Thanks for everyone who voted in last week’s Empath-O-Meter poll about Ford - levitra viagra cialis low price.To our great surprise levitra viagra cialis low price, this was the only unanimous vote we’ve ever had, with Ford earning a perfect 100 percent score in Striving — a rating that seems about right in the midst of the turnaround happening in Dearborn.

This week, the debate is about Gap, Inc., the retailer and apparel maker behind such brands as Banana Republic, Old Navy, and, of course, Gap.Thanks to reader Rick for the suggestion! Gap is a fascinating company to consider from an empathy perspective; levitra viagra cialis low price.At various times in its history levitra viagra cialis low price, it has had its fingers on the pulse of American casual fashion, from its early days making blue jeans in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury to the incredible success of khakis in the 1990s.Nonetheless, the organization’s revenue peaked in 2004 and has been drifting down ever since as fierce competition from H&M and Zara has transformed the American apparel market.

How well do you think Gap gets you?

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Viagra buy online: as we roll into the Fourth of July weekend, we reach the real kick-off to the summer.The twelve books in this post can help you reinvent your business and make major change happen - viagra buy online.And viagra buy online, not coincidentally, they’re 12 of the most enjoyable books we know of.Check them out — and let us know what you’re reading viagra buy online, too!

Rules of Thumb
Alan Webber

It’s hard for us to properly express the full scope of our admiration for Alan Webber.During his time editing Harvard Business Review viagra buy online, he helped it to reach heights it hasn’t seen before or since.The initial run of Fast Company that he put together with Bill Taylor is our favorite years of any business magazine ever.Hell, he even helped make Portland, Oregon, the fun, walkable urban center it is today straight out of college.

So it was with some delight that we raced through Alan’s first book, a collection of 52 rules he’s pulled together through four decades of work for how to be great at business — and a better person, to boot - viagra buy online.When Alan talked about it at a book store appearance recently, he described the book as the “I Ching of business,” meant to be read in the order of the reader’s choice — and he’s dead on - viagra buy online.Each four- to six-page chapter is a clear cogent meditation on a different facet of work and life; viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: it’s the perfect nightstand book — even if you’re the kind of reader who falls asleep four pages into whatever you’re reading, you’ll get a fully baked, extremely relevant tip from Alan before you drift off.Our favorite rule is #8: “If you want to see with new eyes viagra buy online, reframe the picture,” for obvious reasons.That said, I spent a lot of time contemplating #13: “Learn to take ‘no’ as a question.” Best stop there — otherwise we’re just going to reprint all 52, which would rob you of the fun of discovering them on your own.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Expanded Edition)
Dan Ariely

Technically, this fine volume was initially published in 2008, but it belongs for this summer because it’s never been more relevant - viagra buy online.Pete read it during the last days we wrote Wired to Care, and behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s charming and sardonic storytelling style almost certainly had an impact on the final revisions of our own book.

What makes this book so much fun and such a necessity — especially in the added stories — is that it provides a completely different window for understanding the underlying forces in our minds that can lead us to make repeatable mistakes with great consequence - viagra buy online.But rather than beating up humanity for its foolish propensities, Dan offers ways to play to the strengths of our often comically foolish brains.

The insights in Predictably Irrational are broadly applicable, from HR (be careful about market capital as social recognition) to strategy (do you really want to put all your bets on new initiatives?) to marketing (pretty much the entire book) - viagra buy online.It’s fun, fast-paced and ready to put into action - viagra buy online.All that, and it was just rereleased in expanded form with new insights, so you can get it really cheap right now.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip and Dan Heath

With all of the focus in recent years on innovation and design, it’s become easy to lose sight of the fact that plenty of perfectly good product, service, and business ideas never get anywhere.Despite what you might have heard, marketing is about as far from dead as it’s ever been.

That’s where the Brothers Heath’s Made to Stick is such an important and fun read.Picking up where Malcolm Gladwell left off in The Tipping Point viagra buy online, the authors show exactly what factors ultimately determine the success or failure of any given idea.They call it SUCCESs: Ideas that are Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories will thrive when similar notions falter.

