The book drew my attention by its title. I completely realized that selling physical products that consumers can see, touch, even try has been always a challenging job. Selling something invisible was therefore absolutely a lot harder as all you your customers get when making their buying decision is imagination. Sometimes you could give them series of reliable data to support their decision. But even in a rare occasion when reliable data was provided, in almost all cases the customers made their decision with sea of doubt in their mind.

Imagine the case of customized application software. You come to see your prospect with a set of promises that if they agree to pay you a certain amount of money, you will build them a system, the system you build will fit their need, the system you build will be free of bugs, and if there happened to be some bugs you will fix them in a matter of hours. The customer will have to make a decision and give you a large sum of money solely based on your promise. You can give them references, you can give them company profile, you can give them professional impression by coming in a $10,000 suit, but at the end they make their without any physical evidence that you will deliver your promise at the promised time.

In Selling the Invisible Harry Beckwith explains every relevant aspect in helping customers make a sound decision confidently based on various somehow quantifiable quality aspects we present. In many ways it feels like a psychological game, but finally ends up in making them feels that they make an easy decision and remain having a good sleep whilst they are awaiting for your delivery.

Sounds simple? In fact it is absolutely though and everything Beckwith telling us to do is nurturing trust. Put your feet into your customers’ shoes and think how you can confidently make a decision to buy a service you offer. As you could not see, touch, and try the product, you will search for invisible evidence that you are capable and motivated enough to deliver.

This book however is not only suitable for those selling invisible products but also those who are selling physical products that your consumer can see, touch, and try. At the end, even if your consumers are buying a physical product, they actually rely in a promise that the product will work as promised. For example, you are selling a shirt. It is definitely a physical product. Your consumer can see, touch, and try the shirt. But how durable is it? What if the changes on the first wash? What if the color changes after a day? The consumer see, touch, and try, but they rely on trust that the shirt will serve them long enough in normal use.

Finding this book was just like most enlightenment moments, by coincidence. Finding nothing interesting in the bookstore I returned to a few titles I spotted once spotted but decided to buy later. Reminded me of the way I shop by the way … when I noticed something interesting but decided to return later on … then most possibly I would never took it even if I went back to the same shop a hundred times.

I glanced a few times into the cover and kept having like “How could someone make such a stupid looking cover …” After a few glances I paid a bit attention and noticed the author Chade-Meng Tan. “Who the hell is this fella …” I mumbled. I took it up to look a bit closer when I saw, in small font right at the bottom of the cover, a praise from Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google who served as the search giant’s CEO before its co-foundier decided to get back into helm. It was a bit of embarrassing to finally found out that Chade-Meng Tan is quite a prominent figure in Google.

When I decided to buy it, I was not quite sure what this book all about. In a way, having Google as a search engine, the title seem to still relate with what the company was doing for its users. But the sub title saying “The unexpected path to achieving success, happiness, and the world peace” as well as a small picture of a meditating man seemed to say that it was about enlightenment, meditation, and other similar stuffs. So finally I bought it with curiosity being the prominent part of my buying decision.

Fortunately it is an enjoyable book. in Search Inside Yourself, Meng talked about the kind of meditation program he initiated back in 2007 which became quite a popular activities among Google’s employees who found themselves becoming more productive and happy. It was quite amazing to know that in addition to the famous free massage, free flowing soda, and delicious free lunch Google also nurture spiritual aspect of its employees.

Obviously, born as an engineer, Meng approached meditation in a rather scientific way. Included in his team was a zen master who was also a Stanford University scientist and serves as a CEO and author of a number of bestselling books, Daniel Goleman. This actually the most compelling aspect of Search Inside Yourself, teaching us to understand, practice, and benefit from meditation in scientific way. Most of books or gurus talking about meditation made their approach from an ancient out of nowhere root which is really hard to swallow by modern brain.

