And Still Have Time For Lunch

Author : Orna W. Drawas

It’s funny have easy it is to judge a book by its cover without meaning to.  I’m still not really sure why, but I guess partly from the title or images on the cover, I never expected this book to be a solid book or useful tips, recommendations and details about top performance.  It turns out, that initial impression was way off and ever chapter I read, I continued to be impressed with the content in this fairly short book.  The different angles of the book and analogies given are a refreshing change as well from the usual business situations for every example which I found to be creative and easy to understand how they can be applied not only in business, but in life.

The other main aspect of this book that I really liked was that it wasn’t too business focused.  It hit the mark in many areas of personal achievement and taking a serious look at life to put what’s important first and the rest aside.  I really value that and find it gets lost in many business books or books on top performance since they often have a narrow focus of achievement.  Drawas clearly balances work and life and many of the steps and tips are about not only discovering that but making the most use of that understanding in life then as well.

Many areas are covered and here are just a few of the highlighted areas:

• Separate the relevant from the irrelevant
• Get the job done quickly
• Schedule time for your priorities
• Free yourself from the terrors of your email inbox
• Focus to do a few BIG things, not a bit of everything
• A brilliant section and advice on handling interruptions in workday
• Delegation
• Meetings, handling them, making then useful
• Action lists
• Goals and purposeful activities

As you can see, these topics cover a wide range but I was impressed with the conciseness of each one and the excellent advice.  A end of the book is completely devoted to then applying these techniques in the workplace as well and Drawas doesn’t give the usual cliche style of implementation or old advice.  There are solid methods and steps to introduce each of these into a workplace and I believe this is the true value of the book then when it comes to implementing any of these.  You are not let guessing how to start or what to do with them, its all outlined.

There is certainly much of the content with the same processes and concepts as I’ve seen from other experts, authors and personal experience in this book so it is not all new, but it is a fresh reminder at the very least and in many places, quite insightful even though the topics may be know to you already.  I’d say this book overall deserves a very high rating as its an easy read, practically a business guidebook on all things you should know and it can help anyone to balance some things in their life with more purpose and planning, so I highly recommend it.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | No Comments »

How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization

Author : Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

First off, I have to say I love the topic of change and any book that covers how to make change happen is one of interest to me.  There are however many books on the subject of change that give unfounded advice and tips and anecdotes from personal experience that is not then easily applied to other situations.  This book is quite the opposite of that and I am happy to say this book is based entirely on data for its conclusions and everything in it is backed up by a huge 350,000 person survey that was used to identify the characteristics and behaviors of the most effective teams.  That is the other element of this book that makes it so wonderful, all of the aspects of change are from the perspective of teams and teamwork in organization and it is easily the best book I’ve read on the subject so far.  The authors Gostick and Elton clearly outline their findings and how they break down great teams into specific actions that can not only easily be understood, but replicated since it covers the behaviors of what they do and how they act, instead of their opinions or thoughts on the subject by themselves. The book has a wide range of team topics and it reinforces some of the best practices, which the authors call the basic 4 plus recognition, which are:

• Goal Setting
• Communication
• Trust
• Accountability
• +Recognition

With each of these areas, there are short point form lists of specific actions that people on breakthrough teams do for each of the 4+ areas.  I found these lists to be extremely valuable and a great resource for considering performance, creating regular feedback to encourage and excellent measures for any transformational team.  Beyond the basics and these excellent examples of each of those elements, I also really how there is a strong focus though the book on what you can do to actually cultivate a team.  This is immensely valuable for any leader and it was explored in a variety of ways to help you gain a high level of engagement from everyone in the team.  There are 3 basic concepts behind the breakthrough teams in the research and they are:

• Wow – One word that describes everything from excellence and high standards to impressing customers do more than is expected
• No Surprises – All team members are involved understanding expectations, having open debates and sharing ideas with everyone.
• Cheer – The team fully supports and roots for each other, appreciating great work and encouraging the best.

From the research, Gostick and Elton cite many worldly examples and they develop their case well with these examples of exceptional teamwork and results.  Overall, I was pleasantly impressed reading the book, pleased to see many of the examples and activities occurring in my own workplace and I’m happy to have learned many new techniques for enhancing my own team and organization.  I am impressed by their writing and thoroughly enjoyed the book and I recommend it to anyone leading a team, interested in leading a team or any managers or executives with influence about the culture or teamwork occurring in their organization.  For a sample of Gostick and Elton’s writing, you can see the guest post they authored here a couple months back called, Risky Business: It’s One Way to Build a Breakthrough Team.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 2 Comments »

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 »

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 »

Reinventing leadership for the age of mass collaboration

Author : Emmanual Gobillot

Leadershift is not only about the subject of leadership, but how leadership is shifted from a traditional sense of leadership to one more defined by social media, collaboration and engagement.  I love the subjects of this book and it covers the subject well from various aspects of such a shift.  Four specific areas of leadership are argued to be irrelevent in this new age of mass collaboration.

