Choosing Books: "I go into the new-nonfiction section of the bookstore once a month and look at the business titles. I usually purchase most of them. I have easily 1,500 books."
Books as Mentors: "Sometimes it's hard to get actual mentors, models that you can talk to all the time. I use biographies that way. If I'm in a certain situation, I'll think about the biography of two or three people who were doing the same kinds of things. Sometimes I'll go back and skim them for chapters that apply. You draw your conclusions based on what those successful people typically would have done." Where'd he get that idea? From a book, naturally: Reuning was inspired by Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which discusses the value of using great people as role models.
Passing the Word Along: Reuning figures that since there is no established career preparation for becoming a recruiter, his company had better provide one. As part of the company training, Diedre Moire has an internal lending library of roughly 400 volumes, 120 videos, and 1,000 tapes. "A big part of the strategic design of our culture is learning, teaching people how to learn."
MARINA P. ZAZANIS
Age: 52
Occupation: CEO, NMR of America Inc., in Morristown, N.J., a $15-million company that installs and maintains medical-imaging systems; #40 on the 1990 INC. 100.
Education: B.A. in English
Recommended Reading: The Greek Passion by Nikos Kazantzakis
Why: " The Greek Passion is about Holy Week and a Passion play being performed in a Greek village. It's a story about how the people take on the parts of the characters. You get a tremendous amount of analysis of character. Kazantzakis gives you the person, but he also gives you what's underneath the person in great depth. The book was very powerful to me."
Reading that Helps Me Run the Company: Like most CEOs, Zazanis has to keep up with business news. However, she says it's the fiction and poetry she's read all her life that helps her understand the people she works with. "Really," she says, "what is a company? It's the people." Usually the insight into human nature her reading brings her is general, but every once in a while it's quite specific. "In every business there are people in sales. To understand them, I go back to Death of a Salesman. It must be a difficult life; they're away from home a lot; they're eating alone a lot. And all those relationships -- people in sales must wonder, are these people really my friends, or is it business? Reading that book helped me understand why salespeople might take certain liberties that would not be acceptable in other areas."
Zazanis approaches new business situations as if she were starting to read a novel -- looking for clues about the characters and plot as she tries to figure out how the story will end. "What is a novel? It's a slice of life. It's an adventure. And I see business that same way. I think that as a result of reading novels and understanding the structure, I can understand the plot that's going to develop within my own company."
KEN DYCHTWALD
Age: 40
Occupation: CEO, Age Wave Inc., a training and consulting firm specializing in products and services for an aging population; speaker; and author of eight books, most recently Age Wave.
Education: Ph.D. in psychology
Recommended Reading: Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott Why: "It was one of the most useful books I've ever read. A lot of my perspective on redesigning America for an aging population comes from having read Flatland. The book describes this world that has only two dimensions in it. By the time the book is over, you can see how to function and relate to the other beings, all of whom are in the same two dimensions as you. At the end of the book they discover there are three dimensions. And it blows your mind! You say, 'There can't be three dimensions!' To me, that exercise of constructing an artificial world and then seeing how everything has to shift if you add a new dimension to it is similar to imagining how our world would need to change to be better designed for an aging population."
Reading that Helps Me Run the Company: The more Dychtwald learns about business, the more he swears by science fiction. He's always been a science-fiction fan, but ever since he started his own business in 1983, he finds he needs fantasy as an antidote more and more. "I get more of my ideas about longevity and aging from novels and science fiction than I do from stuff in the field. The more ordered and rigid my life has gotten in the world of business, the more I find it's really important for me to read science fiction -- because most creativity happens around the edges of normal reality." Among his favorites:
Dune by Frank Herbert
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson
Son of Man by Robert Silverberg
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Keeping Track: Dychtwald does read a great deal of nonfiction material in his field. He also has an assistant comb through magazines and newsletters, looking for articles on aging and on industries in which the company currently has projects. When he needs to learn more about particular subjects, Dychtwald hires clipping services or the business research firm Find/SVP. He also recruits people he meets around the country to exchange interesting articles with him; he estimates he gets about 20 articles a day that way.
Choosing Books: Dychtwald asks other people for their five favorites. "It's terrific, because usually people have their own cherished list, and instead of having to hunt from bookstore to bookstore, I can simply ask."