I spotted the book featured in Amazon months before it came to the market and instead of making a pre-order at Amazon I decided to do it at a local bookstore. Something that attracted me about this particular book was a combination of Steve Jobs as a controversial yet hugely successful business leader in one side and a writing style similar to What Would Google Do? I read months or possibly a year ago or so. I stood in front of the bookstore the minute after I got an email notifying its arrival.

In a very short conclusion, it is an absolutely incredible book. It worths the price tag, worths to wait for, and worths to spend time reading. As the title itself represents, consists of answers to what would Steve Jobs do in various critical business situations. Very honestly, I am not sure of they are applicable. Nope … wrong! I believe they are applicable as they are strongly relevant to the current situation. Question is whether we are courageous enough to maneuver against all the longtime-proven theories.

Many other books told us about how Steve Jobs brought Apple from steps away to bankruptcy into the current wold’s most valuable corporations. Or how he brought his own life from a miserably rebellious teenager into a multimillion dollar man in his early 20s. Or how he made his way from being ousted from his own company to become the largest shareholders of the one of the most respectful American company, Disney. All of them concluded that Steve Jobs did it by breaking all the management theories and business rules.

Did he intentionally take all of his maneuver against all the theories? I believe he did not. I believe he did it by his own intuition. He might not even knew those theories, not because he was dumb obviously, but because he never even went to a business school himself and he spent all of his productive live building his wealth out of his own brain. He did them all by his own intuition … which happened to be very very sharp.

Would he got that successful if he educated himself in a business school? Maybe not … because his brain, his intuition would have been diluted by all theories old professors taught their students. As most of us went to university and swallowed those theories, it is easy for us to figure out what should we do in various business circumstance according to theories. In fact other than it may have been outdated, those theories were invented and proven for ages.

What makes What Would Steve Jobs Do? interesting is because it answer the question on how the both amazingly successful but bluntly counterintuitive business leader, Steve Jobs, would see, think, and act against certain business situations. He was proven to be correct. No matter how counterintuitive his steps were, they proven to be successful.

There were many emotional connection that made me grab this book as soon as I saw it. Seeing a book with Indonesian author in an international bookstore is just as rare as seeing a fish walking, and the author, Dahlan Iskan is today’s most talked about figure in Indonesia, maybe even more popular than President Yudhoyono himself. Secondly, the book is a biography of Karmaka Surjaudaja of Bank NISP.

Bank NISP was started and currently still has its headquarter in Bandung, a second hometown of mine. I even spent a while researching there at the headquarter of Bank NISP in my university days. As a Bank, NISP is a success story by itself. Looking back to my 8 years career at the Indonesian Central Bank I knew that Bank NISP was a success story on its own, proven that back in 1998 when Indonesia succumbed in devastating financial turmoil that slaughtered most commercial banks, NISP grew even stronger. People rushed to withdraw their money from other banks – including those owned by the state – then rushed to NISP to deposit it.

Usually emotion-based decision brings negative result, but I happened to enjoyed the book so much that I read it more than once. It can be subjective though. Maybe I liked it solely because my emotional connection, not by the quality of the book itself. In fact I rarely liked biography and never liked auto-biography.

Being a biography, the book centers around the life of Karmaka Surjaudaja, son of a Chinese migrant who started his life the hard way. Something interesting to note is that hardworking, loyalty, and compassion seemed to have been stitched into his DNA and therefore consistently led his life even from his days as a teenager. The such loyalty also laid the path of his life to then marry his wife, daughter of the owner of Bank NISP.

Another lesson from Karmaka is dignity. Regardless of how hard his life was, Karmaka has never asked for help from his father in law and therefore never involved in the business of Bank NISP until he was asked to brought it back from severe crisis caused by its own management whilst the owner himself was away. Taking over NISP thus was far away from a blessing. Loyalty and compassion again kicks in, leading to his decision to accept his father in law’s request, and then followed to his persistence then finally bring the glory of NISP back or even better to be exact.

Among serious challenges against Karmaka on his effort to save NISP was his health problem that led to him having liver transplant in the US. Actually this was the issue that took him to met Dahlan, the author, also a persistent business leader who once also faced similar problem leading to liver transplant in China.

