Creators

    

Issue No. 189 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 6, 2010) highlights a phenomenal book about the creative process—using world class creative people as the guinea pigs for this analysis. Delegate your reading. Pass the book around and ask for a Creativity Bio at each future staff meeting. And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Gushing Creativity

Creativity is “the new leadership competency,” writes Gary Foster in his enewsletter, "The Foster Letter: Religious Market Update." He quotes the Monday Morning Memo: “According to an IBM Institute for Business Value survey, today’s CEOs identify ‘creativity’ as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. IBM Sr. VP Frank Kern says, ‘That’s creativity—not operational effectiveness, influence, or even dedication. Coming out of the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial discipline and rigor ruled the day, this indicates a remarkable shift in attitude.’”

And Harvey Mackay, envelope baron, business author and newspaper columnist (“Lessons on Leadership”) recently wondered what it would be like “if you could turn on creativity like you start a car.”  Of his nine suggestions for revving up creativity, he challenged leaders to “read something totally different than usual.” He added, “Too often, we find ourselves looking at the same newspapers, trade publications, blogs and the like. Pick up a murder mystery, a gardening book, a volume of Shakespeare or anything that will teach you something you didn’t know anything about.”

So can creativity be taught or learned?  Read this week’s book and draw your own conclusions.  Author Paul Johnson explores the essence of creativity in his remarkable (stunning, actually) book, Creators. In 15 page-turning chapters (17 pages per chapter), he analyzes, slices and dices an extraordinary mix of the world’s most creative (and usually highly productive) people.  Buyer beware: the fruits of creativity apparently give license to immorality. But that’s also worth studying. Why is that and how do leaders foster the creative spirit in others?

I read chapter 14 first on Picasso and Walt Disney.  “Paris and Hollywood: no two places could be more unlike; yet no two are so similar in the mixture of eagerness and cynicism with which they nurtured creativity, both vulgar and sublime.” Disney died at 65 in 1966. Yikes…what have I done with my life so far? Time is getting short!

Creative people, I learned, are often workaholics. By 1900, Picasso “was turning out a painting every morning, and doing other things in the afternoon.” His total output on stone, canvas, paper, ceramics, metal and more: 30,000 pieces. He died at age 92 in 1973. 

Creative people also focus on excellence. “Like Durer and Rubens, Disney put excellence before any other consideration, and the studio barely made a profit despite its huge bookings, since the incoming cash instantly went for investment in new technology and better artists.”  At one time Disney employed over 1,000 animators, artists and draftsmen. Yikes again! Imagine writing an HR manual to deal with 1,000 artist-types!

The chapter on fashion designers contrasting Balenciaga and Dior was amazing—maybe because I’d never read 17 pages on fashion. The two fashion giants of the 20th century ran their sizeable shops (office and workrooms) two distinct ways: one like a monastery and the other like a party room (Dior). Absolutely fascinating. I read multiple paragraphs of that chapter to anyone who would listen.

There’s a lot more.  Chaucer, Shakespeare, J.S. Bach, Victor Hugo and others.  The chapter on Mark Twain is sub-titled, “How to Tell a Joke.”  Johnson writes, “He understood the economics of humor, and how, once you have a funny idea—a champion frog that cannot move because it is loaded with shot—you can use it, with suitable variation, again and again.”  Johnson himself does not lack in creative commentary: “A storyteller is a licensed liar, though he must never say so.”

On Bach, the author wonderfully describes “the continual warfare between those who play the organ and those who make the organ,” and adds, “operating an organ is, and always has been, a source of great anger.” 

Let me tempt you to read the book with this—a typical Johnson sum-up, this one of Bach. “There are probably about 1,200 works all told, out of—perhaps—1,600 or 1,700 composed; a few are short, but only a tiny number are slight. Considering the amount of time Bach had to spend playing, conducting, arguing with officials, teaching and copying, this output is astounding—the man was a copious, gushing, unceasing fountain of creativity.”

And…my special thanks to David Curry for recommending this incredible read.  I have another Paul Johnson book, per Curry’s suggestion, in the line-up.

