interest. His hard-edged story of these conflicts demonstrate his strength of character and dedication to the improvement through honest dialogue. The presence to continue to make the right decisions to benefit the whole. His battle took him from the union to the politicians–individuals who live by their votes rather than doing right-minded work directed toward efficiency.

Mark’s story is told directly without inflating himself or his ability to succeed. While reading I was encouraged to analyze our bookstore and its chemistry, even while studying the bus business, which I think is a testimony for his book and his work efforts.

Success for a small business requires team ego. Success is too difficult if all employees do not pursue one goal–the best customer service. Mark moved me so much with his story that I ordered four copies for my staff to study and pass around. By reading Mark’s influential book I hope Lemuria’s drive to excellence will achieve the goal of giving Jackson a top-notch local community bookstore. We don’t want to fall into the pitfall of entitled customer support; We want to earn our customers’ business. Lemuria will live or die by our choices. Lemuria needs to earn our community’s support and I hope we are up to the task. Mark, learning from your book, we appreciate the challenge.

Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t 

by John Sullivan (Penguin, 2010)

Booksellers are in a unique position in that they constantly watch what people read and get new ideas for reading adventures from their customers. I had a fun experience learning about the latest book by Paul Sullivan.

My first encounter with Clutch was in September at a Texas airport having a beer. The young pretty gal next to me was reading it and so of course I took notice.

Some time later, an old youth baseball coaching pal came in and bought a copy. He then came back and ordered eight more copies. That caught my attention. I got a copy and laid it on the pile until the time was right.

Clutch is having the ability to do what you can do normally while under immense pressure. Success under intensity is hard work. Sullivan’s goal with Clutch was to find people who were clutch and deconstruct what made them so good. By using two areas, money and sports, where people choke the most, the author explains how we can make better decisions under pressure. Sullivan wants to show people how to become better while under pressure and avoid the simple mistakes that cause most of us to choke.

Sullivan asserts that there are several traits which make an individual clutch.

1) Focus: The basis for all great performers under pressure. Focus is not just about concentration. It’s about trusting yourself and allowing your hard work and assets to come forward when situations get tough.

2) Discipline: This is the battle within yourself. Through discipline, set up a strong foundation in your work instead of giving into neurosis and the demands of the ego.

3) Adaptability: When your plan fails, focus on the intent and an outcome based on solutions. The focus must be outward and big picture and not inward on emotions and details.

4) Be present: This involves being ready for whatever comes your way and developing a heightened awareness that prepares you to respond.

5) Fear and Desire: Carry your drama and recycle it into discipline. Learn big picture, macro not micro. Shape your destiny.

Why do people choke? Part of success may involve how people perceive their actions. Take responsibility and learning from your mistakes. Be accountable for your actions. My actions = my results. On the other hand, Sullivan also explores the dangers of over thinking and over confidence traps.

Finally Sullivan analyzes how to be clutch and what it can teach you. Clutch awareness allows you to enjoy your pleasures fully as the opportunity presents itself. Being prepared mentally and enjoying the process naturally.

Being a bookseller in 2011, I found reading Clutch helpful as I prepare mentally for this time of publishing change. Clutch decisions for small bookstores are critical as we try to stay in business as the recession subsides. Understanding your clutch strengths and weaknesses are a good tool in the work toward success and survival. Move forward without fear and haste; utilize your strengths to increase the endurance of your business.

Clutch by John Sullivan (Penguin, 2010)

The New Rules of Retail is the most important book I’ve read on small business retailing since Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business nearly 25 years ago. A couple of other booksellers at Lemuria have also read New Rules. We all feel this book provides crucial insight as independent bookstores reposition in the book industry. To be a successful small business, you must understand the changes in your competitors. I believe New Rules sees the future.

Lewis and Dart begin by defining the three waves in the history of American retail.

Wave 1 (1850-1950): Marked by the power of the producer—producers distributed their products when and how they chose—“Build it and they will come.” Producers struggled to keep up with demand. Catalogs are delivered to the rural customer. Customers also begin to move from rural to urban areas. Sears & Roebuck targeted rural populations who had limited access to stores.

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Wave 2 (1950-up to our present time): Marked by the evolution of category killers. From malls to big box stores, their strategy was to offer everything in one product category at discount prices. The markets became saturated and consumers were empowered with the superfluous selection. Sellers had to find a way to add value to differentiate it from their competitors. “Capitalism unbound.” Amazon’s distribution centers provide for an unfathomable variety of products.

