Paradise Found

 

Issue No. 526 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Aug. 29, 2022) features a contender for my 2022 book-of-the-year honors. (It’s a poignant page-turner.) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   The Paradise High School football team after the Nov. 8, 2018, devasting fire: “The first workout since the fire was filled with a bunch of kids with no sweats, no cleats, and no chance.” (No way!) No. No. No Way. (Way!) Last week, after reading the prologue and the first chapter of Paradise Found—I couldn’t put it down. Literally. Even though I’m “retired” (whatever that means), I took the day “off”—and read the book in one day. Never done that before. Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke has gifted us with a stunning book, Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise from the Ashes. On Nov. 8, 2018, the friendly folks in Paradise, California, watched their town burn to the ground at the rate of 80 acres per minute. The devasting toll:    • 84 lives lost!    • In a day, the population dropped from 26,800 to 2,034!    • 20,000 burned-out cars, 19,000 homes lost! Of the 104 football players, 95 of the Paradise High School Bobcats had lost their homes. A playoff game for the next night was cancelled. Coaches, athletes, faculty, students, and parents—lives and futures in total disarray. Could the town and the team recover? No way. Paradise, a mountain village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (90 miles north of Sacramento and 12 miles east of Chico), was also the home of the right person at the right time: Head Football Coach Rick Prinz. A former youth pastor with a master’s degree from Biola University, he discovered his calling was coaching.  Bill Plaschke’s narrative launches like a James Bond movie. You’re in those cars and trucks fleeing the fires—nearby propane tanks are exploding while students arrive at school and parents arrive at workplaces. What to do? For many:    • No time.    • No time to return home and pack.    • No cell phone connection to family members.    • No carpool lane—jammed, bumper to bumper traffic. Chaos!    • No escape route—heavy, suffocating smoke.    • No chance to get gas. Yikes.    • No way. But earlier that morning, before the panic and evacuation, Coach Rick Prinz was still hopeful. At 8:10 a.m., he texted the varsity team that football practice would still begin at 3:00 p.m. No way. In a flash, everything changed and—trust me—you won’t skip a page in this page-turner. Eventually, some families moved to San Diego and to Arizona and some to nearby Chico—but snagging even a modest apartment was nearly impossible. Could the team and the town recover? Would there be a 2019 football season—perhaps a revenge/redemption mission? No way. But…the coach with the calling prayed. And in borrowed buildings and a distant hope and more prayer, the high school rose from the ashes: Paradise Found. Kinda. The powerful themes in this breathtaking account prompt both hallelujahs and tears. (Last week, I tried to read several poignant paragraphs to my wife, Joanne. No way. Too choked up.) Fast forward to February 2019 and the school’s new location in an industrial warehouse in Chico. However. “Once school restarted…many of the teens drifted away or just plain disappeared. They couldn’t take the ninety-minute drive from some distant town where they lived in some tiny mobile home. Some of them moved out of state. Some of them couldn’t get out of bed.” Most lived within a three-hour radius of the new school location “…in a variety of accommodations—apartments, trailers, rental homes, hotels—that were paid through insurance or life savings. The players were everywhere and nowhere.” In 2018, the varsity squad was 76 strong. Now…just 22 showed up—“exactly enough for one offense, and one defense, with no subs.” The first varsity football practice landed on a borrowed vacant lot next to the Chico airport.  “The ‘field’ was a weed-choked lot filled with rocks and trash, food wrappers and soda cans, and giant holes next to piles of dirt. ‘Football’ was also a misnomer, as most of the kids were wearing old blue jeans and casual shoes. Even if they had gear, there was no place to dress.” The author adds, “The first workout since the fire was filled with a bunch of kids with:    • no sweats,    • no cleats,    • and no chance.” Honest…when their first practice began—you guessed it:    • No football! But…maybe hope could eke out. The San Francisco 49ers invited the team to their Nov. 12, 2018, Monday night game against the New York Giants. After a three-hour rickety bus ride to the game, those tired, disheveled young athletes emerged into the cold air (low 40s) with no coats. “They didn’t forget them; they simply didn’t have them anymore. Their winter clothes had burned up in the fire.” (No way! The Bobcats athletic director “swooped to the rescue” with a box of mismatched Paradise sweatshirts “pilfered from the student store earlier that morning.”) Not the 49ers, but the Paradise football team was cheered by the 69,409 fans that night. Eli Manning’s team beat the 49ers in a heartbreaker, 27-23. “…but the Paradise Bobcats didn’t care. They knew loss, and this wasn’t it. This was relief. This was escape.”  Invited to appear on the postgame show, the players met “a tearful Jeff Garcia, a retired quarterback who’d been the franchise’s field general in the early 2000s.” He, like them, had experienced being “a tough kid in a small town.” So Garcia gently inspired them to rebuild and “…rally the troops and rally the town, right? Rally the town!” Coach Prinz and the team wondered, “Rally the town? But didn’t they need a place to sleep first?” And suddenly…a bigger challenge emerged, perhaps a movement. “Rally the town!” And so with prayer and persistence (did I mention prayer?), the former youth pastor now head football coach began strategizing both the plays and the process for the rebirth of Paradise. At the Green and Gold intrasquad scrimmage (public invited), two weeks before the fall opener, “…a recording of singer-songwriter Phillip Phillips took over, the wistful sounds of his song, ‘Home,’ playing over the public address system.” Listen here. Powerful! Phillip Phillips sings, “Just know you’re not alone, ‘cause I’m gonna make this place your home.” Listen here. One reviewer called this book, “Friday Night Lights meets Unbroken.” My summary: “If you appreciated The Boys in the Boat—and the stunning master class on teamwork—you won’t stop talking about Paradise Found.” Could this be my 2022 book-of-the-year? (Stay tuned.) The leadership moments in virtually every short chapter are beacons of hope, such as the players’ commitment ceremony: “…the annual Prinz ritual in which each kid stands in