Blog

Hey, just a forewarning that after today, the blog will go quiet until mid-March. Which reminds me of something: You may have noticed by now that my posting tends to be a bit infrequent and erratic. (Sadly, this is also the pace of my good ideas.) So if you check the blog regularly, you may find yourself annoyed that there ain’t much activity.

But wait — there’s a solution to this problem! See that little box to the right that says “enter your email address”? Just pop your email in there and you’ll get all the posts home-delivered, the same day that they go up. All the erratic stickiness with none of the annoyance! Presto.

You can now get a (RED) card from Starbucks. Here’s how it works: You can buy the card online, or in a store, and purchase credit on it, just like any other Starbucks card. But there’s a big difference: With every transaction you conduct, five cents is used to buy life-saving medicine for people in Africa who have AIDS. That’s five cents out of their pockets, not yours.

If five cents sounds trivial, keep in mind that, thanks to the people at (RED), almost a quarter of a billion dollars has been sent to buy AIDS medicines, and that extraordinary amount emerged from the sum of “trivial” transactions just like these. This isn’t even charity, it’s just thoughtful commerce. It’s buying a latte with a (RED) card rather than with dollar bills.

I’ve got a (RED) card in my pocket, and every drink I buy at Starbucks this year will be run through it.

As a final note: Starbucks is the rare global juggernaut that seems to go out of its way to do the right thing. Is there another company with its reach that has a comparable record of Goodness? (Think health benefits for barristas, Free Trade expansion, etc.) Email me with your candidate. 

What else is there to say, really?

Richard Perez-Pena writes that Newsweek’s “ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week’s big events will be abandoned once and for all,” according to execs.

Let’s leave aside whether this strategic shift makes sense or not. Notice how Newsweek editor Jon Meacham articulates the shift in a way that is concrete, specific, and full of uncommon sense:

“There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need to weigh in on,’ ” said Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham. “That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

If you’re leading a strategic shift in your organization, that’s the way you need to sound. (And for more pontification on this point, see the “Talking Strategy” chapter in the new edition of our book.)

The leaders of 800-CEO-READ, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten, have just released their book called The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You. This book is a no-brainer for your bookshelf — it’s like having a literate Cliff’s Notes guide to all those books you know you should have read by now. No one alive — truly no one — spends as much time thinking about the virtues (or otherwise) of business books than Jack and Todd.

And clearly they have exquisite and refined judgment, because Made to Stick made the list.