Seems like it is a mega best seller of all time. I have been seeing enormous amount of praises, tons of incredible reviews, featured in many blogs and books, cited in many publications, and still enjoying prominent spot on the shelve of major bookstores. Glanced into it every time I enter a bookstore anywhere over the globe, sometimes grabbed and ran through the covers, but never really bought it until a few weeks back.

The phenomena of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is not only proven by number of copies sold – which some resources said has reached over 150 million – but also how it inspired many other books. There are a long string of other books using similar title. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Slackers, The 7 Habits of Highly Secure Internet Use, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids, The 7 Habits of Highly Annoying Emailers … those are just to name some. Some of them wrote by the original author Stephen Covey, some were written by his son who also grew into one of America’s most admired motivators Sean Covey, many of them were written by by crowd of – either inspired or people who are lack of their own ideas – complete strangers.

Unfortunately I personally did not find it that phenomenal when I read it. It is very very very good, but certainly not up to my expectation, and I kept on wondering why ever since. This book has been around for decades. Not just simply around but highly recognized. Most of writers especially in similar or related topics would certainly have read it and even used it as one of their references. Therefore I guess I have read of ideas that Covey presented in his book brought over into other books that I have read. I am not at all talking about plagiarism as I am talking about ideas, not the exact word by word.

Obviously I am pretty certain that if I read this book right after its initial publication then I would have been absolutely impressed. If you aren as addicted to books as I am and want something to get you more effective and therefore thinking one book … only one book on the topic, it is still the best to shot, and I believe it still will be for the next few decades at least.

I do not know why I took this book when I saw it. The title was so so, the cover design looked more like failed bestseller wannabe, and and a bubble saying “with a new preface and afterword” declared that it was an old book. I guess I had a cynical grin in my face when seeing that silly bubble. If you have read it, would you buy and read again just for those new preface and afterword? If you haven’t read it, just like me, then you would loose your interest thinking that it should be an old an outdated book, and new preface and afterword definitely would not make the whole brand new idea.

Well … I guess it is enough about the cover. In fact no matter how silly the cover was in my opinion, I grabbed it, brought it to the cashier, paid it, and read it. So what is wrong with the cover? I thought it was silly, right, but it successfully grabbed my attention and made me to brought my wallet out. Isn’t it what this book all about, just like what it has as its title “Start with Why”. Why did I bought something which I thought silly right on the beginning? Why would I think that the content may be good if the cover itself told me otherwise?

Let’s say that … I was driven by my intuition.
In fact, one more time my intuition proved itself to be absolutely reliable, because the book happened to be brilliant. In very simple, concise, sometime silly expression it brought up a lot of mind-provoking idea about why would people do something. Right, it is about leadership, how leaders make their followers do something. Something that the leaders want their followers to do. Something that the followers may not want to do it, at least not in their own will.

In Start with Why, the author Simon Sinek shows us that effective leaders do not expect their followers to do what they say. Effective leaders know that people only do things perfectly if hey do it at their own will. Therefore instead of telling people what to do, effective leader influence the people minds to make them want to do what the leaders want them to do.

Many books about leadership and persuasion tell us that instead of telling people what to do, we have to tell them what they will get if they do what we tell them to. That why people will do it not because we tell them to do it but because they want to get the result, result that we tell them that they will get if they do it. Sinek says that it is not good enough. Among other reasons is that they may not even think that the outcome is something they want anyway.

Sinek tells us to start with a simple question WHY? The question will encourage people to think and build up motivation within themselves and finally do what we want them to do at their own will, just like if it comes from their own mind without someone – the leader – advising them to.

Being fans of Sharms’s book for more than a decade, it is a delight to see this one at the front shelf of a book shop. It has been about two years since the last book I read The Leader Who Had No Title. So it was a no brainer choice to take the book. Among the shortest bookstore visits I had.

