Larry Gennari

Look at me! Telling your story in a noisy world

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Of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn is best for professional communications. Sure, some businesses embrace Instagram or TikTok for their seductive inanity or X for its “enrage to engage” algorithms, but most entrepreneurial storytellers find a reliable audience on the more business-focused platform.

That doesn’t mean creating an online narrative — whether about ourselves, a product, or a company — is easy. First, you need a compelling LinkedIn profile summary. Mine is direct and straightforward. Others are bolder, employing enticing self-descriptors like “futurist,” “guru,” “evangelist, or (my current favorite) “motivationalist” combined with “power adjectives” like “action-oriented,” “award-winning” and “sought-after.” I mean, who doesn’t want to connect with an award-winning, action-oriented, sought-after, evangelizing futurist and guru?

Moreover, LinkedIn tells us that we’re better off with connections to like-minded storytellers, although I remain puzzled about the sheer number of personal injury lawyers, overseas IT professionals, and Gary Vee advice videos (please, just, no …) they are pushing at me.

If all this seems a bit daunting, it is. You likely need some help from a few new books.

Let’s face it. Most humans, especially those online, are obstinate and hard to persuade. We know things already, thank you very much, by instinct and experience and we resist a “hard sell” around a new product, company or vision. That’s exactly why every business and personal storyteller now needs to lean into behavioral science, according to marketing strategist Leslie Zane, author of the The Power of Instinct. Marketing is less about persuasion, she explains, and more about telling new stories to connect visceral, unconscious, positive biases built up over time. Zane recounts how she finally got a reluctant Johnson & Johnson to include dads in Johnsons Baby Shampoo ads. Sure, many moms bought the product, but competition was growing intense and a relentless marketing campaign of promotional incentives, coupons and loyalty rewards ignored the trends of what was happening in homes as more dads leaned in at bath time. New positive images and messaging, layered on top of old associations, sparked remarkable improvement in sales. Zane’s refreshing and common-sense advice on using metaphor, humor and universal ideas to shape and build narratives makes this an incredibly useful read.

Reluctant to craft your own story because it’s “complicated”? You might need a professional like Phil Elwood, author of the funny and raucous confessional memoir, All The Worst Humans: How I Made News For Dictators, Tycoons, And Politicians. Ellwood has spent decades in the Washington PR business working for a variety of questionable clients including Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Assad, and the government of Qatar. Elwood, a creative writer and fast-thinker, reveals how he built and pushed narratives from whole-cloth for a voracious media machine, often more focused on reporting “both sides” of issues than actually investigating the truth. His work attracted lots of unsavory clients and eventually, the attention of the FBI, all before his latest engagement for a client committed to promoting pro-democracy throughout the world. Like Zane, Elwood knows how a story built on assumptions and biases can go viral in a 24-hour news cycle.

In the end, the most compelling narratives are authentic, and for that, you must look within. Andrew Cooper, M&A attorney at Meta, does just that in his compelling new book: The Ethical Imperative. Cooper grew up in a trailer in South Carolina, excelled in school, and became the youngest general counsel of an American airline. Along the way, he cultivated a talent for intentional listening and weaved what he’s learned into five concrete leadership suggestions. As a native of a marginalized “forgotten town,” Cooper urges a conscientious embrace of universal values that drive people to work hard, stay in tough jobs, and ultimately build community in hard places. America needs this message desperately in an election year and well beyond. Happily, I learned about Cooper’s terrific book from his profile on LinkedIn. 

Connecting with people virtually is challenging. Yet even online, this much is true: first impressions can be lasting ones. We all have a story. Thinking about how best to tell yours will make all the difference.   

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

What if you could do … anything?

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For most startups, a stockholders agreement covering the “what-if’s” is a must. As a venture progresses, circumstances change, and quite often, so does the composition of the founding team. I like to see co-founders sort out the impact on the business and the stock ledger of the “three Ds” — namely, death, disability, or departure (voluntary or involuntary) — right up front, while everyone is aligned (and also on this earth). Indeed, the first “D,” death, can be the most challenging. It sparks the most existential of questions: If I am gone, what have I left? And was it worth my time?

Over the years, I have participated in many of these candid, searching conversations. I’ve come to know that although people can join forces with common business goals, their individual aspirations can and will vary pretty widely. Each of us is on a journey for meaning, motivation and purpose. Decades into my practice, I’m still on my own. Judging from a few new, captivating books, I’m on the right track. 

So how is making a living relevant to making a life? That’s a question worth pondering, according to Babson professor and organizational psychologist Jennifer Tosti-Kharas and professor and philosopher Christopher Wong Michaelson, co-authors of the disarmingly penetrating new book: Is Your Work Worth It?  In our uniquely American mind-set, we roughly categorize what people do as a “job” to pay expenses, a “career” to advance skills and status, or most culturally valued of all, a “calling” to serve others and a higher purpose. With insights derived through interviews, literature, and a lens of legacy — including the Portraits of Grief section in The New York Times following 9/11 — the authors urge us to dig much deeper and consider the meaning, context, and value of our work to family, friends, the community, and ultimately, to our unique sense of self. As told in the heartfelt reflections of many 911 victims’ families, the most menial of jobs to the outside world actually enabled noble, worthy, even heroic acts of day-to-day living. If this book nags at you after one reading, you’re getting the authors’ point.  

Yet, discerning when and how your great joy meets the world’s great need, as best framed by writer Frederich Buechner, is not clear, simple or plain. Maybe we all need to think more entrepreneurially — to test and try the “what-ifs” in real time, early, earnestly and often.

Still not convinced? Check out Get The Picture, journalist Bianca Bosker’s hilariously snarky and revealing exploration of the business of modern art. Intrigued by why so many people sacrifice so much for art, Bosker dove in head first, shadowing a self-important, but influential gallery owner so that she could more fully experience the world of creators, curators and promoters. Her accounts of the wealthy buyers, the auction parties, and the stylings of a nearly naked performance artist will make you laugh out loud. Get this author a sitcom now.

If not art, how about investment banking? Brent Underwood tried that, found it unfulfilling, and then quit to buy Cerro Gordo, a ghost town in Death Valley that was home to California’s largest silver mine 150 years ago. Lucky for us, Underwood is now a writer, and his recent book, Ghost Town Living, is both an engaging history of hardscrabble lives and a thoughtful retelling of his journey to rediscover meaning in his own. Raising money to rebuild a forgotten town? Now, that is how you test and try!          

Finally, so much in life becomes clearer towards the end, especially if we finally make time to more intentionally listen, learn, and feel. That’s what inspired attorney Alua Arthur, author of the simple, powerful new book Briefly Perfectly Human, to leave law and start Going With Grace, an LA-based death doula and end-of-life care and planning business. More than hospice, Arthur offers deep listening, and space for reflective silence and storytelling. How does one help another “wrap up” a life, say what needs to be said, and map out a legacy for those left behind? I don’t know, but a service business that can offer witness and also dispense some measure of grace may be the most meaningful of all.     

Arthur quotes Mark Twain: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” That’s certainly one way to consider the “what-ifs.” In searching for an answer, you might just find yourself.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Juneteenth in Boston then and now

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Juneteenth marks the nation’s second Independence Day. On June 19, 1865, Union forces finally arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, some two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, announcing that more than 250,000 enslaved people in the state were now free by executive decree.

No doubt this news cheered many in Massachusetts, given the citizenry’s then-long history of opposing slavery. William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent abolitionists hailed from Massachusetts, and the commonwealth’s highest court essentially had abolished chattel slavery in 1783, with many households freeing themselves of enslaved workers before and during the Revolutionary War. 

Yet, despite the soaring rhetoric of freedom from abolitionist leaders and the refusal of most Bay Staters to keep slaves, the lives of Black people in Civil War–era Boston were anything but easy or uncomplicated.

In her riveting new book No Right To An Honest Living: The Struggle of Boston’s Black Workers in The Civil War Era, Jacqueline Jones — a Concord resident and winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for History — meticulously chronicles the lives of Black Bostonians, including those who would become ministers, doctors, lawyers, house servants, or most often, day-to-day entrepreneurs out of sheer necessity.

Jones focuses her engaging narrative on a group of 66 newly freed Black men, women and children from Virginia who arrive in Boston in 1847 with hopes, dreams, and justifiable trepidation. What happens to them next, without private or government aid, is revealing, heartbreaking and in many cases, infuriating. Local abolitionists seemed much more interested in giving anti-slavery speeches in the South than improving conditions for formerly enslaved people in their own backyards.  

In the 1850s and 60s, Boston was a lively melting pot of native-born residents, Brahmins, immigrants — mostly Irish and Canadian — and formerly enslaved people, who arrived in search of opportunity. The city was bustling with new building construction, the dredging and filling of swamps to enlarge the municipal footprint, and the laying of pipes, bridges and sewer lines. Yet Black residents were excluded, both informally or by law, from most of these jobs and were instead left to fend for themselves. How those residents ultimately made a living, raised their families and developed a thriving community is the stuff of inspiration, making Jones’ book a must-read for policymakers, CEOs and community leaders alike.

Of course, much has changed for the better in Boston over the last 150 years, but the essential goal of ensuring equal access and opportunity remains an ongoing challenge. In my work with returning-citizen entrepreneurs, for example, I see echoes of these formal and informal restrictions in the many housing, occupational, and licensing prohibitions they face when leaving prison. Entrepreneurialism often is the most viable alternative for someone excluded from traditional employment and productive trades. Public safety concerns alone can’t justify the myriad historical restrictions that have been on the books in Massachusetts for decades. Indeed, Juneteenth might be the best occasion for readers to peruse the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction to get a sense of this history.     

Black Bostonian John S. Rock is an impressive, outsized presence in Jones’ book. Rock worked as a physician, news correspondent and the first Black attorney admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was a prolific, eloquent public speaker. The idea that “colored men have no right to earn an honest living,” Rock stated, “must be starved out.”  

