In 1942, Frankl was taken to a German concentration camp and, like millions of other Europeans, lost his family - two parents, a wife and a brother - to death in the camps. Frankl survived the horrific ordeal and finished his book after he had been released from Auschwitz in 1945.

His book achieves two levels of intense insightfulness. The first is that it recounts his ordeal with brutal honesty and details the fallibility of humans and their response to challenging circumstances. Secondly, the book sets the stage for the second profundity of his theory of Logotherapy, the theory about the search for meaning, i.e. man's desire to find meaning and purpose in life. In the end, not all humans are as fallible as others and Frankl offered reasons to discover what leads one human being to give up and another to soar.

What greater challenge could there be to strive for meaning of life in circumstances in which the real specter of death revealed itself daily? That is the environment in which Frankl pondered the meaning of life, the question with the all too elusive answer. Frankl's answer is that meaning is found and discovered only by the power of choice. You can take everything away from a human being but can never take away the power of choice. He ultimately writes that the freedom is the ability "to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

It is during his incarceration in the Nazi prison camp that he discovers the lack of will displayed by so many of his fellow captives. The stress of the situation that he observed, as expected, was so overwhelming that people relinquished their choices and caved into the demands of the Nazi guards, even when it meant performing degrading acts and mistreating other captives.

The behaviors of the concentration camp captives, for Viktor Frankl, provided insights into the will of man. Rather than allow degrading circumstances and horror of his daily existence to break his will, Frankl realized that it would be his vision of the future that would keep him alive. It thus became his goal that he would later share his psychological theories with others, even fantasizing that he would one day lecture to a group in a large auditorium in Vienna (a vision which later came to fruition!). It was this vision kept him focused on surviving his ordeal. Surely the ability to physically survive in a Nazi concentration camp was a matter of chance, but the survival of the will was not.

Frankl's story is poignant on multiple levels, but ultimately is a powerful story of triumph and survival of the spirit. That it has sold over 15 million copies is hardly surprising, yet perhaps still disappointing as the story told in Man's Search for Meaning is one that every human being should know.

-r.d.

The hot topic these days at Building Leaders, Inc. is “Brain Training”. It is hardly a secret that a healthy body requires physical exertion in order to achieve positive results. Thus is should come as no surprise that the human brain also requires exertion, albeit of the mental kind, in order to achieve mental fitness. You may ask if it is even possible to train your brain, instead wondering if you were simply placed on this earth to feel rotten and angry about the world. It is a fair question!

For many decades, scientist concluded that the brain becomes less flexible as humans get older. There is truth in this, but not the whole truth. The reality is that the brain is a powerful and complex organ that is capable of very dramatic change even in adults. Sharon Begley’s book, Train Your Mind – Change Your Brain, traces the study of the brain and describes how research has proven the power of the mind to adapt to adverse circumstances.

More importantly, her book traces the research that has proven how you can literally think your way to a better brain. She traces the studies of scientist that have documented proof of brain changes that occurred merely from various forms of training that re-wired the brain. Modern treatments enable stroke victims rewire their brains and regain movement in affected parts of the body. Another enables victims of obsessive-compulsive disorder to overcome their compulsion for irrational behavior. Particularly significant in the work with OCD patients was the discovery that physical brain changes were caused solely by changes in thought and the training of the mind.

The list of successful studies in neuroplasticity continues to grow and offer treatment options in depression, injury, stroke, dyslexia and more. However…that only speaks to part of the miracle of the brain. Most of us fortunately don’t suffer from ailments requiring serious intervention. Most of us are just stuck living in a work of negativity and fear. For most of us, the significance of neuroplasticity lies not in treatment for crises, but as a cure for the everyday challenges of life.

Begley provides powerful lessons in brain theory that you can employ to make you a happier person. The beautifully written prose is the thing that made this book such a joy for me. She tackles a lofty subject and brings it to you in plain readable English. More importantly, she delivers a message that is important for the ages, particularly the one in which we live today.

The book takes you on a learning journey through the history of brain study and leads you to the endearing happiness, humility and wisdom of the Dalai Lama. He had wondered what physiological effects occurred to Buddhist monks during their meditative states and, as you might expect, a team of scientists was extremely eager to take part in research that would provide the answer. The findings revealed amazingly powerful physiological brain responses that occurred as a result of meditation. In other words, the monks are simply training their mind with their thoughts and physical changes are actually taking place.

The astounding realization made by the research team, working with monks reticent to participate in a study that would put electrodes on their heads, was that dramatic gamma ray production was occurring in the frontal cortex of the brain. (Gamma ray production is apparently a good thing!). The question that had to be studied was whether this display in the frontal cortex of the brain was perhaps a genetic predisposition of these monks. In order to test this, a control group would be needed.

One of the research scientists, he being highly skilled in meditation, led a group of University of Wisconsin volunteers in the practice of compassion meditation. As you might expect, the results were conclusive. The volunteers, after only two weeks of training in meditation, showed significantly elevated gamma ray production in the frontal cortex as a result of the meditative practice. There is more!

