Necessary Endings

 

2011 BOOK-OF-THE-YEAR Issue No. 208 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Feb. 11, 2011) features a hot-off-the-press book on pruning principles, or as Drucker called it, “sloughing off yesterday.”  Plus, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pruning Moment OK. I admit I’m going out on a limb, but I’ve already found a contender for my Top-10 book list for 2011. The chapter titles are powerful enough.  The actual chapters are pure dynamite.  Example:    --The Wise, the Foolish, and the Evil: Identifying Which Kinds of People Deserve Your Trust (Chapter 7)    --Pruning: Growth Depends on Getting Rid of the Unwanted or Superfluous (Chapter 2)    --When Stuck Is the New Normal: The Difference Between Pain with a Purpose and Pain for No Good Reason (Chapter 4)    --Sustainability: Taking Inventory of What Is Depleting Your Resources (Chapter 13) Dr. Henry Cloud, a leadership coach to CEOs and business executives, and a clinical psychologist, has introduced a new term into the leadership lexicon: the pruning moment.  He defines the pruning moment as “that clarity of enlightenment when we become responsible for making the decision to own the vision or not. If we own it, we have to prune.  If we don’t, we have decided to own the other vision, the one we called average.  It is a moment of truth that we encounter almost every day in many, many decisions.” Cloud melds the personal and the professional in this pruning manual of memorable stories and principles and shows why they must go hand-in-hand—and why lack of character on the personal side is often the unseen obstacle to “necessary endings” on the business side. “Getting to the next level,” Cloud writes, “always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on.”  He takes Peter Drucker’s “planned abandonment” and “sloughing off yesterday” themes (download my Results Bucket chapter) and delivers a detailed road map for arriving at your preferred destination.  Necessary endings, he adds, “are the reason you are not married to your prom date nor still working in your first job.”  Leaders get that, so what’s new and fresh? How about his list of the 11 reasons why leaders and managers avoid necessary endings?  Here are just four of the preferred avoidance strategies:    --“We are afraid of the unknown.”    --“We do not possess the skills to execute the ending.”    --“We have had too many and too painful endings in our own personal history, so we avoid another one.”    --“We do not learn from them, so we repeat the same mistakes over and over.” If your gut says it’s time to end a relationship, help an employee exit, dismount a dead horse, say farewell to a sacred cow, or drop a loser program, product or service, this just-in-time pruning book will show you how.  Cloud uses a simple rose bush illustration to explain the pruning process. Pruning is “removing whatever it is in our business or life whose reach is unwanted or superfluous.” It’s also a process of “proactive endings.”  He coaches leaders to prune in three categories (think rose bushes):    1) Prune healthy buds or branches that are not the best ones.    2) Prune sick branches that are not going to get well.    3) Prune dead branches that are taking up space needed for the healthy ones to survive. He likes Jack Welch’s view that a leader must discern whether a business or a division needs to be fixed, closed or sold. “All of your precious resources—time, energy, talent, passion, money—should only go to the buds of your life or your business that are the best, are fixable and are indispensable.” “Leaders by nature,” Cloud adds, “are often optimistic and hopeful, but if you do not have some criteria by which you distinguish optimism from false hope, you will not get the benefits of pruning. Sometimes the best thing a leader can do is to give up hope in what they are currently trying.”  Then, this zinger: “Wise people know when to quit.” And effective leaders know when to ask people to exit.  Commenting on Welch’s “Neutron Jack” style of pruning the bottom 10 percent of employees each year,” Cloud nudges the timid leader with this wisdom: “And I can understand why many people were upset with a fixed strategy like that for firing employees. But I do believe that there is some number of people in every organization and every life who will be routinely ‘let go’ if leadership is doing its stewardship job.” Cloud also delivers fresh ideas in other management buckets, including three practical questions to ask in the Meetings Bucket.  