Getting Big Things Done in Government Focus of Dec 6 Book Review

The December 6 guest on KAZI Book Review is William Eggers, co-author of If We Can Put a Man on the Moon…Getting Big Things Done in Government.  Listen to the interview on KAZI 88.7 FM, 12:30 p.m. – 1 p.m. central time in Austin or live online at http://www.live365.com/stations/kazifm?site=pro&play.  Eggers’ book addresses the frustration of the American people with our government’s series of high-profile failures (Iraq, Katrina, the financial meltdown) that seems to just keep getting longer.

It also covers the nation’s proud history of great achievements: victory in World War II, our national highway system, welfare reform, the moon landing.  Eggers believes we need more successes like these to reclaim government’s legacy of competence. In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Eggers and his co-author John O’Leary explain how to do it. The key? Understand-and avoid-the common pitfalls that trip up public-sector leaders during the journey from idea to results.

The authors identify pitfalls including:

• The Partial Map Trap: Fumbling handoffs throughout project execution
• The Tolstoy Syndrome: Seeing only the possibilities you want to see
• Design-Free Design: Designing policies for passage through the legislature, not for implementation
• The Overconfidence Trap: Creating unrealistic budgets and timelines
• The Complacency Trap: Failing to recognize that a program needs change

Eggers is one of the country’s leading authorities on government reform. A global director for Deloitte Research and director of the Deloitte Public Leadership Institute, he is responsible for research and thought leadership for Deloitte’s public sector industry practice.

He is a former manager of the Texas Performance Review and director of e-Texas. He has advised governments around the world and his commentary has appeared in dozens of major media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune.

The Story of American Business Editor Guest on KAZI Book Review

The November 29 guest on KAZI Book Review is Nancy Koehn, editor of The Story of American Business: From the Pages of the New York Times.  Listen live to the interview 12:30 p.m. – 1 p.m. central time at  http://www.live365.com/stations/kazifm?site=pro&play. The Story of American Business which focuses on The New York Times’ most fascinating and relevant articles about business, opens a compelling window onto how one of the most powerful economies in human history came to be, including the men and women who have helped create it. Introduced and narrated by Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, The Story of American Business walks you through content ranging from feature stories to in-depth news analysis to obituaries, spanning from the 1850s to today.

Nancy Koehn

Koehn is a historian at the Harvard Business School where she holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration. Koehn’s research focuses on entrepreneurial leadership and how leaders, past and present, craft lives of purpose, worth, and impact.  At the Harvard Business School, she teaches the MBA elective Entrepreneurial Leadership in Turbulent Times.  She is currently working on a book about the most important leadership lessons from Abraham Lincoln’s journey and another on social entrepreneurs. Nancy is also the author of Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust from Wedgwood to Dell (2001) and The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire .

Greening Your Business to Grow Profits Focus of November 23 Economic Perspectives

Jennifer Kaplan

Jennifer Kaplan, author of Greening Your Small Business: How to Improve Your Bottom Line, Grow Your Brand, Satisfy Your Customers – and Save the Planet is the November  23 guest on Economic Perspectives, 5:30 p.m. – 6 p.m. on KAZI 88.7 FM.  Listen live to the interview online at http://www.live365.com/stations/kazifm?site=pro&play.

Greening Your Small Business is a resource for those who want their small businesses to be cutting- edge, competitive, profitable, and eco-conscious.  Filled with stories from small business owners of all stripes, Greening Your Small Business addresses every aspect of going green, from basics such as recycling, reducing waste, energy efficiency, and reducing the IT footprint, to more in-depth concerns such as green marketing and communications, green business travel, and green employee benefits.
For companies too small to hire consultants to draft and implement green policies and practices, this guide is designed for easy use, featuring:

• Simple ways to make the workplace greener
• Two plans of action for going green (divided into two levels)
• Definitions for green terminology and jargon

Kaplan is a partner in Greenhance a marketing consultancy that provides ecowise advice to help small businesses grow greener. She has more than 20 years of marketing experience with companies such as Discovery Channel, Lifetime Television, Conde Nast Publications and Simon & Schuster Publishing. An Adjunct Faculty in Marketing at Marymount University, she has conducted in-depth research into consumer attitudes about how small businesses can most effectively go green.

Chronicle of Efforts to Save U.S. Financial System Focus of KAZI Book Review

Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big To Fail: The inside story of how Wall Street and Washington fought to save the financial system and themselves, is the November  22 guest on KAZI Book Review, 12:30 p.m. – 1 p.m. on KAZI 88.7 FM.  (If you missed this interview and would like to know when it will be available to download to a CD or your mp3 player or IPOD email hopeton@econpers.com) Sorkin delivers a behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.

