Go Your Own Way

The Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll – (Portfolio)

Leaders of all stripes and leadership coaches in an array of business sectors, have almost universally endorsed the practice of journaling as a way to grow leadership skills ranging from strategic planning, communications skills, self-awareness, core values, and goal development and measurement.

Like planners, there are a multitude of journals and journaling systems that include old school pen to paper and electronic programs and apps. I have been amazed at the number of folks that I respect who have extolled the virtues and capabilities of a range of cloud based/accessible applications. Then a few short weeks or months later they return to the old, reliable pen and paper route; or as I have become fond of, pencil and paper – there’s nothing quite like the scratch of a Dixon Ticonderoga or Mirado Black Warrior. Lately I found that for some inexplicable reason – ideas flow to life with these old school tools.

Much like the multi-faceted apps, there are any number of journaling systems on the market. One of the most ballyhooed of the bunch is the Bullet Journal or BUJO. The system’s inventor Ryder Carroll posted the detail of his system on the web and things took off in a viral fashion.

Now Carroll has put together what I have dubbed the BUJO Bible in the form of the book, The Bullet Journal Method. Carroll fills in the details of the story behind the development of the concept as a way to not only address his struggles with attention deficit disorder (ADD), but also what he felt were shortcomings with other systems.

Bullet Journal always struck me as a bit on the obsessive compulsive disorder side, with its pretty intensive focus on so many moving parts. It seemed to me that I would spend so much time building out the pieces of the journal and moving journal entries around that I would miss out on doing actual work of projects.

Carroll goes a long way towards clearing up that misconception by demonstrating that BUJO gives you the freedom to take the parts of the system that work for you, to create your own system. You can get as complex or as stripped down as you need, which the brilliance of the system. If what you need is not in here, why not go out a create your own. 

Coach In a Box

Business Boutique – 2019 Goal Planner – Christy Wright (Ramsey Press)

The Search for a “system” be it organizer, goal tracker or journal, seems to be an ongoing, ever evolving process for folks in business, often based on where you are in your career path. To say that there is no one size fits all is an understatement. I have tried any number of professionally packaged and even some personally developed systems, both on paper and electronic with varying degrees of success. I can say that I tend towards the old school, writing and paper side of the equation.

Coach/blogger/podcaster and bestselling author Christy Wright, founder of the Business Boutique brand, is out with a strikingly complete planning system, dubbed, Business Boutique – 2019 Goal Planner. In my experience, the one common denominator of systems, paper or electronic, is that there is generally something missing or incomplete when it comes to meeting my needs; which is why I eventually settled on using a combination of pieces for my system.

Wright has put together a nice, sturdy planner, housed in a nice box. The set includes a great combination of elements that will guide you through business goal development and execution over the course of the one year package.

While Wright’s focus is on helping female entrepreneurs and the design clearly leans in that direction - the elements of this system amount to what is a business coach in a box; with monthly lessons/assignments that cover a range of topics. Wright offers up macro monthly planning calendars as well as weekly working calendars. Importantly the planner also includes monthly review pages so you can take stock of progress and achievements, access your goals and reset your planning to keep your projects on track.

Whether it’s for a startup or experienced business person/entrepreneur – Wright’s system demonstrates/shares a lot of hard earned experience that will help you to success.

The Narrative Driven Business

Five Stars: The Communications Secrets to Get from Good to Great – Carmine Gallo (St. Martin’s Press)

“What do you do for a living?”

It’s a simple question that gets asked every day in any number of social and networking situations as an icebreaker. Over the course of time and a multitude of career transitions I have landed on what I believe to be a great response: “I am a professional communicator.”

That simple answer covers the full gamut of my careers in print and broadcast media, marketing and public relations and coaching. Don’t get me wrong; while the answer is simple the communications skills that have served me well throughout my career(s) were hard won. Those skills are the focus of the new book from bestselling author and communications guru Carmine Gallo, Five Stars: The Communications Secrets to Get from Good to Great.

Strong communications skills used to be treated as a desirable tool to have in your kit; a nice resume bullet point, but not a mainstay skill for most businesses. Gallo makes the strong case that top flight, five star, communications abilities are what separate the big dogs from the rat terriers.