It’s a really quick read, packed with great stories and readily applicable ideas.All that, and the Emotional chapter has a couple of solid empathy tales — we especially love the Hamburger Helper story - viagra buy online.Anyone working on messaging, marketing, or core strategic vision would be very well served to read it.

The Wisdom of Crowds
James Surowiecki

The catastrophic failures in the economy last year had many causes: extremely bad bets in finance, an unprecedented collapse in home prices, a toothless regulatory system; viagra buy online.We’re all paying the price for bad decisions made at all levels.And the worst part of it? It wasn’t just one blunder, or a series of blunders by a small group.It was a cascading wave of mistakes made by many people in every part of the world.

What does that have to do with a book called The Wisdom of Crowds? Good question.In spite of the book’s title, what New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki writes about is not that people in groups are inherently smart; viagra buy online.Rather, he argues that crowds become brilliant if they meet three criteria: independence, diversity, and decentralization; viagra buy online.If you disrupt any of those forces, you can wind up with group-think.

In other words, Surowiecki gives us just what we need to understand what went wrong last year, as well as the tools to ensure that we get it right the next time around; viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: if you work in marketing, business, government, or any other field where the thinking of a large number of people affects the success of your endeavors, this is an absolutely essential read.

Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell

New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell has been justifiably celebrated for his work on the spread of ideas (The Tipping Point) and the power of intuition (Blink), but we actually believe his most recent book might be the most fascinating. Viagra buy online: in Outliers, he tries to figure out how the most successful people in the world get to be that way.Is it hard work viagra buy online, individual genius, good parenting, or something else?

What he suggests is something potentially deeply unsettling to Americans: hidden forces and variables ultimately shape your destiny as much or more than talent or initiative.Hockey players born earlier in the year tend to dominate in the developmental leagues because they play kids “their own age” who are nearly six months younger.Bill Gates was both a visionary and a punk kid who had regular access to computers long before most of the population did - viagra buy online.The smartest man in the world, Chris Langan? Never found a steady career worthy of his intellect.

We think the big takeaway of this book is about creating the conditions for success in your organization; viagra buy online.You can take the most talented people in the world viagra buy online, but if they aren’t in an environment that gets the best out of them, it’s a waste of talent.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures
Dan Roam

Seeing is believing.It really is; viagra buy online.Which is why it’s such a shame that we’re so often left to rely on words to try to make a convincing case or work through a tough situation.Dan Roam, a consultant, shows in a fun, high-impact book how to put visual thinking to work in your career and in your company.

What’s great about this book is that it truly democratizes visual thinking, a set of techniques usually reserved to designers and engineers - viagra buy online.With his humble, approachable illustration style, he shows how even simple imagery can make an idea more concrete, surface challenges, and suggest possible solutions - viagra buy online.He tracks the four different kinds of visual thinking — looking, seeing, imagining and showing — as well as the six different ways we see.

If everyone in your organization reads The Back of the Napkin, there will be a lot less confusion about which decisions are being made and who’s on the hook for which actions; viagra buy online.All that, and you’ll have a lot more fun sketches around, which everyone likes more than PowerPoint documents, anyway.

Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success
Dan Schawbel

If you’ve ever spent any time on Twitter, you’ve probably encountered Dan Schawbel, a sage of personal branding who dishes up insights for how to thrive in today’s job market so rapidly and so thoroughly that it’s a wonder he ever sleeps - viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: plus, he runs a very prolific blog on Personal Branding that goes into depth with authors and topics of interest on a daily basis.Basically viagra buy online, he’s a giver.

And he gives a whole lot in Me 2.0, his manifesto for the era of the Brand Called Me.Only 25 viagra buy online, Dan understands how to define, hone, and promote a self-image for yourself that can help you to win jobs and promotions and make your employer thrive, to boot. Viagra buy online: not surprisingly for a rising star in social media, Me 2.0 is written in a quickly digestible format that delivers a ton of ideas in a very few words.Besides offering a four-step process for building your personal brand, Dan’s book is at its best when talking about the changes in society and the business world driving the rise of personal branding; viagra buy online.Chapter two, “Millennials Enter the Workforce,” is absolutely essential reading, as a result.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
William McDonough and Michael Braungart

For decades, the environmental conversation has been largely about doing less bad - viagra buy online.If companies and people just managed to use less waste, fewer harmful materials, and just use less stuff, then our impact on the rest of the world won’t be quite so bad; viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: architect and designer William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle.Challenges that assertion on its face.What good is recycling if it creates materials inferior to what went into the original products being recycled?

