The Invisible Mentor

Archive for June, 2010

Book: The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit
Author: William Higham

I was delighted that someone decided to write a book about trends, how to spot them and how to exploit them. There are many websites and books about trend spotting and trend hunting, but I have never been able to wrap my head around how to exactly use the information, and many times I felt quite helpless. In an age where things are changing so rapidly, the ability to spot trends and exploit them is a skill that would make any professional more marketable, because they are equipped to accurately predict client attitudes and behaviours, and assist companies with product development strategies.

And, William Higham, the author of The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit is qualified to write a book on trends because he has consulted in the area for 10 years, but more importantly, the area of trends has always been his passion, so he has studied it for many years. I found The Next Big Thing on http://www.netgalley.com, and was able to download a copy for review using Adobe Digital Editions. The book is very well researched, and while reading it you get a sense that the author knows what he is talking about.

The Next Big Thing is 272 pages in length (over 40 of which are used for the Appendix and Index) and divided into two Sections: Trends and Trend Marketing and six Parts: The Value of Trends, Beginning with Trends, Understanding Trends, Identification, Interpretation and Implementation. According to Higham, the objective of the book is “To use my experience and knowledge of trends to strip away the ambiguity and mystery that surround them, to provide a straightforward introduction to the topic, to clarify meanings and debunk myths. I also want to offer some suggestions for standardized trend analysis and implementation process that I call “trend marketing”, and show how it can be learned and practised and incorporated into everyday business practice.”

So what is a trend? William Higham defines a trend as, “A long-term change in consumer attitudes and behaviours that offer marketing opportunities. Trends are the manifestation of change.” He adds, “To identify a new trend, marketers need to look for any signs of change among consumers. These can be change in behaviour or attitude.”

The author spends a lot of time going into the nitty-gritty of trend marketing providing a multitude of examples to build a case. This is good for most people, but for me it was too much information. I wanted him to get on with it, and that’s my bias because I have over 15 years of research and analysis experience, I know many websites that spot trends, so all I want to learn now is what do I do with them. How do I move forward with trends to provide better services to my clients? For me, the meat of the book started at page 115. Your response to the detailed information will depend on what your needs are.

In The Next Big Thing, the author provides many examples of consumer changing tastes and how companies are responding to these changing tastes, or even predicting where their customers would be, similar to the way Wayne Gretzky would skate to where he anticipated the puck would be, which made him a very successful hockey player. I liked the idea of heritage marketing where brands would use their rich heritage, their founders and history to market to consumers. And even those brands that haven’t been in existence for a long time would create a heritage for their clients. How can you use heritage marketing, even if your company and brand haven’t been around for a long time?

Savvy companies that know how to use trends can capitalize on trends such as Trading Up, Come Together and Gender Blending.

Trading Up Trend: Consumer across socioeconomic categories buy more premium products, and you exploit this trend by having products at different price points to create ranges. Think how you might expand into other complementary or even non-complementary product categories.

Come Together Trend: The growth of building community and social networking is staggering, how can you exploit that trend?

Gender Blending Trend: There is a growing trend for gender neutral products. Recently more women have been buying technology products and more men are purchasing and using skin care products. If your products are not gender neutral, how can you make them so? And could you create a line that’s targeted for the “other” gender?

For The Next Big Thing to be truly useful to me, it had to teach me how to do three things, and I suspect it would be the same for most people who are interested in trend marketing.

1. How to research trend activities
2. How to interpret and analyze trends
3. How to implement trends

The book delves into how to create a Trend Marketing Department including the skills needed for every stage of the trend marketing process, as well as how to hire a consultant who specializes in the area. Higham also talks about how trends come into being, “Trends do not just appear spontaneously. They are driven by specific environmental or individual changes. What is happening around consumers affect their thoughts and actions. Trends start when an environment shift disrupts consumers’ normative attitudes and behaviours. And they typically occur as a reaction to something a consumer experiences.” The book also goes into fad versus trends, micro vs. macro trends, national vs. international trends. Several chapters are devoted to identifying, interpreting and implementing trends.