As the study was conducted, a serendipitous discovery occurred when the researchers noted that the gamma ray production in the frontal cortex of the monks continued even when they were not engaged in their herculean meditative sessions. In other words, their practice had literally re-wired their brains for happiness. If you have ever looked at a Buddhist monk, you may have noticed that they seem to display a perpetual smile.

In the end, any significant change in life takes discipline and persistence, whether it is a physical achievement or a mental one. If you want to be in solid physical shape you need to structure a regimen of diet and exercise. If you want to be in solid mental shape, you need to structure a regimen of mental exercise and water. (The brain loves water!)

This is an important book for a serious student of life and one I am thrilled to have read. Amazingly this book came to me as a recommendation from Amazon books. By tracking my past online purchases, the computer amazingly told me that I might like this book! The computer was right and I endorse this book as one of the best reads of my entire life.

Carnegie broke down his rules for influencing people into four categories that include 1) Fundamental Techniques in Handling People 2) Six Ways to Make People Like You 3) Win People to Your Way of Thinking and 4) Be a Leader. The truly amazing thing about Carnegie’s words is the fact that they are enlightened ideas of the 21st century.

For example, the common expectation for handling “objections” in modern sales training is to have clever ideas and manipulative statements to get the sales prospect over to your way of thinking. Carnegie instead offers one simple piece of advice when he says “The best way to win an argument is to avoid one.” This advice, like many other wise concepts offered by Mr. Carnegie, we should all heed.

The book really is not about sales leadership, but is rather a simple lesson in ways to deal better with people around you. That being noted, I do think this is a must read for any salesperson serious about growing in their career. I think it is also an important book for all managers and business leaders as well for the book tells you how to capture the hearts of people around you. If you capture their hearts, your team will enthusiastically follow you into battle.

It is the simplicity of the principles that makes this an important an inspirational book. A nuclear physicist begins her education on the foundation of learning simple math. A high performance sales Leader begins her education by embracing the foundation of Carnegie’s timeless ideas about managing relationships with people.

-r.d.

Harvey Mackay’s book, Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive, is a book that I put in the category of “classic” for no other reason that the “Mackay 66”. Anyone that has read this book knows that Harvey Mackay talks about keeping meticulous records on your clients and prospects as a means to know them better than your competition.

The Mackay 66 is enough reason alone to buy this book, although the book goes much deeper. Swim with the Sharks offers a multitude of business ideas that can help you achieve more in your life. Mackay opens with a story about the Minnesota Twins and the efforts of a group to buy the ball club from the curmudgeon Calvin Griffith. His story includes the legendary Bill Veeck and his desire to exact retribution from Griffith over a long standing vendetta that Veeck had harbored towards the irritable Griffith.

In the end, the group was able to finagle their way to a successful deal to purchase the Minnesota Twins at a price far below anticipated market value. The beauty of this introductory story to the book is the combination of people, simplicity, scale (i.e. the size of the deal), persistence, vision and the impact that all these facets of business had on this single transaction.

The book is a series of vignettes that involve, above all else, people and means by which they have achieved success. It is a book about simple ideas that create powerful success. Included in the book are stories of success from Pia Zadora, Lou Holtz, Fidel Castro, Leslie Wexner, the Columbus, OH bachelor that made millions after founding The Limited, Wheelock Whitney, Pat Fallon and dozens of other people you’ve never hear of.

There is even a brief mention of Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, another book recommended on this website. Mackay offers insights into sales, leadership, management, negotiations and more. This is not a “how-to” book but would better classified as a series of useful articles in the form of chapters that stand alone to be read individually and implemented immediately. If you want high impact ideas that can be change your career, then pick up your copy of this must-read classic.

-r.d.

The Getty Museum purchased a 2500 year old statue only after an exhaustive eighteen month process during which the statue and its pedigree were researched. Three art historians each instinctively, literally within seconds, asserted that the statue was a fraud. Upon further research, their instincts were validated. Documents had been forged and an elaborate scheme to falsely date the age of the stone had defrauded the museum of $10 million.

Malcolm Gladwell's follow up to The Tipping Point is a wonderful treatise on the development of instincts. He illustrates that things cannot be taught as much as they can be learned and recounts several stories that demonstrate "the power of thinking without thinking". "Blink" is a quick and simple read and teaches us to rethink how we think and instinctively process information.

Gladwell's thesis is as important for demonstrating the power of expertise as it is for the error of feigning it. All too often, people rush to judgments based on prejudices and poorly preconceived notions. He details experiments of psychology students which validate findings of prejudicial decision making. It explains why some presidents are elected based upon charm instead of substance, why African Americans are (unfairly) associated with negativity, and why an inordinate number of CEOs are significantly taller on average then the general population.

Particularly appealing is the combination of methodology between Gladwell's qualitative research and the link to qualitative studies. But if you want to have some real fun (or nauseate yourself), read this book if only to learn how the Pentagon cheated on war games in order to falsely validate a position regarding technology and military intelligence.

You will laugh and cry over this story of our federal government, but at least you will have new insights into the way people think, and more importantly, how you can develop your ability to process information in the blink of an eye.