front of the group and states his personal goal, team goal, and character goal for the coming season. They write down these goals on cards, which Prinz saves.” But in 2019, there’s a twist: “When the players finished their commitments, the coaches took over the microphone. They’d also filled out cards. In past years, their part in the ceremony had been subdued. But this year was different. This year they turned the simple declarations into sermons.” A young assistant coach affirmed, “I’m proud to be part of this history that’s going to happen. This program is a huge part of rebuilding this community. I take it not as a burden but as an honor.” Whew! Another coach wore sunglasses to hide his emotions. His words punctuated the moment: “I feel like God chose us.” Powerful! I’ve read hundreds of Plaschke’s sports columns in the L.A. Times over the years and he never disappoints (read the tribute to his Mom). Ditto this book. Plaschke masterfully weaves the sobering survival stories of players, coaches, and cheerleaders into, over, and around the team’s 2019 season. (Spoiler alert: the Bobcats were a very good team!) You must read this book—and when you do, watch for these gems:    • SLOGANS. The team slogans: “CMF: Crazy Mountain Folk” and my favorite, “We Just Hit People!”    • SKILLS. The athletic director’s persuasion skills in cajoling other football teams to compete against the Bobcats. (Lose/Lose: If other teams beat the up-from-the-ashes Bobcats, that’s not a good look. If other teams lose, it will look worse!)    • SPEECHES. The incredible, inspiring, and uplifting pre-game and halftime speeches by Coach Prinz and other coaches and the traditional “Glory Hill Run” with the motivational talk about Cortés and the 1519 conquest of Mexico. “And here the players shouted from the bottom of their ragged shoes to the top of their donated T-shirts: ‘Burn the ships!’”    • STADIUM. Returning (amazingly) to their own stadium for their first home game (on new grass!) with 5,000 ecstatic fans, yet...No restrooms (Porta-Potties only).  And no full marching band (just half-the-size with three tubas, a lonely trumpet, the band instructor on the drums—and only 14 other instruments!)    • STILLNESS. The pregame team prayers (did I mention prayers?)    • SHE! Read how coach Prinz inspired and encouraged a trainer’s assistant to try out for the field goal kicker position. She (yes, she) earned the job—after following Coach Prinz’s contrarian counsel.    • SPIT. The “Paradise Medical Plan” vs. the Immediate Care Plan. Injured? Don’t go to Immediate Care—you’ll be out for two weeks. Instead see our trainer: “Us mountain boys, we put a little mud on it, a little spit on it, and we go back to work.”    • SCARS. Must-read: the 21 quotations, from John Milton’s Paradise Lost—appetizers for the meat to follow in every chapter including, “Purge off this gloom, the soft delicious air, to heal the scar of these corrosive fires.” And the cheerleaders! Oh, my. “In some ways the Paradise cheerleaders faced greater challenges than the players did. They had to stifle their anger and stomach their personal losses while putting on smiles for a town that desperately needed smiles.” The senior cheerleading captain, while running for her life on Nov. 8, dashed back into her house to retrieve her cheer uniform.  At games, she led the cheers: “Circle up, P-Town, you know, you know; P-Town, the green and gold…” and the captain “shouted those words as if they were Scripture” and “clung to those words as if they were salvation.” Hope found? No way! Way! Wow! I can’t imagine that any other book could so captivate my heart and mind for an entire day. I couldn’t put it down. Maybe Paradise Found touched those warm and raw emotions when I earned my varsity letter as #35 on Seattle’s Queen Anne High School football team (ACL injury and all). Or maybe…it was the sometimes rough “locker room” language? (Warning: the author quotes people verbatim, yet my Baptist values gave the crude vocabulary a pass. What angry words would I spew in similar circumstances?) But…maybe it was the praying. A plethora of prayers. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise from the Ashes, by Bill Plaschke. Listen on Libro.fm (8 hours, 2 minutes).  P.S. BREAKING NEWS! Read more about this devasting fire in the article, “Inside the Investigation," in the Aug. 27, 2022, edition of The Wall Street Journal. “The fire was entirely out of control. At its fastest, it engulfed the equivalent of 80 football fields a minute, by some estimates. As the evacuation process began, thick black smoke took on the hellish orange hue of the flames. Escape routes became choke points, lines of cars inching along melting asphalt.” (Excerpted from the new book, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid,” by Katherine Blunt.) YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) High school football coach Rick Prinz was the right person at the right time. A former youth pastor, he discovered his calling in coaching—and he embraced it. Frederick Buechner (1926-2022) wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” How intentional are we in helping and inspiring our team members to embrace their callings?   2) CRISIS BUCKET EXERCISE! Oh, my. Most of your staff just lost their homes and their possessions in a horrific flood. Your entire office is underwater. You’ve assembled the team on high ground to assess, plan, and bring comfort. With no time to prepare (no way), you pull out your best motivational pep talk. Will it be adequate? Will it be enough? (It’s a little late to learn character in a crisis.) Are you ready?   From the YouTube interview with Bill Plaschke: “That’s crazy! How you gonna have a football team with no town?” Watch the entertaining interview with Bill Plaschke on the story behind the story of Paradise Found. (Click here for the 51-minute interview.)   Bill Plaschke chats about writing Paradise Found What he learned from Coach Rick Prinz, his favorite column ever, Kobe and Shaq, the craft of writing, and his biggest fan—his mother! Fascinating! On Nov. 17, 2021, just after Paradise Found was published, Bill Plaschke was interviewed by Christian Stone, L.A. Times executive sports editor. In addition to his color commentary on this unique writing project, Plaschke talks about his amazing 33 years with the L.A. Times, including 25 years as a columnist. (It’s a master class for writers and communicators.) And get this: already an experienced sports writer when he joined the L.A. Times team, the editors rewrote his story leads for Plaschke’s first eight articles!  Listen to “Ask a Reporter” with columnist Bill Plaschke (51 minutes on YouTube). Click here.                     JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Prepared for your next crisis? You’ll need more than a clever slogan. Is your communication contingency plan in place to bring hope to your team and your constituency? We can help. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom For more on prayer, read Dan Bolin’s powerful prayer for the boardroom, Lesson 40, “A Board Prayer,” in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: 40 Insights for Better Board Meetings (2nd Edition), by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Order the book. Read the prayer. Visit John's Books. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:   Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations GET READY FOR YOUR NEXT CRISIS! Read Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In, by Ryan Jenkins and Steven Van Cohen. Why? Patrick Lencioni urges, “Every leader and manager needs to read this.” Read John’s review.  IMPORTANT NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

