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 »

Podcast Management Tip – Enabling Other’s Suggestions

Nick was kind enough to invite me to do a management tip as a podcast with him on his blog.  It’s my first podcast and I think a useful tip for managing and leading others which has a been a strong topic here lately so may as well continue it!

Management Tip – Enabling Other’s Suggestions (9 mins)

Nick has a lot of other great tips at his blog and of course in his book as well.  For those that haven’t seen it, here is my review of his book, “Lead Well and Prosper,” or you can order it from his site for your own copy.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 6 Comments »

Author : Matthew Kelly

Well I’ve had this book on my  bookshelf for a few months now as I’ve been catching up my backlog of books and I’m so happy to have finally read it.  I have read a few other recent reviews lately and while they outlined a bit of the content covered in the book, they never expressed a lot of personal effect the book had.  I want to share mine and my main comment is that this is a fantastic book.  Not only for a manager but anyone wanting to manage their lives and the lives of those around them better.  From the title, I expected the book to teach me how to be the dream manager, which I thought would be one that people would dream to have or the best possible manager.  The funny thing is as I started reading and found out quickly what the dream manager was, the book wasn’t directly teaching that at all.  I love the ideas and as I got further into the book and realized that the concepts put in practice do need to be in place by any  manager, I fell back to thinking and definitely think it now, that doing what this book teaches, will make you the dream manager.  A manager who puts the dreams and ambitions of an employee first in order to build them up only on the hope and knowledge that that will pay back more in the future really is what the ideal manager is.  As I continue to learn in so many ways, put people first and the rest falls into place.  The story is captivating as I couldn’t put the book down wanting to find out the impact of the new initiatives and programs put into place in the story.

The book is written as a fable (my favorite style of business book as I find it far more applicable to real life) about a janitorial services company struggling with a massive turnover problem.  An innovative approach that is used and demonstrated in the story is that of a dream manager program.  The program all started out by the company doing a survey to find out what the employees think causes the high turnover.  This led to recognizing some common goals among the employees and the idea that a dream manager hired on at the company could help to facilitate the dreams of the employees.  This would in turn help employees feel like the organization truly valued them and that they would ultimately feel more loyalty to the company and be more productive with their work.  The presented concept in the story delivers many times over with the turnover problem and the company sees massive improvements in employee productivity and profits.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is,

Our employees are our first customers, and our most important customers.

Anyway, I put a lot of value on the ideas presented and to the extent the dream manager program were taken in the book.  I personally believe 100% in developing people first and seeing the results of that back to the organization second and this message is clear through the story.  The book has given me a new spark to maximizing the use of my own one on one times with my team to look at new ways to explore their dreams and help them achieve them.  I definitely want to look for ways to bring this into other practice with other managers and the book provides a number of techniques to start doing this, all of them realistic and quite practical.  The other thing that Kelly does very well with the book is that he adds a practical handbook section after the end of the fable to explore ways to put this into practice.  The best part of this is that he doesn’t limit it to managers.  He covers ways to start no matter where you fit into an organization and even more unique in a “business book” is that he looks and discusses how this can be used in other areas of your life with family and friends.

This is definitely one of the top books I’ve ever read for business and management and it was highly useful and will definitely make an impact on my work and more importantly, the work of others that I manage.  I can’t wait to put some of these into practice and see the effects it will have in the workplace.  I absolutely recommend this book, especially for any manager!

What’s your dream?

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 4 Comments »

Genre : Business & Investing
Author : Nick McCormick

15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager

McCormick has created a brilliant little management handbook here that is a perfect desk mate of any manager or want to be manager. He truly understands the problems with “typical” management and he offers a superb collection of steps and ways to turn yourself into a good manager. His theory behind what at first seems to be weak, that of just a “good” manager is that being a good manager is FAR more than what is typical in today’s workplace so comparatively, good is definitely good enough and will do you well to strive even for that. There isn’t any need to be a great manager because there is such a gap between the good and typical already that first gap is the important one. The book is nice and short and can be read in about an hour. It’s illustrated by Mark Morgan with a number of office cartoons that demonstrate typical behavior and thoughts that represent the gap that is often between a manager and a direct report. They are quite amusing and add some good humor to what otherwise is a more serious topic.

The 15 steps outlined (which are also the 15 short chapters of the book) are:

1. Adopt a Serving Attitude
2. Teach
3. Provide Honest and Timely Feedback
4. Share Information
5. Listen
6. Treat People Like Human Beings
7. Set Goals, Plan, and Execute
8. Learn
9. Do the Right Thing
10. Embrace the Uncomfortable
11. Clean Up Your Own House First
12. Persist
13. Do What You Say You’ll Do
14. Always Follow Up
15. Plan Your Week

These steps cover all aspects of management and McCormick captures them into a set of steps and things you can actually do. I think the book is also valuable to any leader and even just for life tips as you can see, the steps listed are useful for relationships and other areas of life outside of work and management. The focus in the book however, is still certainly for managers. As I mentioned, the subtitle for becoming good manager is an understatement. Anyone who does all of these steps and does them well is going to be a great manager. None of them are easy, but they are all effective and are required at least at some level to be a good manager.