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney, by Paul Johnson.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
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1) In his chapter on the German artist Durer (“A Strong Smell of Printer’s Ink”), the author says that Germans knew how to paint, but the Italians also knew why.  “They had theory.” Discuss both the how and the why of the creative process.

2) Who’s the most creative person you know?  What makes them uniquely different from others? Can you learn anything from them? Is creativity the new competency?

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Two-tiered and Too Tired
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Volunteer Bucket, Chapter 12, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to reject the notion of a two-tiered Kingdom workforce.  That is, treating your volunteers (your unpaid staff) differently than your paid staff.

While waxing eloquent on this core value in a “Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience,” I noticed that the participants started to chuckle.  I didn’t see what was so funny until one kind person pointed out the typo in my PowerPoint.  It read, “We reject the notion of a two-tired Kingdom workforce.”

This prompted the suggestion that we needed another ball in the Volunteer Bucket. “We pledge not to work our volunteers incessantly, or inappropriately, so they are constantly too tired to enjoy the journey.” 

Whether two-tiered, or too tired—neither volunteer approach honors God or your unpaid staff. For more resources from the Volunteer Bucket, click on my website.

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
• PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts 

NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).

Great by Choice

    

Issue No. 235 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Nov. 8, 2011) features a hot-off-the-press book by Jim Collins. It’s a no-brainer addition to your staff resource shelf. (You do have a resource shelf, right?) And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Jim Collins Lexicon 2.0

True or false? An author’s first book is his or her best.  The second, third or (horrors) fourth book will aptly document the slippery slope into mediocrity.

Usually true.  But if the book is by Jim Collins, the myth is false. And all of us are grateful.

His latest, Great by Choice, keeps his reputation intact for high quality, fascinating, page-turning story/research/label/principle serious management thinking.  If you learned from Built to Last, Good to Great, Good to Great and the Social Sectors and How the Mighty Fall, your life-long learning will continue with what I’m calling the “Jim Collins Lexicon 2.0.”

Using his classic comparison company methodology, this book delivers memorable stories to answer the question, “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?”

“What’s coming next?” Collins asks, building the case for his “10X” companies (his first memorable label). “All we know is that no one knows.” He adds, “Yet some companies and leaders navigate this type of world exceptionally well.
   --They don’t merely react; they create.
   --They don’t merely survive; they prevail.
   --They don’t merely succeed, they thrive.

They build great enterprises that can endure.”

Here’s the new lexicon:
   --10Xers (comparison companies that beat its industry index by at least 10 times). “If you invested $10,000 in a portfolio of the 10X companies at the end of 1972…your investment would have grown to be worth more than $6 million by the end of our study era (through 2002), a performance 32 times better than the general stock market.”

   --10X leadership (the comparison story of the quest to reach the South Pole by two teams of adventurers in 1911). Roald Amundsen, the winner, and Robert Scott, the loser, had comparable opportunities, but it was Amundsen who demonstrated Collins’ triple hallmark of 10X leaders:
   --Fanatic Discipline
   --Empirical Creativity
   --Productive Paranoia

The stories are fabulous, often very funny. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer had the moniker DOCTOR DOOM and Commissar of Concern, taught to him by the “Grand Master of Productive Paranoia himself, Bill Gates.”  Yet it was Gates who put his foot down when Ballmer wanted to boost the head count to—get this—17 people!”

   --20 Mile March (a self-imposed restraint to keep growth under control). “A good 20 Mile March has a Goldilocks time frame, not too short and not too long but just right.” 

   --First Bullets, Then Cannonballs (discipline and creativity will push you to test, test, test—with low risk bullets, then re-calibrate, another low risk bullet, more re-calibration—then when the empirical side of creativity has honed in on the target—let the cannonball rip!) One CEO’s mantra: Be “one fad behind,” never first to market, but never last.  Collins has six bullet points (sorry) on “The Dangerous Lure of Uncalibrated Cannonballs.” Brilliant.

