CTRL ALT Delete Is My Next Book

Warning: self-promotional Blog post to follow…

I am very excited to announce that the name of my next book is: CTRL ALT Delete – Reboot  Your Business (and Yourself) in a Connected World. The official press release went out this morning via my publisher, Business Plus (an imprint of Grand Central Publishing – Hachette Book Group USA). This is the same publisher as my first book, Six Pixels of Separation, who had the option to pick-up my sophomore business book effort, and I am really (and sincerely) happy that they did. Six Pixels of Separation did some great things (800-CEO-Read ranked it at #13 on their 2010 list of best-selling books, and the book has been translated into French, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and many more languages around the world). CTRL ALT Delete will be published in the spring of 2013 (early May) and Business Plus has taken worldwide rights to the book (so, expect to see it all over the world in both hardcover, audio and digital formats). Now comes the hard work of pulling it all together.

What’s the crux of CTRL ALT Delete?

Six Pixels of Separation was about how (and why) new media had changed business forever. CTRL ALT Delete answers the question "now what?" Now that everyone is on social networks, sharing and conversing, how do you adapt your business to capitalize on just how much our world has changed, and get the edge on where all of this is taking us? I think we’ve moved past disruption into unchartered territory. If you follow this Blog, you know that this is a time of great upheaval in business. The challenge is that most businesses don’t know how to adapt and most of the people who are working for these companies don’t know how to change. Technology hasn’t just transformed how we buy or how we sell our wares to consumers or how we connect socially. Technology has sent business through a rapid state of genetic mutation and we’re still in the middle of this evolution. I call this moment in time: purgatory. We’re not in hell… but this certainly isn’t heaven either. CTRL ALT Delete will both clear the brush and act as a roadmap through this purgatory. The book will be broken down into two sections. Section one (titled Reboot: Business) looks at the five modern movements that are changing business forever. Section two (titled: Reboot: You) covers the seven triggers that every employee and entrepreneur must have so that they can shift from just doing their jobs to doing the work that they were meant to do.

The real question this book will answer is: do you want to be employable in the next five years?

The book proposal for my second book was supposed to be done two Christmas’ ago. I was tinkering with the idea of a book about new business models and how every company could learn from what some of these newer startups were doing, but the flow of the book just wasn’t clicking with me. Fast forward to this past holiday season: I was in the shower one morning when everything just fell into place. The whole concept – chapter by chapter – came to me. I spent two days writing a fifteen-thousand word book proposal. I sent it to my literary agent who sent it on to my publisher, and the deal happened in a matter of weeks. I’m really excited because I am writing the book that I would want to read if I were either leading a brand today or thinking about how to move up in an organization or start my own business. The truth is that many are scared because they don’t know what to do, while many others see this as one of best opportunities that they will ever have in their professional lifetime. This isn’t about simple semantics and shifting mindsets, it’s about understanding that during this state of purgatory many business will die and many jobs will disappear, but in the same breath many business will thrive, many new businesses will be created and many new jobs will be invented. The question is: do you want to be employable in the next five years?

I think it’s time for business to CTRL ALT Delete. I’m excited about this book and I’m excited for those who are in desperate need of a reboot.