If a routine meeting is “sick and not getting well,” he offers this example: “We have tried repeatedly to use these times for forecasting, and it just never works. We can’t get the information we need as the discussion progresses, and even though we have tried, it is confusing and a waste. Let’s stop using this meeting to do that.” I underlined a lot of pages in this book. It’s filled with gems…I mean, it’s a bouquet of roses that will brighten your day and lengthen your career. TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, by Dr. Henry Cloud.   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Lencioni writes, “No matter how good a leadership team feels about itself, and how noble its mission might be, if the organization it leads rarely achieves its goals, then, by definition, it’s simply not a good team.” Pop Quiz: Write down at least one previously agreed-upon annual S.M.A.R.T. goal for each member of your team. Do you have a good team? 2) Lencioni says that great leaders see themselves as “Chief Reminder Officers.” He says that “their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis. So why do so many leaders fail to do this?”   --------------------------------------------------------------------- Delegate Your 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 appoint an International Executive Vice President of Hoopla! (funny title, powerful purpose). Some CEOs, senior pastors, and department managers recruit a Hoopla! Coordinator because they understand the principles of the Delegation Bucket. Others appoint a Hoopla! Champion because, frankly, they stink at affirmation and celebration and so they leverage the giftedness of another person to ensure that workplace stress is mitigated and team members are affirmed.  Whatever your reason for finding the perfect person for hoopla!—just do it! Hoopla! honors God. For more ideas and resources on affirmation and celebration, visit the Hoopla! Bucket.   2025 UPDATE: In my "retirement" years, I might do 1-2 workshops each year. 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 ECFA BLOG:  “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”       Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s weekly blog posts. Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 650+ blogs posted (between 2006 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.

The Advantage

 

2012 BOOK-OF-THE-YEAR Issue No. 245 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (March 29, 2012) features a Top-10 book (already!) for 2012 with new insights on core values. Patrick Lencioni says there are four kinds: Core Values, Aspirational Values, Permission-to-Play Values and Accidental Values.  Plus, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bad Meetings: Birthplace of Unhealthy Organizations My regular readers know I’m on a perpetual trek (or is it a treadmill?) to find gold in them thar hills—culminating in my Top-10 books of the year list.  I just found one—and it will take a rare gem to knock this one off its current perch as my Number One pick of 2012.   Any new book by Patrick Lencioni is worth the read, but this treasure—published just this month and already on the Wall Street Journal’s Top-10 business books list—is in a class by itself.   Lencioni says that “bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication.”  He adds, “If someone were to offer me one single piece of evidence to evaluate the health of an organization, I would not ask to see its financial statements, review its product line, or even talk to its employees or customers: I would want to observe the leadership team during a meeting.”   And he says all of this on page 173, in his next to last chapter, “The Centrality of Great Meetings.” I couldn’t agree more. In the “Meetings Bucket” chapter in my book (the 20th and final core competency), I include a two-page template, “Weekly Update to My Supervisor,” a summary document of almost all the core competencies. As Lencioni points out—your meetings are a barometer of everything else.    But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why is this such a spectacular book? What moves it from fad-of-the-quarter, ho-hum pablum, to YOU MUST BUY THIS TODAY for every person on your senior team?   I ordered 24 copies for a CEO Dialogues roundtable last week—after reading just the first 50 pages of The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business. I thought to myself, “These 50 pages are so transformational—if teams apply the wisdom with discipline and desire—it doesn’t matter if the other 150 pages are even readable.”   Lencioni, who has sold more than three million business “fables,” calls this book a “comprehensive, practical guide”—and it is. His goal was to bring all of the ideas from his eight books and consulting practice under the roof of one book—and he did. This one, especially, is brilliant.   “The single greatest advantage any company can achieve,” says this plain-speaking author/consultant (blessed with wit and wisdom) “is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free and available to anyone who wants it.”  