There’s a lot more in the lexicon:
   --Leading Above the Death Line
   --SMaC (Specific, Methodical, and Consistent)
   --ROL (Return on Luck)

Each chapter has a helpful two-page summary of big ideas, plus discussion questions.  The bulk of the book runs 200 pages, plus a few more for FAQs, then another hundred pages of research notes for the unconvinced or Collins zealots.

This is a Top-10 book for 2011. 

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
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1) If we were to compare our organization’s work and results against a comparable company/organization. What might we learn? Should we launch a study?

2) Collins says that Fanatic Discipline, Empirical Creativity and Productive Paranoia separate 10Xers from the pack.  On a scale of one to five (five is high), how good are we at these three keys to thriving?

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Delegation Bucket Pop Quiz!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Delegation Bucket, Chapter 16, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to conduct a self-assessment on your delegation diseases. 

The Delegation Bucket core competency reads: “We are experts at appropriate delegation. We invite team members to accept assignments based on their strengths. We value organized delegation and believe in the Point Person Principle. We track our to-do lists and we add to our don’t-do lists.”

So…what level are you at in the Delegation Bucket core competency?
   --Level 1: I don’t know what I don’t know.
   --Level 2: I know what I don’t know.
   --Level 3: I have an action plan to address what I know I don’t know.
   --Level 4: I am knowledgeable and effective in this core competency and can mentor others.

For more resources, visit the Delegation Bucket webpage and download Worksheet #16.1:  "Dysfunctional Delegation Diseases." Take this Delegation Gut-Check Assessment and diagnose the severity of your delegation diseases.  Are you a Code Green, Code Yellow or Code Red?

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
• PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts 

NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).

The Company Culture Challenge

    

Issue No. 229 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Sept. 2, 2011) highlights a hot-off-the-ePress Kindle book on company culture. Heed this warning, “Low turnover can be an indication of a poor company culture just as high employee turnover indicates employees are not fully engaged.” And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

It’s the Culture, Stupid!

Do you feel like Sisyphus, the mythical character, pushing your boulder-of-an-organization (or department) up a hill, knowing no matter how hard you work, it will eventually all just come crashing back down again? Then this is the book for you—but the solution may surprise you.

It’s the culture, stupid!

Authors David Russell and Robert Betzel begin their book by describing a modern day Sisyphus. They dive into the dismal corporate culture wasteland—expose the skinny relic that it is in most organizations—and then deliver a very, very practical step-by-step process for fixing it.  In their view, a company culture must mean something—and it can be measured in sales, growth, engagement, healthy relationships and much more. 

News Flash! You must get this book! It’s already on my Top-10 List for 2011—and I still have about 15 books to read before New Year’s Eve—but I’m that confident you’ll find huge value in The Company Culture Challenge. (Note: You can download it now on Kindle and other apps. The hardback is coming in October.)

Example: when is the last time a business book (or high-priced consultant) added the word “accountability” after mission, vision and values?  Russell and Betzel do—and their action steps to build accountability into your culture’s DNA are worth the price of a hundred Kindles.

The book refuses to waste your time with hypothetical, theoretical mumbo jumbo filler. Instead, the authors deliver real people in real organizations who demonstrate what a healthy and thriving culture looks like. Example: Jim Cabela, founder of the $2.6 billion outdoor retailing company Cabela’s, “works until noon daily personally addressing new complaints received the day before from customers.”  Ya think that might inspire the troops?

How’s this? To take the company culture temperature at other organizations, they suggest you give your team members $50 to $100 each to purchase something at another company—and then report back to the group on their experience. (Allow your people to keep what they buy.)

Always and Never.  Do you articulate your values using “Always” and “Never” standards? Russell includes his Top-10 “Always Standards” in the book. Example: “Always observe the client’s surroundings like Sherlock Holmes.”

Another good one: As you create the perfect customer (or donor, or volunteer or client) experience, what are your “Experience Bookends?” How do you start and how do you end every customer experience? Have you created an intentional culture? See—this stuff is very, very practical.

Gut check time! “Do you know that statistics prove it costs an average of one year’s compensation to replace an employee?” Stuck with team members who “were great actors during interviews, but poor performers on the job?”  The recruiting standards chapter is brilliant.

