Author : Patrick Lencioni

This book is another to add to Lencioni’s great collection and this one tackles employee satisfaction and job fulfillment.  A topic not easy to write a story around I’m sure yet Lencioni does it again with his usual collection of strong characters and an interesting plot to demonstrate that a complex business issues such as employee satisfaction can in fact, be outlined and modeled.  The story itself is about a retiring CEO who finds himself mindlessly bored without some problems to fix in his retirement and ends up committing into a little local restaurant wanting to help turn it around from a place of misfit employees who really don’t care or even like their work to a thriving business and environment where those same employees not only like their jobs, but also learn to excel at them and maintain the desire to do well in their roles on their own.

I think the book is worth reading for anyone leading or managing in a company with employees and for anyone who works in a cubicle environment or any work environment where they really don’t feel a passion for their work, but don’t know why.  This book will help develop that level of engagement needed to excite employees and to teach some basic principles that work at all levels of an organization to make improvements in work culture and environment.

If you haven’t read any of Lencioni’s books, you are missing out on his fantastic fables and story telling he has become one of my favorite authors because of that.  I find I learn so much from his books and he drives home specific models and applications of the model through examples that it is easy to have applicable take aways from his books.  This one covers a simple model to use for recognizing the 3 signs of a miserable job:

• Anonymity - people need to understand their jobs are important and necessary for the business and for other people or clients in the business.
• Irrelevance - a danger when an employee does not know why their job is important, what impact it has or why it matters as some contribution to others.
• “Immeasurement” – when people do not know how or simply do not measure their own outputs in their job, they cannot have a high level of job satisfaction since their is no output realized.

With the high ratio of dissatisfied and unhappy workers in today’s workforce, I think this book is really important for managers, team leaders, executives and anyone with the ability or desire to drive some change, make a better workplace for themselves and colleagues and to understand some of the important factors that do make a job more enjoyable.  Lencioni’s story is one I’m sure many can relate to because of the dynamic characters and I especially like the point of irrelevance.  The way his characters solve this is by looking not at what a person’s job does for themselves, but how it contributes to others people in their work or to clients.  Encouraging people to measure the impact they have on others and empowering them to seek ways to contribute to a clients life in some simple yet impactful way, really sends a strong message about how people work and how they think about people in their roles.  So, I encourage you get this book and any other of Lencioni’s books (here are my other book reviews of Lencioni’s work), as they are all wonderful stories and train each subject very well.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 1 Comment »

This is a guest post written by Jonathan Fox, a personal trainer.  See his website and info below the article to contact him.

Our health is not something to take for granted, yet many of us do. Many of us dream of living a long and healthy life, yet in this age of fast food restaurants, cigarettes and alcohol, this prospect seems to be an unlikely one. But something can be done to nip unhealthy living in the bud. Remember, when it comes to your health, it is never too late or too early to start making changes.

Here we cover some ways you can change your lifestyle and improve your quality of life. Some of these changes are simple, while others require a bit of work:

Diet

Forget about fad diets – Fad diets never work. Just think of all those people you know who lost huge amounts of weight, only to gain it all back. Talk about unhealthy living. The key to maintaining a fit and healthy body is to eat a balanced diet, which includes fruit, vegetables, meat, carbohydrates and lots of water. Combine this with regular exercise and you should look and feel healthy well into your old age.

And speaking of water – Drink lots.

Dunk the junk – Cutting out junk food should be easy enough as long as you make it inaccessible. Get rid of all the junk food in your fridge, and avoid the junk food aisle next time you go shopping.

Cut the caffeine – For many of us, coffee offers that much needed boost in the morning. But, as well as know, caffeine is a drug, and drugs are addictive. Caffeine, whether in coffee or in soft drinks, are
bad for your health. Rather opt for decaf if you must, or try herbal teas for a healthy alternative to you morning caffeine fix.

Opt for organic – Organic produce is all the rage these days, so why not jump on the bandwagon and join in on the hype? And besides being healthy, organic produce taste better too.

Enjoy healthy snacking – Most dieticians will agree that you need to have six small meals daily in order to maintain a healthy weight. Having a snack between meals is a great idea, but remember to make them healthy. That means no snacking on chocolates, crisps or the like, but instead opting for fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds.