He builds his case quickly—not with fables this time but with real life peeks behind unnamed company closed doors. (Not all business or nonprofit/church leaders have it together, we soon learn.)   His model for organizational health is centered on four disciplines: 1) Build a Cohesive Leadership Team 2) Create Clarity 3) Overcommunicate Clarity 4) Reinforce Clarity   Is this just another yada, yada, yada or a big pile of nada, nada, nada? Nope. It is so simple and practical, I think Lencioni was a bit embarrassed to put so many cookies on the bottom shelf. But that’s what sets this apart from all the other books in recent years—it’s a comprehensive approach that any team can implement. And it’s so simple—it may well be the death knell for us consultant types. (Buy the book and you won’t need us anymore!)   In what I term the “Superman Syndrome,” Peter Drucker said “No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.” Thus Lencioni skillfully delivers exceptional goods—for all of us average players.   Organizational health is like a family, comments Lencioni. “If the parents’ relationship is dysfunctional, the family will be too.” He adds, “Teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice—and a strategic one.” He paints the picture of what healthy teams look like, starting with the basics: size of teams, specific agendas when the team meets, and frequency and types of team meetings and staff meetings.   His five team behaviors (think of a pyramid from the ground up) of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results—are defined and explained in practical, practical ways in the first 70 pages. He writes, “The ultimate point of building greater trust, conflict, commitment and accountability is one thing: the achievement of results. That seems obvious, but as it turns out, one of the greatest challenges to team success is the inattention to results.” (Three cheers for the Results Bucket!)   “Discipline 2: Create Clarity” is really a short-course in strategic planning without all the buzz words. His page on “BLATHER” is hilarious. “Though I can’t be sure, I suspect that at some point about thirty years ago a cleverly sadistic and antibusiness consultant decided that the best way to screw up companies was to convince them that what they needed was a convoluted, jargony, and all-encompassing declaration of intent.” (Think: vision and mission statements!)   I gotta end this review—but, really, I haven’t even enticed you to the deep end of the pool yet. You MUST buy this book and read about: The Two-Headed CEO, the six key questions to create clarity, The Playbook (a few pages, on the desk and in every meeting), Cascading Communication, Performance Management (“Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion.”), The Price of Passivity, Behaviors Versus Measurables, and The Universal Challenge of Peer Accountability.     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Lencioni writes, “No matter how good a leadership team feels about itself, and how noble its mission might be, if the organization it leads rarely achieves its goals, then, by definition, it’s simply not a good team.” Pop Quiz: Write down at least one previously agreed-upon annual S.M.A.R.T. goal for each member of your team. Do you have a good team? 2) Lencioni says that great leaders see themselves as “Chief Reminder Officers.” He says that “their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis. So why do so many leaders fail to do this?”   ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Calendar Reflects Your Convictions Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is that “your calendar reflects your convictions.” Consequently, you must invest time in life-long learning (example: reading or listening to leadership and management books, being accountable to a coach, etc.) if you want to be a God-honoring and competent leader.   I look for alignment in books and Patrick Lencioni’s body of work aligns perfectly with the classic books by Peter Drucker, Jim Collins and Ken Blanchard. For more resources from what I call “The Drucker Bucket,” including a link to “Brainy Quotes” by the father of modern management, visit The Drucker Bucket webpage.     P.S. Here’s a great Druckerism, “Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.”     2025 UPDATE: In my "retirement" years, I might do 1-2 workshops each year. 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 ECFA BLOG:  “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”       Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s weekly blog posts including, “The Nothingness Syndrome.” Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 650+ blogs posted (between 2006 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.