Great Ideas

Simply having great ideas is not enough – it is the ability to convey and clearly communicate those ideas and to persuade others that will increase your value in the business world and in life. Like his bestselling books, Talk Like Ted and The Storyteller Secret, Gallo doesn’t just set the premise, he serves up the action steps that you can put into play to develop, grow and improve you communications skills to the point where you can elevate them to five star status.

No matter what technological advancement or future disruption that may come down the pike, these necessary communications skills are what will give you a leg up on the competition. The reality is, this is not some new innovative twist – some of what Gallo imparts here has been around for centuries. Where he succeeds is by putting it into easily digestible bits that you can put into practice right out of the box.

It is a somewhat sad, but great example of how far we have moved away from the classical education/teaching of things like Aristotle’s, Art of Persuasion. This really boils down to developing the ability to string together words in a manner that moves the needle, that gets people to take action. Oddly enough when it’s done correctly, most people don’t even realize they have been persuaded, but when it’s done badly, it’s clunky and obvious in its failure. With Five Stars, Gallo offers up the path to finding that extra step that will separate you from those with merely good communications skills.

A Wake Up Call For Business

Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth – Mark W. Johnson – (Harvard Business Review)

Try as I might, I could not think of any industry or business sector that has not been impacted by digital transformation. Now more than ever businesses need to be nimble and be able to act both proactively and re-actively to competitive challenges and disruption.

The flat out failure of so many businesses who either could not or would not change their business model should be a wake up call that is loud and clear. Tick of the list: Sears, Kmart, Bonton, Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Blackberry and many others. That clarion call, while not new, should have you asking if you are prepared to take action and if you have the structure in place to transform your business for growth.

Strategy and innovation consultant Mark W. Johnson has been championing for businesses to be ready to take this kind of action since his 2009 book Seizing the White Space. Johnson has revised and updated the book and the title in Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth to account for the blisteringly rapid pace of change that has occurred in the interim.

In the book, Johnson lays out a great, workable framework for business to embrace dynamic change and put it into practice right out of the box. If your scratching your head and wondering where to even start a transition, Johnson provides a road map to reinvention. I have never been a fan of reinventing the wheel, but reinvention may be a misnomer here; this is more of guide path to retooling the way you do business that gives you a leg up on the process by identifying the tools you need for success.

You will likely have more than a few AHA! Moments, as Johnson identifies not only what companies have done successfully, but also illustrates with examples those that failed to act in in turn failed outright. The advice offered up here is useful to both existing businesses to make the transformation or startups to put the framework in place from the start to be nimble from the get go.  

You Can't Shrink Your Way to Success

Growth IQ - Tiffani Bova - (Portfolio)

I remember it clearly...the first time I told a CEO "you can't shrink your way to success. The. Line seemed to hit him like a sledgehammer, jarring him from another cloudy discussion about layoffs, cost cutting, and delaying facility repairs. This was not the first discussion of this type; and while similar cost cutting had resulted in short lived bumps, this was not going to work much longer.

The fact that the concept of growth seemed somehow shocking spoke volumes about this particular executives mindset. I laid out a growth strategy and once the ball got rolling my line about shrinking to success moved from me being credited to the CEO assuming credit for it in a very short term when it started to work. I love it when a plan comes together. Growth can comes in many forms, in fact business growth strategist Tiffani Bova clearly defines ten growth strategies in her excellent new book, Growth IQ.

Ten Growth Paths

This really isn't brain surgery and Bova boils it down to ten pretty clear paths to growth:

1. Customer Experience - Inspire additional purchases and customer advocacy 
2. Customer Base Penetration - Sell more existing products to existing           customers
3. Market Acceleration - Expand into new markets with existing products
4. Product Expansion - Sell new products to existing customers
5. Customer and Product Diversification - Sell new products to new customers 
6. Optimize Sales- Streamline the sales process to increase productivity
7. Churn - Retain more customers
8. Partnerships - Leverage third-party alliances and channels
9. Co-optition - Cooperate with market or industry competitor 
10. Unconventional Strategies - Disruption of current thinking/process

Bova does a nice job of illustrating and detailing each of these growth paths with real world examples that are specific, without becoming esoteric or overly white-papery. The examples add substance to the action steps that you can put into play to get the ball rolling quickly. While each of these growth paths can be stand alone, she also makes the case that you can run on more than one of these paths at a time with the proper synchronization, so they don't bump not each other during execution. Timing is everything.

