Book Summary: The Coming Jobs War - What Every Leader Must Know About Job Creation by Jim Clifton

The vision for the Success Progress website is to help people utilize knowledge locked up in books to gain productivity. Most of the books are business related because small to medium sized businesses will dictate the future of America. The Coming Jobs War confirms this through verifiable data. Jim Clifton is the Chairman of Gallup. This is an excellent book that everybody needs to read.Why is this important to me?I don't want to waste your time and I want you to get actionable information from this summary. America from the top down looks pretty grim. We have been interlaced with several wars trying to police the world, our currency is being debased because of incompetent spending, the education system is not working even though we throw close to $1 Trillion at it annually and we are basically bankrupt if you add in all the unfunded liabilities. To throw another log on the fire, our healthcare costs are more than the banking crisis of 2008 EACH YEAR.America from the bottom u
p is still the greatest country in the world because we are free. I am American and very proud to live here. Entrepreneurial spirit lives in the blood of Americans and it is this basic horse sense and stubbornness that will fix the above issues. Jim's book speaks in detail what it will take to get it done and the almighty JOB is the answer.The Coming Jobs War is packed with 12 relevant chapters covering China, Joblessness, Innovation and Wellness. I am going to focus on four key aspects to highlight the book.1. Joblessness - When there are not enough jobs, everything deteriorates. Jim profiles two cities to make the point. Why is Detroit a mess and San Francisco California thriving? When cities lose jobs, tax revenue reduces and the spiral downward persists. I am from Detroit and understand this first hand. Detroit was the 4th largest city in the U.S. and was an awesome place to live (before my lifetime). Today, the political and education system are loaded with corruption a
nd malfeasance. Leaders need to focus on Job creation at all costs to survive. Now it is even more competitive because every city in the U.S. is competing to create jobs not just with other neighboring cities but with the whole world.2. Behavioral Economics - Jim defines Behavior Economics as data that mathematically track what men and women were thinking before they did something, before they transacted something. Behavior Economics focuses on "decision moments" before a transaction is made. Simple states of mind, like confidence, optimism, determination, creativity, hope and drive all exist before decisions that create the transactions of life. These bring GDP growth.3. Customer Engagement - The key to creating jobs is to acquire new customers and new sales. It is that simple. When companies are growing, then people get hired and are able to spend money and the economy grows. Jim argues (with good cause) that behavioral economics create decision points for customers to buy
or leave you. Thus the real key is for business owners to focus on customer engagement. This can be mathematically computed for potential sales. Let's suppose you can make 1000 customer impressions per month and your average sale price is $100. If the impression is positive (Apple, Southwest Airlines etc.) then you have a potential of $100,000 in sales. Likewise if the impressions are bad then you have the potential of losing $100,000 in sales. This simple concept is so strong that every business leader needs to have it imprinted on their forehead. To cement this fact think about your own shopping habits. Have you ever walked into a store and been treated poorly or ignored? What did you do? Typically, people walk out and never go there again and tell 7 other people about the bad experience.4. Employee Engagement - Organizations that have engaged employees grow their earnings per share 4 times more than organizations with disengaged employees. When I read this statistic, I d
id not believe it. I believe it now because we had an issue where one of our key thought leaders became disengaged and it costs us real money. I can tell you that employee engagement is the key to customer engagement and the 4 times growth number is probably low. The effect of disengaged employees on our company really put us back. Small business leaders need to focus on employee engagement to foster customer engagement which creates growth and new jobs.I only touched on a few of the key relevant points in this book. I recommend you read it because it will open your eyes. Jim profiles our health care problems and says that if they don't get fixed then we cannot win the Jobs war. The good news about this is that it comes down to personal accountability because obesity is tied to 70% of the healthcare costs. This is something that can be controlled from the bottom up.I hope you have found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine
until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is the importance of new jobs. If we want our future in the U.S. to be fruitful then we need to create new jobs. In order to do that, our local leaders have to foster the environment to promote job creation above any other agenda. Business leaders can create incremental jobs by focusing on employee and customer engagement. Control the interactions and your company will grow.

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