Author: Susan Stamm

Overall, I found this to be a very good book and there are many things I really enjoyed about it.  It’s fairly short and easy to read as the 42 rules are separated into 42 chapters and the whole concept of employee engagement is one which is very deer to me and an invaluable tool when it comes to leadership.  The book presents 42 easy to digest rules covering a good variety of topics. There are items that need you to focus on yourself and skills in order to perform well in your team then there are many more showing how you need to put your attention towards your team if you plan to engage them more in their work and for better performance.

I like how Stamm put specific actions you could put into place for each of the rules in order to get started and if you were to tackle each of those, this book would be a sure recipe for great engagement, and ultimately, great management as a result.  I know that management is an area that often gets looked upon poorly as a result of so many bad managers spreading those impressions, but Stamm breaks that with good advice and solid recommendations.  Everything covered is useful for being a better manager but it’s certainly not limited to managers. Many of the rules are things that any employee can do or at least strive to learn for a future role.

As with any book on engagement, I expect to see that it is about people, relationships and working on behaviors in those relationships, as that is what employee engagement is all about.  I am happy to say this book easily meets that expectation and in fact, I was quite happy to see the D.I.S.C. profile used to outline behavioral tools for the 4 quadrants of that model.  The one thing that I did not enjoy as much about this book is that it was hard to read because the rules were so individual.  They book could be read 2 pages at a time which is great for someone well distracted but I found the disconnected rules to be distracting on their own when I sat down to read though a number of pages.  I’d love to hear more on each subject and have the author ties the rules together more, as many are related but not presented that way in this short book.

Overall, it’s an excellent short book and one to be very useful if you don’t know much about employee engagement. I definitely recommend it. So whether you are interested in the book itself, this I recommend even more! The website covering the book’s content and reference site is excellent!  There are brief outlines for each of the 42 rules and there are templates available for excersizes on each of the rules.  This is an incredable resource on the subject so please do check it out and explore more about what this book and website have to offer!

Team Approach – 42 Rules Resources

42 Rules – Templates

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 1 Comment »

Ancient Principles for Lasting Greatness

Author: Michael Holmes

I received a copy of this book from Michael Holmes and he has been wonderful to read from and briefly interact with on twitter.  You can find him @MichaelGHolmes or at his website for the book at http://raisetheeup.com/.  The book is quite a short read and easy to read and it covers the subject of greatness from a Christian perspective very well.  For that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and it is very accurate both from the research aspect and evidence used to outline each area and I think he covers the subject thoroughly.

Greatness is first explored and a number of stories are used to demonstrate what is meant by greatness (both qualitative and quantitative) as well as obedience.

Principles are then explored and how they differ from practices.  I loved the points in instinctive morals but unfortunately, I have to say there were a number of paragraphs and examples that I just couldn’t make any sense of in this area.  Examples of sin being a principle completely lost me and no matter how many times I read it, these parts just completely confused me.  The wording used and how Holmes includes quotes to complete his thoughts I find is very distracting and unnecessary.  Personally, I felt that quotes were used far to much which made the author’s point difficult to follow.  I’m not sure exactly why I felt this way and I had the same feelings reading Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life a few years ago.  It must be a personal preference as millions of people love Warren’s book and obviously the quotes used didn’t keep others away.  The same is likely true with this book.  I’d like to hear an authors point be made from their own words more strongly and then provide some reference or context to back it up, instead of forming paragraphs, arguments and starting new thoughts with quotes from references.

So one thing I really liked are the 3 criteria to identify a principle over a practice:

1. Immutable – simply meaning that it cannot change, its lasting
2. Consequential – principles will consistently bring about consequences (whether they are rewards or downfall)
3. Universal – simply that apply for all wide range and are not specific to certain person or situation.

Next, Holmes covers isolation, desire and character as three critical areas impacted by greatness.  These sections were great and presented with short examples and references as is done throughout the book.

Finally, Homes explores 5 laws: vision, the extra mile, persistence, stewardship and service.  While I love these topics and attach much value to each especially in the personal development studies and writing I do, I didn’t seem to find the same value in these chapters from the book.  I think there is so much covered in such short sections (many are just one page) these laws all felt to be presented in a very disjointed manor.  Again, I felt some of the quotes to distract me from the message even though many supported the argument well.  It simple left the writing to very difficult to read, as the content doesn’t flow and certainly doesn’t segway nicely between the topics.

