Top Shelf Reading Picks:

I picked up Eric Weiner’s book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World, because I needed a break from business books. I figured that, as an entrepreneur, business is my life most of the time, so a little insight into happiness might be a good thing.

Weiner, a longtime NPR correspondent, claims not to be a naturally happy guy. In fact, he describes himself as downright grumpy, which does make for some of the funnier parts in the book as he travels the world to visit a collection of the happiest and least happy countries. His dour approach was greatly appreciated, as who wants a happiness tour guide who is already “Perky Polly?” Blech.

I definitely found the book thought-provoking and, in some cases, reassuring. But I also discovered that many things about being an entrepreneur are the antithesis of bliss. Here are some of the quick insights I pulled out of the book (which I enjoyed listening to as an audio book).

• Switzerland. Happiness for the Swiss is being content with your lot in life and current situation. They also enjoy the minor things (like trains running on time) and, of course, the major things like chocolate! However, he also noted that they do not throw their money around because they fear that it could provoke envy in others. As stated frequently throughout the book, envy appears to be the greatest enemy of happiness.
• Bhutan. Make happiness a national priority because happiness is relational and not personal. In addition, Weiner was also told in Bhutan that to be happy, you need to set aside a few minutes a day to think about death. I suppose this is so that one can appreciate the little things in everyday life.
• Thailand. In Phuket, one does not think about death. In fact, they’ve perfected a society where “not thinking at all” is bliss.
• Iceland. The cold inspires people to cooperate, which leads to limited envy, no stigma for failure, an increase in optimism and, ultimately, bliss.
• India. Despite extreme poverty, they are more able to accept contrasts, i.e., that no one or nothing is perfect. This is one of the secrets to their bliss.

On the other hand:

• Moldova. The extreme poverty bred envy and mistrust, which is the antithesis of bliss.
• Quatar. Too much money and lack of national culture can be a problem. It can cause isolation and envy (and isn’t isolation a response to mistrust of others?). I found it telling that Weiner talked about how the more money we have, the bigger lots of land we buy, the bigger walls we put up, all in a quest to prevent our having to interact with other people (i.e., a typical wealthy American suburb). Yet this is in direct contrast to the recipe for happiness found in almost all of the countries above.

So, back to my question about whether being an entrepreneur is the happiest career choice. I’m not so sure it really is, for the following reasons:

• If we were content with our situation or the way the world worked, we wouldn’t be entrepreneurs.
• As for focusing on happiness as a metric or not thinking, neither concept is part of the entrepreneurial equation.
• Nothing is more isolating than being an entrepreneur.
• If you are a perfectionist or fear failure, it’s probably not the best career choice for you, as it will definitely make you unhappy.

Hmmmm. Looks like I may be in the wrong business for happiness. And for the most part, the wrong country. One of the points Weiner makes is that countries other than the U.S. place higher values on the basics that make people happy–relationships and the small things in everyday life. On the other hand, if you have all those happiness basics in the rest of your life, perhaps entrepreneurship can add factors to further increase your bliss. For me, it’s the creativity, ability to help others and total freedom of schedule that counteract the isolation. So, yes, I am a happy entrepreneur, but it takes some work. However, I might have to plan a visit to Reykjavik real soon.

Top Shelf Bottom Line. The Geography of Bliss provides some interesting insights into happiness, and I found Weiner  amusing and the travelogue interesting, much as I did Eat, Pray, Love. However, if you’re at a point in your life where things don’t seem to be making you happy, it’s almost like a self-help book (without the touchy-feely parts) to get you thinking about whether any of the “happiness” factors he found in other countries could be something you could  incorporate into your life. Otherwise, it’s time to book a one-way ticket to Bhutan.

I love my “cultural trend” books, and my latest addition to my “must read” list is Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky. In the book, Shirky examines how the internet is changing society and business by allowing people to organize themselves and, as a result, siphon power away from institutions.