2 Thinking Books

 

Issue No. 525 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Aug. 9, 2022) features two new books on thinking. Contrarian page-turners—with paradoxical thinking. They'll mess with your comfort zones! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   Enjoy these reviews of two contrarian books on thinking. (Read one and delegate one.) The insights just might launch you out of your status quo chair! 2 CONTRARIAN BOOKS ON THINKING! *Here’s an idea. Next year during Berry Season on Fogo Island in Newfoundland, Canada, let’s book all 29 rooms at the innovative Fogo Island Inn—and enjoy a THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT. Your homework: read these two new books on thinking. (Who will plan this for us?) THINKING BOOK #1 OF 2: A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness, by Roger L. Martin Imagine! You’re the consultant and you’re facilitating a senior team meeting on strategy—pushing the company leaders “to define two mutually exclusive options that could resolve the issue in question.” One option: the status quo which has served you well. But the other option—pretty compelling! Suddenly, “the president of the company leaped out of his seat and sprinted from the room. When he returned, ten minutes later, his colleagues asked whether he was OK. He explained that the discussion had made him see how logically weak the status quo was. The reason he had raced out was to cancel a multimillion-dollar initiative in support of the status quo—the go/no-go deadline was that day.” That’s from the contrarian chapter, “Strategy,” in the new book by Roger L. Martin, A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness. Actually, all 14 chapters are contrarian—and they just might also launch you out of your status quo chair!  I was already a big fan of Roger Martin’s thinking—now even more so! As Professor of Strategic Management, Emeritus, at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, he’s delivered consistent gems. My favorites: • Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (with P&G’s CEO, A.G. Lafley) • "The Big Lie of Strategic Thinking" (Harvard Business Review)  So I was delighted to read his latest book (May 2022) featuring 14 contrarian insights (based on 14 of his 20 Harvard Business Review articles). I could write 14 reviews, but you’d miss the fun of your own discoveries. Martin summarizes: “Each of the fourteen self-contained chapters compares a dominant but flawed model to an alternative that I argue is superior.” My favorites: • Chapter 1, Competition: “It happens at the front line, not at the head office.” • Chapter 3, Customers: “The familiar solution usually trumps the perfect one.” • Chapter 4, Strategy: “In strategy, what counts is what would have to be true—not what is true.” • Chapter 9, Planning: “Recognize that it’s no substitute for strategy.” • Chapter 10, Execution: “Accept that it’s the same thing as strategy.” Wait…what? Martin gives readers and leaders permission to skip around his 14 chapters and read them in any order. (Who does that?) But warning—you’ll read them all. His wisdom on Culture, Innovation, Talent (“Feeling special is more important than compensation”), and more—all include leap-out-of-your-chair thinking!  Here are a few tantalizing morsels: • NOT ARROGANT. After a succinct seven-page summary of the 14 chapters/models, Martin confesses that he is “not so arrogant to claim my alternative is the right model or the perfect model.” He adds, “But be assured that in due course your new model, too, will be found wanting and will be replaced by a better model still.”  • NOT STUPID. Martin writes that the 14 dominant models “are in place not because they are stupid. All of them make a lot of sense. So I don’t believe that these one-sentence descriptions of the alternative models will convince you to jettison the dominant model and adopt my alternative suggestion.” Citing his “hero Peter Drucker,” Martin’s simple goal is like Drucker’s: “to help executives increase their effectiveness.” • MISGUIDED BY THE METAPHOR: Why the metaphor of the brain (top management) and the body (the organization) is all wrong. Must-read: how a bank teller ignored the training manual and discerned that “customers come in three general flavors.” (Brilliant!) • PRICING. Why a product’s price at “$12.99 was really good, $15.99 not so good, [and] $18.99 great.” (Martin is a big fan of testing any new thinking, and using what he calls “the lazy person’s approach to choice.”) • WASHING DAY RESEARCH. When A.G. Lafley was CEO of P&G, he “had a rule that whenever he visited another country, he needed the local P&G organization to set up an in-home visit with a local consumer and a store walk-through at a local retailer. His visit to the bank of a river in rural western China to speak to the village women who washed their clothes there became legendary. The message was clear: If the global CEO isn’t too busy to do in-home visits and store checks, how is it that you are?” • YOUR MIND APPLAUDS YOU! In the fascinating chapter on “Customers,” (and so, so relevant to both nonprofit and for-profit organizations), the author’s contrarian views on customer loyalty may shock you. Using brain research, “Creatures of Habit” discusses “cumulative advantage.” Example: “If the mind develops a view over time that Tide gets clothes cleaner, and Tide is available and accessible on the store shelf or the web page, the easy, familiar thing to do is to buy Tide yet again.” When you do that he writes, “the mind applauds you.” LOL! (And by the way, before you do another expensive and unnecessary rebranding—read this chapter.) Are you gutsy enough to consider a new way to think in your organization? Check out this 32-minute video interview with Roger Martin—with short summaries of four of his books, including A New Way to Think (starting at 20 minutes in). Martin was interviewed in May 2022 by Tiffani Bova, the Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. Click here. (Note: Both Martin and Bova are included in “The Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers for 2021.”)  