So, overall I did enjoy the book and I’m sure any Christian would gain much from it and find pieces that really mean something to them.  I think that people who are not very familiar with the characters and stories from the Bible will not understand many of the references and there is little explanation behind each to support it.  If you are looking to deepen your understanding of greatness and to look at principles and your character as it relates to greatness, then this book will definitely give you a great study guide with good examples and references to deepen your research on.  Each chapter even has ending questions to ask yourself or a study group questions about each topic and they would be very helpful in using this book in a group for discussion and review.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 6 Comments »

Author: Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom

As I’ve learned about leadership and personal development, I’ve learned how much these areas are really just all about change.  Changing yourself first and then looking to inspire and provoke change in others as well.  Recently, I’ve discovered, written about and become deeply involved with another such change.  A process called Appreciative Inquiry that is all about instilling organizational and community change.  I wrote a couple articles about Appreciative Inquiry when I first started learning about it and so if you haven’t read those, definitely jump back and take a look at those to understand a bit more about what appreciative inquiry is.  This book covers it as well, but the review I’ve written skips over much of that introductory material and gets to some of what I found to be more impactful once the basics were already understood.

Appreciative Inquiry – Introduction

Appreciative Inquiry – Tools and Methods

What this book has to offer is an in depth description of appreciate inquiry and the main steps typically needed in planning or hosting any kind of an appreciative inquiry.  There is so much content in this book I’m going to outline a few specific areas that I feel really bring out the value of appreciative inquiry.

Fully Affirmative

Focus on drawing out the best instead of problems

Best example of this in the book is an example from British Petroleum’s ProCare (a US auto repair business) that was conducting customer satisfaction surveys.  There was a downward trend occurring as soon as they company began the surveys.  They were using the 5% of dissatisfied customers from the satisfaction surveys in an attempt to fox those areas and address any problem areas in focus groups assigned for improving the surveys.  It seemed impossible to improve when the discussions and messages were about unwanted cases of customer feedback (or the problems in customer satisfaction).  An appreciative inquiry team of consultants was brought in to help assess this.  Despite much skepticism, they setup the same focus groups to look at 100% satisfied customer surveys only and the results were stunningly different.  The customer satisfaction ratings reversed immediately and started an upward trend.  This affirmative stance of appreciate inquiry created the environment needed to restore high levels of customer satisfaction and was only possible by exploring the best of customer satisfaction and to continue to focus on what was working.  This is the whole premise of appreciate inquiry.

Inquiry Based

Unconditionally positive questions are crafted as part fo the process to ensure that the nature of the questions brings a shift towards the hopeful and positive elements in any response.  Inquiry is a carefully selected word in this process as it implies there is a search and willingness to discover and learn.  Inquiry questions do not lead to a anything in particular, they are about sharing experiences and thoughts or opinions on a topic.  They have an openness that shows a genuine interest in the response which deeply engages people.

Improvisational

The third main trait of an appreciate inquiry is that it is improvisational.  It is loosely structured and has guiding principles only to devleop and get results from any appreciative process.  It is itself guided by questions and so those involved must respond and tailor their interactions and systems specific to that inquiry.  This makes every appreciative inquiry unique and it is that which keeps growing the appreciative inquiry knowledge based with new tools and techniques learn that bring out the vital elements of people and organizations.

Principles of AI

Another element that was new to me in this book was the outline of the 8 principles of appreciate inquiry.  These principles have been derived from the original creators of appreciative inquiry and by the evolution from experiences in conducting inquiries with large scale organization and community change efforts.  Without describing each in detail, which the book does well, here are the 8 principles:

1. The Constructionist Principle – Words Create Worlds
2. The Simultaneity Principle – Inquiry Creates Change
3. The Poetic Principle – We Can Choose What We study
4. The Anticipatory Principle – Image Inspires Action
5. The Positive Principle – Positive Questions Lead to Positive Change
6. The Wholeness Principle – Wholeness Brings Out The Best
7. The Enactment Principle – Acting ‘As If’ Is Self-Fulfilling
8. The Free Choice Principle – Free Choice Liberates Power

The authors cover some history of Appreciative Inquiry, its creators and origins.  They also explore much about how it has been applied since its inception.  There are large sections with great detail about the 4 main stages of appreciate inquiry:

• Discovery: Appreciative interviews and more
• Dream: Visions and voices of the future
• Design: Giving form to values and ideals
• Destiny: Inspired action and improvisation

Why Appreciative Inquiry Works?