Andrew Ross Sorkin (photo by Brent Murray)

Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing never disclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,” it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.

Sorkin is the award-winning chief mergers and acquisitions reporter for The New York Times, a columnist, and assistant editor of business and finance news. He is also the editor and founder of DealBook, an online daily financial report. He has won a Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, and a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.

November 15 KAZI Book Review Features Author of TOO BIG TO SAVE?: How to Fix the U.S. Financial System

Robert Pozen, author of  TOO BIG TO SAVE?: How to Fix the U.S. Financial System is the November 15 guest on KAZI Book Review on KAZI 88.7 FM, 12:30 p.m. – 1p.m. You can listen to the interview live on the web at http://www.live365.com/profiles/kazifm.

Widely recognized for his leadership in both finance and economic policy, Pozen takes federal policymakers to task for spending huge sums of money with too few benefits for America’s taxpayers. Instead, he urges our government to rein in its bailouts, stop buying toxic assets, and provide more incentives for the private sector to regulate itself.  Pozen argues that:   

• The key to our economy’s recovery is the revival of loan securitization
• Broad-based legislative restrictions on executive compensation tend to backfire
• Fair value accounting did not cause the financial crisis and should mostly be retained
•  International cooperation won’t do much to prevent future financial crises
• Regulatory gaps should be closed without creating omnibus agencies

Within a sweeping analysis, TOO BIG TO SAVE? chronicles the collapse of our financial system, one domino at a time from mortgage-backed securities to stock markets, from money market funds to recapitalized banks, and from the SEC’s mistakes to international protectionism. Pozen then suggests how the securitization process should be reformed, assesses the impact of the financial crisis on the stock and bond markets, and evaluates the federal bailout of financial institutions by buying their stock and toxic assets.

Robert Pozen

 Pozen is Chairman of MFS Investment Management, which manages over $150 billion in assets for more than five million investors worldwide.  He was formerly vice chairman of Fidelity Investments and president of Fidelity

Management & Research Company, the investment advisor to the Fidelity mutual funds.  He served on President Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security and as Secretary of Economic Affairs for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.  He is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and has contributed numerous articles to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Financial Times.

Strategies for Career Success Focus of October 26 Economic Perspectives

In this time of economic and job insecurity, people need to make their mark and prove that they are essential and indispensable to their company. According to Carla Harris, a twenty year veteran of Wall Street, knowledge and diligence simply aren’t enough to successfully climb the corporate ladder in today’s competitive work environment.  The October 26 edition of Economic Perspectives on KAZI 88.7 FM features an interview with Harris, author of EXPECT TO WIN: Proven Strategies for Success from a Wall Street Vet.   In her book Carla looks closely at her own ascent to the top and offers strategies that will ensure career advancement and success in any industry.

During her twenty-year career on Wall Street, Harris she’s executed the IPO’s for UPS, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and Redback, as well as the $3.2 billion common stock transaction for Immunex, one of the largest biotechnology offerings in United States History. While climbing the competitive corporate ladder, Harris sought guidance from her mentors and superiors, but found some of their career advice too general. As her own career advanced, Harris built her “key survival tools” or “pearls,” and vowed when she reached upper management and people looked to her for advice, she would provide them with what they needed to do to fulfill their true career potential.

In EXPECT TO WIN is Harris offers advice in an easy-to-read format using “Carla’s Pearls.” Her proven strategies of success include:

• You Are the Captain of Your Career: The 90 Day Rule
• Leveraging Your Voice: Articulate Your Views and Expectations
• Power in the Network: Competitive Advantage
• Expect to Win: Show Up With Your Best Self Every Day

Carla Harris

Carla Harris is currently a managing director for Morgan Stanley and has spent over seventeen years of her career in capital markets. She has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including Black Enterprise’s “75 Most Powerful Women in Business” (2006), Black Enterprise’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” (2006), Fortune’s “The Most Influential List” (2005), Ebony Magazine’s “15 Corporate Women at the Top” (2004), Essence Magazine’s list of “The 50 Women Who Are Shaping the World” (2003), and Fortune’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America” (2002).

Developing a Better Business Model Focus of October 5 Economic Perspectives

If the founders of Google, PayPal, or Starbucks had stuck to their original business plans, we’d likely never have heard of them. Instead, they made radical changes to their initial models, became household names, and delivered huge returns for investors. How did they get from their Plan A to a business model that worked?  Why did they succeed when most new ventures crash and burn?  How can entrepreneurs avoid the risk of today’s high-risk economy?