While I am not sure that Bova put the growth paths in any particular order, I am a big fan customer experience being great path to growth. Customer experience can be a huge differentiator and engendering loyalty can result in dynamic growth; with a great reduction in customer acquisition cost. The basic rule of business is it's cheaper to sell something to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer.

Bova also spells out the factors you should weigh when determining which growth path(s) you should choose. This is critical information because making the wrong choice can cause more damage to your business than a lack of growth. Growth IQ offers a phenomenal knowledge base from which to work on your growth evolution. 

Missed Opportunity

How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation's Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education - Arne Duncan - (Simon and Schuster)

I've got to be honest, I don't quite know what to make of, How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation's Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education, by Obama Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Named the ninth Secretary of Education in 2009, Duncan oversaw the turmoil that public education has become in the United States trough 2015.

With How Schools Work, Duncan ha the opportunity to shine a first hand knowledge spotlight on those school's that are working well and what they do to successfully navigate the roadblocks and issues that stop so many schools from delivering on their primary charge; educating kids.

Those issues are legion; ranging from disinterested or impaired parents, infrastructure failures, teacher's and their unions, forced social engineering, school violence, funding issues, and on and on. Rather than citing those schools who manage to overcome these hurdles, Duncan instead serves up an odd mishmash; part memoir of his journey in education, part recap of the challenges facing educators,  part liberal boilerplate screed and all topped off with his thoughts on gun violence. Oh, and as the cherry on top there is the seemingly obligatory eight point plan too fix the problems.

While the story of his journey to and through the education ranks is interesting and he clearly displays a demonstrable passion for educating, I was left short by the missed opportunity that I felt this book presented. The opportunity comes in the form of addressing an increase in accountability and an effort to refocus on actually providing a useful education that prepares students for a better future, whatever direction that might lead them. Instead of focusing on social engineering and how Johnny feels about himself, why not give Johnny the tools he needs to be successful or even break the cycle that has often hampered generations. Instead of viewing parents as adversaries, why not engage them to participate in the process of educating their kids. Instead of whining about a layoff funds why not offer a ground up overhaul of how schools can work better by how they are managed. Like I said, missed opportunity.      

What You Should Stop Doing

Detonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginners mind) to Survive - Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach - (Wiley)

"If it's not broke don't fix it," became a popular business axiom, that later became "If it's not broke, break it." If you find that your business, in whole or in part, is stuck in a rut because your business operating principle has become "because that's the way we've always done it," then it's probably time to give some thought to bringing a little disruption to your game.

A pair of Deloitte business consultants, Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach are out with a new book  Detonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices, that advocates bringing disruption, almost for the sake of disruption. I think there is a need for careful delineation to be put into play, before you take a sledgehammer to your business practices.  

First you have to account for the specifics of your business and industry. In some business sectors, best practices are actually rewarded. Take healthcare for example; where so-called core measures, a set of industry recognized best practices for treatment protocols. These standards of care get monitored and measured and can result in higher reimbursements, notably from government payers. It would not only be silly to detonate these best practices, but counter productive to the bottom line.

Certainly there are a myriad of opportunities to disrupt healthcare delivery, that could positively improve the bottom line and should be explored to improve not only patient outcomes, but also patient experience.

One of my all time favorite business questions is "what should we stop doing?" We spend so much time looking for opportunities that involve expanding what we do, that we miss the opportunities that lie in stopping doing things that aren't working or aren't contributing to our business in a meaningful way. This is where the lessons distilled in Detonate can have the greatest impact on your business.  

Let Go of the Coconut

Mastering Fear - A Navy SEAL's Guide - Brandon Webb and John David Mann (Portfolio)

I work with folks all the time who have great ideas, the ideal entrpreneurial skill set, and the desire to branch out and run their own shop. Many put the pieces in place, business plans, market research, working with consultants to bullet proof (as much as you can) the process and some even get the financing lined up. Just when you think they are ready to pull the trigger, they back away and leav everything on the table.