Identifying Trends

Who to Study

Consumers

• Innovators
• Influentials
• Early adopters

Observers

• Journalists
• Academics
• Researchers
• Entrepreneurs

How to Study

• Practical identification
• Theoretical identification
• Behavioural identification
• Attitudinal identification

Finding Data

Statistical: research reports, government reports, press releases

Observational: focus groups, clubs

Media: news media (mainstream consumer, alternative consumer), non-new media (books, films)

Interpreting Trends

• How do trends spread?
• What are active trend drivers?
• How will the trends develop tomorrow?
• How to map trends against the key drivers

Implementing

• Potential impact of trend
• How to benefit from trend
• Feasibility
• Consumer demand, relevance, interest

There is a lot of content in the book, and this review should not be used as a substitute for reading The Next Big Thing. Though the information is overwhelming, if you are serious about the entire trend marketing process you have to read the entire book once and use it as a reference guide. William Higham could have easily upped the perceived value of The Next Big Thing by simply including a five page summary of the trend marketing process. He already knows that there are lots of resources out there that spot trends, but people, myself included, do not know what to do with them.

I recommend The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit. Before you read The Next Big Thing, ask yourself the following three questions, and keep a notebook and pen handy to take notes and capture information that’s relevant to your situation.

Questions to Ask & Answer

1. How are my customers changing?
2. Which trends will my customers respond to?
3. How can I exploit the opportunity to identify new markets as well as better service my current clients?

Note: For readers who haven’t read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, it’s the perfect time to do so. The book provides strategies on how to get the most out of what you are reading. And if you haven’t done so already, create Google Alerts for the trends or other important information that you are interested in to flag articles, studies, blog posts and so on.

Further Reading

Trend Analysis Expert William Higham Forecasts Major Changes for Marketers and Consumers Alike
The Next Big Thing Blog

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Book Review: The Next Big Thing (businesspundit.com)

I went to Dan Ariely‘s book launch for  the Upside of Irrationality. It was very unusual because he named several topics that he could speak on and asked the attendees to choose. This is highly unusual, but it made for an extremely interesting book launch and we were all cracking up. He talked about several social science studies that he was involved in. For instance he talked about a website HotorNot that ranks people on attractiveness. He and his colleague evaluated the results from that website and found that people who were most attractive only wanted to be paired with other attractive people. And those who were ranked as less attractive, went after people who were in the same league as themselves. He said that the studies showed that men were a little bit more optimistic and would go after partners who were a little bit more attractive than they were.

Ariely talked about online dating sites which he thinks reduce people to a picture, and people tend to ask questions that neither are really interested in learning the answer to at an initial meeting. When people go on a first date, they do something together, and that’s a way of gathering information on each other. Virtual dating was created to take the superficiality out of online dating, and Ariely prefers this way of trying to meet your mate. According to Wikipedia, “Virtual dating involves the use of avatars for people to interact in a virtual venue that resembles a real life dating environment. For example, individuals can meet and chat in a romantic virtual cafe in Paris or on a Caribbean resort.”

My questions to you are, how do you rate the people you meet in life? And, I’m not necessarily talking about dating, are you judging people by the way they look? Studies have shown that attractive people earn more than those who are perceived as less attractive, what are your thoughts? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

For your information, here is Dan Ariely’s TedTalk on Predictable Irrationality. If you cannot view this video, click here.

Photo Credit: Google via Apture

“I say that presidents of companies should be kicked out every five years or changed because we are only good in one or two areas not five or six or the full breadth of what a CEO does and I continue to believe that. There should be far more turnover of leadership in companies than there are today because people get stale,” says Kevin Shea. Part Two of this interview is packed with advice based on years of experience in the communications sector. After reading Kevin’s interview here are of few of my takeaways, what are your?

1. Listen and hear
2. Find and work with others who complement your skills
3. Going against the grain can have huge payoffs
4. Don’t give up on your dreams just because others tell you that you’ll fail
5. Interact with people from all age groups

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Montreal, and my family moved to Los Angeles when I was nine months old, and I’d like to say it was because I was having difficulty with two languages. My parents moved back to Canada, to Toronto when I was about 10. I grew up in Toronto and was involved as an actor when I was a kid and was always connected to the broadcasting television business. I knew that was the business that I wanted to get into. I went to York University and studied history, I’m not sure why I did that. After university I started my career in the cable industry.

Many years later I am now running my own company SheaChez Inc., have been for the past five years. I get involved in various start-up companies where I assist them with CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) licensing applications, which is a role I did with Sirius Satellite Radio. And I sit on a variety of different boards of private companies and I am chairman of what’s called the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC).

What’s a typical day like for you?