At every opportunity, he called on his fellow residents to join the enduring struggle for equal citizenship and to match heartfelt rhetoric with concrete actions. “Words are easy, like the wind,” he said.  

Rock was thoughtful and prescient. As we celebrate Juneteenth this year, his clarion call still rings true today.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Nakedly unafraid and heading outside

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Spring is in full bloom and we all need to get out there. Indeed, recently outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds gathered at the Boston Outdoor Expo to check out the latest gear, tech and overall advice for hiking, biking and camping, and to hear relevant speakers on important topics like “Leave No Trace,” the principle of minimizing human impact when visiting precious outdoor spaces.

Inspired, I decided to learn even more about how to have my own wilderness-immersion experience. To start, I watched a few documentaries about wild animal-human encounters. Those were unsettling. Then I found Youtube videos on foraging edible mushrooms, including “magic” ones, thinking maybe this would be fun.

Finally, I sat through a few episodes of “Naked and Afraid,” the reality series featuring naked contestants tasked with surviving in the wilderness for a few weeks. This was a mistake. I quickly tired of the show’s implausible premise, the absurdity of the “helpful” items provided to the contestants (machetes for naked people?), and the constant distraction of their pixelated privates. I wouldn’t be doing any of that, even if I could find a bear-fighting machete in the aisles at REI.   

I was getting nowhere. I felt adrift. I needed a few new books. 

Thankfully, I found U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s new book, Walk Ride Paddle: A Life Outside, which recounts his three epic journeys across Virginia from 2019 to 2021. Kaine (while clothed) hiked more than 500 miles on the Appalachian Trail, from Harper’s Ferry to the Tennessee border, before biking 300-plus miles along the crest of Virginia’s Blue Ridge, concluding with a canoe excursion of another 300-plus miles on the James River to the Chesapeake Bay. This is a man who truly loves the outdoors and can zip up and sleep on the ground in all kinds of weather. Kaine kept a detailed journal as he traveled, describing Virginia’s historical and physical terrain as well his entertaining encounters with people along the way. That journal, supplemented later by Kaine’s reflections on faith, friendship, leadership and the need for community in an interconnected world, became this engaging book. Business leaders, environmental policymakers and, in fact, anyone who likes to walk, bike or paddle will appreciate this book.             

So would cycling and hiking outside — or disconnecting from the 70-page merger agreement on my screen — actually help? Yes and yes, according to Harvard Medical School and MIT professor Dr. Jeff Karp, author of the fascinating new book: L.I.T.: Life Ignition Tools. Our brains, Karp explains, have evolved into complex machines that default to low-energy mode. Too much time on this autopilot leads to sluggish creativity, faded connections and slower processing — creating a situation that could, in some cases, result in agreeing to become a contestant on a naked survival show. Luckily, Karp packs the book with exercises and practical cues for “flipping the switch” to creative-power mode, including smart tips from some 40 accomplished people ranging from Nobel Prize winners to Olympic medalists and entrepreneurs. No surprise that Karp, a bioinspirationalist who looks to nature for problem-solving ideas and strategies, also prescribes a healthy dose of the outdoors.

In New England, we are blessed with many outdoor options. But leaving no trace needs to have greater meaning, all day, in more ways — especially now. So argues journalist Edward Humes in his brilliant new book, Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World. On average, we swallow about 285 pieces of plastic a day through particles in our water, the air — even from our sugar and salt. This book will have you thinking about the food you eat, the stove you use and your role in preserving the great outdoors. For Humes, that’s exactly the point.

Tim Kaine’s journey offered him spiritual renewal, time for honest reflection and a chance to think anew about ways to maintain “our environmental bounty” for coming generations. I prefer his approach to reality TV.  Now more than ever when outside, we need to be open to fresh inspiration — and also fully clothed. 

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Jeff Bezos needs to leave me alone

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Jeff Bezos needs to stop following me.

Oh sure, I know that he’s “retired,” and may be tanning on his yacht, supervising a rocket launch, or just heading out for a casual run with his nine bodyguards, but he’s still watching my every move online.

I understood at first. After all, as a fellow business celebrity and widely read columnist (OK, a guy can dream), I expect special attention. Then I learned that I’m merely one of 200 million Amazon Prime members and that he’s tracking ALL of us — even the people with standard shipping! Now I feel duped, and well, ordinary. This needs to stop right now. As a VIP, I refuse to give away my valuable data to just anyone — especially not an ungrateful, two-timing billionaire.

How did I reach this point? By reading a few new books, of course.

Longtime Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli first tipped me off. In her just-released, must-read book The Everything War, Mattioli chronicles Amazon’s steady rise from an unprofitable internet bookseller into a sprawling, monopolistic mega-conglomerate with a vice grip on industries ranging from retail, groceries, logistics and healthcare to the cloud services now powering companies including Netflix, Apple and NBCUniversal. Many Americans are online throughout the day, with short annoying breaks to interact with other humans, and often, they buy things. When they do, that purchase data, first personalized, and then aggregated, transforms into a treasure trove for Amazon and its vaunted proprietary algorithms. Mattioli details how Amazon uses its unique position not only to hook us on fast and easy retail at every turn, but also to avoid taxes, exploit partners, copy competitors and squeeze out millions of small and midsize businesses. In 2023, Amazon took a whopping 45% of each third-party reseller sale. That’s enough to make this purchaser think hard about buying direct from my favorite emerging brands. Small wonder that the FTC and 17 state attorneys general now have sued Amazon for maintaining monopoly power. Is a breakup in the future?

Maybe, but now another former Wall Street Journal reporter (and Holliston native) Byron Tau tells me that Bezos might be the least of my worries. In his sobering, revelatory new book, Means of Control, Tau details how we all create a long and undeniable trail of data breadcrumbs every moment, every day, all the time. Our phones, computers, appliances and even air-pressure sensors in car tires, constantly transmit reams of operating and behavioral data accessible to the likes of Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok, manufacturers, marketers, defense contractors, government bureaucrats and alarmingly, unscrupulous data brokers selling our personal information to the highest bidder. Tau provides ample food for thought and he has practical, concrete suggestions on building greater digital privacy. Seems like I may need even more drastic alternatives to avoid Bezos and the ravenous data-gulping apps on my phone.

A private island with lush vegetation, an all-cash economy, and a ham radio transmitter? OK, but I’m lazy and would need robots to maintain the place. And couldn’t Bezos simply redeploy my robots and start collecting my data? He is determined and Amazon now has 750,000 robots in its fulfillment centers. Is this the start of his robot army? Luckily, I can consult MIT professor Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone and their absorbing new book, The Heart and The Chip: Our Bright Future With Robots. 

AI, robotics and machine learning are very distinct but interconnected fields, according to the authors, and so far, experts still are testing, trying, and imagining ways to use robotic innovation to solve problems. Rus, a longtime robotics researcher, maps out the myriad challenges in designing specific robots for desired tasks. None of this is easy, but all of it is intriguing, fascinating and for Rus, a lot of fun. Her example of the cake-cutting robot arm and the sponge cake disaster that ensued is a hilarious cautionary tale. I’ll have to invite Rus and Mone to the island to learn more about how robots can be imagined, engineered and integrated into our lives and communities. I clearly need a technology strategy.

Avoiding Bezos won’t be easy. As Mattioli recounts, when he was first searching for a domain name, Bezos registered Relentless.com, a web address that the company still owns and redirects to Amazon. Maybe he abandoned it because it seemed too sinister, too obvious, too revealing. We may never know. Whatever the reason, I’m onto him now — and I’m busy making plans.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

All the news we get to print

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This year marks the 60th anniversary of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that newspapers can’t be liable for defamatory statements about public figures unless they are made with actual malice. It’s one of the key decisions supporting the First Amendment and has been foundational for reporters covering businesses, governments, and the people who run them. Given the current state of the news business, the emergence of powerful social media platforms, and with another presidential election only months away, I decided to revisit the case and to dive into a few new books.

Luckily, law professor Samantha Barbas was thinking along the same lines, and in her recent book, Actual Malice: Civil Rights And The Freedom Of The Press In New York Times V. Sullivan, she tracks the events behind the historic case, which arose after the Times published an ad for donations to defend MLK on trumped-up perjury charges in Alabama during the turbulent Civil Rights era. The ad contained several inaccuracies, and Sullivan, who was Montgomery’s public safety commissioner, sued in state court under Alabama’s libel law and obtained a $500,000 judgment against the Times and several Black ministers mentioned in the ad, arguing that his reputation was impugned by implication even though he wasn’t named. Aided by a state judge who was both a white supremacist and a pedophile, local officials began enforcing the court award by seizing the homes and cars of the local ministers. Barbas lays out all of this in gripping detail, and readers will be rooting for the journalists, activists and lawyers who prevailed at the Supreme Court as well as Justice William Brennan who carefully crafted the unanimous opinion reversing the Alabama opinion and consequent actions. 

Back in the 1960s, segregationists feared the national press and its power to sway public opinion with on-the-ground reporting and images. Democracy, we all learned, benefits from a more informed citizenry. However, in the last two decades, our country has lost more than 2,000 newspapers, leaving an estimated 70 million people in places considered “news deserts” or at risk of becoming one. That’s why American University professor Margot Susca is so concerned about the concentration of media ownership in the hands of private investment funds with a single-minded focus on profits above all else. In her just-released book Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy, Susca chronicles America’s newspaper commercial history, tracking ownership, distribution and technology from the “Colonial era” up until the “mass market era,” which existed for much of the 20th century. The business of reporting the news always has involved commercial strategy and opportunity cost. What’s different now, she argues, is the media oligopoly that has emerged, resulting in disproportionate payouts to executives, neglected audiences, and a devastating lack of investment in news organizations large and small. Susca names names and makes a persuasive case. The future of news truly is at stake.   