So what does this “power to the people” mean for business? It could mean the end to middle management. It also changes the status of professions such as publishing, journalism and photography. Is a blogger a journalist? Or not? Is someone who submits one photo to a stock photography site that is then purchased by a graphic designer a professional or not? Do we need publishers? Or are they simply middle managers soon to be extinct? These are only a few of the points that make you think that business as usual might soon end up as unusual business. Here are a few more:

• Shirky opens with a powerful anecdote about how one guy used the power of the internet to track down and force an individual to return a lost cell phone to its original owner. Along the way, he rallied the support of the national media, forced a change of policy at the NYPD and personalized for thousands the plight of a single lost cell phone.
• Companies such as Flickr do not coordinate users; they help them coordinate themselves. Not only does this undercut the traditional structure of businesses (less management, low overhead), but we have a whole generation of users (aka future employees) who are growing up coordinating themselves in a DIY fashion. They’ve never experienced “command and control.”
• Why is the blogosphere and Twitter-world difficult for some people to comprehend? Because we’re not used to seeing written material in the public domain that is not directly meant for us. With traditional newspapers, books, etc., we understand that they’re trying to reach us as an audience, whether we want them to or not. But what about a blog just to keep a small group of friends updated on your love life? Shirky points out that most “user-generated” content is not meant for general consumption any more than a phone call between you and your family. In essence the internet pushes the onus to filter what you want to read back to you, the individual. What’s the effect on business? We’re seeing it in print publishing–filters like newspapers and publishing houses are struggling. And we also see it on broadcast television. The networks no longer need to worry just about cable, but also about YouTube.
• Shirky has an interesting discussion/analysis of fame. Fame happens when it becomes impossible for an individual to respond personally to all the incoming communications. For example, Oprah can communicate to us through every possible medium she chooses, yet we can’t get to Oprah. So rather than wait around for Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes, I suppose I can consider myself famous when I get sooooo many comments on here that it would be impossible for me to respond. Hmmmm. Guess I have a long way to go.
• Online groups/collaborations allow you to lower the hurdle for participation. I’ve been noticing this phenomenon on Facebook, where it’s easy to join a cause and become a “fan” of a politician or product–you just need to click a button. If you only care a little, the internet allows you to participate only a little. The effect on business? I can speak to this one personally. I founded my company, www.DowntownWomensClub.com, because 10 years ago there were barriers preventing young professional women from joining exclusive women’s business organizations. These were cost, experience, geographic limitations and, ultimately, finding someone willing to nominate you. At the DWC, we’ve used technology to make the cost minimal and take geographic limitations out of the equation. We’ve also stood by our inclusive philosophy, thereby making participation easy (even from your computer at 1 a.m. from Belarus).
• Shirky also includes a discussion of social capital that echoes what I’ve read in a couple of other books. First, he talks about how people who have a lot of social capital (i.e., know their neighbors and have a healthy support system of interaction with others) are healthier and happier. This was part of the findings in Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss, which I’ll review soon. Second, he mentions how suburban sprawl is leading to a breakdown of social capital. In cities, people are codependent for existence. This is lost when people own McMansions with three-car garages on one-acre lots in towns with no sidewalks and where kids are shipped out to private schools (a topic that was tackled in one of my other must-read trend books: Nine Shift). Yet, this may be a factor in why cybergroups are popular. People are social animals; they want to be with other people.
• There was an interesting bit about the formation of Meetup.com and the most popular groups founded in its first year. These groups included “Witches,” “Bloggers” and “Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Shirky’s comment on this was that people were not using the new tools to re-create existing groups such as Rotary clubs and Junior League, but they were organizing themselves around a whole new dynamic.
• Finally, he looks at what makes for success in this new realm. First, he admits that there needs to be some form of governance for any large group to work. Then he looks at three crucial elements:
  • Make a promise. You must promise something appealing to your users/customers.
  • Create the appropriate tools. You must make it easy for them to use.
  • Strike a bargain. You need to have an implicit agreement with your users/customers to deliver what you promise in a manner that is acceptable to them.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: Here Comes Everybody contains vital information for anyone running a business today–especially if it dabbles in the Web 2.0 space. However, if you’ve never heard of Flickr, Twitter, Digg and other Web 2.0 social media, it would probably be like reading a foreign language. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t stop you from learning about how the internet is changing work as we know it. So to dip your toe into what the future of business might look like.  You should at least read or understand the concepts behind these books (because in some cases, the future is now):

• The World is Flat by Tom Friedman
• The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

When I received an advance copy of Peggy Klaus’ new book, The Hard Truth about Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner, I figured it was worth a gander. I’ve met Klaus, and she is an energizer who is not afraid to scream and yell and push people’s limits. I know this because I once ran a workshop at a conference right next door to Klaus. Apparently, I had drawn the short end of the stick because the other speakers knew that her crew would be bragging out loud… very loud.

