Monday, May 22, 2006

Blue Oceans and Better Managers

My book club groups just finished reading two good books, Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, and Manager of Choice, by Nancy Alrichs. Good books with significantly different intended audiences.

If you want to get hands on about being a better people manager (emphasis on people relationships) then the Alrichs book is your choice. Chock full of good advice, lots of checklists and to-do ideas, this book is very nonprofit oriented in its outlook that people come first. Good stuff.

On the other hand, if you are a big sky type thinker, then Blue Oceans may be your natural biome. This book talks about creating new space, where there is little or no competition. While certainly intended primarily for for-profits, I could not help but think of nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, who changed the face of low income housing, and others that have followed (or should I say led) these ideas. Another good read if you want to be forced to stop and go "huh!" a few dozen time.

Oh, very apropos of the Alrichs book which talks a lot about online training; this week, TechSoup has an article featured about setting up and running online training programs. Good stuff as well.

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