A few months back I received an advance copy of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness. I try to only read books that come highly recommended by someone I trust or written by individuals I respect in the business world. There are just too many books being written to try and wade through the junk to find the gold. Delivering Happiness is gold. I have been a fan of the Zappos.com phenomenal growth and customer service but most of all I have been captivated by the company culture that has evolved there under Tony’s leadership since 1999. People that work for Tony are happy. They are constantly improving their expertise as well as developing personal and professional goals.

During my visit to the Zappos headquarters in January, I was continually wondering what makes this place tick. In Delivering Happiness Tony lays out both his own professional adventure from the time he sold his first news letter “The Gobler” in middle school (which was a miserable failure), to describing what elements lead to the Zappos success today. What really stood out to me in the book was Tony’s transparency, his willingness to share both his mistakes and achievements. From the disclaimer early on that he is not a gifted writer and his apology to his High School English teacher for the grammar errors, Tony sets the tone of the book at the outset as an honest story of entrepreneurial adventure and a lifetime pursuit of the science of happiness. Just as Dan Pink argues in Drive: the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Tony states that the true ingredients to a company’s success are mutual respect and strong core values.

Later this week I’ll be offering a full video highlight of the book with Chris Nordyke. For now though, go out and grab a copy of Delivering Happiness. It will not disappoint.

Something has changed profoundly in my reading habits.  I am beginning to choose books and the authors that write them for a whole new reason. I look for authors who engage in conversation with their readers.  A few years ago authors never would have dreamed of interacting with readers outside of book tours, signings and readings.  Now authors and readers are communicating via many formats.  Personally, when I choose my next read I look online to see if the author is connected.  Are they engaged in conversation already?

So would Hemingway have been willing to communicate with his readers?  I hope so.  With the way publishing is going today, authors need to engage and build communities involving their readers.  (For more information on getting published today see my friend Jon’s blog post)  They win both financially and relationally.

Here is a short list of authors and organizations that are doing this well and willing to risk engagement.  Their risk is paying off.

Mary Russell (The Bee Keepers Apprentice), Tony Hsieh, Seth Godin, Steve Garfield, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Andy Andrews, Dr. Tim Erwin, Ransomed Heart, Dr. Emerson Eggerich, Jane Kirkpatrick, Rick Warren

To find your own authors, search Facebook for their name or title. On twitter search for the book name or author. Many readers create a search term if the author has not (you can do this by simply posting on twitter about your book with a #hashtag in front of the term).

Please list add any you have found engaging.

Growing up I learned a great deal about how things worked in the physical world from working outdoors with my father. Most days we would have at least a few hours to work on our property using a bright orange Kubota tractor. My job was linchpin keeper. If you change a part in the machine, you have to make sure you replace the linchpins or the whole thing will eventually fall apart. Seth Godin’s latest book is entitled Linchpin. A linchpin is indispensable and this title instantly made sense to me.

Linchpin is his 12th book. This one impacted me almost as much as his ninth book The Dip. In his most recent book, Tribes, he encouraged us to lead. In Linchpin he goes further, pleading with the reader to be the indispensable member of a tribe.

In our society linchpins are those individuals that hold things together. Yes, organizations might succeed or thrive for a while without them, but eventually as pressure is applied and structures are tested, things will fall apart. Mr. Godin clearly illustrates that we are in a critical time of history. The age of cogs and factories worked for a while, but everything has changed. A new breed of worker and leader are now required. We need linchpins to solve our problems, keep us connected, and inspire us with art. People who are linchpins are creative, good at connecting with others, and able to see solutions like no one else. They truly are indispensable.

As Seth Godin explains this concept to his readers, he turns their minds upside down in order to convince them that they are in some way capable of being one. It can be a bit disconcerting that he refrains from handing us a roadmap, since we are a society reared on self help books. Instead, he explains how we got here, criticizing the public education system for creating cogs to fill factories and consumers to buy what they produce. He quotes Woodrow Wilson in his argument that we get exactly what we focus on. In the end we wind-up with drones that do what they are told.