The answer to some of these challenges might be right in front of us, or at least in our own backyard, according to former Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg and news veteran and journalism professor Dan Kennedy, authors of the engaging new book What Works In Community News. Much of national news and talk-show opinion, especially on cable outlets and social media platforms, is meant to engage, enrage and divide, hooking viewers on what some call “anger-tainment.” Clegg and Kennedy present an impressive number of media business startup models in such places as California, Iowa, New Jersey, Minnesota and Tennessee, all centered on quality local news, which they argue enhances community, transparency and, ultimately, self-governance. As the authors demonstrate, communities often have better schools, cleaner streets and lower overall borrowing costs when reporters cover local decision-makers. That’s why so many Americans care deeply about local news and its unique power to inform and hold elected leaders to account. After reading this book, some may even want to launch their own grassroots news platform.     

Here’s hoping they do. With fewer outlets for consequential news and rumblings among some Supreme Court Justices about watering down New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, we all need to pay more attention.  As legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow once said, “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” That’s never been truer than it is today. The future of news is now.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Maine: A humble appreciation of well-crafted things

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My favorite episode of No Reservations featured the late and wonderful Anthony Bourdain’s first-ever trip to Maine. While he and one of his Maine-native producers cracked open vibrant-red lobsters in a hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Rockland, they observed: “There are a few essential elements you find in the spirit of a Mainer; a humble appreciation of well-crafted things, wit dry enough you may not know when the joke ends and when it begins, and most importantly a love for the land and the sea.” 

As the son of a 12th-generation Mainer, I know this to be true.

Native Mainers are unique, unpretentious, often reserved people, and entrepreneurs hailing from Down East are often among the most determined, resilient and resourceful. Lately, many are also committed to pursuing profit with purpose as they scale regionally and nationally. I’m a big fan of Luke’s Lobster in Back Bay and the company’s commitment to sustainable seafood and coastal life and I also greatly admire Sea Bags’ leadership in upcycling local materials for their iconic, durable and well-made products. To any New Englander, these are familiar, inspiring stories of humble founders committed to ventures that express the values of the communities that launched them. And while we’re all enduring another cold Maine or Boston winter, who doesn’t need a little inspiration. Luckily, we can find it in a few new great books. 

Tops on my list is Making It In America, Boston-area journalist Rachel Slade’s page-turning chronicle of the lives of Portland-area entrepreneurs Ben and Whitney Waxman and the launch of Maine-based American Roots (americanrootswear.com), an apparel manufacturer using 100% American-sourced materials. Slade is an experienced and insightful storyteller and she details the demise of manufacturing in Maine and the U.S. over the last half century as well as the Waxmans’ grit and determination to create jobs that offer good pay, decent benefits and meaningful connection to community. You’ll find yourself rooting for this company, these people, and the commercial success of these well-crafted hoodies, sweats and T-shirts. I grew up in a union household and I also enjoyed Slade’s focus on the history and impact of U.S. manufacturing policy on local businesses and communities and the importance of workers having a collective voice. More than a few policymakers now seem to have a renewed appreciation for why “Made in America” should matter to all of us.

For innovators in Maine and New England, the environment that surrounds us has long fired the entrepreneurial imagination. In Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks — A Cool History of a Hot Commodity, science journalist Amy Brady shares the storied and multi-faceted 200-plus year history of ice in America. We’ve been “ice obsessed” from the very beginning, Brady observes. Thomas Jefferson built one of the largest icehouses in the country at Monticello, and Washington had an insatiable craving for its then-modern byproduct, ice cream. Ice harvesting and delivery was an arduous, profitable, and reliable business in New England and beyond for more than a hundred years. This is a fun and engaging book and Brady traces the cultural history that brought us “on the rocks” mixed drinks, ice boxes (and then refrigerators and freezers), frozen dinners, ice sculptures, skating rinks, ice hockey, and eventually a chain of convenience stores named for the 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. hours that they were opened to sell ice, so no one would run out while on the road. 

Of course, for those traveling, either in search of ice or for more and better opportunities, Maine has a lot to offer. Indeed, since 2020, some 34,000 people have moved to Maine, many of them immigrants, creating an overall influx for an otherwise aging and shrinking population. Now comes the challenge of how best to integrate new residents into a sustainable economy that rewards hard work with a better life. We’ve made progress on this in the past in America, as Pulitzer Prize winner David Leonhardt explains, in his powerful, incisive book Ours Was The Shining Future, and we all have a stake in trying to do it again. His revelatory chapter on U.S. immigration policy over the last century is illuminating and a must-read. 

Maine’s new “essential spirit” is emerging.  Around the time of Bourdain’s visit there in 2010, the state changed its slogan from “Vacationland” to “The Way Life Should Be,” a nod to more diverse perspectives and aspirations. With companies such as American Root converting grit, heart and ingenuity into profitable businesses, I’m now beginning to understand why.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Milton Friedman has left the building

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More than 50 years ago, Nobel economist Milton Freidman published his consequential essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” His premise — that corporations should prioritize profits over all other goals — guided many CEOs and boards of directors in the decades that followed. These days, Friedman’s clarion call is under fire, with many business leaders arguing that the world now has evolved and that power wielded by the most dominant corporations must be more consistent with the public interest and directed toward pressing societal problems. With a new year ahead, I’m seeing this in my own transactional practice with growth companies preferring M&A with like-minded partners, CEO’s mapping out financing rounds with “principled” investors, and teams of entrepreneurs planning new mission-driven businesses. Change is in the air. When that happens, I head to the new release section of my independent bookstore to learn more — and I usually leave with a stack of books.  

Lucky for me, plenty of people are seeing the same trends and developments. Among them, Ron Levin, reader, blogger and author of the insightful new book Higher Purpose Venture Capital. Levin, managing director at Alumni Ventures, is a social venture capitalist and his single-minded focus on making money while also making change is pretty unique among his peers. Levin chronicles the start and financing of 50 innovative ventures focused in areas like climate change, access to credit, financial wellness and literacy, upskilling and opportunity, food and water security, and childcare. These are substantial problems and the entrepreneurs tackling them are intense, inspired and inspiring. In example after example, Levin argues persuasively that these companies, which are investing in their people, their environment, and their community, can make a difference — and also earn substantial and consistent returns. We’ll all be better off if they succeed.  Levin is betting that they will.

History tells us that he’s not the only one. More than a century ago, Henry Ford and his corporation were sued by investors unhappy that he was diverting surplus funds to improving manufacturing processes and to employ more people. “A business that earns nothing but money is a poor business,” Ford contended, and he ultimately prevailed when the court deferred to him, reasoning that his strategy ultimately would benefit corporate shareholders rather than humanity. So, what if corporate shareholders could demand that community and the greater good have a greater role in strategy? Well, they might need a new form of corporation from the very start, according to law professor Michael Dorff, author of the instructive new book: Becoming a Public Benefit Corporation: Express Your Values, Energize Stakeholders, Make the World a Better Place. Dorff uses the Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. case as a springboard for a historical discussion of the purpose and evolution of corporations and their place in our economy. He traces the rise of the benefit corporation, the development of the B-Lab, and the practical advantages of using this new kind of structure in a new economy. Even established corporations now can become “B” corporations. Thoughtful advisors and motivated entrepreneurs will want to know this background and own this book. 

Of course, today’s world has no shortage of problems that need solving, including income inequality and climate change. For insight on those two issues in particular, I’d recommend The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America, a searing portrait of historical and entrenched poverty in rural America, across Appalachia, the cotton and tobacco belts of the Deep South and South Texas, by Princeton professors Kathryn Edin and Timothy Nelson and University of Michigan professor H. Luke Shaefer; and also Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, a fascinating look at how innovators, engineers, and designers are shaping our Nation’s roads to minimize harm to our treasured wildlife, by science journalist Ben Goldfarb. 

These new and important books belong in the hands of every mission-driven entrepreneur, investor, and policymaker.

Milton Friedman’s advice to corporate leaders is clear, simple, and plain. Yet, the world that corporations navigate now is none of those things. Businesses large and small already are beginning to play a greater role in reshaping lives and communities. This is just the beginning — and the future is coming fast.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Gifts for thinkers: 2023 Notable Books!

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We’ve made our way through another eventful year and as we close it out, you may be looking for that perfect gift for a colleague, friend, or family member.  By now, we understand the many benefits of taking the time to read, learn and listen more deeply. I’ve read some great books this year and I’m happy to recommend a dozen titles that should appeal to the most entrepreneurial minds on your list. Check them out:

Higher Purpose Venture Capital, Venture capitalist Ron Levin shares his single-minded focus on making money while also making change in this chronicle of fifty innovative mission-driven ventures. 

Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners, A must-read by ASA.org CEO Jean Eddy for parents and leaders who happen to be parents. Given the increasingly uncertain return on investment for a traditional four year degree, most kids would benefit from exploring Ikigai, the Japanese life harmony concept centered on basic questions: what do you love? what are you good at? what does the world need? and what can you get paid to do? 

The Portfolio Life, HBS Professor Christina Wallace, who graduated college with two majors, three minors, and 50 extra credits, recommends that today’s grads take a refreshing entrepreneurial approach to career planning based on diversification, connection, and lifelong learning. Is the portfolio life the new normal?  

The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America, a searing portrait of historical and entrenched poverty in rural America, across Appalachia, the cotton and tobacco belts of the Deep South, and South Texas, by Princeton professors Kathryn Edi and Timothy Nelson, and UMichigan professor Luke Shaefer.

The ROI of LOL, the smart and downright funny book by PR/communications CEO Steve Cody and comedian Clayton Fletcher.  Creating a workplace in which laughter is not only allowed, but expected, is essential for teambuilding and collaboration.

Your Face Belongs To Us, New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill tracks the rise of Clearview AI, a secretive startup developing a revolutionary face recognition app that might end privacy as we know it.  