The final chapter is called, “Why Appreciate Inquiry Works?”.  I loved this chapter as it not only summarizes appreciative inquiry with evidence and continued stories of application, but it also helps solidify the new beliefs around the thinking, words and actions required and what makes it so special and powerful as a process and engaging tool.  For some, it enables personal and collective power, others it enhances self esteem and self-expression.  It makes a lasting change and can permanently affect a person.  The book then covers that there are 6 freedoms that appreciative inquiry enables and how the process liberates power in those freedoms:

1. The freedom to be known in relationships
2. The freedom to be heard
3. The freedom dream in community
4. The freedom to choose to contribute
5. The freedom to act with support
6. The freedom to be positive

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, its hard to express how useful appreciative inquiry can be and what an impact it makes in an organization or community.  I’ve had the wonderful experience of seeing it first hand however in my own work and am honored to be our company’s appreciative inquiry champion steering our process and engaging the whole company with the various stages, tools and interactions.

Its been a great experience so far, has no end in sight, and definitely already shifting our organization towards what is called, “life centered organization”.  I’m excited to continue to learn more about appreciative inquiry and to see how else I can apply it in my life and other communities I’m involved in.  I encourage you to learn about appreciative inquiry as well and bring it into your organization or community.  I’m positive that you be happy that you did!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 12 Comments »

Yesterday in Part 1 of this review, I outlined briefly my experience with reading the Bible as well as the many heroes written in it to learn from.  This second part explores a few more areas I particularly valued.

Great Teaching Through Stories

I love storytelling and I know its a powerful way to teach and convey a message. This is definitely one of the reasons the Bible has as much impact on so many as it does, its full of hundreds of incredible short stories all weaved together in the greatest Love story of all time. That is of God sending his only Son to suffer and die on the Cross to pay for sins of all people through all of time. So of course that over arching story has deep meaning for me as a Christian, but most people will likely connect more with individual stories from the bible and what is taught in them.

When it comes to story telling, Jesus used stories and parables more than any other teacher and He did so with such a deep understanding, sometimes the message He sends with each story cannot be fully comprehended simply hearing it once. Some of Jesus’ stories and the messages He shared can really take years of study to fully understand. In fact, there are scholars and teachers still dissecting the meaning of each story today, 2000 years after the stories were originally told. Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m able to ever tell a story profound enough that even one person retells it I’ll be ecstatic, let alone millions of people teaching it 2 millenium later.

There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death; there is no discharge in that war.
Ecclesiastes, 8. 8

What Matters in Life

Another significant thing the Bible does like no other book is trigger many, many reflective questions about the things that matter most in life. Contemplating some of the stories and instructions from God does much to activate these questions in a hope to understand more of what mattes in our own lives in comparison to some of the heroes, villains and variety of people from the Bible. The example of how Jesus lived his live with servant hood and perfect obedience to God forces one to ponder if any of those same things matter in your own life. Are material possessions and temporary things on Earth getting in the way of you knowing and living the life you truly desire? What about the effort put into your relationships and serving others? Do you have a purpose and what is getting in the way of living it?

Personally, those questions really matter to me and so does the context of them. Of course its still a daily struggle to escape the undesirable and temptations I face, yet I find myself continually spiraling closer and closer to what always seems like a more defined purpose. Yet with each loop of this spiral it seems to morph into more of a funnel and I find the questions taking me deeper and deeper into the funnel. I’ve deepened my beliefs and faith in serving greatly by reflecting on all the stories and examples and by learning so much more through study. There are so many great references, teachings, messages and stories to ponder you can’t help but look at where applying that in your own life is valuable. Also, the moral foundation is so easy to apply to great relationships, true honesty, continual integrity and love for others.

Connections To Personal Development

All these beautiful ways to learn present a huge opportunity to improve oneself and that is where it connects deeply to most areas of personal development in today’s writings, teachings and courses. Many of the books, quotes and role models in personal development today have moral foundations, beliefs and a servant attitude that stems from the Bible. Whether its an intentional connection or not, much of what we study in personal development is a result of both old testament teachings and Jesus’ life here on Earth.