Low turnover? “If you are experiencing high employee turnover then you are either not hiring people who fit well in your company culture or your leadership skills/systems need work. If you are experiencing low employee turnover, then it may be too easy to work at your company.” So they suggest specific ways to improve your hiring process.

Goal alignment is a big deal in their step-by-step process. They quote Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “…81 percent of employees do not have clear, measurable goals.”  Yikes! They add, “If you are not working on your culture, then your company culture is working against you.”

What’s the problem? “They have leadership tendencies, but no leadership skills because they have not been trained, coached and mentored how to lead people systematically, even though they follow proven processes for accounting, operations, marketing, sales and technology.”

What’s the solution? Scrap the “Idea-of-the-Week Club” and, instead, use this book to begin building company culture systems, step-by-step. 

I need to sign off…and I’ve just scratched the surface of my Kindle notes and highlights—dozens of them—but they’re now digitized on my personal Amazon Kindle webpage for future reference.  I’m starting to like this thin little machine! (Didn’t think I would.)

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for The Company Culture Challenge, by Robert Betzel and David Russell.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
........................................................................
1) The authors are (ahem) in your face a bit, like this note: “Those of you who do not know your Average Client Lifetime Value, and think this is a stupid waste of time, need to make a choice: (1) calculate the value; or (2) stop reading this book because you have not experienced enough pain yet to convince you to change your company culture.” So…do we know our Average Client (or Volunteer or Donor) Lifetime Value here?

2) The authors write, “How can we expect our people to deliver a perfect client experience if we have never defined what it is? This is the primary purpose of this stage: To work through a process to define from your client's perspective what a perfect experience is when they interact with your company.” So…what’s our next step?
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Kindle the Hoopla!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Hoopla! Bucket, Chapter 10, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to recognize your team’s contributions with spontaneous hoopla! So here’s a way to coach your team on company culture, with a little bit of hoopla! added in.

Purchase a Kindle from Amazon for your next staff meeting. Give Hank a week on the Kindle and tell him he can download a book of his choice (like this issue’s book)—and ask for his book review at your next staff meeting. Then ask Hank to hand it off to another team member for the same drill the following week.  At the end of each quarter, present a new Kindle to the best book reviewer. Maybe offer an iPad to the best reviewer of the year for the one book that has had the greatest impact on your organization.

For book recommendations on hoopla!, such as The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their Employees, Retain Talent, and Drive Performance, visit the Hoopla! Bucket webpage.

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
• PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts 

NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).

Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us

    

Issue No. 127 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Feb. 16, 2009) is all about tribes, Seth Godin’s latest book on leading a movement. By the way, Peggy Noonan commented in her Feb. 7, 2009, Wall Street Journal column, “Every new president starts out fresh, in part because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Ignorance keeps you perky.” That’s the big challenge as you lead your team: helping them move from “I don’t know what I don’t know,” to “I know what I don’t know.” And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Sell One!

One word, one paragraph, not even one page can adequately describe Seth Godin’s latest epistle on leadership—because it’s more about marketing. No, it’s about tribes (I’ll explain). No it’s about the Internet and factories. No, it’s about how leaders build communities (tribes, again) and focus on true fans versus thousands.

Well, actually it’s about heretics, nonprofits, faith, religion, Steve Jobs, unicorns and the Customer Bucket and the Printing Bucket (aka Communications Bucket)—and how movements are looking for leaders—and how you can lead your tribe (I think).  Aw…forget it. I can’t really explain this book, but I’m going to read it at least twice. You should too.

Guarantee. Read all 147 pages (it’s short and small) and you’ll have dozens of conversation-droppers to impress and amaze your colleagues. You’ll also change your thinking on stuff. I counted 127 short stories/principles—each with a gotta-read-this headline. There are no chapters—just quick-reading, page-turning marketing/leadership insights:

   • Leadership Discomfort: “Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead … When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.”

   • Twitter and Trust and Tribes and True Fans: “The essential lesson is that every day it gets easier to tighten relationships you have with the people who choose to follow you.”