Know What Matters, Former Panera CEO Ron Shaich engages readers with this first-hand history of the development, growth and eventual sale of one of the Nation’s iconic fast-casual brands; it’s a thoughtful distillation of how to scale, finance and maintain a “concept essence” competitive advantage at various stages of company growth.  

Powered By Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life, Dr. Neha Sangwan, who experienced burnout herself as a busy ER doctor, shares a broad and holistic approach to wellness that emphasizes partnering with your body to address your own unique needs.

Your Brain on Art: How The Arts Transforms Us, Johns Hopkins neuro expert Susan Magsamen and Google product designer Ivy Ross introduce the fascinating field of neuroaesthetics as they describe how music, movies, art, dance, and poetry can literally rewire our brains for enhanced memory formation and deeper connections.  

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains The World, Journalist and Harvard Fellow Henry Grabar describes how “Parkitecture” determines the design of new buildings, the fate of old ones, traffic patterns, and the viability and livability of our shared public spaces. Grabar persuasively argues that parking in America, and its priority in our professional, social, and financial lives, requires a bold and decisive reimagining.    

Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Business, HBS Professor and business historian Geoffrey Jones challenges head-on the notion that for-profit leaders have never be virtuous while chasing the bottom line as he brings to life “deeply responsible” business leaders ranging from chocolate pioneer George Cadbury to Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard.

The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work,   Harvard Fellow and master carpenter Mark Erlich maps out the history of the building trades in the twentieth century and the continuing role of unions in negotiating for the improved wages, conditions, and benefits enjoyed by many industries today.

This year, give the gift of insight and knowledge and support your local independent bookstore.  We’ll all be better off if you do!

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Avoid ‘Kitchen Nightmares’

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Chef Gordon Ramsay is obnoxious, confrontational and mean. In each episode of Kitchen Nightmares, the restaurant renovation series, Ramsay unleashes direct and unsparing advice on beleaguered owners and unwitting staff.  Sometimes the answer is obvious: Don’t leave fish and meat out for hours in a bucket. Other times, the restaurateur just needs to get better ingredients or eliminate items from an overcrowded menu. Ramsay’s assessment can be really tough — and incredibly entertaining to watch — and in the end, the restaurant is better positioned to thrive and grow. 

Do hardworking businesspeople really need to endure profane tirades to improve operations? Sadly, often, yes. And I will reluctantly watch — especially when food-throwing is involved. For others, I would recommend a few just-released business books.      

Dining out has changed in recent years. Owners face higher inventory prices, overworked staff and fickle, sometimes obnoxious, patrons. If only restaurants could sort the “bad tippers,” “indifferent parents,” and “overly demanding” patrons and treat them accordingly.  Soon they might, according to New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill, author of the revelatory, must-read book Your Face Belongs To Us, which chronicles the rise of Clearview AI, a secretive startup developing a revolutionary face-recognition app that might end privacy as we know it.

Hill, a veteran journalist focused on internet privacy, outlines how Clearview’s algorithm can identify virtually anyone whose picture has appeared online anywhere and anytime. Imagine wearing glasses with built-in tech that enables you access to the name, address and all publicly available details of someone in a crowded restaurant? Yikes. That self-important blowhard without a reservation won’t have to bluster “Do you know who I am?” anymore. If this innovation continues unregulated, we all will — and quickly.

Of course, technology is just one part of the overall restaurant experience, and the best operators relentlessly focus on delivering great food that people actually want, again and again, over time. For a primer on those business basics, you’ll want to check out Know What Matters, the terrific new book by the locally based former Panera CEO Ron Shaich. This is more than an engaging first-hand history of the development, growth and eventual sale of one of the nation’s iconic fast-casual brands. It’s a thoughtful distillation of how to scale, finance and maintain a “concept essence” or sustainable competitive advantage at various stages of company growth.

Shaich is direct and self-effacing, and his candor about both successes and failures is refreshing. His advice on “learning by observing” in the stores is spot-on and no doubt informed his willingness to tackle the wholesale replacement of more than 96 artificial additives from the chain’s offerings with “good for you” ingredients, even while the company was enjoying solid revenue and continued success. Shaich’s observations on handling demanding investors and balancing critical initiatives also are instructive for entrepreneurs in any industry.

Back in my days as a waiter, I preferred working for bosses like Shaich rather than Chef Ramsay. We all know that the people out front really matter and throwing hot pans and invective at the wait staff only will go so far. Being on your feet all day and cheerfully enduring rude and demanding customers takes a toll. (“Sure, happy to refill that water glass for the ninth time.”)  That’s why everyone waiting tables — and in fact, anyone in a demanding job — should read Dr. Neha Sangwan’s smart, practical book Powered By Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life. Sangwan experienced burnout herself as a busy doctor with an overwhelming caseload. Stepping back, she took time to recognize the physical warning signs so she could make important adjustments. We can do this too, by adopting Sangwan’s broad and holistic approach to wellness that emphasizes partnering with our body to address our own unique needs. 

I may even send this book to Ramsay, whose trademark anger is a telltale sign of burnout. He probably also needs to read The ROI of LOL, the smart and downright funny book by PR/communications CEO Steve Cody and comedian Clayton Fletcher. Creating a workplace in which laughter is not only allowed but expected is essential for teambuilding and collaboration. Using “yes and” improvisation skills and getting hit occasionally with an overcooked T-bone might even inspire better performance for the right team.

Gordon Ramsay’s leadership style seems to work for him. For the rest of us, great ideas from these new books could be part of our own recipe for success.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

AI, Ikigai, and the new world of work

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Class is back in session, and educators at every level are struggling with how best to position students for future success in a rapidly changing world. That’s a big task, especially given developments in artificial intelligence and the automation it will bring. According to experts, most jobs in manufacturing, construction, finance, tech, and professional services aren’t going away — but they will change immeasurably, and AI will transform them, allowing people to do things faster, more efficiently, and at higher levels, leaving more room for strategy, creativity, and well, thinking. 

So will we use that extra time intentionally, to think more about how to make a living and also how to make a life? We should. And for the sake of this next and newest generation of workers, we can — with few new insightful books.

To be sure, even without the press of AI, the best companies now are focusing on providing more dignity and meaning to the daily grind of work. That’s essential for building a sustainable competitive advantage, retaining employees and enhancing the bottom line, according to MIT Professor Zeynep Ton. In her thoughtful book The Case For Good Jobs, Zeynep details how an all-too-familiar, relentless focus on cost-cutting and profits has led to a culture of low pay, high turnover, and low expectations at many companies, public and private. Zeynep persuasively argues that managers need to move beyond the shallow “no one wants to work anymore” lament, examine the specific “whys,” and adopt a “good jobs strategy” built on the expectation that motivating and paying employees to help clients and customers will lead to greater satisfaction, deeper meaning, and ultimately more robust profits. Her examples of the good jobs strategy in action at Costco, Trader Joe’s, and QuikTrip are well worth reviewing. 

An entrepreneurial approach to career and life 

Of course, these days, thinking about AI also is causing considerable anxiety for important stakeholders adjacent to the workforce, namely, parents. Planning is what we do, and from early on, we want our kids to engage in useful learning, explore their unique passions, and otherwise be well prepared to take on a productive and rewarding career that offers financial independence and stability. The challenge is that while we are planning, the world is changing. The days of starting and ending a career with the same employer are just about over. For that reason, today’s generation of workers will be best served by acknowledging their time, talents, and passions as a portfolio of interests to be balanced and rebalanced to serve different objectives throughout their working lives, according to HBS Professor Christina Wallace. In this smart and practical book The Portfolio Life, Wallace, who graduated college with two majors, three minors, and 50 extra credits, recommends that today’s grads take an entrepreneurial approach to career and life planning based on diversification, connection, and lifelong learning. Will the portfolio life become the new normal?  It’s an intriguing read.

Indeed, a “portfolio” development process probably needs to start even earlier, and in middle school, according to educator and non-profit CEO Jeany Eddy in her forthcoming must-read book: Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners  Given the increasingly uncertain return on investment for a four year college degree, most kids would benefit from exploring a variety of pathways to a good job and stable future, whether through trade schools, apprenticeships, or specialized training in coding, alternative energy, and infrastructure and transportation, and sooner rather than later. Eddy, the CEO of American Student Assistance (whose Board I chair), urges early contemplation of Ikigai, the Japanese life harmony concept centered on basic questions: what do you love, what are you good at, what does the world need, and what can you get paid to do.

Mark Erlich, fellow at Harvard’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy, reinforces that message in his book: The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work. Erlich maps out the history of the building trades in the twentieth century and the continuing role of unions in negotiating for the improved wages, conditions, and benefits enjoyed by many industries today. These are good solid jobs. Moreover, building things provides meaning. Even with AI, infrastructure spending will continue to provide substantial opportunities for young people interested in obtaining specialized skills in industries on which we all depend. 

The world of work is changing faster than ever before, thanks in part to AI. Now is the time for leaders, policymakers, and most especially parents, to embrace the future and restart a conversation about the dignity and purpose of work.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

AI is here, so now what?

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The age of artificial intelligence has arrived. Congress is holding hearings on the dangers of AI-assisted deepfakes, scams and misinformation. Venture capital firms are anxiously prioritizing pitch decks with AI at the center and “as a service,” and the Screen Actors Guild has seen the future and it involves AI-generated performances for no additional pay. Seems as if everyone is grappling with the profound implications of a brave new world shaped by machine learning.   

To be sure, generative AI now is capable of doing knowledge work that none of us could have imagined five years ago. Does that mean, for example, that AI might replace lawyers (shudder…)? In some areas, maybe, but the tools still need significant work and they won’t replicate human judgment and creativity. This past June, a federal judge in New York sanctioned two lawyers who submitted a legal brief that included six fictitious case citations generated by an AI tool that did the “research.” (Note to my law students: I always check citations and every Latin phrase.). How then can decision makers and knowledge workers prepare for what lies ahead? Simple. Step back, lean in with curiosity, and as always, dive into the unknown with a few essential books.     

