Possible Good News; Replacing Owning; #1 on Amazon; Favorite Books

  "…keeping you great"

HEADLINES: "Happy Diwali to all my readers in India.

Favorite Books and Speakers — I'm in the process of choosing #1 rated business authors and celebrity CEOs for the 2011 Summits and online seminars. Who would you most like to hear from? Favorite new book? Email me at [email protected] — thanks.

#1 on Amazon Business This Week — David Meerman Scott, the top rated speaker at the Fortune Growth Summit a couple weeks ago, released his new book this week entitled Real Time Marketing and PR. Download a free eBook sample — as Tom Peters noted "If you are not hooked (hook, line and sinker) within 10 minutes of starting David Meerman Scott's wonderful new book; well, I fear for you." For my take on the book, re-watch my 2 minute interview of David highlighting the main lessons.

Sharing is Replacing Owning — this business model is continuing to garner a lot of attention with a second book (the other being The Mesh) entitled What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman. Here's the link to a CNN piece written by Botsman that provides a summary of the book — and hopefully spurs your teams' thinking on how you might apply this idea to a part of your business — worth 30 minutes at your next weekly meeting or a topic at your broader monthly management meeting.

Malcolm Baldrige Award Criteria — have any of you utilized the criteria from the Baldrige award to assess and drive improvements in your business? Please let me know. A friend of mine is interested in connecting with anyone who has — and I'm curious as well. For those interested, here's a link to the criteria — go right to page 7 to see the seven main categories.

"Multipliers" Online Seminar Available — the second highest rated presenter at the Fortune Growth Summit was Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers: How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. Her entire presentation, complete with PowerPoint slides and her one-page action plan, is now available as an online video seminar. Considering Multipliers get twice the brain power from their teams as do Diminishers, her techniques have an extremely high ROI. Here's a link to the online seminar — always with a full money back guarantee.

Extreme Question Challenge — one of Wiseman's immediate take-home "to do's" is her Extreme Question Challenge which she suggests you test on your children before trying it at work. Do nothing but ask them questions (she shares the horrors or getting her children ready for bed and how this technique worked for her). No less than a dozen executives came up to me later in the Summit and shared how they had already tried the technique with their children. I remember one of them explaining how for the first time, using this technique, his 7 year old engaged in a lengthy conversation with him over the phone. Learn this technique (and others) from her online seminar.

Possible Good News For US Businesses — I've reported out (and complained) several times that in 2012 businesses will have to issue a 1099 for ALL expenses over $600. Well, President Obama mentioned yesterday that he felt this specific provision of the healthcare bill should be changed — yea! It was a specific change the Republicans wanted if they won, so it seems both sides might find common ground on at least this one issue — a real victory for business owners.