   • Leading from the Bottom (with a Newsletter): “Twice a week, the newsletter went out. Twice a week, I talked about our quest. Twice a week, I chronicled the amazing work of our tiny tribe. The newsletter connected the tribe members. It turned a disparate group of career engineers into a working community.”

Godin, bestselling author of Poke the Box and This Is Marketing, says there are three steps in tribe work: motivating, connecting and leveraging. His real-life examples get your adrenalin going. His pithy bursts of wisdom are memorable. “My friend Fred has a new book coming out and he was trolling around for marketing ideas. I think he’d be surprised at this one: Sell one.”

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
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1) Seth Godin writes, “The first thing a leader can focus on is the act of tightening the tribe.” He says it’s tempting to make the tribe bigger versus more connected. What are we doing here to “tighten the tribe?”

2) He adds, “Friending 10 or 20 or a thousand on Facebook might be good for your ego but it has zero to do with any useful measure of success.” What would be a useful measure of success on Facebook [or Instagram or X]?

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Giftedness vs. Slots
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Volunteer Bucket, Chapter 12, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to leverage the spiritual giftedness of your volunteers. Rather than filling volunteer slots, take time to discover the spiritual gifts of your volunteers—and place them in roles where their giftedness shines. (Now there’s a concept!)

Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:11-13 (The Message), “He handed out gifts above and below, filled heaven with his gifts, filled earth with his gifts. He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”

For more volunteer resources and ideas, visit the Volunteer Bucket page of my website.

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
• PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts 

NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).

Hemingway Didn’t Say That

 

