AIMS First Book - Extreme Leadership

Books by AIMS Authors

The plan is to start using this book as a supplement to existing Leadership textbooks in DL courses. We are going to have it available to the public for only 30 days, then after that you have to be enrolled in the Taft course to be able to buy it. We've been working on it for about 6-months.

The amount of work to get here starting from scratch is crazy, I would never suggest that you support your local entrepreneur and buy your copy today!!

No seriously, I would never suggest you do that. That would be wrong.

 

Great work!!!!!!!!!!! The books looks and sounds excellent and will be a very effective learning tool.

Abner :smile:

 

Okay, the book does look pretty interesting, but $48.75 for a pre-order, and then the price jumps to $65.00? And to top it off, it's only going to be for sale for a month, then it gets locked up like "101 Dalmatians" going back into the Disney vault? I'm not sure I understand how this is a win for your author. Most people want their books to be available to a wide audience, not bundled into a small college's distance MBA program and otherwise unseen.

Why not make the book available more widely and more affordably? An e-book priced at $10-$15 with bound copies in the $20-$30 range would probably sell extremely well, especially if you conducted a "guerilla marketing" campaign by distributing free review copies to influential blogs and set up an affiliate program that would let websites refer you buyers and pay a commission on each book sold.

I'm struggling to understand the logic here, but maybe I'm missing something.

 

Hmm.

Well, when competing in a red ocean with a minority position, what are your market options? How can you start to build a competitive advantage (or honestly just a competitive position)? Pretty much price or differentiation, right?

What if you had a price competitive product with no differentiation? What would you do?

What if you built up a complimentary brand based upon incredible quality? How would you build buzz, and leverage the two?

Ahh, there it is.

 

“The test of a leader lies in the reaction and response of his followers. His worth as a leader is measured by the achievements of the led . . . the ultimate test of his effectiveness." —Gen Omar N. Bradley.

 

Just so I understand, then, the strategy is to use high-quality supplemental materials such as Mr. Patton's book as a way to differentiate Taft's MBA offerings from the rest of the market. Is that substantially correct? Absolutely nothing wrong with that, in fact, many other business schools use their unique curriculum as a selling point. For example, just here in the RTP area of NC, we have NC State, which focuses its MBA at techie types, Duke, which pitches a global perspective and strength in marketing, and UNC, which sucks. ;-)

Seriously, I see that Mr. Patton is on the faculty at Taft. Does he see his book as an individual effort related to but separate from his work as a professor, or does he see it as part of an integrated effort to launch a new and different kind of b-school? He has certainly tied his book's long term prospects to the program. I'm sure that Eli Goldratt and Clayton Christensen are proud that their books are used in MBA programs, but I can't imagine either one of them making a single MBA program the sole outlet for their work.

 

Agreed, and great quote.

 

A - they are in a different market position, however B - if I got the chance to pitch my vision to them they might change their minds..

 

Sorry, just got told that this looks like advertising. Not the intent, just really proud of what we are doing and enjoy discussing the DL business model. I have asked them to pull the thread.

DEL

 

"To truly become a leader, a person must make a difference – not “try to make a difference” but actually make a difference. Being in a leadership position doesn’t make someone a leader; leadership is demonstrated through accomplishments. Period. Extreme situations call for extreme leadership skills. Do you have what it takes?"

This sounds like a bunch of pop pysch feel good babble (I know that's what many in the business world fall for and call leadership) but it sounds cheesy. The whole extreme bit was played out in the 90's and reminds me of the "turbo" bit from the 80's. Everything in marketing in the 90's was extreme. Everything in the 80's was turbo-charged. What's extreme about trying to meet a deadline for widget A so that the marketing people can mock up a web page and the sales people can hit the road? If everything is extreme, then nothing is extreme.

How can a person actually learn to be a better leader of overly PC employees in this day and age by reading about Ernest Shackleton?

I've met some amazing leaders in my time in the military. Most of them were Marine Officers and SNCO's. I'm not sure how the reading of outliers will make someone a better leader? Sure the stories are motivating but can a book actually make someone a better leader?