So what stops them? More often than not, the only thing stopping you, is you. And what stops you? Fear. Maybe it's the great uncertainty, the great unknown; the lingering doubt of "what if" this doesn't work out? For is the great equalizer that levels the playing field and often level great ideas.

In Mastering Fear: A Navy SEAL's Guide, retired Navy SEAL and bestselling author Branddon Webb, along with John David Mann (The Go-Giver series) offer up on of the best fear analogies ever with the story of the monkey and the coconut. Webb describes how a friend in the Philipines explained how they trap monkeys. "They dig a hole, place a coconut in it; the monkey reaches in and grabs the coconut, and his fist is now too big to pull out. He's trapped. All he has to do is let go of the coconut. But he won't do it. Why not? What keeps the monkey;s fist clenched? Fear. H's afraid of losing what he has, so he keeps the coconut and loses his freedom.

You want to take the leap and do your own thing, but for keeps your fist clenched on your coconut.

Webb draws on his vast experience in battle and business to craft, along with Mann, a playbook of five steps you can take to overcome your fears in business and in life. No you don't have to have survived the arduous Navy SEAL's BUD/S training course to apply these strategies to make marked improvements in your life.

I loved the chapter on knowing what matters. This seems like it should. Be pretty basic, common sense stuff, but I have found it's what often trips people up. Sometimes it real. Is as simple as knowing when to let go of the coconut.

Powered By Ideas

Breakthrough: How To Harness the Aha! Moments That Spark Success - Scott Duffy - (Enrepreneur Press)

"Don't be afraid of new ideas. Be afraid of old ideas. They keep you where you are an stop you from growing and moving forward. Concentrate on where you want to go, not on what you fear," - Anthony Robbins

As I considered Scott Duffy's new book, Breakthrough: How to Harness the Aha! Moments That Spark Success, for some reason on got locked in on a quote about ideas with out action, that I had heard or read at one time, but remained just out of my mental grasp. A quick Google search and I came across the Anthony Robbins quote above and thought that it was a good fit, when you consider that Duffy was once in the employ of the Robbins organization.

The quote is also fitting in that Duffy is offering a substantial primer on not only how to seize on great ideas, but how to shift into execution/action mode. As you progress through the process, he also demonstrates the action steps to grow and scale you business.

Duffy hits all the marks, delivering easily digestible chunks on leadership, making smart, informed choices for the next steps in you business development cycle, including; transitions, culture and building sustainability. He takes this beyond the theoretical by illustrating many of the. Steps with interviews and example from successful entrepreneurs including Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Daymond John among others.

While I tend to chafe at the shelf full of books that seemingly endorse failure as a business option everybody should take a swing at, I fully endorse not fearing failure from limiting your business decisions and learning from failure; I appreciated Duffy's clear illustrations about some of the potential issues that come with scaling and how you can avoid them with poor planning.

Stop Running Around the Room

The Digital Marketing Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Websites That Sell– Robert Bly (Entrepreneur)

So, how is your website doing? The so-called experts will all tell you that your business must have a web presence, but they don’t often tell you why. So, you go out and build out a website and depending on how much your budget is it may look slick, have some nifty doo-dads and maybe it even tells some of your business story, but how is it doing? Is your website driving sales, or customer experience; is it at least filling your sales funnel?

If you are scratching your head and not sure what the answers are, then you probably really have your answer. You may be guilty of what I call running around the room! Some guru tells you, you need a website or a Facebook page or a Twitter account, so you go out and do just that. The question then becomes, WHY? If you find yourself being pulled in twenty different directions, all the while chasing the new, shiny, thing; then you will want to take a break and invest some time with Robert Bly’s new book, The Digital Marketing Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Websites That Sell.

Bly has made a career out of cranking highly effective marketing copy that does exactly what it’s supposed to do; sell products and services. PERIOD. If you are a small business or looking to fire up a side hustle or even make the transition from side hustle to full blown business, this is a great starting place to gather knowledge of how to build out a website the actually makes you money! And isn’t that the bottom line?

If you are an experienced marketer, Bly approach may seem a little basic, but I can’t tell you how many people I work with that that invest in building out a website, only to have it not produce the results they thought it would and then who take the attitude that “this internet thing doesn’t work” or use the now famous line “I was too late, everybody already had a website like mine”.

