Staying Street Smart in the Internet Age

The internet does not change everything. Building relationships of trust is still required. Rely on face-to-face personal skills, common decencies like politeness and sensitivity to other people feelings, and the need for human contact. 1. The best solution is not going to come from the people you have locked in a room. Experience and talent combine too solve a problem and these people are often found externally. 2. The customers, who will have the most impact on your sales performance, are not your customers now. Therefore, the drive and reality of success is proportional too the number of new customers. 3. Creativity means connecting two disparate concepts and coming up with a third concept. If people appreciate your creativity, you will be rewarded through out your life. Hire people with talent and creativity rather than skills. Invest in skills as part of the job training. 4. Regard your job as a project, make a contribution, meet new people, gain some knowledge, and associate with success that looks good. Careers are a continuum of increasingly more important projects. 5. Schedule to end the day, the same time each day. Learn how to accomplish more in less time (reverse Parkinson Law theory): focus on improving what you do best, arrive an hour early, close the office door, work through lunch, extend "to-do lists" over multiple days, and work on highest priority tasks first. 6. You only need two or three good reasons to tip a decision one way or another. Don't get caught up into complex decision trees looking for the optimal choice, instead use two or three of the best reasons too make a decision. 7. The best ideas usually start out as little ideas and grow into big ideas. Big ideas are attractive and they gain the attention of the company and its support; however, big ideas are complicated legally, financially, and logistically; and many big ideas never materialize into reality. 8. Ideas are money. You should be constantly sharing good ideas with your boss and making your boss look good is health for your career. If good ideas are sitting out in the open, they can be stolen and in competitive environments coworkers will quickly claim the idea is theirs. 9. An idea must be a recombinant of two disparate ideas. The best ideas are impossible to be stolen. A good idea is so original and creative it cannot survive without the creator of the idea because he understands the concept fully and is the one who can execute it up to its full potential. 10. The size and dimension of an idea is unknown until you act upon it and see how it plays out in the market place. Let the market place be the judge on the quality of the idea. 11. In order to get through to the president, you must become friends with the secretary. They are the gatekeepers. 12. Pay attention to the care and feeding of your enemies. Acknowledge their existence. The richest sources of enemies are your peers, who are competing with you up the corporate ladder. Do love to fight and choose n

This review is of the paperback edition re-published as 'Never Wrestle with a Pig'). It's not the first book by Mark McCormack I've read. Like the others, its very readable, and gives a collection of homespun philosophies, interspersed with personal ife experiences. There's a strong emphasis on Sales, but 'selling' is surely part of all of our business relationships.Just don't believe in the gospel of everything McCormack has to say; there are contradictions, just as life is full of them, such as :In Part 8 'When you are in Charge' there is the lesson "trust your 1st impression", whereas in Part 9 'Etiquette for the New Millenium' there is a "caveat about reading people too quickly" - so which is it to be?Consider it light reading to just remind you of the good & bad things that you can do to others & they can do to you, and re-adjust & compensate accordingly.

The title just uses the buzzword "internet" to get your attention. It could have been called "career and business tips," which is basically what it is. McCormack's writing has gotten better since his earlier books, so I found this one good on that account. His tips have a bit more depth here, too. He mentions how his 2nd wife has helped him learn to "stop and smell the roses," and perhaps that's why this book seems less "combat"-like than some of his past books. Plus, his arrogance, that would bleed between the lines in past books was, thankfully, missing. (For example, in earlier books he said, "I made a lot of money at a young age, so I never resented others who did," not considering that perhaps some readers are young and broke, or old and broke, and might resent HIM. And also he said, "99% of people should work for someone else," which conveniently puts him in the elite 1%, and, never mind that through most of history, until the industrial revolution, most people were self-employed.) Anyway, this book is readable and helpful, with some tips I don't think I would have seen anywhere else. He does reuse anecdotes that he uses in other books, but I didnt' mind. If you want a general career-tips book, this is as good as any recent ones I've read recently.

This book is about career management and office politics. It contains a lot of straight-forward, down-to-earth tips for getting along with co-workers, bosses, and clients. This "Arli$$- agent's" clientele includes Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer and Venus and Serena Williams. What he offers is common sense as applied to a plethora of topics like goal setting, picking up the check, managing time, dealing with enemies, managing your work- just doing business in a "smart" way. Thinking of all those Olympic atheletes who will be returning to their respective countries to assimilate back into the work force, or pursue endorsements or dreams of gold in 2004, it seems to me another astute book about self-management is timely, especially coming from the chief executive of a sport and entertainment conglomerate like International Creative Management. It is a step up from his previous book, "What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School". Mr McCormack's book seeks to prepare readers for life in the fast lane, and for success. Interesting! A very interesting presentation.