Wave 3 (present time, early stages): Final shift from producer power to consumer power. Access to more and cheaper goods leads to quicker and easier access. Powered with information from the Internet, consumers have total power over what they buy and how much they pay for it. Consumers also begin to think about quantity versus quality. Who thought you could sell shoes online? Zappos does with unparalleled customer service.

The Great Recession has helped to cause a paradigm shift in terms of how customers value goods and services. This new understanding of value by the consumer proposes that price no longer equals value and that value is no longer determined by a price. This means that the customer is going through an epic transformation. The days of trying to get the customer to come to you are over; you have be in your customer’s world.

Customers are now beginning to redefine their consumer values. In doing so, they are self-actualizing their buying habits as they redefine what it means to be happy and satisfied. Buying habits show that customers are looking for experiences as opposed to accumulating more stuff. The experience—a neurological connection—must be unique and it also must be something that the customer has co-created with the seller.

Nobody understands value better than the customer. Talking to or at customers is fading as a neurological connection from retailer to actualized customer is growing. As a result, advertising and marketing are in a major transition stage.

Sweeping retail changes are just beginning. Entire industry structures are being reinvented and transformed. With customer actualization, the control of the value change is much more challenging.

The revolutionary transformation of retailing is just beginning. Here are just a few Lewis and Dart’s major predictions for Wave 3:

1. Fifty percent of retailers and brands will disappear because the business models cannot be changed.

2. The ultimate collapse of traditional retail/whole sale business model is now clearly visible.

3. Major box stores will roll out smaller localized neighborhood stores.

4. Amazon will open brick and mortar showrooms.

5. Box retail stores will become hybrid enclosed mini-malls. In the case of Barnes & Noble, I predict that real books may evolve to a second or third inventory tier.

I suggest that an independent book seller who wants to still be open in five years should read and study The New Rules of Retail. Lewis and Dart have helped Lemuria begin to restructure and redefine our community presence.

I feel that for every small retail business person, reading New Rules is a must. Use the work of Lewis and Dart to look inwardly at yourself and outwardly at your competition. A challenging message comes across loud and clear.

Collapse or Convert.

The New Rules of Retail: Competing in the World’s Toughest Marketplace by Robin Lewis & Michael Dart (Palgrave, 2010)

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

(Riverside, 2009)

Having been in small business for so long, I’m always facing issues of self-motivation: my drive to do my part in making a good bookstore; my drive to continue my book selling actualization while wanting to reaffirm the quality and customer service of my staff. To enhance my “mo,” I picked up Drive from my unread pile (which is too large) to explore.

Drive begins by reflecting on on the work of Abraham Maslow whose humanistic psychology was the beginning foundation of my earliest business concepts. Young, inexperienced, really stupid, and with no training, I started Lemuria, hoping one day to experience a degree of self-actualization from my work life.

Daniel H. Pink emphasizes creativity in the workplace. The role of management is to provide an environment that maximizes  the intrinsic reward, not just financial. Pink analyzes worker rewards, stressing the need for employees to have the freedom to be creative. Work pleasure is not just solely determined by the dollar. Work fulfillment can be enlightening.

All of us want to meet our basic needs as we make decisions about financial goals. After certain monetary needs are met, however, we need to ask ourselves: How much is enough? How is our individual fulfillment going to be obtained?

Pink applies Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow concepts to the work environment. Being = creative flow provides maximum creation. A situation forming the maximum creative fire emerges and burns, thus providing an elevated work high.

Work is hard with so many monotonous demands put on time and energy. For me, self-motivation can be routine. However, when the lines of creativity cross with the correct business perceptions, activating the success button, job gratification occurs beyond words. At this point, internal smiles emerge.

My life’s drive has been reinforced by reading Pink’s Drive. Readdressing your value system is healthy–not in a rigid way, but with a peace of mind. For me, that peace of mind comes from the quieter moments spent with a drink on my porch, reflecting on the gratifying benefit of providing services and a lifestyle to loved ones. In those moments work results in a happiness high.

Lemuria, our bookstore, is facing a challenging book-selling climate. It’s fun to think about all of the humanistic reasons that brought Lemuria into being. The future is now, a time for all Lemurians to explore the creative force within.

Lemuria’s actualization has currently plateaued. Reading Drive, however, has made me want to redefine our goals and find our next plateau. Reading Drive could help keep the Lemuria book-selling wagon on the trail.