Rather than thinking about finding some way to reuse what we consume viagra buy online, he argues, we need to set up virtuous cycles in which everything we make can be made into something else that is as good or better than what it’s being recycled out of. Viagra buy online: in an absolute worst case, create truly biodegradable substances that can be turned into fertilizer.And, to make his point, the book is waterproof and made out of a synthetic paper that was made without the use of any wood pulp. Viagra buy online: if all of this is done, these cradle-to-cradle products (instead of cradle-to-grave) will be inherently profitable, removing the need for onerous regulation to make the world a better place.

What’s perhaps most motivating about reading Cradle to Cradle is that it’s incredibly practical and concrete for a big idea book.What McDonough proposes is truly radical and a challenge to supply chain orthodoxy in most of business.But it’s also something that can be started today. Viagra buy online: we’re some unknown distance from the world described in the book — but parts of it already exist.And your business can help make it more widespread.

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Friedman

One of the most prevalent and wrong-headed ideas of the earlier part of this decade is that the United States was losing its ability to compete - viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: this wasn’t a problem of talent, dedication, or hard work — it was structural.According to the argument, costs were simply so low in China and India that the U.S - viagra buy online.was destined to lose manufacturing and service jobs, never to be seen again.Outsourcing is inevitable and permanent.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman offers a sharp rebuke to this entire notion. Viagra buy online: he recognized that the developing countries of the world would soon be developed, and wages would rise to the point where it no longer made sense to outsource, say, technical support to India.The most important question wasn’t how the U.S - viagra buy online.should work to cut its costs and compete on costs with the rest of the world. Viagra buy online: instead, we need to come to grips with the fact that new technology has truly leveled the playing field.You don’t need to be based in New York to be a top-notch ad agency or start in Silicon Valley to build a tech empire.You can do it from anywhere.

This is a really big idea viagra buy online, and a much more important one than figuring out how to slow outsourcing.The global economy is now truly global. Viagra buy online: your customers live all over the world, as do your competitors and allies.Decisions don’t exist in a vacuum anymore; viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: what is your company doing to come to grips with the realities of the new market?

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Daniel H.Pink

The debate between art and science is as old as modernity - viagra buy online. Viagra buy online: though great thinkers of every era from the Pleistocene to the Renaissance recognized the value of expertise across disciplines and fields, this link got cut some time in the late 19th Century.Art and science went their separate ways, and then science won as reason, analysis, and provable facts were exalted above all else.

Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind is a wonderful ode to what got lost in the process.He articulates six senses of the right brain — design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning — that add context, color, and connection to everything that we do - viagra buy online.In so doing, Pink makes a compelling case for how to reshape our educational system, corporations, and other institutions to embrace both sides of our brains - viagra buy online.It’s not that the rational left brain is superior to the emotional right brain or vice versa - viagra buy online.It’s that we’re smarter when we can join the two together - viagra buy online.Smart and fun.Creative and critical - viagra buy online.Heart and mind.

Be on the look-out for Pink’s next book, Drive, as well - viagra buy online.It should be out in December viagra buy online, and it speaks to what truly motivates people to achieve.We fully expect it to provide a nice follow-up to Whole New Mind. Viagra buy online: one teaches you how to unlock the creative side of your brain, and the other shows you how to inspire greatness.That’s a pretty killer combo.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
Matt Ridley

Few discoveries in history hold as many implications for understanding ourselves and how we work than the recent mapping of the human genome.It has the potential to reshape medicine, politics, and even education for the better - viagra buy online.And it also has the potential to wreak havoc.