Issue No. 389 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 29, 2018) warns—those famous quotations from Mark Twain, Yogi Berra, and Ernest Hemingway? Probably fake news. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   Pop Quiz on Popular Quotes Fake news. Fake stats. Fake quotes. Who ya gonna call? Call Garson O'Toole. He’s got some chops, at least for branding—he labels himself “the internet’s foremost quote investigator.” We haven’t talked about the Printing Bucket for a while (aka the Communications Bucket)—so during these lazy days of summer, here’s a fun reference book by O’Toole that will position you as the premier quotemeister at staff meetings. Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, by Garson O’Toole, describes (to accurately quote the book’s dust jacket): “How one man corrected hundreds of modern misquotations infecting the internet, our books, and our minds.” POP QUIZ!  Did the following people originate these quotations? (True, False, or Recycled? Answers below.) 1) Andy Warhol: “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” 2) Woody Allen: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” 3) Pablo Picasso: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” 4) Edmund Burke:  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” 5) Thomas Edison: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” 6) Bill Gates: “640K [of computer memory] ought to be enough for anyone.” 7) Chief Seattle: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” 8) Dorothy Parker: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” 9) Mother Teresa: “’Do good anyway’ and the Paradoxical Commandments.” 10) U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes on the invention of the telephone: “Great invention, but who would ever want to use one?” 11) Benjamin Disraeli: “Half of the town councilors are not fools.” 12) David Foster Wallace: “You’ll worry less about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” 13) John Wooden: “Sports do not build character. They reveal it.” 14) Albert Einstein: “Not everything that counts can be counted.” 15) John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, and Woodrow Wilson: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” 16) Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Easy reading is hard writing.” 17) Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.” 18) Mark Twain: “If your own tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.” 19) Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Proverbs 17:28: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” 20) Mark Twain: “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” You’ll enjoy this book! Garson O’Toole (click here for his Quote Investigator website) segments his known quotation falsehoods into four categories: Group Error, Reader Error, Author Error, and Finders Keepers. Example:  In researching the quotation attributed to Benjamin Disraeli: “Half of the town councilors are not fools,” O’Toole devotes six pages (including notes) and concludes that the earliest reference was in 1927 in Sweden, and not from London and Prime Minister Disraeli. The 1927 quotation: “A government official reportedly lost his temper and rebuked his fellows. A municipal councilor . . . remarked that certainly half of his colleagues were fools. An apology was demanded. He promised to make reparation and caused bills with the following correction to be posted on boardings in the town: ‘I said that half of the town councilors are fools. I now declare that half of the town councilors are not fools.’” According to O’Toole, “Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, Dorothy Parker, and Yogi Berra are quotation superstars. Personas of this type are so vibrant and attractive that they become hosts for quotations they never uttered.” So…what’s your favorite quotation—and have you verified its accuracy? As Abraham Lincoln noted, “Not everything you read on the internet is true.” POP QUIZ ANSWERS: Quotations 1 and 2 are true. All others are false, except O’Toole says 12 and 15 are “recycled.” And here’s an interesting note (at least to me): Quotation 12 notes that Ethel Barrett should also get some credit for this recycled quotation. It appeared in her 1968 book, Don’t Look Now, but Your Personality Is Showing (5th printing), published by G/L Regal Books—also the publisher of my book, Mastering the Management Buckets (now distributed by Baker Books). To order from Amazon, click on the title for Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, by Garson O'Toole. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:  1) “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life” is frequently attributed to Confucius. Not so, says O’Toole. But…whoever said it, do you agree with it? Why? 2) “Proofreading occurs best after publication” is one of my favorite quotations, but I don’t know who first shared that wisdom. Discuss: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are we to zero typos and accurate attribution?” (Visit the Printing Bucket.)       Typos Matter! Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) The Printing Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets will remind you that if the written emergency instructions on a Boeing 747 are laced with typographical errors, it may cause passengers to wonder, “If the proofreading is shoddy—what about the safety precautions?” Check out the six strategic “balls” in either the book or the hot-off-the-press second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon. #1. LEVERAGE your communication tools to keep programs and projects aligned with your BHAG and strategies. #2. APPOINT and empower a printing coordinator. #3. CREATE a failsafe proofreading system. #4. POST your printing deadline calendar by the coffee. #5. SELECT a style and take off! #6. MAXIMIZE new technologies and innovations. The workbook (232 pages) includes worksheets for staff meetings on all 20 buckets/core competencies, including the Results Bucket, the Customer Bucket, the Team Bucket, the Delegation Bucket, the Printing Bucket and much more.   NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).               Printing Bucket Resources  JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod. 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 • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts   LESSONS FROM THE NONPROFIT BOARDROOM Dan Busby and John Pearson are authors of the new book, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Order from Amazon and follow the "40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays."  guest bloggers each week here. What are your favorite books on board governance?  Check out this new series from John Pearson, on the ECFA Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations blog. Read it here.

Smart Moves for People in Charge - 130 Checklists

   

Issue No. 227 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Aug. 20, 2011) highlights a book of 130 checklists, including 14 ways to facilitate a meeting—and how to infuse them with energy and substance. You’ll also note a way to leverage this book’s wisdom once a week for over two years. And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

130 Checklists!

Rats! I wish I had written this week’s book!  It’s very, very good and will probably make my Top-10 list for 2011. It’s got checklists and I’m big on checklists.  (FYI: one of my Top-10 books from last year, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, was just ranked No. 7 on this month’s New York Times’ paperback business bestseller list.)

So when Jim Canning recommended Smart Moves for People in Charge: 130 Checklists to Help You Be a Better Leader, I was immediately hooked—even before the book arrived.  It exceeded my expectations by about 129!

The “checklists” run about three pages each, but each item on the checklist has been expertly honed down to just the big idea, with three to five lines of color commentary. That’s it—the big idea, an insight—and you’re in and out.  Examples:

Checklist No. 48: Nine Guidelines to Make Praise Motivating
   #1. Overcome your reasons for not praising enough (there are three).
   #9. Initiate a team-of-the-month program. “Your company will be one of the very few that elevates work teams in this way.”

Checklist No. 50: Seventeen Inexpensive Ways to Reward Employees
   #12. Taking a member of the support staff on a sales call. “People in support roles may spend their entire careers without meeting those people who ultimately pay their salaries—customers. What this trip will cost is puny compared to the motivation it will purchase.”