Chat GPT and similar AI technologies can learn, evolve and operate with sophistication when fed the right content and data. Of course, our human brains already do this, and in fact, we can amplify our learning, restore our mental health and cultivate even greater creativity if we regularly expose our brains and selves to the arts, according to the fascinating new book Your Brain on Art: How The Arts Transform Us, by Johns Hopkins expert Susan Magsamen and Google product designer Ivy Ross. Several regions across our brain work together to determine saliency, so that we can sort, recall and process information.  The emerging field of neuroaesthetics, or neuroarts, is focused on how music, movies, art, dance and poetry connect those regions, building stronger synapses and literally rewiring your brain for enhanced memory formation and deeper connections. This is compelling stuff. I was particularly intrigued by the example of MIT’s pioneering work on how treatments combining light and sound (at 40 hertz, close to the lowest “E” on a piano) can activate microglial cells and possibly erase beta amyloid brain plaque in Alzheimer’s patients. Will ChatGPT inspire new and different art forms to similar positive effect?

In the meantime, business leaders hoping to use art (analog or AI-generated) to enhance team connections may want to start with comedy. Why not an all-hands screening of the iconic Will Ferrell movie Anchorman and a group discussion of Kind Of A Big Deal, the hilarious and insightful new book by NYU Professor Saul Austerlitz? For fans of Anchorman, now almost two decades old, the behind-the-scenes history of how the final script and casting came together is revealing and fun. Austerlitz also details the many challenges Ferrell faced in getting the film financed. The whole Anchorman project encountered many rejections and was a no-go until Ferrell’s unexpected success in the film Old School. Funders appreciated Ferrell’s tenacity and liked the storyline, but wouldn’t back it unless it was similar to a prior hit. Sound familiar? Tech entrepreneurs pitching investors will recognize the “chicken or the egg” conundrum and appreciate the importance of an original story or pitch in completing a round. Would AI have changed the outcome? Probably not: Ron Burgundy is a unique character from the mind of Will Ferrell. Per Ron: “People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.”

Finally, who uses AI tools and how they use them will be critical for most businesses. For that reason, I strongly recommend that every CEO and board member read psychology professor Jean Twenge’s new book: Generations: The Real Difference Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean For America’s Future. This data-driven book based on survey data from more than 39 million people across generations is revelatory, incisive and surprising. If you want to better understand how team members and target customers — from Boomers to Gen-Zers — consume, process and communicate all sorts of information, you need to add this book to your stack.

These are early days for AI. How can we use it to enhance creativity, connection and communication in our own lives and beyond? Fasten your seatbelts, we are about to find out. 

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

On the road, and paving the way for change

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School is out, summer is here, and for most of us this again will be a time of rest, reflection and reconnection. After the last few summers close to home, we’re also now ready to hit the road again, anxious for a change in scenery. I’m hoping that more than a few people, inspired by Kerouac, Steinbeck, or even Chevy Chase, will embark on a cross-country trip to explore more of America from the freedom of the open road. For those mired in the day-to-day of economic turbulence, partisan polarization and negative news, a trek along Route 66 might offer renewed hope, broader understanding and a change in the way of looking at our shared problems and common goals. How might an inspired business decision maker and strategic thinker prepare for such an auspicious journey? By taking along a few good books (as if you had to ask).

Of course, like most other trips these days, this begins with Waze and a strategy for parking at stops along the way. In fact, parking itself is one of the issues that divides us, confounds us and prevents us from being our best collective selves, according to journalist Henry Grabar, author of the entertaining new book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains The World. We want free parking right out front, any time, every time, and we are willing (often quite literally) to fight for it. Grabar chronicles how we have relegated much of the nation’s most valuable real estate to car storage — much of that space (in publicly financed stadiums (for example), unused and ignored most of the time. “Parkitecture” determines the design of new buildings, the fate of old ones, traffic patterns, and the viability and livability of our shared public spaces, according to Grabar. I found his description of Chicago’s recent and disastrous 75-year lease of its parking meters to a group of investors led by Morgan Stanley riveting and his take on mandated parking as the prime obstacle to affordable housing insightful. Parking in America, and its priority in our professional, social and financial lives, requires a bold and decisive reimagining.

Are we up to that task? Could a few people, refreshed from a family road trip and inspired by scenic vistas, spark major policy changes around parking and urban planning to improve our communities? Yes, probably, and not so fast, according to policy experts Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox in their new book: Gradual: The Case For Incremental Change in a Radical Age. Despite calls from politicians and activists on both sides of a variety of controversial issues, especially on hyper-polarized social media, progress in areas such as climate change, Social Security expansion and criminal-justice reform, has been incremental, the result of the gradual give-and-take built into our American system of government. Berman and Fox’s take on immigration, the media’s pejorative coverage of it, and how some unlikely states are leading the way forward was especially thought-provoking.

Change, like memorable travel, often requires patience, vision and leadership. Someone has to chart the course and remain steady when things don’t go as planned. In King: A Life, Jonathan Eig tells us how Martin Luther King Jr. did just that. Eig’s authoritative biography of King, the first in decades, is masterful, detailing how King moved from protesting Jim Crow laws in the South to opposing segregation in the North in cities such as Chicago and Detroit. Eig draws on archival sources and dozens of interviews to present MLK in all of his complicated humanity. He traces MLK’s travel through the U.S., detailing his frustration, insecurities and fears, and revealing an America fraught with inequality and division but also receptive, in many disparate places, to King’s inspired message of peace, hope and economic justice. To my mind, the best books about leadership don’t use that word in their title. This surely is one of them.

Finally, not every summer road trip will include only nonfiction titles. I’d also strongly recommend a playlist that includes Chris Stapleton’s aptly named Traveller, an amazing album from a once-in-a-generation talent, and two novels for non-strategic, poolside reading: West with Giraffes, which is Lynda Rutledge’s engaging coming-of-age adventure, and Ghost Music, An Yu’s haunting story of grief, music and self-discovery.

With the promise of summer rolling out before us, here’s hoping that we all have a chance to “get out there” and reflect on the collective challenges ahead. You might even be surprised at where you might end up.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Woke, broke, or bespoke?

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Of all the sources I consulted for a definition of “woke,” the satirical news site The Onionseems to capture it best, in a series of incredibly funny, apocryphal quotes attributed to random politicians, celebrities and business leaders.

My favorite: “Whatever it is, we need a few hundred op-eds to nail it down.”

These days, businesses large and small are trying to reach customers, grow revenue and build a sustainable competitive advantage — all while navigating cultural fault lines. Just this month, Florida, like Texas and Kentucky, enacted a law barring the use of state funds to “promote” environmental, social and goals. Additionally, Disney, Anheuser-Busch, Maybelline and other consumer-facing companies are managing their own “anti-ESG” and “woke-related” controversies as they balance short-term profits with long-term goals.

So how can a thoughtful business leader pursue a growth strategy in these fraught times? Not easily, but as always, business planning should start with a few new insightful books.

For starters, let’s acknowledge the considerable angst driving these hot-button topics. Corporate monopolies; regulatory gaps, especially in tech; income inequality; and the rapidly evolving nature of corporate responsibility overall are important issues at the forefront of many strategic conversations. In the new book Chokepoint Capitalism, writer and tech expert Cory Doctorow and law school professor Rebecca Giblin argue that we are in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism” with companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook wielding disproportionate and exploitative influence over creators, intellectual property and much of what we read and put on our playlists each day. Their narrative of how concentrated corporate power in news, publishing, and music, in effect has “captured” American culture is compelling and their suggestions for “braking anti-competitive flywheels,” including copyright law changes, are sensible calls to action.

Indeed, an increasing number of critics say that legislative reforms are urgently needed to curb the excesses of capitalism, especially in private equity. Brendan Ballou, a federal prosecutor who served as special counsel for private equity at the Department of Justice and the author of Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, lays out his case that Blackrock, Carlyle, KKR and other PE firms now have become the largest employers in the U.S. in a variety of industries, ushering in a “New Gilded Age.” He persuasively outlines how the largest PE firms’ relentless and singular profits-at-all-costs strategy has been detrimental not only to portfolio company employees and retirees but also to consumers as they pursue homeownership, nursing home care, health and property insurance, fair lending — even responsible oversight of the nation’s prison systems.  Ballou’s concerns about industry consolidation, privatization of public services, political lobbying and the notorious carried interest loophole are well-reasoned and his practical and detailed proposals for systemic reform also are well worth the read.     

Small wonder that concentrated economic power and profit are prompting a wholesale reassessment of the purpose and responsibility of business. Does capitalism need to be reimagined, or is “wokeness” and ESG — in the words of one Congressman last week — “just window dressing for … activism and … ideology.” Turns out, we’ve been here before, and the answer to these questions has been evolving at least since the early 19th century. In his outstanding new book, Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Business, HBS professor and business historian Geoffrey Jones challenges head-on the notion that for-profit leaders have never be virtuous while chasing the bottom line. 

Jones chronicles the business lives of “deeply responsible” business leaders ranging from chocolate pioneer George Cadbury and retail visionary Edward Filene to tech innovator An Wang and activist-turned-business titan Anita Roddick. Jones doesn’t sugarcoat the personal challenges and business obstacles these leaders faced, but instead he focuses on the values that motivated them to embrace strategic goals beyond traditional income-statement metrics. This is a timely and insightful read. Across cultures and time, Jones argues, deeply responsible leaders have done three basic things: sold genuinely useful products and services, engaged stakeholders with respect and humility, and believed in the importance of community and their business’s role in it. Whatever some might call those practices in a speech or letter to shareholders, they certainly aren’t new and we need more of them now.