• Experience
• Knowledge
• efforts
• power

I like the discussions on these and while I can’t say I was all that aware of this new ‘shift’ as it is called, I’ve certainly seen evidence in leadership and learning about leadership where each are true.  These factors do not on their own carry much weight and when it comes to mass collaboration which has been proven time and time again with online content, system for anonymous creation like Wikipedia and massively multiplayer online role playing games.

One quote I love in the book is this:

The key to leaders’ success is not their willingness to accept a day of reckoning and the efforts they make to prepare for this.  Rather, it is their ability to embrace the idea that, given some fundamental trends, each day is a day of reckoning.  This is the difference between mediocrity and excellence.

I just love that as the point of embracing an idea is by far the most important thing to lead change.  There are literally thousands of great ideas that stay as just that, ideas.  it is not until one of these is truly embraced by a leadership that the idea takes form and begins to shape into reality.

The remainder of the book covers how to create the leadershift the book is really talking about.  It focuses on building communities, on engaging a social atmosphere around the shift and building followers that are fully participating in the community.  The four usual suspects of business that are desirable outputs are engagement, alignment, accountability and commitment.  The corresponding leadershift inputs to make these occur are simplicity, narratives, tasks and love.  Completely different from the old school list which is clarity, plans, roles and money.  These fundamental changes force a new kind of leadership, one where engagement happens without structure or hierarchy, where the leader is more involved and equal to the masses with narratives and dialogue to deepen the community and with compassion that bonds it all together.

All in all, the book is very good, I am not sure how to act on some of the ideas in the book or how to make those neccessary changes, but it certainly gives enough examples and stories to get a person thinking about application.  I’ve certainly seen many aspects of the mass collaboration and as a blogger, this is more obvious than it might be to most, since social networks, collaboration and building a community are certainly the success factors of any good blog as well, its interesting to see this in a context of business as well. Its a book that I’m sure you will enjoy if you are a leader, have interest in these mass collaborative efforts or you are simply interested in learning about how business are changing the way they operate to be successfull.  I don’t think the book is a game changer by any means but the information in it, the references, the examples are all solid, informative and very intriguing to any leader exploring collaboration.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 4 Comments »

Get a Grip on Your Business

Author: Gino Wickman

Let me start by simply stating my own praise for this already highly recommended book.  I have read a lot of business books and Traction is definitely my new found favorite.  It packs in so much applicable content around 6 key factors for running a business; it is an excellent handbook to use for growing and leading any small to medium sized business.  It covers these components from the perspective of starting from the top in a business with the leadership team and expanding the concepts throughout the organization as the tools are implemented and proven.

Most books and many that Wickman references are excellent business guides for narrower topics and while agree with many of his references and have enjoyed those books as well, this one covers such a wide scope, yet with an incredibly strong focus on the leadership component itself and with what is called the Entrepreneurship Operating System (EOS).  The EOS is Wickman’s term for the overall system used to run the business and it is what the book teaches very well with example company implementations used throughout the book, with specific tools and implementation strategies and with outlines and samples available for every step of the implementation process.  This is what I like so much about Traction, it is more of a handbook and one that gives an excellent set of steps for implementation.

Wickman covers these 6 components:

• Vision
• People
• Data
• Issues
• Process
• Traction

Inside each component, he presents the strategy of why and how to implement changes to make each step of the EOS a success.  It typically takes anywhere from one to three years to fully implement and realize this EOS in a business and see the resulting change and/or growth as a result.

To give a bit more detail about one of these components, I particularly liked the component on issues as it is a strong area especially in engineering and software areas which I work in.  The issues component is certainly not new to me in my company but it is often an area we struggle with solving.  Wickman gives a framework to use for the issue solving track that is three mains steps:

1. Identify – This step involves examining an issue to discover the real issue that is faced by that can only be discovered by being honest and uncomfortable to peel back the layers to identify what the underlying problem really is
2. Discuss – Everyone involved has their say about the issue with a focused effort to discuss that issue alone (no tangents). Keep the discussion around what is right overall for the company (the greater good) not individuals or individual groups.  Once any discussion becomes redundant, it’s time to move to step 3.
3. Solve – This step is mean to conclude the issue and solve it once and for all.  The whole point is to make the issue go away forever and not come back.  You turn the discussing into one or more action steps and you decide to move forward to finally solve the issue.

So overall, this book is one I will definitely be using in business to implement much of this EOS as I see the value, am excited by the overall focus and approach Wickman has and very much like the components and implementation guide.  I’ll leave you with a final quote directly from the book near the end about putting this system all together.

Many books have been written on the topics of meetings, planning, solving problems, developing people, and prioritizing.  What is new about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) is the way these disciplines have been assembled into a complete system for running an entrepreneurial organization.  Each individual tool is not as important as the whole, and all six components that make us the Entrepreneurial Operating System and the EOS Model need to be understood and mastered in order to fully gain traction.  You can read more about the process and book at the website, www.eosprocess.com

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 2 Comments »