Miracle Wheels

 

Issue No. 545 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Feb. 4, 2023) highlights Don Schoendorfer’s stunning story: PhD engineer launches a global nonprofit by reading Nonprofit Kit for Dummies! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).    How many PhD engineers does it take to give away 1.3 million wheelchairs in 94 countries? (One!)   Hell Freezes Over in India! No problem! It’s 1974 in Cambridge, Mass., and Don Schoendorfer braces for the first question on his oral qualification exam for his engineering PhD at MIT. The brilliant professors on the committee begin with their best curveball: “People mention that when they walk out onto the Golden Gate Bridge, they can hear humming. Could you please explain where that sound is coming from?” Schoendorfer nailed it! And he nailed the follow-up questions about equations, first principles, and more. He writes, “By the time I was done answering every line of questioning from the committee members, my hands were covered in white chalk and the blackboard behind me, the one I’d been writing on, was filled with equations, drawings, and solutions.” Fast forward. How did God orchestrate the journey of a shy introvert from Ashtabula, Ohio…to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…to the burgeoning bio-medical field of blood cell separation in Southern California…to becoming the founder of a global-impacting nonprofit that has given the gift of mobility (free wheelchairs!) to more than 1.3 million people in 94 countries on five continents…and counting? You must read: Miracle Wheels:  The Story of a Mission to Bring Mobility to the World by Don Schoendorfer with R.C. George Super Bowl Sidelight! In the book’s foreword, NFL Quarterback Nick Foles, the 2018 MVP of Super Bowl LII (his Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New England Patriots 41–33), notes that an estimated 75 million people worldwide still need wheelchairs. In this inspiring and very transparent book, Schoendorfer shares the poignant story of how his daughter urged her parents to return to church. In 1996, “over that first year attending Mariners Church, I went from being a ‘pedestrian Christian’—someone merely standing on the sidewalk and watching other people practice their faith—to wanting much more.” After several failed attempts to serve others (tutoring, etc.), Don invites us into his conversation with God! Oh, my. “I know you’re an introvert, God said. You don’t like people in general, I’ve really noticed that. You barely got through your psychology class in college. You’re not trained as an educator. You have no knowledge about being a mentor. And quite frankly, I’m discouraged that you’re not using the tools I gave you.” “What tools would those be, Lord? I wondered.” “You’re an engineer, aren’t you? As an engineer, can’t you come up with something that would help my kingdom?” In church, he was convicted by a four-sentence story, “The Fool’s Game,” shared by his pastor, Kenton Beshore. (Read more in this 2006 Los Angeles Times interview. And note to pastors: It’s content—not length—that makes your sermons impactful! For example, read about a sermon Juan Carlos Ortiz once preached. Classic!) What happened? From prototype in 1999, to 100 wheelchairs in Don’s garage, to the journey with four pilot test chairs to India in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission, the global nonprofit was launched. When was the last time you and three other volunteers hurdled the obstacles of airline schedules, visas, and the bureaucracy to travel to India—and checked medical supplies, medicine, and four wheelchairs as baggage? LOL!  Fighting jet lag and in search of cold drinks during their first night in India, the team asked their hotel clerk to recommend a restaurant. The local establishment was named “Hell Freezes Over!” (The perfect metaphor for this 21-year journey!) The India trip, for Don, was research-focused. He wanted to gather data to document and prove that his wheelchair prototype could be used in the developing world. “When I left California, this had been my expectation for this trip, to collect cold, lifeless data. But what I found instead were real people with real needs that I had the ability to meet face-to-face. I’d come to India with a paper on my mind. But I left India with people in my heart.” Click here to view the 2½-minute video as Don Schoendorfer talks about his new book on ABC’s Good Morning America 3. Update! According to Free Wheelchair Mission, through the generosity of their donors, “six containers of wheelchairs arrived at their destinations in Chile, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and the Philippines in January 2023. Soon, 3,178 people with disabilities in these countries will receive the gift of mobility.” To give the gift of mobility (one or more wheelchairs), visit FWM here. Amazing! But, let’s back up a bit. Before FWM was incorporated as a nonprofit, checks began arriving from friends who shared Don’s passion for bringing the gift of mobility to the world. Generous checks! His garage was