I can suggest Drive to readers  who are looking for reaffirmation and have a desire to enhance their dedication to work and purpose.

Predictable Success breaks down the business journey. Beginning with the early struggles of a business, the fun of fast growth and early success, reaching a plateau at status quo. Hopefully, you don’t find yourself in a rut filled with growing problems and the final big question: Could this could be the end?

It’s not easy to clearly recall my early business inclinations 35 years ago. Struggles long past flash by mixed with memories of “light bulb” moments–but it’s just too long ago to remember it all.

Both my children started new businesses in 2010.

My daughter Saramel has partnered with an early stage art gallery called SCOOP while my son Austin has partnered to launch Mississippi’s first legal distillery Cathead Vodka. I started reading Predictable Success to help me be more aware in offering helpful advice–if I were asked.

To my surprise, midway through the book, I was put in a Lemuria trance. I began to relive and reflect, especially on the grinding “treadmill” and the haunting “Big Rut” stages my business has progressed in and out of. Readdressing these times could be very important, as it seems a hazardous journey is upon us now. Every decision seems important in the book business of 2011.

Nevertheless, this year could be a great time to start a business and follow your dream. Opportunities abound, and our country needs small business more than ever. The unknown is waiting and it seems change is taking place in every aspect of business.

Predictable Success gives a clear grasp of ways to figure your own business place and evolution helping you know what to look for. Being very clear, the author presents ideas and examples that hypnotize the reader to search out the flaws in their own work. Any new business person would benefit from reading about McKeown’s experience of predicting success and understanding problems.

As my industry changes, the 2011 rules of success no one seems to know. Big ideas of e-book mania appear catastrophic to real book readers. However, I see this as an opportunity to redefine Lemuria as a better bookstore by readdressing my traps of the past. Applying McKeown’s understanding as a tool, I will try to not make the same mistakes again.

Whether you are thinking of starting your own business or feel the overwhelming challenge of staying afloat in a thunderstorm of change, reading Predictable Success will shed light onto your path.

Increasing awareness as your business journeys through these stages is a constant challenge at every moment. With awareness, creativity has the chance to emerge, giving advice for adjustment at all business growth and decline stages.

Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track–And Keeping It There by Les McKeown (Greenleaf, June 2010)

Practically Radical: Not So Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself

by William C. Taylor

(Morrow, 2011)

In the mornings during this Christmas season, while working very hard, I read Practically Radical. I knew a wave was coming in my industry with the emerging e-reading devices. Book buying and book publishing appear to be going through a radical transformation.

While reflecting on Lemuria’s past, Radical has helped me build a distinctive point of view on how to begin building a plan for our future. With the present state of reading and e-reading, we want to emphasize that we are a book store.

Lemuria loves the physical book store, nothing against all the reading devices and gizmos (They have a place for some readers, some of the time.) However, Lemuria is a bookstore for physical book readers. With real bookselling, our roots, we want our readers to focus on the measure of our reading suggestions and performance.

Not every reader will want to continue as an independent book store patron. As reader’s go through change, we as booksellers must use our head and our heart to readdress the mindset of our readers, examine our standards as we try to fulfill more than ever your expectations.

From our bookselling staff, we want more bookselling originality to emerge. Using our past, we must emerge with a creative, progressive attitude, not forgetting the value–our heart–that we add to the system of bookselling. The change is here. Being independent is our difference. We are not about replication but individually expressing our sense of place in our community of Jackson and virtually through our blog.

For us, Lemuria is our state of mind. We know Lemuria is not for everyone, but for those who choose, we want to be part of your lives. As our competition is being redefined, we also want to redefine our work for the reader. While sustaining our performance, we want to engage our readers with passion and emotion about the books we read and support.

Reading Radical helped me to focus on crossing this new industry frontier. For anyone, in a small business needing a wake-up call, Practically Radical might be your alarm clock.

Real-Time Marketing and PR: How to Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products That Grow Your Business Now by David Meerman Scott

John Wiley Publishing (November 2010)

As we seem to be coming out of the tough last two years, it’s obvious that doing business will be different than before the recession. Marketing appears to be going through a major overhaul. The new rules are being formed in the present tense. Not only are our businesses changing rapidly, new customer habits are being formed daily with the increase of constant information access. Real-time marketing is about connecting with your customers and speeding up your marketing.