Let’s face it, even folks who do this for a living are playing a game of catch up because the digital realm is changing seemingly every day. If you don’t have a solid foundation to build on then things like AdWords, landing pages, click through rates and the multitude of social media sites will all amount to deciphering hieroglyphics. Bly delivers the basics in easy to understand chunks and action steps that you can put into play right out of the box to start impacting your business today. Once you mastered the delivery, I would even suggest picking up one of Bly’s books on how to write effective copy that sells.

Avoid the Void

The Power of a Positive Team – Jon Gordon – (Wiley)

Have you ever been a part of a successful team?

How about a team that did not quite meet expectations or failed miserably?

Looking back at those experiences were you able to break things down and get to the bottom of what worked well, or where things went off the rails and failed miserably? It’s always a good idea to do that kind of postmortem break down to identify what works best.

In his latest book, The Power of a Positive Team bestselling, business and team guru Jon Gordon not only walks you through what the elements of a successful team are, and as the title suggests, how a positive team proves to be more successful. Now that may not sound like brain surgery, but as always, Gordon really offers some definitive insights, often based on scientific research about the mindsets that go into the chemistry of teams.

One of my go to stories when coaching teams or individuals, is about going to your favorite book store and asking for a book on how to be better at being negative, as I used in my review of Jon’s book, The Power of Positive Leadership. I spend a lot of time focusing on the impact of communication, good and bad, on businesses, and I love the chapter here that focuses on how communication impacts teams. Jon hits it out of the park when discussing how teams need to avoid the void; when there is a void in the process, more often than not, negativity will fill that void. He illustrates how effective communication within the team and its individual members can eliminate the void and cut down on negativity.

If you look at problem areas in most businesses, no matter what the business type or industry, communications are almost always at or near the top of the list. Gordon really drives home the point that while communication is “often the last thing you want to do” it is “the most important thing you must do.” He suggests a number of effective vehicles for communication among teams; it boils down to finding the method that works best for the team and the situation because it is not a once size fits all proposition.

Teams and team work comes in a multitude of varieties and Gordon offers great ideas and actionable steps the can help you keep those teams working in a positive fashion and with great results. This is a straight forward book, that you will want to keep handy so you can plug these steps into action.

The American Dream

I Love Capitalism: An American Story – Ken Langone (Portfolio Books)

Be perfectly clear up front, if you are a socialist pinhead who thinks you deserve a $15 minimum wage or worse a guaranteed income and government funded (meaning your hard working neighbor funded) health care; YOU WILL ABSOLUTELY HATE THIS BOOK. And that is why you are a pinhead.

I love, I Love Capitalism: An American Story, by Ken Langone, a longtime Wall Street investment guy, who helped raise the capital to found Home Depot, simply because the title says it all; this is an American story! The son of a plumber and a school cafeteria worker, Langone didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he did grow up with something you can’t teach; drive, determination and a work ethic that pushed him to rise above while other lagged behind.

This guy is all about the hustle and his stories about pulling himself up by the boot straps is the stuff of legends. I live in Central Pennsylvania and loved his stories about attending nearby Bucknell University and some of the things he did, hustling to make money. Some will whine about Langone being a braggart, but he has earned the right to toot his own horn because no one handed him anything, he mastered the grind and won.

While there are certainly no guarantees (income or otherwise), to me this is a great book to inspire your kids to be BOLD, to aggressively take chances and quite frankly to work hard to get what they want and achieve big things. At the end of the day isn’t that what makes the American story great? If you’re waiting around hoping that someone will hand you success, you will end up angry and empty handed.

Excellence 101

The Road to Excellence: 6 Leadership Strategies to Build A Bulletproof Business – David Mattson (Sandler Training)

It really shouldn’t be a secret, but it all too often is; excellence doesn’t just happen it is a process that is built brick by brick and step by step. It also doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by choice and by detailed planning.

It is that planning process that is the focus of Sandler Training CEO and President, David Mattson’s new book, The Road to Excellence: 6 Leadership Strategies to Build A Bulletproof Business. Clearly Mattson taps directly into the countless hours of training working with a wide range of businesses and organizations to draw on not only the best practices they have developed, but also the trends and common mistakes they encounter when advising and coaching these folks.

