As other reviewers have already so succinctly stated, this is a must-read book for marketers and business people.
1. Because the world is being turned upside down by social media, and at the heart of that change is Mark Zuckerberg. And we need to understand what he's up to.
2. Because Ekaterina Walter has some serious business-think mojo to share with us. I got to interview Ekaterina for my own book - and was the recipient of her wisdom then. She's one of the brightest people in the industry (she heads social media at Intel).
This is NOT a fluff book. There are a few of those out there - this book is refreshingly free of fluff.
Some of my favorite parts of the book aren't about Zuckerberg at all, but the culture and strategy bits from XPLANE. The philosophies holding that mission and purpose are the driving forces behind any enterprise entered into business philosophy in the late 19th century. They were then promulgated by organizations such as the Masons and later by the Rotary Club. Even later, after World War II, organization change thinkers advocated for the use of vision, mission, and values. With Facebook and the other companies discussed in Think Like Zuck, Walter shows that these are powerful forces that could be critical to business success.
The famous business writer and thinker Jim Collins was invoked many times both in the book (and in my imagination) - Walters mentions the "getting the right people on the bus" concept many times. I also thought about Collin's most recent book
Great by Choice where he talks about the element of luck. No doubt, Zuckerberg had a great amount of luck in the timing of the creation of Facebook. But others had good luck, too - Zuckerberg had the foresight to use it.
Collins had a concept of Level Five Leader, someone who showed demonstrated a "paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will." Zuckerberg, with his famous "CEO, Bitch" business card could hardly have been said to show humility. But Walter's subject has, like the hero of The Truman Show, been in the public eye throughout his twenties, and seems to be becoming something closer to a Level Five leader with each passing year.
In contrast to the Level Five Leader, Walter introduces her model of what she calls the "Hummingbird Effect of Leadership."
The amazing qualities of the hummingbird can be seen in the beauty and complexity of its flight. Just like this flyer, effective leaders soar in their purpose of serving others and, in the process, achieve unprecedented heights of success.
See my review on Social Media Today at [...]
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