Beginning in 1958, the International Paper Company ran a series of classic ads with the tag line: “Send me a man who reads.” The premise was that people who read would be better workers and more successful, driving results in organizations.

At the time it didn’t seem like a campaign like that was necessary. Reading in the US was on a roll back then. The number of books purchased increased by 447 percent between 1940 and 1960. The population only increased by 37 percent.

Today, things look different. Books sales have been flat for a while. An AP-Ipsos poll in 2007 found that a quarter of Americans had not read a book during the preceding year.

I’m not here to beat you up about not reading. I won’t bemoan the evil internet, mindless television, or a broken school system. Instead, I want to offer a suggestion.

Reading will help you be more successful. Start with what you can do online.

Read to keep up with what’s going in your industry or field. Head over to Google News. You can scan the news of the day to see what newspapers around the world think is important.

But there’s more. You can set up alerts that will let you know when there’s an article about your company or industry.

Check out the important sites for your industry. If you’re in manufacturing, go to Industry Week, for example.

Visit the sites of the important news outlets. Consider the Wall Street Journal and New York Times if you’re in business. Both of those offer alert options to subscribers and subscriptions are inexpensive.

Read book summaries and book reviews. There are lots of books you want to know about but may not want to devote time to reading.

Read books. They provide a kind of thoughtful depth that you won’t find in magazines and on the net. Find a subject you like and read up on it.

In today’s world we’d have to modify International Paper’s original line to “Send me a person who reads.” But if you’re the person you’re going to be more likely to find yourself in demand because reading will give you more to offer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.