Overheated political rhetoric will make government reforms for today’s challenges more difficult, at least in the short term. In the meantime, corporate leaders should be thinking more broadly and strategically about the constituencies they serve and the communities they might help build. That may or not be more “woke,” but it certainly is more responsible, and we’ll all be better off.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Talking, and not talking

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In the mockumentary Best in Show, Sherri Ann Cabot (played by the incomparable Jennifer Coolidge), sitting beside her addled, wizened husband, 40 years her senior, relates what they have in common: soup, snow peas … and also, she coos after pausing, “talking and not talking.” In fact, she adds, they could “not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about.” 

This could be us too. We love communicating, and we use words every day, all day, in so many media and contexts. For you, the C-suite executive, co-founder, team builder and manager, that should mean talking and not talking thoughtfully, and of course, to do so expertly, you should be reading a few new insightful books.

For his book Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way, Wharton Professor Jonah Berger parsed thousands of movie scripts, academic papers and online reviews to identify how language powers influence and creates impact. Readers will appreciate Berger’s actionable “six magic word” framework for (i) activating agency, (ii) conveying confidence, (iii) questioning carefully, (iv) leveraging concreteness, (v) employing emotion, and (vi) framing similarity and difference. This is great stuff. Berger seamlessly covers the intricacies of can’ts vs. don’ts, hedging words that detract, and how to use emotion to connect to people you don’t really know. Among his essential advice: Be an active reader, ditch the “ums” and “uhs,” and for their own sake, stop telling your kids they’re smart.

However, before you employ your enhanced word skills, know that leaders who talk less achieve more. So says Dan Lyons, bestselling author and writer for the hit show Silicon Valley, in his fun and entertaining new book: STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut In An Endlessly Noisy World. We’re all overtalkers, Lyons explains, and in our eagerness to share everything, in real time, all the time, we fail in negotiations, meetings and, often, in relationships, both business and personal.  Lyons argues that we need to work much harder and even more intentionally at deep and active listening, and he shows how it can be done in a variety of situations, simple and complex, at home and at work. If we can become more like Tim Cook, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Albert Einstein and master the art of shutting up, we’ll be better off in body, mind and spirit.

Journalist and MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan would agree with this, and in his useful new guidebook, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, he advises leaders to start with quiet, deep and thorough preparation. Armed with demonstrable facts, you can then listen critically, absorbing and processing, and also listen empathetically, connecting with the speaker and trying to see the world through their eyes. Hasan is a great storyteller and he uses compelling examples from historical debates to emphasize these techniques. I loved his chapter on “Gish Gallopers,” those all-too-familiar commentators, politicians and debaters who try to bury adversaries, including lazy reporters, in a torrent of incorrect, irrelevant and idiotic arguments, so much so that time and media debate formats don’t allow for adequate responses. Arguments large and small are a part of everyday life. As Hasan would explain with his Rule of Three, using them to inspire, inform and persuade takes practice, learning and time.   

Just starting an argument can mean saving lives. Saket Soni, labor organizer and activist, gave an urgent speech in Hindi to an assembled group of migrant workers trapped in a squalid “man camp.” The crowd was silent and grumbling. To make his point, he had to start all over again, this time in English. His huddled, desperate audience, men from Tamil Nadu and Kerala who barely knew Hindi or English, had scraped together $20,000 each for the chance to live in the US and work on hurricane-damaged oil rigs in Mississippi in 2006. 

Soni’s new book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America, is a riveting page-turner and one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. Soni’s rhetoric and perseverance and the worker’s endurance and determination reveal an unforgettable and infuriating story of forced labor in modern America.  Well-chosen words, especially from courageous people at just the right time, can have powerful consequences.

In the end, we use around 16,000 words a day, according to estimates cited in Magic Words. As leaders, parents and friends, when we choose and position them carefully, we can make more of them count. And that’s certainly something you should talk or not talk about after reading these incredibly worthwhile books.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Truly, madly, and sometimes deeply with Philomena Cunk

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Philomena Cunk, the irreverent, confoundedly misinformed journalist on the Netflix series Cunk on Earth, tackles topics head on. Armed with notes just handed to her, insights from her friend Paul, research on YouTube, and her own life experience, the intrepid Cunk (comedian Diane Morgan) interviews distinguished experts on topics ranging from evolution and religion to history, music and the rise of technology. I’ll admit upfront: I love this kind of goofy humor, built as it is on challenging norms and asking unserious questions of very serious people. Cunk’s voiceover intros are hilarious: “Because no one had invented camouflage yet, the British troops of the time wore bright red coats and were consequently shot in the thousands, while looking amazing.”

Yet, for business decision-makers, the truths that make Cunk both funny and insightful pose very real challenges. What makes information reliable, authentic and actionable? Is that expert or my team telling me what they really think? How do I make rational decisions in an era of deep fakes, disinformation, and general distrust? Indeed, this month, the U.S. Supreme Court could address some of these very questions when it hears arguments in a landmark case involving Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which provides social-media companies broad liability protection for user-posted content. A decision should come in June. In the meantime, what’s a manager to do? As usual, and unlike Cunk, I’d recommend a few good books.

If news about the world and angst about the future have you unsettled, that’s “normal,” according to Rohit Bhargarva and Henry Coutinho-Mason, trend experts and authors of the engaging new book The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work, and Thrive In The Next Decade. The key, they say, is to more deeply consider the future and plan your place in it. In 10 short, topical chapters, the authors take readers on a journey, identifying emerging trends in areas including learning, media, health, wellness, and remote work, showcasing the “instigators/”innovators responding to them, and positing how we might use innovation collectively for a better, more just and sustainable world. I was especially intrigued by the chapter on “Certified Media” and the startups addressing the proliferation of AI-generated disinformation. Can more technology restore trust in information and news? Would media outlets support a certificate or standard that authenticated all images and videos before publications? This book will leave you thinking — while Cunk ponders whether Egyptian mummies rode bikes.

Of course, for Cunk, all experts and prognosticators should be approached with skepticism. Colleagues can deceive or mislead us, especially when trying to avoid blame, an uncomfortable topic, or a project they can’t get that excited about. Mindreader: The New Science of Deciphering What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are, the latest fascinating book by Dr. David Lieberman, a psychotherapist and “lie-detector” who instructs FBI and law and security agents, sorts some of this out. Lieberman unpacks how liars tell and sell stories, often long ones, embellishing responses that should be short, simple and plain. How liars tell those stories matters too — and passive voice (“Mistakes were made”) and impersonal pronouns (you and they, not me and mine) can be revealing tells. Discerning leaders will enjoy Lieberman’s practical insights. No one likes to be fooled.

In fact, that very concern might be driving decision-making and strategy at many levels these days. I really enjoyed Foolproof, the wonderful and thought-provoking new book by University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, centered on how sugrophobia, the fear of being duped, exploited and played for a sucker, crowds and distorts business negotiations and everyday thinking.

Wilkinson-Ryan, who also holds a doctorate in psychology, teaches Contracts, and she provides countless examples of how regret-aversion — not engaging because something appears too good to be true or lending aid because “someone might be a scammer” — can inhibit creativity, connection and win-win solutions. Her discussion of how some politicians and leaders weaponize the sucker narrative is a must-read for critical thinkers. Small wonder that Cunk believes we’re all deceived by the “facts” about the moon landing and even the very existence of the moon — it’s all spelled out in a Youtube video that smarter people should watch.

Where does all of this lead? Can we refocus our thinking and reclaim integrity, trust, and authenticity in a rapidly changing world? Only time will tell. After all, “thinking about thinking is the hardest sort of thinking there is,” according to Philomena Cunk.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Maybe We Need More “Travels with Charley”

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Thank goodness for dogs. For so many, especially during the last three tense and turbulent years, our dogs have been a source of tactile comfort and unconditional companionship. Dogs also have connected us, especially in parks and public places, allowing us to share our stories and in many ways, our shared humanity. No wonder more than 48 million households now have a dog, a number that increased by more than 11% during the pandemic.

As we begin 2023, we need our dog friends (and poop bags, for those community walks) more than ever. Rising inflation, global conflicts, and rapid technological change have most decisionmakers worried about the direction of the overall economy and their future in it. Will this be another year “gone to the dogs?”

I don’t know, but these days, I’m thinking about an earlier time, a memorable dog, and a gifted writer trying to make sense of a shifting economy, a new generation, and a changing country. In Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck chronicles a cross-country road trip with his travel companion and friend, Charley, a wise and sensitive brown poodle, who helps him connect to people and their revealing economic stories. Published in 1962, the book was among Steinbeck’s last and best, and it set the stage for many important cultural, business, and policy conversations. Could a current savvy thinker with a precocious dog retrace some of Steinbeck’s steps and restart important dialogues today? Sure, but I’d recommend that they prepare by reading a few recent and insightful books.

Maine is among the first states Steinbeck and Charley visit, and there they encounter a listless and unhappy waitress, working paycheck to paycheck in a dead-end job. Echoes of this scene are reflected in business journalist Rick Wartzman’s recent book Still Broke, an engaging must-read history of Walmart and its often-fraught relationship with its frontline store employees. As one of the nation’s largest employers, Walmart has substantial influence, and its determined efforts to improve wages, training and benefits for a more full-time workforce are impressive. Still, Wartzman argues, Walmart and other influential companies can only get us so far. Congress needs to do more — actually, a lot more — given that 80% of Americans need to earn at least $20 per hour to make a living family wage. Six decades after Steinbeck’s trek, many American families still struggle just to stay in place.