Counting carbs – Carbohydrates are an essential part of a healthy diet, but some of them do more harm than good. Cut out bad carbs (i.e. white carbs) and instead switch to whole-grain alternatives.

So long sugar – Refined sugar is in just about everything, so it would do you well to read labels and avoid products like soft drinks and sweetened teas. High sugar intake leads to obesity, and have been known to be a contributing factor for heart attacks and strokes.

Exercise

Get active – Getting up and moving is the best way to get your body back in shape. And we do not necessarily mean intense work-outs in the gym. A simple, leisurely walk twice a week can do wonders for your body and mind. If you are new to this, start small by taking a 30 minute walk twice a week. As time goes on, increase the time and frequency of your walks and get your blood pumping.

Don’t forget to stretch – Stretching is important before any strenuous activity as it assists with the flexibility and recovery of your muscles. But be careful as stretching can lead to injury if done incorrectly. Only stretch after you have warmed up, and again after a work out when the muscles are already warm.

Curb complacency – Find something that will motivate you to exercise and stick with it. People often get bored in fixed routines, and familiarity breeds contempt. So shake up your routine once in a while.

Social

Surround yourself with friends and family – Friendships, family, love, happiness and laughter can greatly improve your quality of life.

Get friends that live healthy – You will be surprised at how influential your friends are in your life – whether good or bad. When it comes to healthy living, speak to friends who have the same goals as you, and lean on them for support.

Lifestyle

Smoking stinks – Smoking is one of the leading causes of various cancers, heart disease, strokes and emphysema. Not to mention, it causes bad breath, yellowing of the teeth, wrinkles, and it smells bad.

Sleep tight – Try to get a good night’s sleep often – every night if possible. Experts suggest that eight hours of sleep per night is best for optimum results during the day. But it really depends on your diet, exercise and daily activities. At worst, try to get in at least six hours.

Do not forget about your teeth – Many people become lax about the health of their teeth. Visit your dentist regularly to prevent tooth decay, gum disease etc. Respect your teeth and enjoy a lifetime of pearly whites.

Practice safe sex – With the increase of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV AIDS, it is now more important than ever to protect yourself and your partner. Visit your local clinic and get informed.

A pill a day – A good multivitamin does wonders. If you are over 50, a good multivitamin with provide you with most of the nutrients and vitamins needed.

Check it out – Visit your doctor regularly for check ups. All men over the age of 50 should visit the doctor for a complete physical, including blood work and a prostate exam. This is also an age to be concerned about colon and prostate cancer. Schedule screenings with your doctor.  For women, visit your gynaecologist annually for cervical cancer screenings. Yearly mammograms are also required if you are over 40. This is also a common age for thyroid problems, high cholesterol, diabetes and colon cancer. Check your family’s medical history for any hereditary illnesses and prepare your screenings with your local GP.

This article was written by Jonathan Fox, a personal trainer who teaches people how to get a six pack.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 9 Comments »

How to Change Things When Change is Hard

Author : Chip Heath and Dan Heath

This is a great book, I really loved it!  The authors give incredibly convincing content around a subject that is so hard for many people, that is: change.  I personally love change, drive a lot of change in my own live and those around me and love anything that helps me to be more of a change agent.  I expected the book to be great considering their first top selling book, Made to Stick, I also highly enjoyed and recommend.  The authors take what is such a common problem and struggle in people’s lives and they break it down into pieces that are easier to understand individually yet still highly related and well tied together in the book.

Dan and Chip Heath break the topic down into three simple sections:

1. Direct the rider
2. Motivate the elephant
3. Shape the path

These concepts or sections represent what is necessary for change and are used by comparing to what is needed for a rider on an elephant.  The rider is the logical, rational or thinking body of the system and responds to triggers of rationalization, fact and well thought out ideas. The problem for the rider is then the elephant itself, which cannot be physically controlled and has to be motivated to respond by triggering its emotions or by any short term influence possible.  The idea then of shaping the path is to make changes to the environment and other outside influences easier on yourself and the elephant so the change can be carried through with the least effort.