There is no typical day, because I’m self-employed, and as I said I do a lot of board work, my days are a mix of visiting companies I am involved with trying to set up strategic partnerships between companies that I know and companies that I’m involved with, lobbying government on various things and then working on a host of different projects. Quite honestly the overall content of what I do is somewhat similar but my days are dramatically different.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Because there is so much diversity in what I do, what I mean by that is, I’m on the board of Cookie Jar Entertainment for example, which is an animation company and they are involved in what I call the conventional broadcast production business, but I’m also involved in a lot of new media companies and just diversity alone keeps me very interested. I work with entrepreneurs from the age of 20 to 70. In the old broadcasting business there are still a lot of legends and in the new media business there a lot of young, smart people.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I’ve thought of that before, and in many respects I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had some fabulous jobs and I’ve had the privilege of starting and running YTV the kid’s network for seven or eight years. I was at GlobalTV in its best years, Atlantis before it was Alliance Atlantis where we launched Life Network. That was great grounding for me, but there was always a bit of entrepreneur in me that wanted me to do my own thing. Having the benefit of working in large corporations most of my career has now allowed me to take that and help companies along the way, which has been a real benefit.

What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

I think the most profound discovery is how dramatically changed the broadcasting and communications sector is becoming. It is literally changing every day, and for many it’s very difficult to keep up with. It’s dramatically altered almost every aspect of the broad communications sector whether that’s newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. I mean it’s in a real state of flux. Even advertising is going through its own dramatic changes as it tries to keep up and understand all the change, and in the mean time consumers are very quick adapters, particularly Canadian consumers and they just want more, more, more. I guess the other profound discovery is that we’ve almost moved back 40 years sort of pre-cable and pre-online where the expectation is you buy the device, for example a TV, you put up an antenna and everything is free, and today’s consumer is also expecting everything online to be free and we both know that free isn’t going to pay for it, so that’s a discovery. It’s the reality of today.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

I don’t know if there has been a single advance, but I think that for all of us, and when I say us I mean those who grew up in the traditional, conventional broadcasting business, understanding the impact that these new distribution technology advances are like night and day and is still very much a struggle for a lot of executives to figure out where this business is going. Today I spend the bulk of my time and effort in the new media business not the old media business and it’s been a dramatic shift. It’s not well understood and we don’t know with certainty where it’s going.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

1. Keeping current, particularly as someone who is a consultant and advisor you have to know what’s going on, so I find myself spending more time with younger people because they have a better handle on where things are going
2. We saw last year what impact the economy had on investments and in Canada the sources of investments in new start-ups in the communications business is difficult, there aren’t a lot of people investing in that.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

My big break came when Phil Lind at Rogers hired me to come in and run Cable Satellite Network way back when, and put me into Rogers a much bigger company than I was with in a leadership role. He remains both a close business associate and key mentor of mine. When I moved around in Rogers, Colin Watson who was my boss was an incredibly supportive and smart guy, so I would say it was a big break getting into Rogers at that time

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

In my early days at Rogers when I was running this organization called Cable Satellite Network, and this was before we had specialty networks in Canada, the only thing we had was live coverage of the House of Commons, no Toronto Sports Network (TSN) or Newsworld. I had worked on a couple of applications for TV Ontario (TVO), one was called Galaxy to start a national children’s channel. This was before YTV and we kept being turned down by the CRTC and it was very disheartening because it seemed like such an obvious thing because we had TV Ontario that was a core strategic partner which was the first time that a broadcast and cable company had come together, which was my doing because I was the one who put that partnership together. I learned that we were before our time. The CRTC had no policies, they have never licensed a specialty channel, and the moment they licensed TSN and MuchMusic, which were the first two and they weren’t specialty channels back then, they were paid TV channels that almost went bankrupt and changed to specialty. It was when we all realized that it was time to put together a kid’s specialty channel and YTV was born. Now YTV was a controversial license because it had cable companies as shareholders and producers as shareholders, we didn’t have a broadcaster. TVO didn’t participate this time. I learned that you have to wait in this country [Canada] until they are ready, and secondly you have to be patient, and don’t stop because someone says no doesn’t mean that you go away forever. It took us six years to get an YTV license. It was called something different in different applications but in the end it was worth it.

The failure was Galaxy and the lesson is, do not give up and sometimes you are a bit premature.

What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?