Continuing into the Midwest, Charley helps Steinbeck meet people in Ohio and Indiana for a conversation about local and national news. In contrast to New Englanders, these folks are eager and quick to engage visitors and learn more about new and different places. Turns out that stories, especially local ones well told, were a critical source of inspiration, innovation and imagination to readers and listeners across communities. That’s still true, according to Quinnipiac dean Chris Roush, author of the terrific book The Future Of Business Journalism: Why It Matters For Wall Street And Main Street. The consolidation of business media has led to nonstop national coverage of public markets and big companies, much to the detriment of local stories that matter to the entrepreneurs, business owners and policymakers trying to build and sustain their own economic communities. Roush’s clear and direct suggestions for training young business journalists and expanding local-media business models are incredibly important. Steinbeck, who also understood the connective power of shared stories, would agree wholeheartedly.

Finally, Steinbeck and Charley visit California and the West, where Steinbeck laments the steady march of technology and its uncertain impact on society. We have much the same worries today, even more so in an interdependent, interconnected world. For an update on those pressing concerns, I’d strongly recommend reading two books in tandem: Chip War: The Fight For The World’s Most Critical Technology, a detailed history of the semiconductor industry and its vital importance to national security, by Tufts professor Chris Miller, and also Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China, an urgent and provocative assessment of the global economy and shifting geopolitical alliances, by Tufts professor Michael Beckley and Johns Hopkins professor Hal Brands.

As Steinbeck notes toward the end, we all move on from a “permanent and changeless past.”  We need to understand, as he last did, standing among the redwoods, that the future will arrive and “we can’t go home again.” For 2023 and beyond, we all might handle that insight just a little bit better with a trusted four-legged friend at our side.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

 Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Top Ten Must-Reads from 2022

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As we close out another busy and eventful year, you may be looking for that perfect gift for a colleague, friend or family member. What better gifts than new ideas and wisdom! I’ve read some great books this year, and I’m happy to recommend 10 titles that should appeal to the most entrepreneurial minds on your list.

Top 10 Books on Entrepreneurship and Business:

This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You

I loved this terrific book by neuroscientist Ogi Gas and music producer and neuroscientist Susan Rogers, who also collaborated with Prince on Purple Rain.What does music cognition have to do with business? Well, your taste in music and why you prefer jazz over reggae, or punk over classic rock, can reveal a lot about how your one and only brain works, and in turn, how your style, originality, and personality influence everything you do and the experiences you want to have — as a person, as a leader, and in the world. Want to know more about someone else? Ask about their favorite songs.

Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet

University of Pittsburgh professor Michael Meyer lays out the fascinating story of how Franklin, on his death, gifted $2,000 pounds to each of his hometowns of Boston and Philadelphia to establish microloan funds to jumpstart the careers and businesses of coopers, blacksmiths, carpenters and others in the “leather apron” class. What happened after that is a fascinating tale of two cities.

Rebel With A Clause

Roving grammarian Ellen Jovin visited all 50 states with her folding Grammar Table and fielded questions from interested and interesting visitors. Turns out a LOT of people care about grammar and Jovin’s entertaining and engaging explanations of Oxford commas, sentence starting conjunctions, and non-referential pronouns–among many others–make for informative and fun reading. This book is for the language lover on your list … or “whomever.”

Purpose + Profit: How Business Can Lift Up The World

HBS Professor George Serafeim tells leaders that they can and should deploy their own skills and knowledge to improve the world. The purpose and focus of business is changing from a model of shareholder primacy toward a broader expectation that companies contribute to society. Serafeim provides plenty of data and lots of examples of how companies and investors can implement purpose driven initiatives.

When Women Lead

CNBC’s Julia Boorstin chronicles the challenges, qualities, and insights of more than 120 successful women leaders. The book is unique for its breadth, depth and data, and Boorstin’s storytelling of how and why inspired women tend to build strong, purpose-driven companies while establishing new patterns in male-dominated markets is sharp and insightful.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America

In this provocative, thought-provoking book, New York Times business reporter David Gelles traces Welch’s ascent at GE and his unrelenting focus on maximizing shareholder value, which meant pretty much exclusively an always-increasing stock price. Gelles envisions an emerging inclusive and mission-oriented business model for future corporate leaders.

Build For Tomorrow

Entrepreneur Magazine Editor Jason Feiffer shows and tells us how we can best adapt to continuing and sometimes uncomfortable change. The numerous stories, examples, and use cases are fun to read and Feiffer’s advice is spot on.

Golden: The Power of Silence in a World Of Noise

An incredibly absorbing and insightful new book by leadership experts Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz. Readers will value their countless examples and practical tips on recognizing opportunities for restorative silence every day, every week and all the time.

The Art of Insubordination: How To Dissent And Defy Effectively

George Mason University Professor Todd Kashdan traces the history and theory of dissent and change in a variety of contexts. This is an easy-to-read, step-by-step playbook on how to become a persuasive and patient dissenter.

Influence Is Your Superpower

Yale Professor Zoe Chance’s smart, practical book shows how to build and use your unique influence. You don’t need to be a celebrity, YouTube influencer, or celebrated expert to give actionable advice and shape behavior.

This year, whether your list includes audio or old-school book readers, give the gift of insight and innovation and support your local independent bookstore.  We’ll all be better off if you do.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

 Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

The Sound of Leadership

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This fall, former rock climber and current billionaire Yvon Chouinard announced that he was giving everything away. Patagonia, the iconic outdoor clothing company Choinard founded almost 50 years ago, soon will be owned by a uniquely structured nonprofit trust that will use future profits to fight climate change.

“Instead of ‘going public’,” Choinard explained, “we’re going purpose.’”

For some executives, this was music to their ears. In fact, for many, this is exactly how leaders should sound and what they should do in a post-pandemic, more purpose-driven business world. So, what can a thoughtful executive do to prepare for the turbulence and tension that comes with wanting to do well while also doing good? As usual, you can start with a few good books, but this time, only after listening to a few great songs.

Wait — which songs? Well, that’s entirely and uniquely up to you, according to neuroscientists Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas, authors of the new and wonderful book, This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You. Your taste in music and why you prefer jazz over reggae, or punk over classic rock, can reveal a lot about how your one and only brain works, and in turn, how your style, originality, and personality influence everything you do and the experiences you want to have — as a person, as a leader, and in the world. Want to know more about someone else? Ask about their favorite songs. Rogers, a faculty member at Berklee College of Music and one of the most successful female record producers of all time, knows a lot about the music business and the leadership values of creativity, grit, and challenging convention. Her work as Prince’s chief sound engineer for Purple Rain and her stints as producer for Barenaked Ladies and many others ground her many incisive observations about human cognition. Rogers belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and this book belongs in your library.

So, will knowing why I like classical music will help me be a better leader? Quite possibly, according to Wharton Dean Erika James and Simmons University President Lynn Wooten, authors of the smart, practical new book, The Prepared Leader. Self-awareness and preparation are critical for today’s mission-driven leaders who need to strike a balance among profits, people, and planet. Seeing crisis as opportunity isn’t easy, but James and Wooten thoughtfully frame the necessary skills. In fact, they point out, prepared leadership can be a lot like jazz, the music genre reflecting the most collaboration and improvisation, with leadership rotating as the music/circumstance flows and changes.

Indeed, leaders who can more deeply hear their own music also can more capably communicate, inspire, and make sustainable change. A useful guide for that discernment is The Answer is You: A Guidebook To Creating A Life Full Of Impact, by Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT’s Solve Initiative. This is a rich, deep, and thoughtful book for both emerging and established leaders who want to solve real problems using their own distinct “superpowers.” Amouyel encourages intentional thinking, noting that “your life and your potential impact are more than just your job” and that we are all diminished when we define ourselves by our title rather than our talents. HBS Professor George Serafeim sees this mindset too and in his new book, Purpose + Profit: How Business Can Lift Up The World, he tells leaders that they can and should deploy their own skills and knowledge to improve the world. The purpose and focus of business is changing from a model of shareholder primacy toward a broader expectation that companies contribute to society. Serafeim provides plenty of data and lots of examples of how companies and investors can implement purpose driven initiatives to attract and motivate employees, broaden strategy to include constituencies, and build sustainable competitive advantage.  Entrepreneurs launching B corporations and experienced leaders trying to figure out where to start will find this to be an incredibly helpful and hopeful book.

How will your purpose-driven leadership sound? Consider the timeless advice of the late, wise, and thoughtful Howard Thurman: “The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams, your ambitions, so that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you … because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing.”

Read in the Boston Business Journal

 Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

The Pleasing Appeal of Harry Styles

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Harry Styles, right now the most famous entertainer on the planet, rose to acclaim as a member of the boy band One Direction. His catchy, confessional lyrics, gender-neutral retro style, and upbeat, ineffable charm on stage have made him an icon. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter easily fills stadiums across the U.S. and beyond, and he soon will appear in several soon-to-be released films.

As the dad of a superfan, I’m long aware of his renown. (Harry, remember that small SUV that tailed your tour bus in the Boston area, the one blasting As It Was and Watermelon Sugar, with the girls screaming “HARRY!!!” at every stoplight?… Thanks for not pressing charges.) Styles is indeed a generational talent and with thoughtful choices, hard work, and a bit of luck, his entertainment career will continue its soaring trajectory. Yet, I’m less interested in his next album (Harry’s House is all-around solid; good luck topping that!) and more focused on his entrepreneurial work, and more specifically, his newly launched, eco-friendly, consumer goods company: Pleasing. Building a brand into a business is challenging and I hope Harry will consider a few business-oriented books alongside those new scripts he’ll be reading in the coming months.

Pleasing.com launched last year, starting with nail and skin care products made from sustainable and plant-based ingredients as well as apparel from recycled and organic fabric, some of which was modeled by Mick Fleetwood, another super-fan dad. Harry’s partner in the venture, Emma Spring, is his former assistant. Kudos to Harry for recognizing the power and potential of a woman-co-founder. He and Emma will want to read When Women Lead, the upcoming book by CNBC tech correspondent Julia Boorstin, who chronicles the challenges, qualities, and insights of more than 120 successful women leaders. The book is unique for its breadth, depth and data, and Boorstin’s storytelling of how and why inspired women tend to build strong, purpose-driven companies while establishing new patterns in male-dominated markets, is sharp and insightful. We need more books that challenge set narratives and expand the definition of effective leadership beyond men. Pleasing seems to incorporating some of Boorstin’s “Learning Lessons” already.