Mattson boils down leadership to a set of a half dozen strategy areas he labels the Six P’s-

• Planning – like everything else, excellence starts with planning; I say the word plan so often I start to worry that it starts to become wallpaper to the folks I coach. You have to spell it out that this is the most important, cornerstone piece of the success of any business venture.
• Positions – the organizational structure you design can make or break your business.
• People - they truly are the building blocks of success and the crumbling bricks can cause the failure.
• Processes- good things don’t occur by happenstance; leaders create the repeatable steps that build success by having the processes in place.
• Performetrics – what gets measured gets repeated if its working, if it doesn’t measure up, it gets fixed or tossed.
• Passion – my favorite question to ask leaders is “what are you passionate about?” Great leaders not only have passion, they know how to engage their team so they have the same passion and drive to succeed.

Recently I have spent a lot of time and energy focusing on employee engagement/satisfaction and the impact it has on business. Too many folks don’t understand that engagement starts on day one; whether it is a new employee or someone shifting to a new position in your organization. Mattson’s chapter on the onboarding process is worth the price of the book. He serves up easily actionable steps in an amazingly short section that will have immediate impact on your turnover, your employee engagement and your success. Ask yourself the simple question, “What does your first day look like?” This is not something you can leave to chance or the team to make work, it takes a plan, a process, perfometrics…are you seeing a trend?

Get Out…What You Put In

The Go-Giver Influencer – Bob Burg and John David Mann – (Portfolio)

A couple of definitions to start out:

Thoughtful – Showing careful consideration or attention. Or, maybe more importantly- giving consideration for the needs of other people.

Influence – The capacity to have an effect on the character, development or behavior of someone or something.

I have been blessed to be in a position to influence. I have always tried to guide my family members, co-workers and the folks around me with the simple phrase, “you get out what you put in.” I am often asked about why I spend so much time and energy, two commodities in short supply, working with community boards, organizations, students and more. The simple answer is that I get out more or get back more, than I put in. The payback I receive in both satisfaction and treasure, is substantially more than I put in.

To me that is the message the bestselling duo behind the Go-Giver series of books, Bob Burg and John David Mann spell out so well in their latest entry, The Go-Giver Influencer. The pair distill the insight down to the Five Secrets of Genuine Influence that they spell out in the story.

Five Secrets of Genuine Influence

    1. Master your emotions

    2. Step into the other persons shoes 

    3. Set the frame

    4. Communicate with tact and empathy

    5. Let go of always having t be right

Like so much of what goes into truly effective leadership these five secrets boil down to what amounts to, at varying levels, communications skills; not just leadership communication because they don’t draw the line to separate leadership and personal communication. The great secret here is that you can put to use these “secrets” in any relationship you may have, be it in the workplace, your family, as a volunteer or member of a community.

While I admit to never being a big fan of the parable form of leadership learning; I tend to lean towards actionable steps that I can put to work today, The Go-Giver Influencer is a truly learning experience that will guide to a more fulfilling work place, family life and community.

Hacking YouTube

Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business – Jason R. Rich (Entrepreneur Press)

The numbers are gaudy; YouTube, the streaming platform delivers 1 billion minutes of streaming content to more than 1.3 billion active users on a daily basis. That bears repeating; 1 BILLION minutes to 1.3 BILLION users, per day. So how can you as a business owner or entrepreneur tap into that power and influence and grow your business?

The answers come in the form of Jason Rich’s second edition of the Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business. Rich does a nice job of breaking down the nuts and bolts of using YouTube into easy to understand, digestible chunks that you can implement with just the right amount of planning. Yes PLANNING. Just because the numbers have a great allure and you will want to dive right in, I think Rich does the right thing by getting you to develop a strategy and set measurable goals for using YouTube.

I have labeled it running around the room, others have called it the shinny object syndrome; the reality is too many businesses skip the planning phase and try to jump straight to recording something on their IPhone that they can post today and they end up wondering why the stupid YouTube doesn’t work. Forget about becoming a “YouTube Star” and focus on getting the right plan to reach your customer with the right message.

Once you hit that, then it’s time to focus on what is the best vehicle to deliver your YouTube message. Rich delves into a variety of formats that have been successfully used and how to figure out the best fit for you. Then he tackles all those technical things like recording and editing and the hardware that is appropriate for your needs. Despite what you may have heard, it’s not all free! Rich lays out the differences in the hardware and how to best put it to use.