Maybe not going out on my own earlier and starting my own cable networks. There is nothing that I can really point to be honest.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

I was at Global TV and had been there for six or seven years as president, they had just bought the newspapers, whether I had a premonition, I realized that this acquisition of the newspaper was going to dramatically change how the company was going to be in the future. I thought about this for a few weeks, talked to a few friends and associates, and to resign from a big job at that point to go and do my own thing was one of the biggest decisions that I`d ever made. And you leave from having assistants, flying all over, all sorts of expenses being covered, stock options, to do your own thing is a big decision. I look back and say thank God I did it for a lot of reasons, given unfortunately what has happened to CanWest today, and I’m not saying that I predicted it. I look back and say I did the right thing even though I didn’t have all that information at the time.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. Being born since it wouldn’t matter otherwise
2. Having four great sisters who are my best friends and I mean that, and they have been very influential in my life
3. Having two wonderful children

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Starting YTV. I look back at my career and it took a long time to get the license, everybody said it would be a failure and would be off the air and bankrupt in six months and when I left after seven years it was probably one of the most progressive cable networks in the country.

How did mentors influence your life?

In many ways, and I seek out mentors and they continue to advise me. Somebody told me when I was young that you cannot be an expert in everything, you just can’t, and to concentrate more on your strength than your weaknesses and fill the gaps with people around you that actually complement your areas of weakness. I know where I am good and not so good so I’m always conscious of this advice. I say that presidents of companies should be kicked out every five years or changed because we are only good in one or two areas not five or six or the full breadth of what a CEO does and I continue to believe that. There should be far more turnover of leadership in companies than there are today because people get stale.

What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Make sure that one of your capacity is the capacity to listen because most times people do not listen to what you’re trying to advance because the only thing they have on their mind is what they are trying to advance, and you can tell that there are certain people who are not listening. And it’s almost as if you have to say, ‘hang on a second, I want to make sure that it’s not that you just understand this, but I want to make sure that you are hearing it.’ That’s been valuable personal advice in terms of dealing with people because at the end of the day a company is only as good as the people are.

Which resources (books, movies, training etc.) did your mentors recommend to you?

Everybody has their latest favourite book. It provides them with intelligence or a clue from an operating standpoint that they didn’t have before to see the world in a different way so if I read everyone of those books I`d never be able to leave the house, so I do a lot of scan reading.

As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Keep an eye out for, and try to follow the capacity in which the individual has been able to implement change. I come back to where we started this conversation, and that is unless you can adapt really quickly in this day and age to change, and fully understand that change is happening all around you, so today’s best leaders are those who can actually implement change and that’s not easy because to implement change you have to have buy in, understanding and a collective will and good folks are the ones that today have that capacity and that`s something we all need.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected?  What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Kevin Shea is the kind of guy you would want to be your mentor. Not only would he give you great advice, but he is also the connector, he’d know exactly who to connect you to, to help you get to where you’d like to go. To succeed in today’s environment Kevin advocates learning and networking. And he recommends that you share information when you attend conferences. While you are reading the interview, think of ways that you can use he information.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Montreal, and my family moved to Los Angeles when I was nine months old, and I’d like to say it was because I was having difficulty with two languages. My parents moved back to Canada, to Toronto when I was about 10. I grew up in Toronto and was involved as an actor when I was a kid and was always connected to the broadcasting television business. I knew that was the business that I wanted to get into. I went to York University and studied history, I’m not sure why I did that. After university I started my career in the cable industry.

Many years later I am now running my own company SheaChez Inc., have been for the past five years. I get involved in various start-up companies where I assist them with CRTC licensing applications, which is a role I did with Sirius Satellite Radio. And I sit on a variety of different boards of private companies and I am chairman of what’s called the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC).

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

On a personal note, the most important thing to me outside of the obvious is my children. I am a big cottager and I love to get away, and nowadays I can work anywhere so that`s a big part of me. I have a wide, wide group of colleagues and I am a connector so I stay in touch with a lot of people, and a lot of people stay in touch with me. In many instances within the era I grew up in, I’m probably one of the first people who gets a call from someone who has either just been laid off, or their company has been closed down. I do a lot of coaching, providing advice and direction to people who have hit a rocky road in their career. And I think I can say this to you because I have four sisters, women are far more willing and probably able to have difficult emotional discussions more quickly, and want to get to the issues quickly, and men are very proud, I see it so often trying to get them to open up and settle down on the anxiety, and get a plan.