There is no shortage of pundits today that criticize the flaws of our education system, but few will offer a solution. He challenges teachers to inspire student to think instead of follow rulebooks and ace tests. He even goes as far as telling us to give ourselves a D for the rut we have fallen into.

In his chapter titled The Resistance he leaves the reader very unsettled and challenged to no longer be ruled by anxieties and everything that holds us into complacency. Throughout the book I could not help but reflect on the story told in the movie Apollo 13. Three linchpins stand out, each one indispensable to the mission. Astronaut Ken Mattingly puts away his frustration from being pulled from the mission to spend hours in the simulator to solve a problem and bring his friends home. Nasa Engineer and master innovator John Aaron works endlessly with Mattingly. In the film Gene Kranz played by Ed Harris makes the ultimate call for his linchpins to do what they do best, “Let’s work the problem people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.” We love stories like this because we don’t really grow up hoping to be conveyor belt operators or stuck in cubicles doing meaningless work. We dream of changing our world.

Linchpin could be Mr. Godin’s greatest work so far. He treats the subject with history and sociology as well as a compelling mix of fact, story and philosophy. Using examples that will both shock and inspire, Linchpin leaves you feeling like you have no choice but to reassess your current situation and make the changes he so eloquently urges us toward.

I want to hear about linchpins you know. Leave a comment telling me about them.  I will choose my two favorite stories and send the authors a free copy of Linchpin. I can’t wait to read them. I will announce the winner in a few days.

I  am always surprised to discover what people value most in a blog post.  You never know what people are going to enjoy reading and thus comment or spread.  I really find it amusing that some of the posts that were actually knee jerk reactions, written in a few moments, actually ended up being the best conversation starters.  So here are my posts from this year that had the most conversations.  After all it is simply about community.

• Filtering Your Tweets
  

This one was interesting.  I never realized this would be a hot topic.  I still believe we need to have our own filters.  I still use the ones mentioned here.  @lessallan ‘s response and reaction blog post was the most interesting.

• Folding when the taking is still hot.
  

I was accused by a friend of using scare tactics to get restaurants to use new media in the midst of the downturn.  That really was not my intention.  I came from a restaurant family.  My father started his career way back with Sambo’s in Santa Barbara and eventually founded Shari’s Restaurants.  Restaurant owners have a special place in my heart and the tools at their hands are simply amazing.

• A guide rather than an expert: navigating social media
  

This is probably my favorite post from the year.  With the glut of “experts” we are all getting good at spotting the snake oil and those that sell it.  Luckily I have been able to become friends with people who are genuine guides.  We are even talking about starting a Social Media Brigade of sorts.

• All the news that’s tailored to read
  

Getting my news in a way that I feel is efficient and effective is still a work in progress for me.  I am using google reader more these days, and I have to admit that I still get most of my articles from either twitter or facebook.  I trust my friends to bring me the headlines instead of CNN.

• Why Ning, Why Now
  

I continue to be passionate about tribes.  Helping others build community or find a nascent tribe is still what I enjoy most.  Ning is still the most powerful tool for organizations to mobilize their followers.  I am curious what will emerge in 2010 though.

Let me know your favorites.

*See updates since the post was originally written. The way we get our news should be a shifting process, as methods and technology changes.

At the top left hand corner of every New York Times front page you will see the words “all the news that’s fit to print”.   A college professor  of mine Robert Sahr once pointed out  how ridiculous this statement was.  There is no possible way you could fit all the news worthy of print in a hundred papers, let alone into one.  Each news outlet chooses what stories to pursue. Fewer ones make it to print.  I love the New York Times, and I used to be a junkie.  But I began to find that I was increasingly being affected by the stories I was reading.  Did I really need to know about crime and mayhem around the world? Local papers and news outlets are even worse.  Turn on the 11 o’clock news anywhere in the US and you will soon be depressed.  Max Lucodo in his book Fearless tells about Frank Furedi’s study of the increased use of the word risk in British newspapers.  In 1994 risk appeared 2,037 times increasing to over 8,000 times in 2008. A psychologist friend once stated the obvious, “we can not as humans handle all the worlds bad news”.  So I have stopped watching, listening and reading.  I still need to know what is going on in my world.  -My WORLD-  is the key phrase.  That is why I like tools like Alltop.com, Twitter, Google Reader, and yes occasionally Facebook.  I can peruse these news sources -yes I did say sources- and find the news I need for the day.  Rather than going through a media source, where an editor picks my stories for me (and today for not such pure reasons) I can choose my own stories from people I trust. This has revolutionized how I digest news.