The resource list that Rich provides at the end of book is worth the price of admission; dynamic and covering all of the bases it will prove to be a HUGE time saving hack for cutting down the time from planning to concept to streaming.

All the Action…No Bullsh*t

Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself – Crush The Excuses That Are Holding You Back – Jon Taffer (Portfolio)

Let’s face it, you’re busy…I get it. So when you tell yourself that you don’t have time to read another business book; let me warn you in advance, time or a lack of it, is one of the excuse categories that JonTaffer, producer and host of Paramount Network’s (formerly Spike TV) Bar Rescue program, rails against in his new book, Don’tBullsh*t Yourself – Crush The Excuses That Are Holding You Back.

That is one of the great things about the book, you don’t have to slog through the entire book to get the gist of what Taffer is talking about. He breaks things down into a very actionable format serving up a summary of the problem/excuse categories in a bulleted and shaded list in each chapter, one category pre chapter. Then he provides a bulleted list at the end of each chapter he dubs the Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself Busters.

The categories are easily relatable and you will find yourself shaking your head in agreement, acknowledging that you (and I) have used these xcuses at one point or another in our careers. Fear, knowledge, time, circumstances, ego, and scarcity are things that everyone can relate to…and if you claim otherwise, stop bullsh*ting yourself, you know it’s true.

So what are you waiting for? No excuses…no bullsh*t! If you think you need more, Taffer provides a boatload of real world examples from real people who have overcome these problems/excuses and how they went about tackling them. Often the examples are worse than anything you and I have encountered. These examples tie in well with the to do lists and the steps you can start taking today.

Common Sense Approach to Culture

The Power of Company Culture : How any business can build a culture that improves productivity, performance and profits – Chris Dyer (Kogan Page)

All too often there seems to be the mindset that for something to be truly innovative business idea you have to develop some new, groundbreaking approach or plan. Every once in a while someone come along and drops a simple reminder of common sense things that you can apply to your business that can deliver an impactful, positive change.

One such great reminder comes in the form of PeopleG2 founder and CEO Chris Dyer’s new book The Power of Company Culture, which spells out tactical steps that you can take to drive your company culture and deliver bottom line success.

Dyer builds his approach on seven pillars, cornerstones of company culture that are pretty straight forward.

The Pillars

·       Transparency – What is one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase buy in? Keep your people in the loop and on task working for the common goal.

·       Positivity – By turning the focus to what is working well without focusing on the negative you can smoothly shift your team to fixing problems.

·       Measurement – This one is often over looked, but a true necessity; if you’re not holding your team and for that matter yourself up to a yardstick how can you ever hope to succeed. Keep and share a score card.

·       Acknowledgement – You literally cannot succeed without celebration; this one has been a touchstone for world class leaders. If you are concerned about the cost, just imagine what the cost of not celebrating would be.

·       Uniqueness – This one is different for culture, but every marketer knows well that unique value propositions can drive growth; so look for ways that you can transfer that mindset to company culture.

·       Listening – This is hands down one of the most important skills that leaders need to develop, because you really can’t have all of the answers. Encourage your team to listen as well, because your customers will often reveal opportunity that they have to be tuned into, which makes for low hanging opportunities for growth.

·       Mistakes – Everyone has heard the cliché about learning from your mistakes; I recently heard a multinational, Fortune 500 CEO make the comment “ learn for your mistakes, but don’t live with them.” Great advice.

Dyer gives you easily implementable action steps that you can put into play immediately and begin to impact your culture and your business.

The Battle for Talent

Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First – Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey – (Harvard Business Review Press)

I recently wrote about a growing emphasis that is being placed by companies on their talent. With the available talent pool shrinking as more and more companies are hiring that focus has become more imperative in some sectors and industries. While there is more and more attention being given to the value of talent as a competitive advantage, there really has not been a go to guide for business to make this shift towards a talent bias.

With good people becoming harder and harder to find, there is a need for direction on how to transition to a talent-based value, hiring practice and avoid just filling holes in your team with warm-body syndrome. Moving beyond all the talk of talent and getting down to the nuts and bolts of it is the new book by a trio of skilled practitioners in the art of talent acquisition and development, Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey, Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First.