Checklist No. 56: Thirteen Tactics for Increasing Teamwork
   #1. Create a teamwork culture. “Rename staff meetings ‘team meetings.’”

Checklist No. 61: Eighteen Tips for Conducting a Selection Interview
   #7. Stay away from hypothetical questions. “Whenever you ask, ‘What would you do if…’ you encourage the candidate to guess at what answer you’re looking for rather than tell the truth.  These are hypothetical questions calling for hypothetical responses. Since you’re not hiring a hypothetical candidate, it’s best to avoid them. Instead ask, ‘When was the last time you encountered…? How did you handle it?’”

Each of the 130 checklists has an average of 10 to 20 big ideas—with easily 1,200 ideas in this 296-page goldmine. The first of nine sections, for example, “Build Your Executive Power,” has more than 150 ideas, plus the short color commentaries and some memorable call-outs. You’re probably familiar with half of the ideas (but maybe not practicing all of them)—but likely 20 percent of the ideas are new gems for you, or certainly many of your team members, including those you’re mentoring.

Each of the nine sections, like Spread the Word, Lead Your Team, Build Your Team, Stay Close to the Customer, and Find Your Balance, conclude with a dozen or more pithy quotations. Example: under “Twelve Quotes Worth Quoting About Teamwork,” the authors include this from former Boston Celtics NBA Coach Red Auerbach, “They said you have to use your five best players, but I found you win with the five that fit together best.”

The call-outs scream-out to be shared immediately! For example:

“A consultant advised one manager to initiate a gripe session with several dissatisfied employees. The manager responded, ‘Are you crazy? All they’ll do is complain!’ To which the consultant retorted, ‘I hope so—that’s just what a gripe session is for.’”

Speaking of consultants, there’s a checklist titled, “Ten Tips for Hiring a Consultant.” The call-out is brilliant! “If you can’t fully identify the problem in advance, consider using one consultant to identify the problem and another to help you solve it. Here’s one reason why. Let’s say you know you’ve got serious morale problems but haven’t figured out why. If you hire a human relations consultant both to pinpoint the cause and to recommend solutions, you’re tempting that consultant to find the problems he knows how to solve.”

Or, as Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.”

How can you not buy this book when the checklists are so tempting?
   --13 Ways to Get Employees to Keep You Informed
   --  6 Red Flags of Burnout
   --13 Steps to Delegate Effectively
   --17 Ways to See Your Business Through Your Customers’ Eyes
   --10 Steps to Resolve Customer Complaints
   --  9 Tips for Creating a Succession Plan

   --  8 Ways to Get Great Value From Mentoring
   --  9 Methods to Handle an Insubordinate Manager
   --13 Ways to Make Sure Your Incentives “Incent”
   --18 Management Classics You Should Read
   --15 People to Listen To
   --64 Business Terms to Have on the Tip of Your Tongue
   --  7 Tips for Giving Off-the-Cuff Speeches

[x] Check! Like I said…this is a goldmine!

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Smart Moves for People in Charge: 130 Checklists to Help You Be a Better Leader, by Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
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1) Gutsy idea: “From this book’s table of contents, select the 25 leadership behaviors you believe are most essential to your success (e.g. ‘Managing your time effectively’). Give the list to your employees and ask that they identify the three behaviors that you display most consistently and the three you display least consistently. Tabulate the results. Ask humbly for explanations and perhaps examples of feedback you don’t understand. (For even greater impact, ask employees to choose the 25 leadership behaviors they’ll evaluate in you.)”

2) OK…who wants to borrow this book for a week? Your assignment: report back at our next team meeting on just one checklist—and what you learned.  Then inspire another member to do the same for next week. (Note: with 130 checklists, you can keep your team meetings energized for over two years with just one book!)

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Hire Healthy People!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Culture Bucket, Chapter 8, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to hire for attitude, not aptitude. Other thoughts on culture and core values:

Max DePree: “The corporation can never be something we are not.”

Miles McPherson: "One way to get a healthy culture is to hire healthy people."

For five book recommendations on culture and core values, plus other resources, visit the Culture Bucket webpage.

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
• PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts 

NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).