Whether your looking for examples of moral leadership, trust, integrity or friendships, its all here. From the beginning to the end (pun intended), its the Word of God. You’ll find nearly every area of personal development and a challenge to explore your own character to a level beyond what most would ever dare to start. Beautiful examples of the golden rule, servant hood, obedience, purpose and true faith are here in the one book nearly everyone has but seldom reads. It’s by far the best book I’ve ever read and is so profound I could put all other books away and just continue to learn by rereading this; the greatest book of all time.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12: 31-32

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 20 Comments »

I read a lot of books and I write a lot of book reviews here at LearnThis.ca.  Nearly all of them are focused on areas I have interests and about things I want to learn more about.  As well, many of you know about my Christian faith and foundation and while I had continually been explorer deeper into many areas of personal development through books, I’ve only just started to explore more books about Christianity and faith.  So, I decided to challenge myself and so I embarked on reading the greatest book of all time.  The number one best seller every year with nearly 6 billion sold overall through time.  That’s right, I decided to read the bible start to finish within 6 months.

Reading The Entire Bible

So I started by picking a few books (of which there are 66 by the way) from the old Testament.  I’ve read all the gospels and the first few books of the bible many times before but never consistently read through many of the inner books except story by story or bit by bit.  I decided to start part way through and wrap back to the old testament to finish it so I started with Ecclesiastes.  It’s a wonderful book and actually one of my favorites now.  So many words of wisdom and things to think about I could likely read it 100 times and not understand half of what is said in it.  This is the thing that amazed me the further and further I read.  I understood far more than I ever have in reading individual stories and chapters or bible books before, but at the same time, I realized there is so much more depth and wisdom that I just barely scratched the surface of what can be learned.  There are countless passages of wisdom and things to learn from that other books really just don’t compare any more for me.  One man’s book on a subject couldn’t possibly come close to the sheer volume of things to learn in the Bible.  This is not to say I’m going to stop reading other books or value them less as they have their place as well, it just really demonstrated to me that most of the content I really love learning about in personal development roots back to the Bible and especially to Jesus by example in so many ways.  I’ve always known that but never read it first hand over and over like I did reading through in the past 8 months.  I started reading in March and finished 8 months later in October which I’m quite happy about.  I read a number of other books in between as well, especially through the summer with more vacation time and time spent out at the lake.

So I want to explore as with any book I read, some of the things to learned.  In this case, I can only begin to mention the things I learned and really its more about the general methods that I learned from, not specific elements since there is just so much content to take in.  I know I will be reading this incredible book many times over after such a great experience this time.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1–2

Learning from Heroes

Everyone loves heroes and there are no shortage of them in the Bible.  There are a significant number of them in fact and they have so much to teach through their actions.  Everything from great acts of faith, fantastic leadership, servant hood to acts of desperation from suffering, despair and heartache.  These heroes aren’t like your everyday Pixar movie heroes though, they’re real with real scenarios, struggles and in most cases quite an amazing journey.

One of my favorite heroes is Jeremiah.  The depth of his character, his integrity and emotion portrayed is simply wonderful.  Jeremiah faced delivering a message of despair to the people of Judah due to their lack of faith in God and distance the commands of the Lord.  Of course he was rejected by the people of the land and expressed deep emotion to the pain and hardship that was brought upon him, yet all the while, he obeyed every command from God.  He was imprisoned, beaten, tossed aside, hated and wanted dead by many who knew him.  His faith kept him alive despite the harsh emotions and laments he expressed in his time of solitude. Jeremiah’s strength showed by him being completely real and expressive about his emotions and relationships.  He expressed his disappointments, his questions, his burdens.  He was authentic.  Genuine.  We don’t live an honest life like Jeremiah did, we fake our feelings, we tell little white lies to hide our true feelings and expressions.  Why can’t we be genuine like Jeremiah while still holding onto a faith in God, a hope that cannot die regardless of the suffering and despair we come across on this short earth life?  We ought to learn from Jeremiah to remember God’s compassion, seek him and wait for his grace and love.  Anyone who can exult the Lord and follow God in spite of these great grievances heart ache is a hero if you ask me.

Click here if you want to listen to a 32 min sermon and story about Jeremiah.

I’ll finish up with Part 2 tomorrow looking specifically at how The Bible teaches through storytelling, makes you look at what really matters in life and then how this relates to personal development.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 17 Comments »

Author: Dave Esler and Myra Kruger

How an Underdog Company Defied the Odds,
Won Customers’ Hearts, and Grew It’s Employees into Better People

I was sent an advanced copy of The Pursuit and Something Better and while I generally don’t like to read new books until I’ve had them recommended and ravely reviewed by others first but I’m glad I didn’t wait for this book, its absolutely brilliant! I read it back to back with The Adversity Parodox and both books are now in my definite top 5 for business and personal development books.  The Pursuit of Something Better is a story of a CEO who takes a mediocre company with high turnover to a thriving culture rich customer focused success.  Jack Rooney is that CEO of the company, U.S. Cellular and he comes in with a passion and belief in culture change being the cornerstone of the company’s success and that belief drives new systems and focus that is unstoppable.  There is more story and insight and example in this book than many others combined and it shows what can be done not only from top down, but also in other levels of the organization, your life and individual self improvement so don’t think this is an executive book only, its much more than that!