To order from Amazon, click on the title for A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness, by Roger L. Martin. Listen on Libro.fm (7 hours, 58 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending a review copy.   View the two-minute video, “Strange & Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island [Official Trailer].” Read the two thinking books and meet us in Newfoundland next year!   *So…what’s with the THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT during Berry Season at the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland, Canada? (Reminder: someone, other than me, needs to plan this!) THINKING BOOK #2 OF 2: Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis Breaking News! Leaders and managers must move from “Either/Or Thinking” to “Both/And Thinking”—and must be very comfortable with navigating paradoxes. Why? Authors Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis preach that “…either/or thinking can result in responses to dilemmas that are limited at best and detrimental at worst.” Now after two decades of studying paradoxes, these management profs (with in-the-trenches savvy) warn: “Navigating paradoxes begin with the understanding that tensions are double-edged swords—they can drag us down a negative path or catapult us toward a more positive one.” So…pick one: the negative path or the catapult! (Oh, wait. It’s not an either/or question—or is it?) In Chapter 1 of Both/And Thinking, the authors spotlight Zita Cobb who had a vision to re-energize the rural community of Fogo Island, Newfoundland—the island of her birth. Talk about a challenging paradox! A traditional saying in that province is “Onward through the fog.” (That’s going on my office wall!) So how would you preserve the tradition, the beauty, the culture, and the economy of a small Eastern Canadian island (16 miles long by nine miles wide)—with just over 2,000 residents? (The challenge: keep things kinda the same, but thrive.) With help, Zita Cobb and her brothers dug deep into the paradox research—and launched a charity, Shorefast, and created a spectacular 29-room hotel, Fogo Island Inn. (Did I mention it’s perfect for a THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT? Click here.) The Fogo Island story is just one of many colorful case studies and insights in this hot-off-the-press (Aug. 9, 2022) thinker’s book from Harvard Business Review Press. The authors also share their personal paradoxes. One word: transparent. Other must-read paradoxes: THE LEGO WRECKING BALL. Pendulum swings—in response to lagging sales—prompted an unfortunate either/or overcorrection at LEGO. “In this case the pendulum becomes a wrecking ball; an overly powerful swing in the opposing direction creates a new and even greater challenge.” The book features challenges at Starbucks, IBM, and others, plus these insights from LEGO: The slow and steady LEGO protocol…    • “In response to a proposal from Lucasfilm, one vice present proclaimed, ‘Over my dead body will LEGO ever introduce Star Wars.’” (RIP! I recommend this LEGO Star Wars model with 1,062 pieces!)   …was replaced by a “Creativity Above All Else” LEGO mandate…    • “Whereas it once took nearly a decade for LEGO to introduce the green color, within a few years the toy maker started making parts in 157 colors.” When a new strategy development champion arrived, he was shocked. “Despite early successes, few of the innovations were actually profitable.” Helpful: the “Polarity map: upsides and downsides of LEGO’s strategy” illustrates the classic matrix: Inspiring the builders of tomorrow vs. Organizational death; and Core business vs. Innovation (page 59). MULES & TIGHTROPE WALKERS! The memorable metaphors ensure that the complexity and efficacy of paradox thinking is described with a measure of simplicity:    • MULES. Complementing Roger Martin’s thinking in The Opposable Mind, the authors note that “mules are the offspring of female horses and male donkeys”—and write that leaders must look for “a synergistic option that integrates the opposing sides of a paradox.” They add that notable creatives (Einstein, Picasso, Mozart, and Woolf) had “aha moments” that often started “with noticing the opposing forces in their work.”    • TIGHTROPE WALKERS. Picture tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s 1974 triumph between NYC’s Twin Towers. That’s the metaphor for the “microshifts between alternative options”—that enable organizations to move forward. This process involves “small either/or choices that constantly move us back and forth between alternative poles, creating a pattern in the big picture that accommodates both options over time.”  Maybe you’d prefer a terra firma metaphor—like riding a bike. Warning! A true “balanced life” is never achieved. Or consider Soren Kierkegaard’s description of the “tug-of-war between being expansive…and being constrictive.”  With that context, Smith and Lewis then serve up “Breeding Mules That Walk Tightropes” (that I’d pay to see!). Their quadrant on page 85 is (my opinion) the most helpful one-page summary of the book: “The paradox system: four sets of tools” for both/and thinking. I salute two academics who deliver a very memorable ABCD picture! •  A: Shifting to both/and assumptions •  B: Creating boundaries to contain tensions •  C: Finding comfort in discomfort •  D: Enabling dynamics that unleash tensions (a big idea: “Learning to unlearn”) Gratefully, the authors allocate one chapter to each of the ABCD topics—and that’s where you’ll find the meat and potatoes (or just the potatoes, if you’re vegetarian).  CONFLICTING GOALS? With stunning documentation and resources, the appendix (pages 259-302) includes the “Paradox Mindset Inventory” with 16 questions on measuring tensions experienced and comfort with a paradox mindset. Example: “I often have competing demands that need to be addressed at the same time.”  