crammed with wheelchairs, but donors challenged him to purchase more materials for more wheelchairs. What to do? One friend simply said, “Don, you need to start a nonprofit.” So what does this biomedical engineer, with a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, do? The same thing you’d do. He bought a copy of Nonprofit Kit for Dummies! (I actually reviewed this book in 2014.) The rest is history—but not really. There’s much more to come. Don Schoendorfer quotes global stats that indicate 75 million people still need wheelchairs. He invites you to help like our mutual friend, George Duff (1931-2023) helped. With his family and local church, George Duff was a longtime cheerleader in the Seattle area for Free Wheelchair Mission. To listen to Don Schoendorfer’s comments at George Duff’s memorial service on Jan. 14, 2023, click here and fast forward to Minute 40.00 for Don’s seven-minute tribute. Schoendorfer notes seven qualities that Duff modeled. (That will preach!) I gave my grandkids this book so—I pray—they’ll connect the dots between life experiences (XQ) and God’s call.  To order from Amazon, click on the title for Miracle Wheels: The Story of a Mission to Bring Mobility to the World, by Don Schoendorfer. And thanks to Connie Salios (FWM board member) for sending me a review copy. BONUS BOOK! While reading Miracle Wheels, I also read a new book on “XQ” (the third dimension of IQ and EQ). Don Schoendorfer could be the PhD poster boy for Experiential Intelligence: Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs. Soren Kaplan, the author, defines XQ as “…the combination of mindsets, abilities, and know-how gained from your unique life experience that empowers you to achieve your goals.” (Read my review.) YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Who on our team and in our circle of family and friends should read Miracle Wheels? Who would be gutsy enough to share this book with selected donors of our favorite nonprofit? (Whoa! Would all their money then go to Free Wheelchair Mission—or would this God-story maybe inspire givers to be even more generous with more nonprofits?) John Pearson gave this book to his grandkids (all teenagers)—so they would learn how to connect the dots between life experiences (XQ) and God’s call. Whose life will you impact with this book?  2) To drill deeper on XQ and how Don Schoendorfer leveraged his life experiences to create and implement the vision of Free Wheelchair Mission, read Experiential Intelligence: Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs, by Soren Kaplan. Think back: what experiences growing up, in school, and in your early career days, prepared you for the work God has called you to do now and in the future?      Mastering 100 Must-Read Books Part 2: Books-of-the-Year Book #16 of 100: Necessary Endings  For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #16 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.    Necessary Endings:  The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships  That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward by Dr. Henry Cloud Books #6 through #21 spotlight 16 books that I named the Book-of-the-Year from 2006 to 2020. Necessary endings, writes Henry Cloud, “are the reason you are not married to your prom date nor still working in your first job.” • Read my review on Amazon. • Order from Amazon: Necessary Endings • Listen on Libro (7 hours, 15 minutes) • Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson) Cloud lists 11 reasons why leaders and managers avoid necessary endings, including these four avoidance strategies:    • “We are afraid of the unknown.”    • “We do not possess the skills to execute the ending.”    • “We have had too many and too painful endings in our own personal history, so we avoid another one.”    • “We do not learn from them, so we repeat the same mistakes over and over.” If your gut says it’s time to end a relationship, help an employee exit, dismount a dead horse, say farewell to a sacred cow, or drop a loser program, product or service, this “pruning book” will show you how.                     PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. How compelling is your story? Should your founder or CEO (or even a volunteer or customer) write your organization’s story? With self-publishing tools today and gifted writers, it’s faster than you think. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).   The 1-Page Tool for Fixing Fuzziness Tool #16, “Prime Responsibility Chart,” will help you eliminate fuzziness between board and staff roles—in just one page. It’s one of 22 tools and templates in ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Order from Amazon. Read more here. Download the tool here. The tool is adapted from a template used at The Boeing Company by Bill Benke (1927-2023), who introduced it to John when Bill served on the board of SAMBICA. 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 Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 650+ blogs posted (between 2006 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.

