Good to Great

Finally had a chance to catch up on some reading over the weekend. It's sad, but the airplane is one of the few places I find myself that still lends itself to reading for long periods of time without distraction. I wonder if that'll change as WiFi proliferates into more flights (sidenote: Is "into" the correct preposition for "proliferates"?) and as mobile phones become usable and I find myself sitting between two chatty cathy soccer moms unable to focus -- and we wonder why kids these days prefer gameboys and require Ritalin to function... but alas.. I digress.

My most recent read was Good to Great, recommended by my father. There are 380 customer reviews on Amazon, so I'm not about to walk you through the ins and outs here and now, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the read and highly recommend it.

Recently, I've read quite a few books that tell great stories and solidify much of what we already know, but don't provide much new substance. Good to Great did not fall into that category. In fact, I'd find it hard to believe that anyone could walk away from this book not feeling more knowledgeable than before reading it.

Based on a study of companies that consistently outperformed the market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, Jim Collins and his research team explore the distinguishing characteristics that cause 'good' companies to become 'great'. These 'great' companies are then contrasted point for point with a selection of comparison companies that failed to achieve the same level of greatness.

The findings are quite interesting -- so if you've got a mind for business books, do check it out. And if you've already read it and liked or disliked it, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts too.

Woohoo. Down to only 30 more on the "must read" list of books recommended by friends and family (but still growing faster than I can keep up).

I heard a new catchy buzzword phrase over the weekend from a friend who is working down at Sun in the bay area -- to "double click" on something, as in, to drill into something deeper. Example: "That's an interesting thought... let's double click on that (and further explore the implications)..." Muaha. I'm going to infect work with my new cheesy saying tomorrow.

Hmm... I just added it to Urban Dictionary, and was told:

Your submission is under review by editors. This can take up to 21 days. Check back here to see the results of the review.

That's lame. Imagine if it took 21 days and editor review to update Wikipedia. Oh well.