How will your team members score this one? “I often have goals that contradict each other.” (Use these questions at your next staff meeting using the authors’ seven-point rating scale: “Strongly Agree” to Strongly Disagree.”) There’s so much more—but let me conclude with this comment from Tom Peters of In Search of Excellence fame. “This book is, pure and simple, a masterpiece. And every word and semicolon is backed up by hard research. Don’t skim—dig in, take deep breaths, and reflect.” On tensions in Chapter 7, the authors quote Peters: “Leaders have to guide the ship while simultaneously putting everything up for grabs, which is itself a fundamental paradox.” Reminder: I need someone to plan the THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT next year at the Fogo Island Inn. Bring your books! To order from Amazon, click on the title for Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis. Listen on Libro.fm (9 hours, 46 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press and Fortier PR for sending a review copy. BONUS. Read the HBR article, “’Both/And’ Leadership: Don’t Worry So Much About Being Consistent,” by Wendy K. Smith, Marianne W. Lewis, and Michael L. Tushman (May 2016). Click here.                     JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Maybe…you don’t need a six-month rebranding marathon (per Roger Martin), but a rethinking exercise on customer habits? We can help! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). Caution! People Are Creatures of Habit... ...is #8 of 10 principles in the short 1990 business story, Marketing Your Ministry: Ten Critical Principles, by Robert D. Hisrich and John. Find used copies on Amazon. Or read the summary in Chapter 6 (“The Program Bucket”) in Mastering the Management Buckets. Visit John's Books. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:   Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations IMPORTANT NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

4 Books on Strategy

 

Issue No. 523 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 16, 2022) spotlights the lead, tenor, baritone, and bass parts of your strategy quartet—just in time to delegate to your harmonizing team members! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   Here’s this month’s edition of your 2022 “Summer Shorts”—brief reviews of a quartet of strategy resources, including the new book, The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists. Summer Shorts! Don’t look now (enjoy your vacation)—but in about 90 days, your Board of Directors is expecting Draft #1 of The Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan for 2023 and beyond. (Is anyone working on it?) Check the board meeting minutes, but I think there was a strong suggestion that they are expecting a new-and-improved plan—not a carbon copy of last year’s plan, and the previous year’s plan, and the…(well, you get the idea). So if your current “strategic plan” is as outdated as my metaphors (“Carbon copy,” John? Really?)—here’s some help! For this “Summer Shorts” issue, I’m featuring A QUARTET OF STRATEGY RESOURCES. Forward this eNews to your strategic plan task force (including one board member)—and delegate your reading. Plan an off-site day with the task force in October and ask for book reviews and vacation videos. POP QUIZ!  What are the four singing parts in a barbershop quartet? (Answer: Lead, Tenor, Baritone, Bass.) What are four strategy resources you should read this summer? (Answer: See the “Strategy Quartet” below.) LEAD: [  ] #1. The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, by Richard P. Rumelt. Click here to order from Amazon. Listen on Libro.fm (10 hours, 53 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending a review copy. Published in May 2022 with COVID-relevant insights, The Crux dares you to think differently about strategic planning, in fact—the author preaches—don’t even think about the worn-out, over-hyped strategic planning process—especially the “star” of the show, the rhetoric-rich actual document (LOL)! Instead, try this: “Don’t start with goals—start by understanding the challenge and finding its crux.” The “lead singer/resource ” in this Strategy Quartet notes that Elon Musk built his SpaceX company by focusing on the crux—flying rockets back to earth and reusing them. “By 2018 the Falcon 9’s cost per pound into low-Earth orbit was twenty-three times cheaper than the old space shuttle.” To get to Mars, NASA had estimated a cost of $200 billion. Musk’s estimate: $9 billion. Known as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers on strategy and management, Rumelt is professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. (You remember UCLA, right? They are the latest football program to join the Big 10. After all, they’re practically neighbors with those Cornhuskers. Wait…what?) If I were on your team—I’d pick The Crux to read and report on. Hot-off-the-press. Fascinating. Practical. Witty. Humble. (Even some mountain climbing references—per the author’s personal experience.) Using real life consulting examples (names have been changed, of course), Rumelt also shares what he learned from clients and from Donald Rumsfeld in 2004, then U.S. Secretary of Defense. (Read my review of Rumsfeld’s  Rules.)   Rumsfeld believed leaders were neglecting a key element—the need for a coherent strategy. When Rumsfeld asked Rumelt if his academic colleagues had fixed that problem, Rumelt admitted they had not. The professor’s plan: “Basically, you put a small group of smart people in a room and see what they come up with.” (See Chapter 18, “Rumsfeld’s Question.”) How did I miss this “giant in the field of strategy?” My favorite chapter, “The Challenge of Power,” is based on a talk the author gave to “the Sons and Daughters of Vikings” in Stockholm, Sweden. He’s also the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. TENOR: [  ] #2. What Is Strategy? An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter, by Joan Magretta  and Emile Holmewood (Illustrator). Conceived by Heinrich Zimmermann. Click here to order from Amazon. (And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending a review copy.) When you sing tenor in a barbershop quartet, you’re expected to add interest and appropriate pizzazz. So how do you add vitality and that wow-factor to an already rock solid pillar in the strategy literature? Michael Porter’s classic article, “What Is Strategy?” first appeared in the November–December 1996 issue of Harvard Business Review. (See purchasing options under #3 below.) So you probably already know which task force member will enjoy reading/viewing this very creative resource—what the prestigious Harvard Business Review Press titles, “An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter.” Better buy two copies, because this eye-catching coffee table book will be “borrowed” by visitors to your reception area. Similar to the recent publishing trend in business/parable/novel/story graphic format (with very appealing illustrations), What Is Strategy? announces on the first page, “This is not your father’s business book.” (LOL!) Instead, the author clarifies, “It’s aimed at readers in all types of organizations who learn visually as well as verbally. It’s aimed at time-starved readers who want to absorb important content fast. It’s aimed at readers who are serious about learning, but who also enjoy a good laugh.”  