The authors do an amazing job of breaking down complex situations and examples to these same 3 aspects with concise examples that really demonstrate the ideas well.  I love the authors’ ability to do this and while they do break it down for you, the book leaves a lot to think about in the way of applying the concepts and similar breakdown to your own problems and changes you face in life.  There are 9 steps to examine for handling change and 3 of them I’ve outlined below that really really resonated strongly for me:

• Find the bright spots – This aligns very well with the appreciative inquiry work I’ve discovered this year and I am happy to see the overlap and recommendation here to seek the positive aspects of a change to help drive it.  I agree completely.
• Shrink the change – break down the change into small management parts and deal with them on a scale that makes it easier.
• Tweak the environment – Change the surroundings and environment to influence the change desired and lead people toward the new path, which might include yourself as well in that steering process.

Switch take abstract and complex ideas and breaks them into easy to digest pieces through brilliant examples, memorable points and quotes and enough content to leave you thinking about the book for some time.  It’s one of those books that really needs to be re-read and to some degree studied to fully digest the content.  There are levels of change to consider for any situation including individual, societal and organizational levels of influence that are expanded on with each area of the book as well.

So, I urge you to read Switch, let the authors educate you on how your mind reacts with both a rational side an an emotional one, explore the components of influencing change and to enjoy the perfectly matched examples and stories that both prove the points made and more importantly, teach the content in a powerful and memorable way.  I can assure you its a great book, you will be entertained reading it and it will give you more power in making change happen, wherever you desire it.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | No Comments »

As a blogger (and many of you reading this as well) I regularly visit others’ blogs, new blogs and surf through socially connection blogs.  In doing so I’ve come across a huge variety of sites.  As much as I’d like to say its always about the content, we all know that while that is an important factor for the quality and impression of any blog, there is one other big component of a blog that is just as important, the overall blog etiquette at the site.  By etiquette I mean how well the site and the voices on the site are behaved and what impression this leaves the visitors.

Stay on topic

Often I find that bloggers shift away from what they know about to publish popular content that is way off topic or not related to their blog in any way.  Usually I see this from bloggers who are seeking growth, popularity or other “traffic” generating measures so they are willing to bring in unrelated content or popular at the expense of their existing readers and visitors who expect consistent content.  I think it is much better to publish off topic items or content as guest posts on sites where that is a regular topic.  This would benefit everyone more by exposing to a new audience, by helping create great content for another blogger and by sparing existing subscribers of unrelated content they may not be interested in.

Be honest, don’t act like you know everything

Often I see bloggers responding to questions, comments or stating opinions as if it is fact and true.  While there is nothing wrong with writing your thoughts (after all, that is what blogging is all about) but it is misleading and dishonest when a blogger states opinion as if it is fact, or leads readers to believe that they know a lot about a subject when in reality they do not.  It is best to be honest with your readers and state how you have learned something or where you learned it and why you are sharing it, instead of making it seem like an absolute true when in fact, it may just be an opinion.

Don’t reply publicly to every single comment

Reading blogs is great for the content, but the best part of blogging is the connections, the discussions and the people you can meet through commenting.  It’s because of this that I like to read through comments after a great article and you often get a lot more insight, opinions and additions to the original article.  However, some bloggers feel a weird need to reply to every single comment and its incredibly distracting and simply unnecessary.   Some comments are as simple as “Thanks, I liked the article” and then the blog owner goes on with some comment that adds no value and simply repeats what was already said.  If you have something valuable to add, then by all means add it and welcome your visitors but to set a guideline to always reply publicly is just poor etiquette for the discussion area.  There is no reason why a blogger can’t reply to many of these visitors to welcome them in a private email to keep their comments and discussion focused and on topic so they are more enjoyable to read.

Spare your visitors of all popups

I’m sure that this is a personal preference but I think it is safe to say that in general, people don’t like popups showing up.  I am seeing more and more sites using newsletter subscriptions and popups to entice visitors to sign up.  What I really hate is when I visit a site and it says I’ll only see the popup once, and then it keeps showing up or it shows every time I visit.  Unfortunately, many bloggers see this as a necessity and use popups to grow their followers but I find it to be far too aggressive and unnecessary. Personally, I often find that these are the very sites that leave my reading lists first and since I enjoy visiting sites for the comments, they often are the first to leave my news reader as well since every visit to a page to read comments leaves me with some popup subscription.  I am much less likely to share these sites in social media and I would always prefer to promote a clean article, then one with annoyances that will face those I share it with.