Xenophon's Cyrus the Great

 

2014 BOOK-OF-THE-YEAR Issue No. 301 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features Peter Drucker’s pick for the “best book on leadership.” ‘Nuff said!  Plus, this reminder:  check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff or board meetings.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Drucker: "Still the Best Book on Leadership" I’m often asked to recommend my top leadership or management book. So, almost on autopilot, I hit play and blather the following:  “It’s impossible to pick one leadership book. Everyone’s at different levels of experience and need. That’s why you need 20 management buckets—and dozens of niche leadership books. Blah…blah…blah.”   Then (gulp) this past January I read and reviewed The Practical Drucker: Applying the Wisdom of the World’s Greatest Management Thinker, by William A. Cohen.  (Read my review.) Here is Peter Drucker’s response to that question: “...the first systematic book on leadership —the Kyropaidaia by Xenophon, himself no mean leader of men—is still the best book on the subject.”  Kyropaidaia (or Cyropaedia) was also known as Cyrus the Great (c. 580 – 529 B.C.). Cyrus founded the Persian Empire in the sixth century B.C. by uniting the Medes and the Persians, the two original Iranian tribes. His empire “extended from India to the Mediterranean Sea and was the most powerful state in the world until its conquest two centuries later by Alexander the Great.” What did Drucker see in this remarkable figure? “The great Persian’s astonishing military successes and mild rule provided just the kind of raw material that Xenophon needed to fashion his portrait of a human paragon.” Fortunately, Larry Hedrick, a former air force officer and military historian, has edited Xenophon’s work (c. 431 - 355 B.C.) and crafted a stunning, page-turner leadership treatise, Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War.  Five chapters in the Old Testament, Ezra 1-5, salute the generosity of Cyrus the Great for liberating the Jews from Babylon and for his generous gifts for the temple in Jerusalem. According to Hedrick, the Iranians regard Cyrus as “The Father,” the Babylonians as “the Liberator,” the Greeks as “The Law-Giver,” and the Jews as “The Anointed of the Lord” (see Isaiah 45). So why did Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, call Xenophon’s book (written 100 years after Cyrus died) “the best book on leadership?” Start with more than 140 you-gotta-read-these subtitles (inserted into Xenophon’s new abridged edition by Hedrick):    • Inspire Your People with an Enticing Vision of a New Order    • Know When to Keep Your Own Counsel    • Err on the Side of Self-Reliance    • Obedience Should Not Be the Result of Compulsion    • Imagining Disaster May Save You from Tragedy    • Exude Confidence, Not Anxiety    • Recognize the Inevitability of Conflict And those are just samples from the first 33 pages. Cyrus the Great was a life-long learner—with unusual wisdom. “Let us remember our forefathers,” he preached to his warriors, “but let us no longer exaggerate their virtues.” And this from Cyrus’ father: “If you wish to be thought a good estate manager, or a good horseman, or a good physician, or a good flute player without really being one, just imagine all the tricks you have to invest just to keep up appearances. You might succeed at first, but in the end you’re going to be exposed as an imposter.” Delivered like the off-camera color commentaries popular on TV sitcoms today, Cyrus’ frank assessment of both allies and enemies is instructive—this one on Syazarees, his uncle: “He seemed only half awake to the extraordinary responsibilities of his office, and he exuded far more anxiety than confidence.” So Xenophon (channeled in modern leadership/management lingo by Hedrick) paints a leadership masterpiece with both subtle tones and bold smash-face war scenes. Whew! (Not what I was expecting!)   