I particularly love how McCormick focuses so many areas on the fact that you are serving others as a manager and that your directs are real people, with real feelings and their own minds. They aren’t robots, shouldn’t be treated like a possession and that you will only succeed as a manager through the work of those people you work for (yes, you do work for them as a manager)! One other thing I really like that’s in the book is a 31 question survey to measure if you’re a good manager. I did well on that but it also pointed out a few areas I can focus on to improve. I’ve decided that each month, I will make sure to take on one of those questions I don’t yet do and make it happen that month. I plan to get to the point where I can honestly answer yes to all the questions about being a good manager and the book is definitely an excellent guide to help understand how to do that.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 8 Comments »

Author : Gary Hamel

As a brief summary, I think the book flap does the best job:

…Hamel argues that organizations need bold management innovation now more than ever. The current management model – centered on control and efficiency – no longer suffices in a world where adaptability and creativity drive business success.

For me, the book is about how the models used for management need to change to better match that of a world where creativity and adaptability drives business success. There are 4 parts to separate the book:

• Why Management Innovation Matters
• Management Innovation in Action
• Imagining the Future of Management
• Building the Future of Management

Why Management Innovation Matters

This first part looks at many reasons why management as it is practiced, is at risk to end and is falling behind our innovative and technology driven world. There are examples where innovation with management really enable a company to move forward and gain competitive advantage. These advantages include measureable examples from the past century where classic processes such as strategic planning, capital budgets, project management, reviews and promotional incentives have been pushed aside in favor of new areas:

• Managing science
• Allocating capital
• Managing intangible assets
• Capturing the wisdom of every employee
• Building a global consortium

These are not without challenges and preparing an organization to be ready to adapt management innovation is a critical factor. 2 significant ways to accomplish this are listed as:

• Make bold innovation everyone’s job
• Allow and encourage everyone to participate and give their best

Management Innovation in Action

The Whole Foods Market company is detailed as an example where management innovation drove great success through development of a community purpose among all stores and employees. This was done through setting and holding new bold principles and standard, high level of employee accountability and incentives, and by getting rid of any preconceived or expected management techniques to allow new ideas to develop without criticism.

The next example is about W.L.Gore and its vision that brought about a $2.1 Billion company creating the well known Gore-Tex among many other products in 45 plants around the world. Gore flattened the organization eliminated the need for approvals and allocated 10% of all staff time to be used for creating new things and acting on new ideas.

No management innovation book would be complete without Google as as example and this book is no exception. Google is explored to show how they fully adopted a number of techniques to maximizes management innovation:

• utilized the power of the internet
• reinforced new bold management ideas without needing business degrees and education
• that engaging all employees with few hierarchical boundaries
• encouraging collaboration
• dedicating 20% of time to use for creative new ideas maximizes management innovation

Imagining the Future of Management

Next, the shackles of old management principles are discussed and how to break free from these old ways. Embracing new principles by using diversity, democracy, flexibility, and meaning with all employees are the keys here. Also, the techniques to learn new ways are outlined which include democracies of ideas, amplifying imagination, implementing new learning methods, using collaborative involvement, asking for volunteers and by leveraging the wisdom of crowds.

Building the Future of Management

A few examples are explored again such as GE and IBM to demonstrate ways to build a new maangement model for the future. This is outlined as:

• decentralizing
• creating equal ground competition
• allowing decisions to be peer based
• giving free choice of work opportunities

All of these techniques look very much like the Web 2.0 revolution and the same advantages that the internet is experiencing from massive per person involvement is possible at a management level if some of the boundaries are removed and the environments are worked to let them expand and be creative. I personally love this style of management and got a lot of new idea son how to further involve my team and produce an environment to stimulate imagination, collaboration and ultimately drive more and more innovation. I definitely recommend this book to any manager or leader. It is especially useful in a technology based company where many of the concepts are visible in the technology and products being produced but has not yet transitioned into the day to day culture of the workplace and management team.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 6 Comments »

The purpose of this blog is to provide personal development methods and tips, and these involve articles, lists, stories, books and other things. So, I wanted to share some of the resources I use and enjoy online to my readers. This article highlights some of my favorite resources online (I read many more than just these) for personal development content in life and business. I know they will be useful to you as well. Feel free to add comments with your favorite resources.

#1: Books. Books. Books. This is THE best resource I can possibly recommend. I have many recommended book reviews here if you use this search.

#2: Manager Tools weekly management podcasts(http://www.manager-tools.com). Mike Auzenne and Mark Horstman have created a stunning amount of brilliant content that they describe as, “… a weekly podcast focused on helping you become a more effective manager and leader.” They deliver actionable content each week in podcasts, host amazing conferences and offer premium content on their site. I highly recommend it to any aspiring leader/manager.

#3: Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Site/Blog (http://www.stevepavlina.com). Steve simply has a huge amount of great content on his site and blog. Its an excellent resource and covers many of the same topics and categories that I write about. Definitely worth spending some time at as well.

#4: Personal MBA (http://personalmba.com). Another great resource site where Josh has collected a batch of recommended business books and additional resources to get you on your way to learning everything you need to learn about business management, without the cost of tuition. This site is a wonderful option to paying for a MBA program. I’ve found his site online after reading many of the same books and definitely agree with most of his book selections.

#5: Other blogs and sites. These are some of my other bookmarks and blogs I read. Nothing in order, just a great source of content from various other sites:

• Marshall Goldsmith Online Library
• David Maister
• Mission Minded Management
• Genuine Curiosity
• Management Craft
• The Practise of Leadership
• The Positivity Blog
• Life Hack

#6: Audio books, seminars and motivational speakers are other great resources for stepping up your capability, lifestyle and attitude to get more out of life. Some of the resources/individuals in this category I’ve really enjoyed are:

• Brian Tracy
• Anthony Robbins
• Earl Nightingale
• Executive Online Book Summaries

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 5 Comments »