In this day and age, they are saying that kids entering the workforce will probably have between 16 and 20 different jobs.  And in our era you had maybe three. There is no such thing as a full-time job anymore, it doesn’t exist, we are all contract employees, sometimes the contract is six months, sometimes it’s a year, sometimes it might be 10, but at the end of the day, companies can get rid of us so we are all contractors.

What’s a major regret that you’ve had in life?

Maybe not travelling as much, I sort of got to that late in life.

What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

1. Patience is huge
2. Work with great teams
3. Respect your work mates
4. Make change quickly

When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

I spend it in cottage country – reading, gardening, fixing and building.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I don’t think that I have a specific process. Ideas come to me then I bounce them off people. I mean ideas can land at any time, it’s more what you are doing with your ideas opposed to having them. How can you move on them? I just joined the Idea Council for a major ad agency that I can’t name. Big ad agencies are struggling today and they are trying to figure out how to respond to the market. The ad agency has brought together five of us from completely different walks of life. We meet once a month for three hours with the entire management, and we are basically charged with coming up with ideas. Ideas in terms of new kinds of partnerships, things they should be looking at, these are the emerging technologies, how to win particular clients, and it’s kind of fun. We are given nothing in advance, they make a presentation as soon as we get there, and it creates a very interesting environment because the single purpose is to share ideas.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“If you sit by the river long enough you will see the body of your enemy float by.” Japanese Proverb

How do you define success?

Success is so different for different people. It’s meeting your objectives, life and corporate. I see it at companies where they won a big deal, a big award and you look around the room and it’s a bunch of long faces, so clearly that wasn’t success for them. It’s also who owns that success, who is really responsible, so I think it’s different for so many people.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Setting reasonable, attainable objectives with the capacity to change those benchmarks as you go along. If your goals are way too lofty you’ll never attain success in your own mind.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

I think one thing is to network and make sure that you are out there and know people and not just specific to your sector. I got involved in all sorts of different things, charitable organization work to other boards of directors, even way back just to broaden my network. It’s really funny because at some point in time you may need someone or need an affiliation, so building a series of contacts that are real is necessary.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

I talk to a lot of graduates and so on, and there are a couple of things that are critical in my view: read everything about your industry so that you are totally fluent and current in what’s going on, attend conferences even if you have to pay for them yourself because you’re going to learn more by listening to others, and by meeting others you are going to broaden your network, so constantly ask your boss if you can go to this, or go to that. And more importantly, bring that learning back, share it, don’t just hold on to it. Even at a young age network and don’t be just 9 to 5, and read as much as you can.

If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

1. I’ve always wanted to meet the president of Ireland and I think I’d say, “Thank God you’ve found a way to begin to stop the internal strife between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland because it’s a ridiculous altercation in this day and age, and I hope and pray that it never surfaces again because it’s an awful, ridiculous conflict in such a modern society.”
2. I’d probably want to me meet more world leaders and ask them to try to build better bridges of communication within their own ranks and the world. We are at a time and place when we are really lacking, and I really understand why we are lacking in really strong political leadership because no one wants to run anymore because they are paranoid about what may be in their background and so on and so forth. They are judged on all the wrong things and we are not getting good people to run, even for members of parliament and it’s showing. That’s what I think I’d want to do. And I don’t know who those five world leaders would be.

Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply? Did you have an emotional or intellectual attachment to this book? Why?

Maybe I haven’t read it yet. There are so many because you pick snippets of things and not the entire book may be relevant, only sections.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

1. I’d want to have The Hunt for Red October, I just love that book
2. I’d want a bunch of books written about people stuck on deserted islands to give me some clues about what I would be encountering
3. I’d want a couple of survival books

I’d want advice and guidance because we’re not good being caught in nature.

What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

For the music CD I’d probably want the Beatles. I know most of their songs, they are comforting and I’d like a little bit of Aretha Franklin mixed with that, I love rhythm and blues. For the movie, The Hunt for Red October and all the movies I haven’t seen.

The Beatles YouTube “Get Back” Video. If you cannot view this video click here.

Aretha Franklin YouTube Video “I Say a Little Prayer for You”. If you cannot view the video, click here.

YouTube Video The Hunt for Red October Movie Trailer. If you cannot view this video click here.

What excites you about life?

Change, I’m so happy that I’m in the communications sector, as opposed to insurance or banking, or hospital work. I love the communications sector, I really do, and it is a very key cultural instrument for our country, and you know how diverse our country is and I think it has been so adept, more so than any other nation in advancing multicultural and multi-language content. We are quite unique and we are quite diverse, and that’s kind of cool.