Most of my reading colleagues tilt towards the skinny management books, not 295-page tomes. But this is neither. This is readable. This is exciting. Leadership, coaching, mentoring, innovation, psychology, motivation, crisis management, social styles, cultural hiccups. Plus: stunning acts of kindness. And generosity—AMAZING generosity. The case studies in generosity (on and off the battlefield) will shock you. Wow. Here’s Cyrus on his favorite subject: “Allow me to pause and emphasize this general rule: Success always calls for greater generosity—though most people, lost in the darkness of their own egos, treat it as an occasion for greater greed.” There’s wisdom and insight on almost every page. More subtitles:    • Brevity Is the Soul of Command    • Address Different Audiences with Different Emphases    • Minimize Distinctions of Rank    • Create a Psychological Advantage by Seizing the Initiative    • Nip Ill-Advised Plans in the Bud    • Counter Demoralizing Words with Reasoned Argument    • Understand the Motivations of Your Followers    • Overconfidence Has Been the Undoing of Many    • Defeat the Foeman Known as Envy    • Convince Your People of the Benefits of Change    • Blessed Are Those Who Take the Initiative There. These teasers should be enough for you to hit “purchase” at Amazon.  But really—if Peter Drucker said it’s “still the best book on leadership,” what more do you need? To order this book from Amazon, click on the link for Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War, by Xenophon (Larry Hedrick, Editor). Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Cyrus the Great wrote the first human rights charter. Imagine—centuries before Christ, a king takes out a blank sheet of paper (I said “imagine”) and begins. What’s on his Top-10 list? What’s on yours? 2) Cyrus said that “one fine instance of generosity can inspire dozens more.” In our organization, how might we excel at generosity so our acts inspire dozens or hundreds more? What would that look like 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 Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 650+ blogs posted (between 2006 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month. ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”   Add your thoughts to John's latest blog post for boards, "The Dreaded CEO Report."  PLUS! View the short video on the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series: No. 1: Recruiting Board Members and No. 2: Balancing Board Roles (DVD and Viewing Guides).

Leadership Briefs

 

2015 BOOK-OF-THE-YEAR Issue No. 318 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Feb. 21, 2015) spotlights a new leadership book with—trust me—at least a dozen chapters you’ve never read before. I’ve exhausted my inventory of affirming adjectives for this refreshing resource, Leadership Briefs. It’s amazing.    When Do You Stop Leading? Aw, heck.  Just when you think you can pontificate on all-things leadership, along comes a phenomenal book that hammers your ego. I still have much to learn. Case in point: Ask me how to build a healthy culture on your team—and I can give you three steps and three books.  Ask Dick Daniels the same question and he delivers eight core elements and seven steps. (Where does he get this good stuff? It’s off-the-chart insightful—and packaged brilliantly.) In the new, hot-off-the-press book, Leadership Briefs: Shaping Organizational Culture to Stretch Leadership Capacity, Daniels says that “building a healthy culture requires a carefully crafted blueprint.” He starts with four foundational building blocks: vision, mission, values…and one more we often minimize: leadership. Then in less than a page, he outlines the four sides of organizational framing: strategy, structure, staffing, and systems. He notes, “Staffing follows structure. A change in strategy leads to a change in structure which impacts staffing.”  But…there’s more! His seven steps to building culture are short and crisp (three to five lines each), yet comprehensive. The outline:    1. Declare it.    2. Define it.    3. Model it.    4. Defend it.    5. Expect it.    6. Measure it.    7. Reward it. He elaborates: “Culture is evidenced in specific and measurable behaviors. People consistently perform according to what is measured.” That’s Chapter 3 on organizational culture—a feast in just four pages, plus an eye-catching “Leadership Debrief” three-line chapter summary on the fifth page. (Some chapters—with equal punch—are just two pages. My kind of book!) So imagine…40 very short chapters in nine major leadership categories with tempting subtitles:    • CULTURE: Leadership Friendly Places to Work    • FORMATION: Building Leaders from the Outside—In    • CHARACTER: Building Leaders from the Inside—Out    • STRATEGY: The Intuition of Leadership Judgment    • LEADING: The Daily Agenda    • TEAMS: Collaboration and Cross-Functional Alignment    • FOLLOWERS: Engaged and Growing    • COMMUNICATION: Everyone Knows Almost Everything    • ETCETERA: Behind the Scenes Honest.  