We know customers want immediate thoughtful information and response. They want quick recognition and satisfaction for their effort and action. Lemuria is trying to react immediately to help service your reading needs. With our Facebook and blog work, we are striving for more real time communication.

Most small businesses are not set up to respond to opportunities in real time, thus wasting customer reaction time. We are interested in using our web services to figure out how you are responding to Lemuria in the instant and reacting to your response.

Real-time marketing is a mindset we are trying to learn about. Scott’s very new book has given me many fresh ideas–more ways to enhance our Lemuria experience, and enlarging what we can do beyond the brick and mortar tools.

We are Jackson’s real bookstore; however, if you don’t live close by, we want to connect with you as if you had just walked into Lemuria to browse and talk books. We are striving to offer more convenience than we have ever been able to in the past.

The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself

by John Jantsch

Portfolio (2010)

As I continue to read business books to help me come up with recession battling ideas for Lemuria, Referral Engine gave me plenty to think about. With the broadening of our blog and Facebook work, we are discovering new ways for our customers to have more fun in a more convenient, engaging and frequent way.

We are all overwhelmed with the stimulation of modern life. For our readers, we want to help you filter and make sense of what’s happening in the book world. We are interested in providing authentic content that educates and enhances how you choose to spend your reading time. Our customer’s relationship is determined by how much value we can offer in terms of trust and engaging content. Any business can give coupons and discounts. Through customer service, we try to demonstrate our uniqueness. We want to meet your expectations, caring more about our results than you do. Few businesses, especially small unique stores provide consistently oustanding service, but it’s the effort that’s authentic and makes the difference.

For 35 years Lemuria has cared about Jackson’s reading community. We’re not a gimmick, a formula brand or an out-of-town chain store not interested in making personal connections. Customers recognize false publicity and gimmicks when they see them. With the addition of our expanded effort on the web, we emphasize a total customer experience.

We want to make it easy for you to participate with Lemuria, helping us to define ourselves even more closely with Jackson. If you are inspired with our efforts, let your friends and family know.

Referral Engine sends a strong message that building social currency building comes from a place of giving.

It has recently come to my attention that I am sitting in a boom. It doesn’t feel like it but if you look in the right places our economy is smashing into a new, sort of, front: the Internet. One of the few places in our economy that isn’t in the tank. For the past couple decades people have done business on the internet and it seemed like a lot of a few were making very large amounts of money; but now the market is opening up and large amounts of people are making substantial sums of money. Therefore, I’m ready to get on my horse and make sure I don’t miss the revolution!

I’m not a tech nerd or have any sort of exceptional internet prowess; but I’m pretty sure that its not a requirement, having friends that are is what you need. In my thinking a good product with a refined sense of marketing and design are what makes the money happen. So where else to look than Seth Godin. He has been highly recommended to me several times by Joe and John and after flippin’ through a few of his and a few of others. He seems to have the weighty information that actually make a difference in your thinking and teach you how to become an educated business beast, instead of trying to get a quick fix and tricks.

-John P.

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

John Wiley Press (2009)

Trust agents are defined as digital natives who use the web to be genuine and humanize their business. In other words, these are people who practice humanistic psychology on the web, people who maintain a web consciousness with a constant plateau of psychology expressing honest and consistent human sales representation.

It seems that traditional advertising–giving out business cards, glad handing, or in your face selling–is old news. As consumers, we’ve been sold too much. We now want helpful information and worthwhile entertainment for our time spent. The social web has given businesses the opportunity to rehumanize. Businesses can share information without holding back knowledge and not just in an one-on-one in-store fashion. Real marketing is sharing with service, and the web offers businesses the opportunity for expanded individualization. However, I believe as marketing broadens, we will have more opportunity for creative display through our traditional advertising as well.

The mold seems to be broken and expanded. By being yourself, your own business can be enhanced by combining your whole marketing to share your core strengths, allowing you to get your message out your way.

Lemuria is stumbling along, trying to get our message to you. As we explore all the tools we can, we want you to know who we are and why we are doing our work. We want our community to be our efforts’ judge. For 35 years we’ve tried to add to the essence of Jackson and care about its readership. Using the web, we are able to expand our reach.

We think if we can add value to our community of readers, we will be a more successful bookstore. Ultimately, we hope you will be more satisfied with your reading experience.

Lemuria wants to be a helpful trust agent for your reading experience.