How do you nurture your soul?

Through family, my mom and pa are still alive, they’re 90 and fabulous. Family is very fundamental and important to me and they are my friends.

If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for? Or, if I gave you a magic wand, what would you use it for?

World peace.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m busy. I like being busy doing a lot of different things, that’s why I love what I’m doing. I don’t think I’ll ever stop working because that’s when I’m the happiest.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected?  How can you apply this information? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

YouTube Videos via Apture

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I read and reviewed The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli which was written over five hundred years ago. And, it always amazes me how some books that are timeless classics are still relevant today. The Prince is one such book. I firmly believe we can use some of yesterday’s ideas to solve today’s problems if we step back in time a take and look at some of those classics. For those who like videos, I’ve found some YouTube Videos created by AntiGroupThink, which I have included.

After you have read The Prince for yourself, or at the very least watch the five short YouTube videos, ask and answer the following  three questions:

1. Does the end ever justify the means? And if yes, in what situations?
2. How do you get power and how do you keep it?
3. Is power the end all and be all?

Niccolo Machiavelli worked in politics from 1498 to 1512, but his political career ended in shame, with him being arrested and imprisoned for 22 days. Machiavelli refers to Lorenzo Medici as the Prince. In his forced absence from politics, Machiavelli wrote The Prince hoping that given his republican credentials, he would be re-employed with the Medicis, thus returning to a position of power.

The Prince was written nearly 500 years ago, but some of the ideas are still relevant today. In The Prince, Machiavelli deals with the rise and fall of states, and the measures that a leader can take to ensure the states’ continued existence. The author’s focus is on how societies actually work. The book is very technical, and focuses on how to grasp and hold power, and offers advice on what worked and what did not work in advancing a political career.

For example, Machiavelli states “A man who is made prince by the favour of the people must work to retain their friendship; and this is easy for him because the people ask only not to be oppressed. But a man who has become prince against the will of the people and by the favour of the nobles should, before anything else, try to win the people over; this too is easy if he takes them under his protection… it is necessary for a prince to have the friendship of the people; otherwise he has no remedy in times of adversity.”

Machiavelli was nicknamed “Old Nick,” another name for Satan, and the Jesuits called him “the Devil’s partner in crime.” While reading The Prince, I was often very shocked because some sections are very dark. However, once you get past that, it is filled with many parallels and contrasts to today. If you dig beneath the surface of what he is saying, the information can be transported to our time and used. For example, “As for intellectual training, the prince must read history, studying the actions of eminent men to see how they conducted themselves during war and to discover the reasons for their victories or their defeats, so that he can avoid the latter and imitate the former. Above all, he must read history so that he can do what eminent men have done before him….” We could make this more relevant to us by interpreting it to mean that we must read history and study the actions of successful men and women to discover the reasons for their successes and failures to imitate their successes.

Machiavelli’s political thesis can be summed up as “I also believe that the man who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.”

YouTube video of The Prince, Part One of Five. If you cannot view the video click here.

Five +2 Great Ideas

1. When trouble is sensed well in advance, it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself, any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable
2. Men willingly change their ruler expecting to fare better
3. When states are acquired in a province differing in language, in customs, and in institutions, then difficulties arise; and to hold them one must be very fortunate and very assiduous. One of the best, most effective expedients would be for the conqueror to go live there in person. This course of action would make a new possession more secure and more permanent.
4. Whoever is responsible for another’s becoming powerful ruins himself, because this power is brought into being either by ingenuity or by force, and both of these are suspect to the one who has become powerful
5. Governments set up overnight, like everything in nature whose growth is forced, lack strong roots and ramifications. So they are destroyed in the first bad spell
6. A man who becomes a prince with the help of the nobles finds it more difficult to maintain his position than one who does so with the help of the people. As prince, he finds himself surrounded by many who believe they are his equals, and because of that he cannot command or manage them the way he wants
7. Prosperity is ephemeral; if a man behaves with patience and circumspection, and the time and circumstances are right, he will prosper, however, if circumstances change and he doesn’t adapt his policy to reflect the change, he will be ruined.

I recommend that you read The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli just to see how far and sometimes not so far that we’ve come. After you have read The Prince, what parallels can you make to events occurring in our world today? What are your great ideas? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Part Two of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli YouTube Video

Part Three of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli YouTube Video

Part Four of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli YouTube Video

Part Five of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli YouTube Video

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