Rooney comes into U.S. Cellular and introduces a new concept known as the Dynamic Organization (the D.O.) which he lives and breathes by example and immediate sets new standards and expectations that all associates in the company will also start living that DO culture.  He delivers these systems with a proven track record and overcomes significant hurdles along the way.  I found these hurdles and ways they were addressed to be most inspiring as I see the same items in my work and often they feel like impossible roadblocks.  This story and book are proof and guidance to get past that!

So, I found there are 4 main themes to the Dynamic Organization in the book  and I’ll cover some specific things from each in this review.

Culture

This book outlines an impressive transformation that is built upon a new culture for U.S. Cellular, one far from the conventional business wisdom.  The culture is one that shifts toward a customer focused, caring and value based company.  One that seeks motivational leadership, provides impressive personal development systems and engages and expects every employees to contribute to these new cultural initiatives.  Among these deep messages built into the company come a focus to always do the “right” thing and expect that of all its associates, especially its leaders.

Rooney puts many stages of culture change into place and he does so with much resistance, as would be expected, but his systems built over time and prove themselves to be valid in building a better company and all of the culture changes become sought after both internally between departments and regions within U.S. Cellular and eventually outside the company as well. All three areas below are embedded into the culture and the core to making it all work is that this culture is actually what defines the business strategy.  In fact, it IS the business strategy.  Everything that is promoted in the dynamic organization and the culture for it, are actually the business focus to Rooney and all of the systems, decisions, leadership, and financing is put towards these cultural aspects.  This was the most exciting part to me, to see how the success of a company can come by focusing strategy on things that matter to the employees and customers, that things are done with moral leadership and that the company can focus on initiatives that lead to profits, without directly being steered by profits.

Customer Service

The customer deserves the focus and the customer gets priority are also embedded into this Dynamic Organization and it is taken to great extremes in many cases with long term benefits that certainly didn’t seem profitable in any way when first introduced.  Much of these initiatives in the story were created at a time when there was huge growth in the cellular industry and most companies were purely after capturing market share quickly to expand and take advantage of the available growth.  While this mattered to U.S. Cellular, it wasn’t a focus and the customers were treated better than competitors, service was of its highest quality and the company had expectations from every employee that decisions and actions were taken to ensure the customer would benefit as a result.  Many of these things were costly in the short term but they slowly saw the market shifting to recognizing this customer service and the loyalty of their customers grew.  It allowed them expand and ultimately hang on to market share while their competitors were still struggling to capture new markets without a loyal customer base.  The long term benefits of this payed off and the book outlines many of the challenges that were faced in doing this and how this customer focus was created and maintained at U.S. Cellular.

Leadership

None of this great change could happen without great leadership and there are impressive stories and systems employed that can be modeled to help companies build stronger more focused leadership.  The Dynamic Organization expected drastic contributing to the new culture and that was reinforced with regular leadership development and feedback systems.  Peer based feedback systems for all leaders drove much of these expectations and it allowed all associates to identify the desired leadership factors which seemed to enable more and more grass roots leadership.

Ethics

I think the sheer volume of attention put to ethics in the Dynamic Organization was impressive and one of the most inspiring aspects of the book.  It shows how a company can still operate (and do so very successfully) with strong ethical boundaries and expectations.  Business competition often stems unethical behaviors and greed that dominate our news and media channels which is so obvious today.  These kind of stories and examples of doing the right thing no matter what the costs and the way U.S. Cellular put ethical boundaries and expectations into a company’s core culture is something to be honored and admired.

So, I’d highly recommend The Pursuit of Something Better to anyone interested in culture change, leadership, ethics and moral leadership and customer service.  I believe some of these changes can occur at any level of an organization but its especially useful for driving systemic changes and strategic change in your company.  I can’t say the book is really a clear guide of exactly how to do this, but the stories are inspiring and many of the systems and actions are described in detailed and will be easy to use as a model for similar systems in your own company.  I know I can use some of these in mine!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 16 Comments »