About a year and a half ago a friend told me that he does not read papers anymore or watch CNN.  It seemed odd at the time because I knew him to be someone who likes to keep up on current events.  He then went on to tell me that he gets all of his news from twitter.  If it is a story that his friends are talking about, he will click on their links and read for himself.  At the time I thought he was nuts, but I have now come to do the same.  I follow people in my network whom I trust.  Most of them have similar interests as me.  If they begin to talk about a story they will usually have a link associated with it for me to learn more.

Beyond this I have what I like to call my own personal newspaper using My Alltop.  It changes every day and the topics range from fly-fishing news to publishing news.  Alltop is one of many ways, and currently my favorite, for people to gather rss feeds into one place where they can digest all of it.  I like Alltop because it has the major blogs that I like most.  I can hover over a headline and easily see the first few lines of the article.  It is also a great way for me to answer people’s question “what blogs do you read.” With one link they are reading what I read.  Of course not all blogs are on Alltop, but they can easily be submitted.  I use Google reader for ones that are not on alltop. There I can also share my favorites with others.  The bottom line to all of this is we can now be back in control of what news we digest.  Instead of depending on an increasingly conglomerate run press for our information, we can search out our own sources.  That is priceless in today’s world.

You can create your own Alltop page here.

*updates

-5/5/2010: Seth Godin had some great thoughts on how we get our news today. All the news that fits.

-8/17/2010: Flibboard.  New tools come on the scene all the time.  It is rare that one so unique, simplistic and useful as Fliboard shows up.  If you own an iPad you really need to be using Flipboard to read you community driven news.  I can now see my Facebook and Twitter list updates in a well designed digital magazine format.  Check them out at flipboard.com And don’t take my word for it. Robert Scoble is the one who turned me on to Flipboard.  Here is what he had to say.  First look at “revolutionary” social news iPad app: Flipboard

A few days ago Kevin Miller caught my attention.  He posted a message to Chris Brogan on twitter asking where he could get a deal on a box of 20 of Chris’s latest book, Trust Agents.  He wanted to send them to a few friends.  I can only imagine what will come of Kevin Miller’s gifts.

A while ago I was unexpectedly laid off from work.  I was pretty shaken.  I remember dusting off my tools and putting my carpentry skills back to work to pay the bills.  It was the rainy season here in Oregon, but I felt that I had no choice.  I needed to continue working in some capacity as I waited to see if my job would exist when the lay off ended.  It was a very discouraging time.  I started to reevaluate everything from life goals to job satisfaction.  Throughout the process my good friend, Jon Dale, was there to encourage and listen.  Better yet, he sent me a book.  After opening the surprise package and reading the first chapter, I knew he had seen a perfect opportunity to share a hopeful message that would change my perspective.  He had followed through with action.   The book helped me launch into everything I am doing today.

How often have you read a book and told a friend about it only to find out many months later that they still have not taken your advice and read it?  I do it all the time.  Someone suggests something, but I just don’t have the time to follow through.  On the other hand, I have read every single book that a friend has sent me.  There is something profound about a statement followed up by a package from Amazon.  It says, “I think you need to hear this message so much that I put money behind it”.  We have the power to help others change their lives and perspectives, change their world, and carry on that change.  We have the opportunity to help those around us in a time when bad news abounds and dreams are being dashed.  I’ll bet the pay off will far outweigh the cost of a few books and shipping.

Go ahead.  Give a book away.