Journalist Matt Ridley unravels the implications of this amazing new science in the simply titled Genome.The book takes 23 chapters (the same number as humans have chromosomes) to walk through viagra buy online, in clean accessible prose, the many ways in which genomics will ultimately impact our society. Each chapter focuses on one of our chromosomes, shows how it affects our lives today and suggests how it might be harnessed in the future.It’s a fun device, and it paints a vivid picture of what’s coming next.

Genome also offers lots of food for thought for anyone involved in business - viagra buy online.The mapping of the human genome started a massive social change that we won’t see the full extent of for at least a decade.But once it’s complete, life might look very different - viagra buy online.What new opportunities does it create, and how might you take advantage of them? The clock is ticking for this seismic change; viagra buy online.This just might be your handbook to get ready for it.

Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy
Dev Patnaik With Peter Mortensen
We promise this one will knock your socks off.

Seriously.

Thanks, everyone, for your nominees for the Empath-o-Meter.Based on your votes last week, we have judged Radio Shack to be Low Empathy, receiving almost 79 percent low ratings.We’ve also updated the list with Nordstrom in high empathy and Walgreen’s in striving.Keep your nominations coming! Up now? Ford.

The last nine months have been among the worst in the history of the American auto industry.Chrysler and General Motors both entered bankruptcy, accepting billions in loans and direct investments from the U.S - online prescription for cialis.government just to avoid liquidation. Online prescription for cialis: only Ford Motor Company has avoided the need to accept federal dollars in order to stay afloat.

While it’s clear that Ford has done a better job of keeping a good reserve of cash on hand in case of a rainy day, however, it’s not necessarily clear that the organization is set up to succeed beyond keeping its head above water. Online prescription for cialis: though Chrysler and GM’s woes have brought positive attention to Ford, we don’t know if the company will be able to create a product portfolio that will help it thrive when the economy comes back. Online prescription for cialis: there are positive signals that the company has an outward-facing culture — CEO Alan Mulally is known to drive the cars of his competitors and have a clear sense of how consumers see the auto market.

What have your experiences been?

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Order cialis online without prescription: long before there was Best Buy, Radio Shack was the biggest electronics retailer in the U.S., offering everything from raw parts for hobbyists to toys for kids.But how’s it doing now? The Fort Worth, Texas-based giant has recently faced fierce competition from emerging players in the space, and CEO Julian Day instituted a major program of cost-cutting when he joined the organization following a stint at Sears/K-Mart - order cialis online without prescription.And in that time, some insiders say, the company has started to lose its most critical form of empathy — the deep knowledge of the products it sells that allowed Radio Shack to provide electronics for the masses - order cialis online without prescription. Order cialis online without prescription: all that, and current and former employees of the organization say that it’s become out of touch with the needs of people inside the company, too.

What have your experiences at Radio Shack been like? Do they get you and your life?

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Today marks the bankruptcy of an American titan — General Motors - rx-viagra. Rx-viagra: the organization was, at one, time the very largest company based in the United States, and the dramatic drop in its profitability in growth over the last decade have been staggering.At least some of that must be attributed to senior leadership’s inability to see that a boom fueled by gas-guzzling SUVs and large trucks couldn’t last forever, in addition to its struggles to create solid offerings in the small and mid-size car categories - rx-viagra.But as it hits bottom today, there are signs of hope at the company.The plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, due next year, promises to be significantly greener than the Prius and have none of the range limitations of the all-electric Tesla Roadster.In many ways, it’s a car of the future.

So where does GM rank in empathy for today.

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Kamagra: this week’s empathic company nomination of the week comes courtesy of reader Lynn McLeod, who submits the following nomination for drug store chain Walgreen’s.Rather than weigh in, we’ll let her speak for herself:

“Walgreens replaced a mom and pop stationary store in our local shopping area (Los Altos) and they had a very tough time winning us over.  Several years later the store is a mainstay, the only “general store” close by.  They have all the day-to-day necessities and lots of house brand items that are high quality/low cost.

The interaction that finally won me over completely was when I had to find a prescription that my regular pharmacy (Target) was out of.  I stopped in Walgreens and was treated so well, in a personal manner, that I moved all my prescriptions.  Target, which I love generally and has GREAT, innovative drug packaging, has service that I would rate as “fine” but did not have the terrific services and inventory management that I find at Walgreens.