Of course, Boorstin and others would advise Harry and Emma not to go it alone or to rely solely on outside professionals, investment bankers, consultants and legal advisors. As Pleasing expands, they’ll need a broader leadership team and advice informed by real experience to scale.  For more on that, they should read Build Your Board, Build Your Business, by economist, investor, and entrepreneur Barbara Clarke, the new, engaging, read-in-one-sitting guide to the basics and benefits of building an effective board for first-time entrepreneurs. Of course, building a board is more than just adding inexperienced celebrities as advisors. Harry and Emma need an intentional strategy of enlisting people who can be true thought partners in their mission-driven strategy. The best board members are selfless, honest, objective, experienced, loyal, and along the way, willing to engage in healthy, necessary, and uncomfortable conversations about operations, money, and growth. For more on that, I’d recommend the new second edition of Startup Boards: A Field Guide To Building and Leading An Effective Board of Directors, by author/ venture capitalist Brad Feld and entrepreneurs Matt Blumberg and Mahendra Ramsinghani, especially the chapters on board recruiting, relationship dynamics, and critical differences between advisory boards and “real” boards of directors. Also, Harry should call Rihanna. She’s busy with her billion-dollar Fenty cosmetics line, but she certainly knows the industry and may have time to be on Pleasing’s board.

Finally, although Harry is continuing his ambitious tour through New York, Austin, Chicago and then Europe, he and Emma will need to remain in close contact about Pleasing’s operations, product development, and marketing support for aligned non-profits. Founder communication shouldn’t be delegated to third parties or left to an email or text from a private plane. Harry should read The Art of Conscious Conversation, the incisive upcoming book by communications expert and mediator Chuck Wisner, which offers practical tips on listening, reflecting, and collaborating with team members, business partners, and family. Given that Harry’s lyrics tap the emotions beneath the surface of common conversations, this book is a must-read for him. He’ll definitely need more Late Night Talking.

Pleasing seems to be off to a good start in a crowded, competitive space.  Fortunately, Harry is a daring original, willing to try new approaches that get noticed. Going forward, that’s undoubtedly what will matter the most.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

 Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Chocolate, Capitalism, and a Sweet Approach

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Last year, as we emerged from our pandemic cocoons, Americans filed more than 5.4 million new business applications, according to U.S. Census figures. I know — we incorporated more than three dozen of them, a number that seems to increase with each new year.

Some were formed by workers who were part of the Great Resignation, others by tech founders who always wanted to be their own boss, and still more by entrepreneurs who feel the urgency to be part of something larger, a new generation of builders committed to changing the way business, capitalism and our economy actually work. When advising these amazing, energetic risk takers, I’m thinking often these days of chocolate, and well, more specifically, the example of Mars Inc., the global and iconic American company responsible for such confectionary miracles as Milky Way bars, Twix, and M&Ms, as well as pet food and related products. Judging from the new and soon-to-be-released business books that I have recently read, I am not alone.

Founded by the Mars family, privately held and headquartered in Virginia, Mars has been around for more than 100 years and employs more than 130,000 people worldwide. Its owners, the family’s fourth generation, are famously tight-lipped and publicity shy, but that hasn’t stopped commentators from touting the company’s consistent and time-tested “old school” strategy of balancing profits, valuing people and working alongside outside stakeholders to solve community problems. This is an enviable and admirable path that, according to some business experts, too many U.S. companies have lost along the way. According to The New York Times business reporter David Gelles, author of The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America, at least some the fault lies with media-created business heroes such as Jack Welch, the late and formerly much-lauded CEO of General Electric. Gelles traces Welch’s ascent at GE and his unrelenting focus on maximizing shareholder value, which meant pretty much exclusively an always-increasing stock price. In Gelles’ telling, Welch’s use of mass layoffs, rank-and-yank firings, relentless acquisitions, and creative accounting, were key tools in remaking a staid and steady GE into a Wall Street juggernaut that enriched institutional shareholders and a select few executives at the top — while good jobs were outsourced, corporate culture was decimated and worker wages and benefits suffered staggering declines in comparison. Certainly not the Mars path, and whether or not you will agree with Gelles, his provocative and lucid book is most definitely worth a read.

So, what should the thoughtful entrepreneur do in charting the path for a better, Mars-influenced venture — while enjoying a Snickers for inspiration? To start, build some perspective and get Launchpad Republic, the upcoming book by entrepreneur investor Howard Wolk and Harvard Business Review editor and historian John Landry, which offers a rich and detailed history of entrepreneurialism’s unique roots in America. Wolk and Landry observe that  “entrepreneurship is often a form of rebellion,” and transformative things have occurred and often still happen when people take on the status quo. Wolk and Landry reveal that certain new challenges are versions of familiar problems and we all must work harder for more inclusive entrepreneurship and the evolved stakeholder capitalism necessary for an innovative economy.

For history’s sake, then, let’s acknowledge that we are living through change, turmoil and volatility. We need Skittles, and possiblyStarbursts, more than ever. Yet uncertainty can be motivating, and we should lean into it, according to Jason Feifer, Entrepreneur Magazine editor and author of the forthcoming book: Build for Tomorrow. Feifer says we experience change in phases: panic, adaptation, feel for a new normal and then, ultimately, “wouldn’t go back.” A creative storyteller with a keen sense of history and business, Fiefer shares numerous and memorable examples of finding opportunity in change. So much of this is about finding purpose, whether that’s a soon-to-be obsolete wall cleaner transforming into Play-Doh or the revelation that people seek out celebrities not for a treasured interaction but instead for a quick selfie that will attract more likes from friends. When starting a new business, enhancing an established one, or designing a new product, Feifer urges us continually to ask: What is this for?

For Mars, that reportedly means retaining less than 10% in annual profits and reinvesting the rest in product innovation, employee benefits and initiatives such as sustainability and a worldwide living wage. Whether you sell services, develop new technologies, or make products like Lifesavers, I think we all can agree on one thing: that’s a pretty sweet approach.

Read in the Boston Business Journal

 Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

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Back in the 1980s, the British pop group Tears for Fears produced one of the most memorable songs of the last four decades. Everybody Wants to Rule the World topped music charts back in 1985, and Rolling Stone recently ranked the song among its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It’s a rich, catchy song with lush guitar solos and memorable lyrics that speak to the often-unsettling human need for control, dominance and influence.

Ironically, the working title of the song in the studio was “Everybody Wants To Go To War.” I’m hearing that song a lot in my head these days, given the tragic and unnecessary war in Ukraine, and it has me thinking about bad decisions and unfortunate patterns that so many of us see in our own personal and professional lives. Every organization, public and private, large and small, could benefit from more reflection, understanding, and independent thinking, and for those CEOs, managers, and elected officials interested in better, more consensus-based decisions, I’d recommend a few new books.

How often have you heard: “It’s not personal, it’s just business” after a decision? That’s never entirely true, and in Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking, CalTech Professor Leonard Mlodinow explains that all decisions — good and especially bad — are grounded in part by our uniquely personal emotions and core body functions at the time. This is a fascinating chronicle of the evolutionary roots of the mind-body connection, where feelings come from, and how those with “emotional intelligence,” the ability to understand the feelings of others, excel in business, politics, and day-to-day interactions. Life is busy and we all must make decisions and interact with people throughout the day, even when we are angry, upset, bored, distracted or hungry.

Think this doesn’t matter? Ask anyone up for parole. Who knew that parole boards granted requests 60% more often when the hearing was the first of the day or just after a break or lunch? Mlodinow provides plenty of other interesting data on the bio-roots of motivation and determination, and he encourages all of us to assess our own emotional profile so we can understand ourselves, make better decisions, and also recognize patterns in others. Small wonder that we’re already hearing more about the role of emotion in wartime leaders’ decision making these days.

So if strategic decisions, some good, and others tragically bad, are shaped by emotion, how can we help a leader or a team avoid adverse outcomes? With your influence, according to Yale Professor Zoe Chance and her smart, funny new book, Influence Is Your Superpower. You need not be a celebrity, YouTube influencer, or celebrated expert to give actionable advice and shape behavior. Charisma, she explains, isn’t something you are — it’s what you do through word framing, body language, and by leaning in to others with deep, authentic listening and intention.

I liked her take on how individual influence can be contagious and lead to broader, collective action among people and organizations and her advice on framing negotiations around three questions: How could this be even better for me? How could this be even better for them? Who else could benefit? will be especially valuable for teams trying to find common ground in difficult situations. This thoughtful framing could work for nations in conflict too.

Of course, ineffective leadership, entrenched systems, and toxic cultures may not change overnight.  Change takes time and often requires subtle and everyday acts of disobedience. In The Art of Insubordination: How To Dissent And Defy Effectively, George Mason University Professor Todd Kashdan traces the history and theory of dissent and change in a variety of contexts. Non-conformity is hard for us humans and we take comfort from the familiarity of the collective status quo. We like to fit in; we avoid conflict. Kashdan’s easy-to-read, step-by-step playbook on how to become a persuasive and patient dissenter who finds allies and builds consensus incrementally is incredibly persuasive. So too his advice on how adding dissenters to teams — even just one — can result in broader perspectives and better decisions over time. As we are all seeing on the global stage and especially in Ukraine, rebels matter.

Four decades ago, Tears for Fears captured the tension between conflict and peace in the human condition in a song. They’ve now released a new album with songs about life, love, and fraught choices.  As we sort out how far-reaching and impactful decisions are influenced and made, seems like we still have plenty to learn.

 Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.  Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.