In the business story, a fictitious management team—with the help and ideas of the real life Michael Porter, “grapple with the challenges of strategy—and their own egos.” The executive team includes a creative collection of animals (the CFO is a bull!). The panda (HR) tweets, “I wish @CEO would stop with the insensitive animal jokes. #hostileworkplace.” If someone on your team enjoyed reading/viewing other business novels (graphic-type) such as The Goal and StrategyMan vs. the Anti-Strategy Squad, they will love this illustrated edition.   BARITONE: [  ] #3. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy (including What Is Strategy? by Michael E. Porter). Click here to order from Amazon. The person who sings baritone in a barbershop quarter rarely stands out—and that’s a good thing. Ditto a good strategy. There’s alignment and coherency. Everything blends together. (Examples: Southwest Airlines and IKEA.) Option #3.1 – Book. This resource features “10 Must Read” articles on strategy—pulled from back issues of the Harvard Business Review. “What Is Strategy?” is the anchor article. Option #3.2 – Article. If you just want Porter’s 21-page article—and not the other nine must-reads on strategy, click here to order “What Is Strategy?” which first appeared in HBR in November/December 1996. Option #3.3 – Article Review. Really? You don’t have time to read a 21-page article? (LOL!) Well then, would you have time to read my 900-word review of Porter’s article? (Email me!) BASS: [  ] #4. Talent, Strategy, Risk: How Investors and Boards Are Redefining TSR, by Bill McNabb, Ram Charan, and Dennis Carey. Click here to order from Amazon. Listen on Libro.fm (7 hours, 13 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending a review copy. POP QUIZ! What should boards be talking about? One word: Talent. The authors of “TSR” write: “Of all the factors that go into the creation of long-term value, talent is the most important one for boards to be talking about.” That’s the first salvo of the triple focus on “TSR” in the 2021 book, Talent, Strategy, Risk. The authors spotlight a corporate board that “…dedicates one board meeting a year to talent, focusing on CEO succession and development, and discussing in detail the performance of every senior officer of the company.” While I’m partial to books that deliver the goods by page 25, TSR is an over-achiever. The chart on page 19 (six pages early!) delivers eight “lessons of leaders who have made talent their priority.” About half of the book is focused on the board’s role with strategy and talent, including a chapter on “Redesigning the Board’s Committees.” (Don’t get me started! LOL!) As my long-time readers know, I’m a big fan of the books and wisdom of Ram Charan—but this one almost slipped past me. (In February, I reviewed his most recent book, Talent.) Without a lively bass singer, all barbershop quartets will fall flat (no pun intended). The bass anchors the group to the rhythm, the lyrics, and all the fun of quartet singing. (How do I know this? I sang bass in my high school’s barbershop quartet.) And when a board does not “own the strategy” (per chapter 5 in Ram Charan’s book, Owning Up), organizations will also fall flat. So there you have it…four strategy resources (Lead, Tenor, Baritone, and Bass) for you to delegate to your strategic planning task force. And, of course, you’d be disappointed if I signed off without featuring a barbershop quartet chorus toe-tapper—with the post-COVID celebratory lyrics, “Zoom Meetings Are Over!” (Note: Enjoy this 11-minute video parody, “Together Again,” from the Music City Chorus and featured on the Barbershop Harmony Society website. You may not get all the competition’s in-jokes, but…LOL anyway.) View the video here. YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) See Figure 10 on page 129 of The Crux, “UN Sustainable Development Goals, 2015”—and you’ll need management therapy after you’ve read the 17 SDGs. Rumelt notes that “each goal points to a desirable outcome.” They are “admirable aspirations, but they are not coherent,” he notes. “Having seventeen inconsistent goals is the indulgence of politicians. A strategist would face such an exuberance of inconsistent ambition by selecting a consistent subset and pushing the rest aside, at least for a while.” But before we lambaste the United Nations for such idiocy, do we dare hold our own annual goals up to the light of day (or a cranky consultant)?  2) Peter Drucker wrote that if you “have more than five goals, you have none.” Richard Rumelt suggests you lead with “the crux,” not goals. One of four major steps in strategic planning, suggested Donald Rumsfeld, is to “Identify Your Key Assumptions.” Are we using a coherent approach to strategy—or have we become victims of what Scott Vandeventer (see the Book Bucket) termed, “management-by-bestseller?”   The Strategy Bucket affirms, “We know our mission statement by memory, and our programs, products and services are in alignment with the mission.” (aka…coherence!) Click here to view this hilarious parody video, “Mission Statement,” from “Weird Al” Yankovic.  POP QUIZ! The Strategy Bucket Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon. The Strategy Bucket Core Competency: “We plan, believing the results are up to God. We energize our people and customers with a Big Holy Audacious Goal (BHAG). We’re systematic—never negligent—in our strategic planning. We know our mission statement by memory, and our programs, products and services are in alignment with the mission.” At your next staff meeting, surprise your team with this POP QUIZ! “On the blank sheet of paper you have, write down our staff-reviewed and board-approved strategy.”  (If all you get are blank stares and blank sheets of paper, then ask for volunteers to read and review one strategy resource from above or below.) MORE STRATEGY RESOURCES (visit the Strategy Bucket): [  ] #5. Strategy/Mission Statement Mumbo Jumbo! Before you launch your strategic planning project, view this rhetoric-rich “Mission Statement” video (4.5 minutes) by "Weird Al" Yankovic, the prince of parodies. Click here. [  ] #6. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin (read John’s review) [  ] #7. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t – Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0, by Verne Harnish (read John’s review) [  ] #8. Breakthrough: Unleashing the Power of a Proven Plan, by Randon A. Samelson (read John’s review) [  ] #9. Another Strategy Oops! The front page of the July 12 edition of The Wall Street Journal announced, “Gap CEO Sonia Syngal Is Stepping Down.” The reason? Old Navy, which is owned by Gap, is doing poorly. “Old Navy last summer introduced a range of sizes to make its clothing more inclusive but the effort backfired, leaving the chain with too many very small and very large sizes and not enough of the middle sizes, which are the most popular. In May, the company said it would scale back the strategy, after reporting disappointing earnings.” (Read the article here.) The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.                    JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is your strategy coherent? According to The Crux, “At the simplest level, coherence means that actions and policies do not contradict each other.” Do you need an outsider’s look at your insides? We can help! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). STRATEGIC PLAN TOOL Download Tool #14, “The Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat” (one of 22 tools), from ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Order from Amazon. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:   Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations IMPORTANT NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

One Damn Thing After Another

 

Issue No. 522 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 9, 2022) urges you to read a “Master Class” in leadership by former Attorney General William Barr. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   Senator Everett Dirksen’s counsel to his son-in-law, Senator Howard Baker, after Baker gave a “windy maiden speech” in 1967: “Perhaps you should occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.” Bill Barr on Malice or Stupidity! We’ve all written our fair share of job descriptions over the years, right? So take out a blank piece of paper (you still use paper, right?)—and list the Top-10 roles and responsibilities for POTUS 47 (President of the United States, 2024-2028).  Extra Credit: List the Top-20 responsibilities of the White House chief of staff. Spelling and neatness count. Term Paper: List the Top-100 responsibilities of the Attorney General and—in 50,000 words or less—explain how the nation’s top law enforcement officer (though appointed by a Republican or Democratic president) can effectively call those legal balls and strikes and still keep his job! Required Reading: Oh…before you pick up your pen, read the absolutely fascinating, hard-hitting, poignant, often concerning, yet very witty book by Bill Barr (I've retitled it), “The 2022 Master Class in Seriously Critical Issues as Seen Through a U.S. Department of Justice’s Top Decision-Maker.” William P. Barr, now 72, served as the 85th Attorney General for the last two years of President Trump’s term. He also was the 77th Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush (1991-1993) and here’s a hint on your job description assignment:  When Ed Levi, Dean of the University of Chicago Law School (and then president of the university), was asked to describe his stint as Attorney General under President Gerald Ford, he responded, “It’s just one damn thing after another.” Did I mention that your required reading is One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, the New York Times instant bestseller by William P. Barr? It’s a robust 567 pages (plus notes). But honest—Barr’s honesty and insights were so memorable, I would have enjoyed another 500 pages. So…how does Barr view the President’s job description? When COVID hit, Barr noted that “…the President’s desire to honor our federal structure and accommodate the states’ sovereign role was both sensible and, ultimately, unavoidable.” He adds, “But this collaborative approach required a statesman capable of herding cats—one with boundless patience and diplomatic skills, especially in an election year when his adversaries were at their worst in scoring cheap shots against him.” DEMOCRATS will appreciate this book. Barr writes that the COVID crisis “…required a statesman with the ability to explain complex matters and regional variations to the public with precision and clarity. Trump was not that statesman. He was a disrupter—he liked to move forward by confusing and rattling his opponents. After March 2020, that was basically the opposite of what his job called for.” (What’s on your CEO’s job description?) REPUBLICANS will appreciate this book. After about 300 page-turning “inside the Beltway” stunning moments (the Prologue explodes like a James Bond movie) and Oval Office policy debates (but often monologues), Barr then invests 200 pages for “Master Class” treatments of the gnarly issues facing our nation and world. With a conservative philosophical bent (yet an honest and balanced narrative), he offers real world solutions for:    • Upholding Fairness, Even for Rascals    • Bringing Justice to Violent Predators    • Fighting the Drug Cartels    • Securing Religious Liberty    • Taking on Big Tech    • Cops, Race, and the Big Lie    • Protest and Mayhem For a first-time author (I think he was way too busy with “one damn thing after another” to write a book earlier in his career), Barr’s writing is colorful, often elegant, and yet with a tell-it-like-it-is candor. Yes, he voluntarily served as Trump’s second Attorney General, and stayed through thick-and-thin for 23 months, but frequently pushed back. Yikes! What a tough job! (Where is that in the job description?) WHY READ THIS BOOK—whatever your political leanings? You’ll appreciate how leaders lead through the minefield of politics, egos, and crises. (Imagine: you’re the “CEO” of a government department with more than 100,000 employees in 50 countries. Click here for the DOJ’s current organization chart!) #1. MENTORING UP. How do you coach your boss or CEO to dial it back a bit? Maybe fewer press conferences during COVID? Fewer “gabfests.” Fewer tweets. Barr quotes Senator Everett Dirksen’s counsel to his son-in-law, Senator Howard Baker, after Baker gave a “windy maiden speech” in 1967: “Perhaps you should occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.” (Resource: Read the classic HBR article, “Managing Your Boss.”) #2. TWO TYPES OF LEADERS. In the chapter, “Eating Grenades,” Barr colorfully details the constant never-ending challenges of leading the DOJ. (Impossible, actually.) He describes two kinds of cabinet secretaries, those “…who are run by their agency. They do little else but respond to their in-boxes and thus are almost entirely reactive, spending their time hopping to other people’s priorities and putting out fires.” The other type: “Then there are executives who run the agency. This requires, in addition to responding to events, clearly identifying a core set of priorities, taking direct charge of them, and applying the energy necessary to overcome institutional inertia and bring them to fruition.”  