As his previous books, here Sharma’s presents life wisdoms in an enchanting story about a young executive who was so drawn into his career that he forgot anything else in his life, his wife that he loves, his little kid, his mother who has just lost her beloved husband, even the happiness of himself. Then Julian Mantle, the monk who sold his Ferrari who happened to be his family relative jumps in to help by sending him to a long journey across the globe where he can get away from his work and learn some essential life wisdoms

Enough about excerpt I guess. The essence of this book is that some of us get so taken into something we are not happy with, know that our beloved ones are severely affected, still we keep on believing that it is something that we have to do, we do not have any other choice than getting ourself in it eternally.

Only by taking ourself away of it that our mind will open to something else. We can learn thousand of thing but as long as we are still drowning in it, nothing would help us out. But when we get ourself away, it will be easier for us to open our mind, see and accept new things, real enlightenment. At the end we will realize that there are other choices, choices that makes us and everyone around us happier, making our life more fulfilling.

Even when we finally choose to return to the situation where we were before, we will live our life there in with a different perspective, in a different way that makes it more fulfilling.

Richard Branson is phenomenal. Not only because of his phenomenal idea to give wealthy people a space tour, but because the way he sail the wave to his success. Technology industry has seen many successful business leaders who achieved their success in somehow “against the norms” ways. Not only the iconic Steve Jobs, we have also seen quite a long array of similar stories, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckenberg, Chairman and Co-founder Microsoft Bill Gates, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Bill Hewlett of HP, Sergey Brin and Larry Pages of Google, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo, Intel’s Andy Grove, and many more.

But technology has for long been seen as an exclusive area where breakthroughs were invented. The inventors then brought their brainchild into commercial success in the same way they initially invent, think and work outside the box. Richard Branson is among very rare businessmen who did his non-technoligy business the same way those technology titans achieve their success. So when I saw the title and connect it with its author, I guessed it would be something similar to stories about how Steve Jobs brought Apple from one step from bankruptcy to the world’s most valuable company.

In a way, it does, but in a very different sense. Most of companies Richard Branson built started with kind of more noble objective instead of making a fortune. Just like Steve Jobs, Branson has always started his business initiatives from his will to change the world, however Branson aims to change a different side of the world. In a way, he is somewhere between Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Gates spread his wealth with the poor, to save people’s live. Branson wants to take the less fortunate people out of poverty by creating sustainable productive activities.

This book Screw Business As Usual shows how Branson exactly actualize his vision. Reading this book reminded me of Mohammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi who tried to help the poor people in his homeland by founding Grameen Bank, a formal financial institution aiming to finance micro-enterprises initiated by poor people in their effort to get out of poverty. They are indeed not only out-of-the-box but against business theories, but in fact both of them are successful in both ways, helping people improve their life whilst increasing their own wealth.

Another interesting thing about this book is that it seems to be published in hard and soft covers at the same time. In most of the case, books that considered to be valuable for hardcover will be published at the more expensive hardcover version. The soft cover version the published months later, obviously in significantly cheaper price. In this case, most of us are forced to pay more for the hardcover version as waiting for softcover version will take months.

It is the first 2012-published book I bought and among a few long awaited ones as I have been reading previews months before its launching schedule. First of all, previews exposed that it will talk about post-Jobs era of Apple, which by themselves have been the most talked-about entities.

Awaken from the brink of bankruptcy, Apple broke the record into the world’s most valuable company, sweeping aside array of technology giants such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, even Google. With his controversial attitude and leadership style, Jobs successfully brought the company he once founded back into its glory. As Jobs passed away, people get anxious about Apple’s future and Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky comes as the first well written publication into Apple’s post-Jobs era.

Secondly, contrary to most modern management theory advising transparency, secrecy was and is among the prominent managerial style of Apple. The strategy applied by Jobs is faithfully follow we by its successor who has been Jobs loyal aide, Tim Cook. Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky gives us a credible sneak peek into how Apple maintain its leadership, something that many of us can learn and implement to patronize Apple’s success.