- friendly, expert service that follows through on cases
- usually has what I need in stock, gets it fast if not
- staff understands the complex insurance; kamagra.medicaid, drug rebate, etc.
programs, is willing to do the research to save me money
- has a “drug club” discount program for those of us with no drug
coverage in our insurance
- inexpensive generics”

Kamagra: lynn’s made her voice heard.What do you think? Please vote and leave a comment with your thoughts!

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The BlackBerry has become an icon of our always-on, ever-faster globally connected culture.The e-mail device buspar, infamously nicknamed the “CrackBerry,” has made it possible for people to communicate in writing from just about anywhere.As we noted in our piece for the Toronto Sun, the original development of the device sprung from Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion, a company that had been dedicated to helping create wireless cash registers, credit card verification, and other mission-critical data applications; buspar. Buspar: so when the company made a messaging pager, it was for people who need their notes to get through the first time, every time: doctors, construction workers, politicians, and executives.They got these folks brilliantly, which is why the BlackBerry became the icon of the busy and important.

But recent competitive challenges and new markets have challenged RIM’s empathy; buspar.The arrival of the iPhone led the company to abandon its strengths and put out the Storm, a me-too touchscreen phone that worked a lot like an iPhone — but worse - buspar.As work and life blend ever more, the BlackBerry needs to do a better job of supporting both people’s workstyles and lifestyles; buspar.And that means empathy greater than the affinity that has brought them thus far.

How do you think they rate?

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Cheap impotence drug generic cialis delivery: the business press is a-buzz this week with the announcement of Starbucks’ new VIA ready brew instant coffee.While many people think the product line is off-brand for the world’s leading provider of premium coffee drinks, company CEO Howard Schultz cites VIA as evidence that the company is willing to meet consumers where they are in tough times; cheap impotence drug generic cialis delivery.He was right 25 years ago with his prediction that a $3 cup of coffee would soon be a mainstay; do you think he’s right this time? More importantly, does Starbucks get you? Does it understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of people who are cutting their personal budgets and eliminating luxuries?

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We’ve been getting a lot of requests to examine luxury brands through the lens of empathy, as their position during an economy is rather unique - cialis 30. Cialis 30: though many of their consumers are still doing just fine, luxury itself is out of fashion at the moment.What does that mean for a company that has a brand built on that notion.

I decided to start with Nordstrom cialis 30, because the high-end retailer has a world-class reputation for customer service.In Built to Last, Jim Collins tells legendary stories of Nordies going above and beyond the call of duty: getting lunch for customers, taking returns of products the company doesn’t sell, even acting as personal valets.

But great customer service alone isn’t Widespread Empathy.And on this point, the jury is out; cialis 30.Do the products stocked at Nordstrom and the services offered make it clear that the organization has an intuitive sense for the people it serves? We leave it to you to make the call.

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Microsoft’s Xbox was a smash-hit launch in the video game market in 2001. Cialis by mail: out of nowhere, a new platform managed to challenge Sony’s dominance, and the Xbox 360 even surged ahead.It was a triumph fueled by empathy for hardcore gamers and gaming developers, which is why XBox is on our list of High Empathy organizations.

But the empathic culture of a single division in a much larger company doesn’t necessarily translate to the rest of the organization or to other customer targets.Microsoft at large is a great example.On the one hand, Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Office are dominant in their markets, used almost universally in homes and offices; cialis by mail.Zune has yet to find a mass audience cialis by mail, and Microsoft’s critical Windows Vista has suffered from poor performance, bugs, and the reluctance of business customers to upgrade their computers, all of which are troubling signs for the larger organization.Rivals Apple and Mozilla have made gains in PC sales and browser usage when it once appeared those leads couldn’t be threatened.

Even so, Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 7, is reputed to be a major improvement from Vista, and it has incorporate lots of customer feedback into its design - cialis by mail.Anyone who wants to can even use Windows 7 today free of charge to ensure it will be significantly better when it ships. 

Where do you think MS at large ranks? Do they have widespread empathy for the people they serve? Are they striving to do develop it? Or are they struggling to understand the world outside their walls?

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