Jim Collins’ book has been used by countless organizations that are driven to emulate characteristics that have catapulted companies to extraordinary levels of performance. This book deals in fact and, by isolating the performances of the top companies over the course of recent decades, details with amazing simplicity the keys that contributed to their success. The incredible facts are that success is simple and, not surprisingly, a result of hard work, risk, focus and determination.

Jim Collins began the study for this book based on a challenge. A CEO that had read Collins first book, Built to Last, told Collins that he failed because he had not told business leaders how to take a broken company and fix them or, more importantly, take a “good” company and make it great. Thus Collins and his team of young scholars investigated the stock performance and characteristics of hundreds of publicly traded companies. They were seeking companies that not only outperformed the general stock market, but also (dramatically) outperformed other companies in their sector over a 25 year period. So, yes, Microsoft stock skyrocketed for two and half decades…but so did dozens of other technology companies.

The result was a list of eleven companies that met the criteria of companies that went from good to great. After selecting these companies, the team then investigated the characteristics and practices of these companies to determine the common themes and business practices that enabled such outstanding performance. In the beginning, end and middle, it was and is about people. They discovered that great business leaders are a lot less like the charismatic, high-profile CEOs such as Jack Welch and Lee Iacocca but rather more like Abraham Lincoln, Darwin Smith, and Colman Mockler. (If you don’t know who the latter two men are, maybe you’ll enjoy reading the book and learning their story).

Like any book, it is not perfect and like so many business books of the past few decades, the power of this work has been diminished, albeit slightly, in the ten years since it was first published. Of the companies profiled in the book, several have failed to achieve the continued growth levels that made them subjects of the book – e.g Circuit City, Walgreens, Fannie Mae. Additionally, I am not convinced that the book fully develops the best methods for “getting the right people on the bus”. Nevertheless, the book still rates high on my list because of the outstanding comments it provides on leadership and the single-minded focus that all the organizations took to achieve excellence.

This is not merely a book for high level executives, but one that I strongly recommend this book for anyone at any level of business. The chapter that highlights the amazing power of Admiral Jim Stockdale is alone worth investing in this book. I particularly enjoyed reading Collins’ profile on the humility of “Level 5” leaders and recommend that any manager take heed of this section of the book. The book concludes by illustrating how the principles of the book work not only for large, publicly traded companies, but can work for smaller companies as well and even for individuals…like you!

-r.d.

First published in 1995, The Discipline of Market Leaders, provides a simplistic approach to understanding the basic business models by which high performance organizations operate. Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema identify three basic business disciplines – Operational Excellence, Customer Intimacy & Product Innovation – and the successful methods by which each has helped leading companies thrive.

The Operational Excellence model is prevalent throughout the world today and is virtually a growing and evolving being. This model is the “franchise” model employed by companies such as McDonalds, Southwest Airlines and Walmart. The power of this model is its simplicity and consistency. The requirement of your organization is that you literally force employees to operate within constraints of the model. My personal feeling is that people assume that the concept of consistency and franchising somehow takes the personal touch out of the equation. Southwest demonstrates that an organization can have lots of fun while still adhering to a model of consistency that yields amazingly steady financial results.

The Customer Intimacy model is one that most organizations apply incorrectly. In other words, they strive too often to be all things to all people and fail to realize that there must be a price paid for “special service”. The authors use IBM as the quintessential example of an organization that exemplifies Customer Intimacy. In spite of the colossal strategic mistakes made by IBM in the late 70s and early 80s (e.g. not manufacturing their own microchips or subcontracting their operating systems for PCs to a Harvard Dropout named Bill), they have managed to use the very same computer machinery available to all computer consulting firms and thrive by adapting homogeneous technology for specialized client needs.

The Product Innovation Model is one employed abundantly in the technology sector of business. Companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Adobe Acrobat and others are their own competition. Thus the book describes how companies like these are busy making their own products obsolete! When the Pentium II was being developed, a team was being given the trade secrets of that group and developing the Pentium III. As Microsoft planned the release of Windows 3.1, a team was already at work creating the Windows 2000 edition.

My opinion of the book is that it is a must read…with a caveat. Organizations must be careful when using this book to educate their employees by emphasizing the objective nature of terminology used by the authors. “Operational Excellence” is not a subjective term that should be applied to any organization that feels they do a very good job of running their business. They should rather emphasize that a Franchise approach is the mission of the business (when employing this model). Thus an organization that strives to emulate this model must be prepared to train its customers and align all employees with this mission.

“Customer Intimacy” is another term that I wish the authors had changed. I believe a better term for this model would be the Adaptive model. To “adapt” to customer needs means that a company creates special programs and procedures for the benefit of adapting to their customers unique needs. Thus, a policy or procedure that works for one client might not be used for another. The reader must recognize that this model often requires that an organization to change for each unique individual and therefore should determine carefully what costs are involved in order to achieve maximum profitability.

This book is truly outstanding and makes the reader think. The challenge for business leaders that read The Discipline of Market Leaders is that they must not assume that the simple concepts are simple to implement. But those that “get it” will find that the vertical communication of vision throughout the organization evolves and gels into a powerful theme that can help companies become leaders in their market segments.

-r.d.