John Mullins, co-author of GETTING TO PLAN B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model, will be the October 5 guest on Economic Perspectives on KAZI 88.7 FM.  In the book, Mullins and co-author Randy Komisar argue that the startup process, largely driven by poorly conceived business plans based on untested assumptions, is seriously flawed. But there is a better way to launch new ideas—without wasting years of your time and loads of investors’ money.

In GETTING TO PLAN B, Mullins and Komisar present a field-tested process for rigorously stress-testing your initial business idea, and using the evidence you uncover to make swift corrections that tip the business equation in your favor. Focusing on five elements that determine any business model’s economic viability— its revenue, gross margin, operating, working capital, and investment models—the authors’ approach significantly reduces your risk of failure by:

• Comparing your idea with existing models to steal what works and avoid what doesn’t
• Identifying “leaps of faith”: the as-yet-untested questions you bank your business on
• Conducting fast, inexpensive, data-driven experiments to test your assumptions
• Using this data to make smart strategic changes and course correct before it’s too late

Through examples from their firsthand experience and research in large businesses around the world like Skype, Ryanair, and Costco, and smaller startups like Silverglide Surgical Technology and the African Leadership Academy, Mullins and Komisar reveal how companies have used such systematic experimentation to transform their current business into a viable Plan B.

John Mullins is the author of the definitive book on assessing new venture opportunities, The New Business Road Test and an Associate Professor of Management Practice at London Business School.

“Missing in Action: Black Women in the Boardroom” Focus of September 21 Economic Perspectives

Dr. Wendy Johnson, author of Missing in Action: Black Women in the Boardroom, will be the September 21 guest on Economic Perspectives, 5:30 p.m. – 6 p.m. on KAZI 88.7 FM.  Dr. Cornel West, a Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, describes Missing in Action as “a powerful intervention into our public discourse about the American business world. It is a courageous-and badly needed-book that lays bare the ways in which the grand talent and genius of Black women remain relatively untapped. Don’t miss this book!”

Dr. Johnson, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin has over 20 years of business experience, a BS in Accounting/Economics from Lakeland College, an MBA from LeTourneau University and a PhD in Applied Management and Decision Sciences from Walden University.

She is the President of Emerge Consulting Group, LLC, a management consulting firm and the parent company of Dr. Wendy and Emerge Publishing.  Dr. Johnson is also president of the Houston chapter of the National Black MBA Association.

Marketing of Consumer Debt to America Focus of September 7 Economic Perspectives

Charles Geisst, author of COLLATERAL DAMAGED: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America, will be the September 7 guest on Economic Perspectives.  Geisst believes today’s credit crisis  is the result of Wall Street’s orchestrated maneuvers to fuel what he calls “cannibal consumption.” In COLLATERAL DAMAGED Geisst explains how a nation of savers became a nation of consumers and how Wall Street turned Americans addiction to spending into the toxic securities that have crippled the global economy. A thorough and penetrating analysis of how the marketing of consumer debt has radically transformed global economics, COLLATERAL DAMAGED connects the dots from consumer spending, to credit cards, to home equity loans, and beyond.

Geisst is a professor of finance at Manhattan College and author of eighteen books on finance and economics.  His books include Wall Street: A History, Wheels of Fortune: The History of Speculation from Scandal to Respectability, and Undue Influence: How the Wall Street Elite Put the Financial System at Risk.  His books have been on the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and New York Times best-seller lists.

How the Best Leaders Inspire Their Teams Focus of August 17 Economic Perspectives

John Zenger, coauthor of The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate, will be the guest on the August 17 edition of Economic Perspectives on KAZI 88.7 FM. In their bestselling work The Extraordinary Leader, performance thought leaders John Zenger and Joseph Folkman revealed the 16 key competencies that separate the top 10 percent of leaders from the rest. Since that book’s publication, they and coauthor Scott Edinger discovered, through an extensive study conducted over four years, that leaders who possessed the ability to inspire and motivate outperformed all others.

The authors found that the impact of inspiring and motivating others is consistent across different kinds of organizations and within different cultures. The Inspiring Leader reveals the authors’ newest proprietary research on how top leaders inspire teams to greatness. It discusses the behaviors exhibited by the most successful leaders and includes advice on how to implement them.

John H. Zenger, D.B.A., is the  CEO of Zenger Folkman, a firm that brings empirical research, innovative development methods, and software tools to leadership development. He is a member of the HRD Hall of Fame and has authored or coauthored eight books and 50 articles on leadership, productivity, and teams.