Scan the table of contents—and you’re hooked. If you’ve got even a hint of leadership in your bones, you can’t resist cancelling your next meeting and digging deeper into these life-long learning leadership briefs.  There are gems in every chapter: • Chapter 9: The Trusted Leader • Chapter 10: Emotionally Smart Leaders • Chapter 11: The Social Graces of Memorable Leaders Yikes! Under six “Graceful Reminders” in Chapter 11 he warns about “the danger of the 15%. Some people can be right 85% of the time. It is a powerful gift. The danger is when they assume they are right 100% of the time. They become relationally dangerous 15% of the time when they are wrong but think they are correct.” How can you not read these chapters?    • Chapter 14: When Leaders Look for the Silver Bullet    • Chapter 18: The Point of Creativity in 31 Leadership Polarities    • Chapter 22: When Do You Stop Leading? In Chapter 22, Daniels cautions, “There is a disruption in leadership continuity when you stop doIng the critical exercises needed for sustainability.” Then his poke-in-the-ribs includes 12 “Don’t Stop” warnings, including: Don’t Stop Learning. Don’t Stop Listening. Don’t Stop Confronting. Don’t Stop Celebrating. Don’t Stop Studying the Competition. Don’t Stop Taking on the Next Challenge.  There’s more!    • Chapter 23: The Delicate Dance of Team Chemistry    • Chapter 25: Counterintuitive Conflict    • Chapter 30: Delegating Developmentally Gimme a break, Dick!  I’ve written a whole chapter on the Delegation Bucket, so how come I just learned a new insight that’s going right into my PowerPoint?  “Leaders have three options: (1) Not delegating, (2) Delegating prematurely, or (3) Delegating developmentally.” And more:    • Chapter 33: The Emotional Flow of Employee Disengagement    • Chapter 35: The Power of Thought-Provoking Questions    • Chapter 38: Formulas for Succession Planning Gut check on employee disengagement: “When the problem is organizational,” says the author, leaders fix it. “When the problem is a team member’s personal baggage, they find a way to help. At last resort, leaders will carefully calculate if it is necessary to release and replace the disengaged. How this transition is handled impacts the attitude and engagement of every other team member who is watching.” ‘Nuff said. Just buy the book. As I wrote in my endorsement, “I could have used this book 30 years ago—and saved myself and my team members from unnecessary leadership pain! Every chapter begs to be discussed and implemented in a weekly staff meeting. The chapter on delegation is worth the price of the book. I've already borrowed his memorable outline: Think, Talk, Act, and Ask. Brilliant!” To order from Amazon, click on the book title for Leadership Briefs: Shaping Organizational Culture to Stretch Leadership Capacity, by Dick Daniels. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Dick Daniels peppers his book with stunning insights from leaders, like this from Tom Peters: “Leader’s don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” How effective is our team’s leader-creation plan? 2) Here’s another. This one from Leroy Eimes: “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.” Tell us about a leader you know who embodies that description. Charles, You're Fired!   In my cycle through the 20 buckets, here’s a reminder from the Culture Bucket, Chapter 8, in Mastering the Management Buckets. In their book, Winning The Answers—Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today, Jack and Suzy Welch comment on “The Ultimate Values Test.” They warn not to get rid of value offenders with surreptitious excuses such as “Charles left for personal reasons to spend more time with his family.”  Instead, they say, inform your team publicly and “announce that Charles was asked to leave because he didn’t adhere to specific company values.” By the way, today’s Wall Street Journal features an interview with Jack and Suzy Welch about their new book, The Real-Life MBA, coming this spring. For more resources—and 11 other book recommendations on building a healthy culture, 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 Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 650+ blogs posted (between 2006 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.