Never copy content

I wish everyone had the moral compass to know that copying content is wrong but sadly, it is not true.  Copying other people’s text, full articles and images is wrong and you should never do it without permission.  I have found my own site’s content and even my own pictures I have taken scattered onto other sites often without permission.  On one hand, it is nice to know that it is valuable enough for others to want it, it is also nice to know that that value is attributed to the right person for their hard work to create it.  This one is simple, good blog etiquette means that you just don’t ever copy content without permission.  Period.

Always site your references

Related to other people’s content is then in how you use it.  I often read people quote someone or mentioning an article they read, but they fail to include a link or proper reference where the original context could be read.  If you are going to use references or external content, please always include the appropriate links and detailed reference so that the content could be found.  This is especially useful from blogs as often blog articles become the search engines top pages for studies, articles or interest or other things one might be doing research on, and if the reference are their the site is still useful to such a visitor, if it mentions it without the link, it is next to useful.  Do your readers a favor and always site your references.

Accept criticism and allow healthy conflict

Some bloggers hide comments that they perceive as negative even when they are respectful and simply differing in opinion.  I’ve had my own comments removed from sites, seen whole discussions get removed and even seen many bloggers completely remove commenting from their site because of criticism or conflicting opinions.  It’s important to have this interaction on a blog and any blogger not willing to have any, might as well not be blogging as it only shows they are close minded and one sided.  If you can’t learn from your visitors who are interested in the content in the first place, then who will you learn from?

Reduce the ads for direct visitors

This tip goes far beyond etiquette but I will start there.  I first learned about doing this from Steve at My Wife Quit Her Day Job which shows you how to put ads into your pages only for search engine traffic visitors and not people who type your URL directly.  I’ve implemented this on my site and it works great and have seen many versions of it at other blogger’s sites as well.  Basically it lets you show less ads to visitors your link or type your site in directly which is a huge benefit since those visitors are less likely to click your ads anyway, since they are usually repeat visitors and after your content, not the ads.  The second advantage of this is that you will get a higher click through ratio on your ads since the ads are shown to general visitors, not the people less likely to click.  This results in higher payouts by google since the click through is also higher on your site and it can make a significant increase in your ad earnings.  My ad impressions went down by about 25% implementing this but my ad revenue went up by 30% immediate and has been sustained.  The value of this to your visitors makes your site more attractive to regulars.  I wish that bloggers would implement this for the popups and subscription notices in the section above on popups.  It would provide the same benefits to the visitor and clean up a blog.

Don’t spam the network

Growing attention to your blog takes work, no doubt.  It requires guest posts, back links, other site commenting and social media.  Using all or any of those is easy to abuse and so you must learn to put similar effort into those areas with proper etiquette as your site itself.  Don’t go on a commenting rampage unless you are adding valuable comments, as it can easily be seen as spam.  The same is true of social networking and back links.  Most of the social networking sites either work by computer algorithm or simply by followers, either way, they naturally detect spam and if there is not a mix of others’ content, promotion of friend’s sites and a healthy mix of content, your efforts could easily be considered spam.  The more you promote other people and build your connections in pretty much any social media, the more successful you will be in that network.

Focus on giving value, not selling it

Many bloggers dive right in to focusing on making money before they really are providing strong value and usually results in a poor blog or sort lived one.  Those that look to provide value first, grow the value and then look to benefit from it do much better.  As for your content whether it be subscriptions, ebooks or services, if you give enough of that away for free and give away that value, the sales will come as a result of the value, instead of having to continuously sell it.  Giving away a number of ebooks before you start selling them will allow visitors to know what value to expect and see examples of your work, which increases the likeliness that they will actually buy something as well.    My own example of this is with my free ebooks I give away.  They have created tremendous traffic, comments and feedback for my site and they are consistently downloaded more than 7000 times per month!  Please if you haven’t seen those before, do take a look.

Do you have any additional blog etiquette tips??  Please add them in the comments below.

Posted by Mike King under Learning & Personal | 16 Comments »