This week’s book review is The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib.

Dib does an amazing job of describing the marketing process in an easy to understand and powerful format. I am a huge fan of simplifying complex topics and Dib does this for marketing. He clearly defines his 1-Page Marketing plan in a way that allows the reader to complete their own business marketing plan while they are reading through the book.

My takeaway from this book are the nine components of a marketing plan organized into three stages listed below and shown in the graphic below:

This week’s book summary is The Excellence Dividend by Tom Peters.

Peters doesn’t disappoint with this “sequel” to his In Search of Excellence book that was considered groundbreaking. Where In Search of Excellence focused on the eight principles of management that created 43 of America’s best companies in the 1980’s, The Excellence Dividend focuses on the practice or discipline of excellence itself.

My takeaway from this book is Peters’ mindset that he summarizes with the statement; “Excellence is the next five minutes.” Basically, anyone can do average. We must differentiate ourselves by being excellent!

Peters says we can exude excellence by considering simple things like:

This week’s book review is The Attacker’s Advantage by Ram Charan

Uncertainty must be used as a competitive advantage by businesses and business leaders in today’s marketplace. Charan explains uncertainty and how structural uncertainty is causing market upheavals that will inevitably impact all businesses. Some businesses like Netflix recognize and take advantage of a structural uncertainty while other businesses like Blockbuster do not and are destroyed.