Now I just wish that energy had transferred over to the book. While it is chock full of info, it was a bit scattered for me and some of the real “punchy” points were diluted and buried. I also had to keep checking back to the title/subtitle to see why these bits of advice were all interconnected. I’m not sure the title’s use of “Soft Skills” was the best description. Maybe it could have been titled “People Skills: How to Present Your Best Self So That Others Want to Play With You.” As that’s pretty much what this was about: skills that will help you deal with other people.

However, the whole scattershot approach abruptly disappears in chapter six, where she launches into a chapter on “Branding and Bragging.” All of a sudden, it’s the Peggy Klaus aka “Brag Lady” with whom I was familiar. The writing was better, the flow much smoother, and the energy was back and carried over into the final chapters on gender, generations and leadership.

As for the “soft skills,” there were some good points in the first two-thirds of the book, such as:

• “I swear if I hear one more person say [follow your passion], I’m going off a Swiss Alp.” This is the Klaus I like who tells it like it is. Following your passion is no guarantee of success. Sure, it makes it easier if your business involves some bit of your passion, but it involves a whole lot more than that. (Note: A good book about how you can work passion into your worklife is Career Bliss: Secrets from 100 Women Who Love Their Work by Joanne Gordon.)

• “If you want to stay competitive and ahead of the game, keep your hard skills sharp. Making this happen is not your employer’s responsibility, it’s yours.” Now this is one statement that I would jump up and down and shout about because every day I run into people, including entrepreneurs, who refuse to learn technology. There was an interesting article in The New York Times recently about how technology laggards still add value to the innovation process. But if you’re an entrepreneur, you should have a leading mindset rather than “nooooo, don’t make me learn something new.”

• “If you find yourself having to defend yourself and make an argument for why your behavior is really OK, then you’ve probably crossed what I’ve called the IC Divide–the IC here stands for integrity and character.”
• She has some good takes on risks, listening, grammar, apologizing and saying thank you.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: There were some good refreshers in here re: what she calls “soft skills.” These seem to be skills that help you be your best self and convey that and/or converse with others. But as stated above, you need to pull out relevant tidbits from the first two-thirds of the book and hang on until the last third of the book. The last third is the best part and includes info on creating your personal brand, bragging, generations and leadership. So if you didn’t read her first book, Brag!: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It, and you need a book to motivate you to get more proactive in promoting yourself, it’s worth picking up.

I picked Gordon Patzer’s Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined out of my review pile because it struck a nerve with me as a huge cultural issue. In his book, he focuses on “lookism,” as he calls it, from all different angles: in the family, the schools, the beauty industry and TV news. Yet what does it have to do with business?

When it comes to your career, he sums it up in a chapter chock full of studies that conclude that if you are “good-looking” or even “tall,” you have a better chance of landing that job, getting a higher salary over your lifetime and getting promoted more than an average or “PA-challenged” (physically attractive-challenged) colleague. However, if you are good-looking and mess up, you can expect to fall farther and harder. There were also subtleties, in that an attractive woman will have a harder time getting a masculine-oriented job. Yet attractive women are more likely to get a job that involves face-to-face contact with clients, unless it is a woman doing the hiring.

He even has data about how good-looking execs created more income than the cost to their companies of having to pay them higher wages. For the lawyers in the audience, maybe Denny Crane on Boston Legal had a point about hiring only attractive lawyers at Crane, Poole & Schmidt. Patzer reports that they tend to fare better in court.

I’m sure there’s nothing new here for anyone who went to high school. The pretty girls are popular, the handsome athletes get the pretty girls. The rest of us count the minutes until we go to much larger, diverse colleges and universities, and ultimately into the workforce, where brains come a bit more into play. Yet it doesn’t change much even there, according to Patz’s resesarch.

Patzer does cover the dark side of beauty, from plastic surgery to eating disorders. Yet his conclusion to the book is a bit depressing: “Good looks make a difference today and most likely always will.”

I suppose one way to conquer lookism is to have a more diverse point of view as to what constitutes good looks. One wonders why, with our 500 channels on TV and our ability to connect globally over the web, we still have a Ken and Barbie view of beauty. Perhaps if we had a larger variety of what people find attractive, we might be able to spread the looks around more.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: It’s a depressing read, but sometimes we need to read the unpleasant stuff that makes us squirm. As for entrepreneurs? It looks like the beauty or anti-aging industry might be the way to go.

To hear more from Gordon Patzer, listen in to my new blogtalkradio show, Smash the Ladder, with Anita Bruzzese and Diane K. Danielson. Click here to listen to Anita’s interview of Patzer.