Testimonials from
Advance Readers
of Smarts

Business Success has always been a blend of art and science. Chuck Martin has delivered fresh and meaningful insights to help us drive performance to the next level.

Mike Jannini, executive vice president & general manager, Marriott

It is a book for the manager and the employee, the interviewer and interviewee, for someone to assist in developing others and for you to better develop yourself. It is amazing how managers focus on people's strengths and accomplishments during the hiring process, yet concentrate primarily on weaknesses and development needs once inside a company. It is unlikely a football coach would move a lineman to a wide receiver position for his development and wonder why he didn't perform well, yet we tend to do this often in the business world. This is a practical guide for assessing and maximizing the abilities of yourself and others - condensing a wide variety of courses and study into a handbook that can be applied to a variety of challenges. I believe "SMARTS" can help drive the best results for the organization while best aligning the chances of success for the individual. You would be smart to read it.

David Blackwell, vice president and CFO, Wal-Mart Global Procurement 

We all know we have certain predispositions and this book explains them in a structured way so we can maximize the strong Executive Skills and contain the weak skills. It offers a new way to think about tasks and teaming, how to match skills to tasks and teaming of people performing those tasks.

Doug Dreyer, director of business development, IBM

NY Times Best-Selling Author

Chuck Martin is a New York Times business best-selling author, researcher, speaker, and business strategist. Martin offers invaluable context and pragmatic solutions to the problems leaders at all levels face today, helping them refocus on what matters most: overall vision, customers, strategy, and execution.

He is the author of seven business books, including most recently, Tough Management, the business fable Coffee at Luna’s and the upcoming Smarts: Are We Hardwired for Success (January 2007). Coffee at Luna’s, is about an overworked manager who can’t get off the treadmill of work until he learns three valuable lessons that totally improve his situation and those around him as well.

As the chairman and CEO of NFI Research, Martin is at the nexus of a global idea exchange and the leader of a research engine that regularly samples the mood and intentions of 2,000 senior executives and managers from 1,400 companies in 50 countries, including many of the Fortune 100. This gives him a staggering amount of useful information and a true, up-tothe- minute view of today’s workplace. The broad base of his network, the robust and virtually instantaneous nature of his process, and his experience analyzing results give him unusual insight into business and workplace trends.

A former vice president of IBM responsible for a global division dealing with media and entertainment, Martin has helped identify successful corporate business strategies for some of the leading companies in the world. Prior to joining IBM, he was the founding publisher and chief operating officer of Interactive Age, the magazine credited with helping to define the interactive marketplace and the first publication to launch simultaneously in print and on the World Wide Web. Martin’s last book, Managing for the Short Term, investigates how companies large and small are managing in today’s volatile world of disruptive technologies, sudden downturns and upturns in the economy, and tumultuous world events. He reassembles the profound disconnect he sees between many organizations’ long-term strategic vision and the short-term actions needed to realize that vision.

He is also the author of Net Future, The Digital Estate, and (co-author) Max-e-Marketing. He writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column on management and business issues and regularly appears on television business shows. Martin resides in New England.