Practically Radical audiobook

In ''Practically Radical'', William Taylor, co-founder of the magazine ''Fast Company'', presents a diverse set of case studies, from police departments to hospitals, from start-ups that can only exist because of crowdfunding to established industry giants such as IBM that use open innovation to define their future. From these case studies, he draws some general lessons about change management and leadership. These lessons are grouped together in 3 different categories:- Transforming Your Company- Shaking Up Your Industry- Challenging yourselfTRANSFORMING YOUR COMPANY: 5 Truths of Corporate Transformation.Taylor argues that there are 2 sources of inspiration for transforming your company: A company's history and other sectors. He especially stresses several times that to be innovative, you don't have to ignore your past. On the contrary, a company's past can be both an inspiration for new ideas and a guide or compass for a company's culture and values. To see the future with new eyes you don't have to close your eyes to the past.Besides from a company's past, inspiration can also come from other sectors. Some of the best sources of new ideas are ideas that are already tried and tested in other sectors.In order to find those 2 sources of inspiration, you have to know where to look: What you want to change depends on what you see, what you see depends on where you look. Asking questions can be an excellent way to check is you are looking in the right places. Taylor gives several examples: What do you see what other companies don't see? How would you see your company and sector if you were to see it for the first time? What aren't we doing what we should be doing? What should we stop doing immediately? Note that the specific questions are less important than the general thought behind them, which should be to challenge conventional wisdom.Five Truths of Corporate Transformation:1. Tunnel vision. Note that often experiences can be an obstacle to innovation.2. Benchmarking only to companies in your own sector can strengthen tunnel vision. Learn from innovators in other sectors!3. The past can be an inspiration for the future.4. Taylor proposes a framework very similar to B. Quinn's ''Defying Doom'' framework:- What's the Story?- Who's on board?- Getting things done5. Never stop learning. The best leaders are tireless learners.SHAKING UP YOUR INDUSTRY: 5 New Rules for Starting Something New.''Good enough in everything'' and ''the middle of the road'' are no longer working. Note that if you want to please everybody, you are likely to end up being mediocre. So you have to be the best in something. Those companies that see a different game-plan are the ones who will really win.Five New Rules for Starting Something New:1. True innovators make sure they are the best in something.2. Being the best in something doesn't mean that you can't do different things. E.g. You may use your core competencies to shift to other product categories or enter new markets.3. Success has 2 ingredients: Thinking better, more and differently + empathy. Make sure you really connect with customers and employees.4. We are not just rational agents. You have to win your customers both rationally and emotionally. 5. Creating something new doesn't necessarily mean creating a new company.CHALLENGING YOURSELF: 5 Habits of Highly Humbitious Leaders.Taylor argues that it is time for a new kind of leadership style. The 20th century know-it-all authoritarian decision maker should be getting out of fashion. Taylor proposes a new kind of leadership style, which he calls HUMBITION. Humbition = Humility + Ambition.To be honest, Humbition sounds a lot like Jim Collins' ''Level 5 Leader'' concept. Also, Humbition is very similar to some of the things Dov Seidman is saying in ''How''. Seidman argues that leaders should shift from ''direct and control'' to ''share and collaborate''.Note that it is likely that success is a combination of luck, being surrounded by great people and having access to brilliant ideas.Although he doesn't use the buzzwords themselves, in this context Taylor is talking about crowd-sourcing and open innovation. Part of his new leadership mentality is that leaders must not pretend to know it all, but that they instead obtain the best ideas from many people. Leaders must therefore create environments where people can express their ideas. Note that Gary Hamel in ''Leading the Revolution'' makes a similar point (Note that both Collins' and Hamel's books were published a decade before this one was). Some of the best case studies of the book strengthen this point: IBM's information jam, the ideas-stock-market at Rite-Solutions, the crowdfunding by shoe designer John Fluevog. The case I enjoyed most was also related to this: Threadless, a on-line company that sells T shirts that can be designed by anybody: Anybody can go to Threadless website and post his/her design. Next step: Anybody can go to the website and vote for the proposed designs. The most voted designs are evaluated by Threadless employees and then brought into production in limited edition.Five Habits of Highly Humbitious Leaders:1. Real business geniuses don't pretend to know it all. The best ideas can come from the most unexpected places.2. The community doesn't only generate ideas, but also evaluates them.3. Obviously not all ideas are good. How do you reject the bad ones without creating bad blood?4. Give and take. If you expect that your community shares its ideas with you, then you should also be willing to share your ideas with others.5. Humbition can be applied to both people and companies.This book is a good read: Great case studies from diverse backgrounds that lead to a collection of lessons that make sense. Some lessons also make sense because others have mentioned them before. Some obvious examples I mentioned earlier: Humbition looks a lot like Collins Level 5 Leader, Hamel argued 10 years earlier that leaders should create environments where people can express their ideas. Because of this, and because several case studies are about companies that are now household names, reading the book in 2016 means that it probably doesn't feel as original as it did when it was published in 2011.

The Appendix is the most valuable part of the book. A tremendous amount of research was done for the book and the "real world" stories are excellent. Tough to slog thru in the middle, but the questions posed in the Appendix make up for it. Recommended for any leader looking for the way to innovate into the next 10 years.

This books gives great tips and examples to boost your business. He key to victory, according to Sun Tzu is engaging your opponent on your own terms, and if you can't prevent conflict, choose the battlefield, redefining the terrain instead of trying to outcompete your rivals (like TBWA did when they stopped marketing themselves as a dog food company and instead positioned as a brand that cares about dogs); also, drawing ideas from other industries (like Ford did from slaughterhouse that had assembly lines) and being the best in one area rather than average at a lot of things, and engaging their customers with a human face while being humble and asking for ideas within your company.

While the book is a few years old, many of the lessons hold up. I find this type of work so inspiring.The author does a great job of referencing the businesses as he makes points later in the book. It helps to keep things fresh.Would highly recommend to anyone looking for creativity and new business sparks.

This books helps inspire you to step back, take off those corporate tunnel vision goggles, and see your business from an entirely different perspective. Just as Ford first envisioned the assembly line after viewing a Chicago slaughterhouse, sometimes you need to look outside your business and completely question all assumptions within your industry. I enjoyed the behind the scenes journeys of Ryanair, Zappos, and Umpqua Bank and how they transformed their industries by simply doing things different from the norm.

This book just barely eeks out a 4th star. To be honest the writing and structure is only ok. It gets a point across... kinda. It doesn't do a good job of having a cohesive and succinct point, so it lacks power on that front.That said, this book is a treasure chest of interesting ideas and case studies. These little tidbits have a lot of insight in them and make the book quite worthwhile.It seems like the book could have been truly special with either a strong thesis or an observer viewpoint.

I really enjoyed the case studies in this book about companies that stand for something more than just making a profit. It's interesting because this book is kind of making the case for what we call user experience design: looking at what matters to the people who use your service/product, and finding ways to improve that experience.

Great book, I got lots of creative ideas for my organization which happens to be a church. I love the broad set of examples used to demonstrate how to connect with people and set yourself apart. Loved the term humbition and agree that the best leaders have that mindset of humility and ambition.