In Talent Wins, the trio make the case that going down this road is not only pivotal in your future success, but that the first step in the process needs to be an organizational paradigm shift at the top; whether that is with the board or with the C-Suite.

The Buy In

Charan, Barton and Carey make the case that there is a proven, verifiable business basis that is at the core of the talent shift that makes the case for this change in direction for many organization. While it may fly in the face of ‘how we always did things” the fact is there is bottom line proof that is demonstrable for businesses that choose this path and do it well.

It shouldn’t be shocking to anyone that there is quite literally an actionable playbook (it is in the title!) that walks you through the process of developing your plan, your team that will lead the organizational shift, getting the internal buy-in, and even how to go about competing for talent and winning. There is even an operational checklist to utilize as you walk through the process. These guys almost make it easy…just kidding. Don’t be fooled, this kind of process will involve some very real world heavy lifting and you will likely run into a pile of issues that you will have to overcome, but in the end, something worth doing, is worth the effort it takes to do it well. Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First, will give you a leg up and a road map to run on going into this process.

Make No Mistake

The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future – Skip Pritchard – (Center Street)

There is an old saying that has a load of variations that goes something to the effect of “learn from your mistakes.” Then there is the extension of the phase that  goes “If you don’t learn from your mistakes you are doomed to repeat them.”

They both became clichés, because like most clichés they are rooted in the truth. Lately I have noticed that there is a growing business buzz about mistakes, failure and even failing at a high velocity. There is even a book granting the permission to go out and screw things up. It’s almost to the point where I feel the need to go and mess up so I could check the box; as if it’s a resume enhancement.

While I certainly don’t think that making mistakes is a deal breaker or can somehow be avoided, but I think there are steps that we can all take as leaders to not only minimize mistakes but to help our teams avoid the pitfalls that we have all encountered along the way. While I have never been a huge fan of the business parable style, I find the new book by Skip Pritchard, The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future, is loaded with great advice/tips to help you not only steer clear of mistakes, but how to effectively and proactively take what you have learned and put it into action.

I found myself reading and highlighting sections of the book to share with my daughter. I think this book can provide great lessons for someone just like her; someone who is searching for direction, is uncertain of the right answers and for whom college may not be the best path. I have encouraged her to be courageous and pursue her dreams and have offered guidance towards that path. Pritchard end each section/mistake with a short recap and a track to run on for each one. His advice on Mistake #1 Working on Someone Else’s Dream really hit the mark when I shared it with my daughter.

I hope Mr. Pritchard won’t be offended that I have copied those 9 pages and created a simple poster to remind her and course correct her along the way. I think no matter where you are on your career path The Book of Mistakes, offers great insight or great reminders that we can all put into action for our future success.

CEO Playbook

The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People Into World-Class Leaders – Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell – (Currency)

Based on decades of experience, countless hours of direct interaction/interviewing leaders and in depth research culled from what is likely one of the most comprehensive leadership databases, Elena Botelho and Kim Powell have boiled things down to the secret sauce that goes into the making of a CEO in their new book The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People Into World-Class Leaders.

The results are a playbook that is about more than just what it takes to get there, but also about succeeding when you get there. Along the way, The CEO Next Door, will have you thinking about the CEOs that you have crossed paths with or have worked with/for. Botelho and Powell have utilized evidence based research to develop the CEO Genome Project that identifies the 4 behaviors that are the building blocks of a CEO.

They include:

·         Decisiveness

·         Engaging for impact

·         Relentless Reliability

·         Adapting boldly

This list had me focusing on the CEOs I have worked with and advised over the past couple of decades. I found the chapter on relentless reliability the most intriguing, notably the list of underperforming CEO types because I had worked for The Seagull, who dropped piles of emails seemingly out of the blue; The Fireman, who managed crisis by crisis and The Hothead, who’s reaction changed based on today’s mood.

The CEO Next Door, goes a long way towards busting some of the myths that have been built up over time surrounding the proverbial corner office. It also goes a long way to help those who either have made the jump or aspire to the C-Suite with actionable steps that can be put into practice at whatever stage you are in, in your career arc.