The grenade metaphor? When working with White House counsel Pat Cipollone, “We operated like a tag team, so that neither of us would provoke too much of the President’s ire at one time. We referred to this as choosing who would ‘eat the grenade.’” #3. MALICE OR STUPIDITY? Commenting on Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 suicide while in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, Barr said that he personally reviewed the relevant video footage. He writes, “The fact that so many failures occurred at one time understandably led people to suspect the worst. But thorough investigations have shown once again the wisdom of Hanlon’s razor: don’t ascribe malice when stupidity is a sufficient explanation.” (Resource: More wisdom from Wikipedia!) #4. RECRUITING GOOD PEOPLE. I’ve often wondered (usually ascribing malice) why cabinet secretaries and senior White House staff continued to serve Presidents whose policies and/or character they could no longer support. Barr quotes Bob Gates (who served both Bush 43 and Obama). “‘Look, somebody has got to do these jobs,’ he said, ‘and what is best for the country is that we get good people who know what the hell they are doing.’” (By the way—as you might expect from the Trump White House—there are the occasional “strong” words used in this “damn” book!)   #5. CHIEF OF STAFF/LION TAMER. Barr notes that Trump’s fourth chief of staff, Mark Meadows, would sometimes take the heat for helping Barr and Cipollone protect the DOJ from “the President’s frequent bad ideas or his impulsive mistakes.” So what’s the job description of the chief of staff? “Before the election, Mark’s job was like a high-wire act; after Trump’s defeat, he was like a lion tamer without a whip and chair.” (Resource: read Rumsfeld’s Rules and his description of the job as “javelin catcher!”)   #6. MEMORABLE METAPHORS. My opinion: outstanding leaders have a steady supply of metaphors and well-crafted labels for describing challenging and complex issues. Barr is a master at this. When arguing with the Treasury Department that ATF (not a revenue source) belonged in the DOJ, Barr told Treasury Secretary Nick Brady (during Bush 41’s term), “Things that go Clink belong to you; things that go Bang should belong to me.” (Hilarious!) Other memorable metaphors and wordcrafting:    • “Hissy Fit” (Really…someone emoted inappropriately in our government?)    • Space Cowboys (the Clint Eastwood movie about geriatric astronauts): a moniker the younger DOJ staff assigned to Barr and two of his senior team members!    • Bamboozled: “Yet the FTC, bamboozled by economic mumbo jumbo, approved the acquisition.” (See the “Taking on Big Tech” chapter—brilliantly written.)    • Alligators: “Getting [Trump] to accept good advice was like wrestling an alligator.” And when asked how he felt beginning his first term as the AG, Barr commented, “Like I’m about to run across a river on the backs of alligators.”     • Skunk Works: Barr assembled a "skunk works" of key players to create “a specific plan of action to step up the fight against the Mexican cartels.” (See more about skunk works in the book, In Search of Excellence.) There’s much, much more—including Barr’s appreciation for Trump’s important policy decisions during his term. But he also quotes Salena Zito’s article in the Atlantic describing how people responded when Trump made outrageous claims. She wrote, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” This is Barr’s first book. I would definitely read another damn book by Barr! (Visit here to read his speeches.) To order from Amazon, click on title for One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, by William P. Barr. Listen on Libro.fm (22 hours, 1 minute). YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Bill Barr writes about the death penalty: “Opponents cannot dispute that the proportionate penalty for murder is death. But they argue that it is somehow inconsistent to take a life in the name of upholding the value of life. This is a sound-bite argument lacking intellectual coherence.” (He builds his case in the chapter, “Bringing Justice to Violent Predators.”) Who on our team is gutsy enough to push back on, perhaps, our simplistic “sound-bite arguments” that we’ve grown accustomed to using in defense of our mission? 2) Barr had a good working relationship with FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Yet Trump wanted to fire Wray for a variety of reasons Barr thought inappropriate.) “I thought [Wray's] low-key, businesslike style—he called himself a ‘workhorse, not a show horse’—was refreshing after Comey’s insufferable exhibitionism.” Discerning leaders know when to hire and when to fire (some say “hire slower, fire faster”). Are our job descriptions, SMART goals, and expectations clear in our organization—so there is clarity on character and performance standards?   Burned out or exhausted in this season of your leadership? Read one of these six books (below) on lessons learned by U.S. presidents and their chiefs of staff. (You’ll immediately feel better about your job!) POTUS Leadership Lessons Looking for several leadership books to read on the beach or in the mountains this summer? (Or if you’re a Southern Hemisphere reader, please jump in also!) [  ] The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy (Order from Amazon.) [  ] The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple (read John’s review) [  ] Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life, by Donald Rumsfeld (read John’s review) [  ] Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, by Tevi Troy (read John’s review) [  ] How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions, by Susan Eisenhower (Order from Amazon.) [  ] Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols (read John’s review) For more leadership and management insights, read Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.                   JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Does your chief marketing officer feel like a “lion tamer without a whip and chair?” Is it just one crazy thing after another—with no coherence in your marketing and communication strategies? We can help! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). WORKBOOK AVAILABLE To order the 107-page workbook featured at John Pearson’s three-hour seminar with The Barnabas Group San Diego, visit Amazon for The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board: How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance (Third Edition). Order here. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:   Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations IMPORTANT NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.