Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign, Safari

Barack Obama's campaign didn't just make history: it teaches lessons that every business can profit from. The Obama campaign was brilliantly planned, strategized, and executed, and built to drive home a powerful, consistent core value proposition: the proposition of change. Moreover, it had an extraordinary understanding of innovation, manifested by its extraordinary use of technology to achieve specific, quantifiable goals. In Barack, Inc., Barry Libert and Rick Faulk present the Obama campaign as a business, identifying lessons any business leader can use to maximize performance. Libert and Faulk cover issues ranging from marketing to leadership, strategy to execution. They reveal how Obama's team identified and honed a powerful core message, and applied it flexibly in response to changing circumstances without ever compromising core brand values. You'll discover how Obama built a focused, "no-drama" organization that empowered local decision-makers without sacrificing nationwide consistency or discipline. Finally, the authors, executives at the world's leading provider of business social networking services, show how Obama leveraged social networking at a scale unprecedented in the history of either politics or business. From start to finish, Barack, Inc. is actionable: packed with ready-to-use strategies and tactics that can help you succeed with any goal, in any marketplace.

Introduction  2

Chapter 1   SUCCESS YOU CAN BELIEVE IN--AND EMULATE  6

Getting down to business may be passé.
Getting up to politics could be the wave of our future.

Chapter 2   BE COOL  16

The indispensable quality of a leader whose decisions
and actions can change people's lives is his cool--his calm rationality,
steadiness under pressure, and ability to stay on message and
control strong emotions.

Chapter 3   BE SOCIAL  58

Business--like politics--is extremely personal.

Chapter 4   BE THE CHANGE  104

Impermanence rules the universe.
Those who resist change resist reality and life itself.

Epilogue  144

Sources  148

Index  156