Focus On the One Thing

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results– Gary Keller & Jay Papasan (Bard Press)

A few years back California passed Proposition 227 which mandated an English immersion approach to teaching kids whose primary language wasn’t English. Teachers union-types and so-called education “experts” decried the policy as unfair and harmful to the students. After a year of focusing on teaching the students in one language rather than using the prior method of bilingual education, the results demonstrated that the students were actually performing at a higher level.

This shocked and dismayed the “experts” but, was actually a very predictable result. By focusing the efforts, 100% of the time on one thing, students learned English faster and improved the results across the board. If you did anything with a 100% focus rather than splitting your focus in half or quarters or eights, what do you think the results would be?

While multi-tasking has been the rallying cry for business for years, yet study after study as shown that outcomes aren’t great for those who practice it. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan are offering up a contrarian view to multi-tasking in the new book The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results which makes the case not only for singular focus, but also for a process of determining what your priority should be.

They make the case that with laser focus being brought to your “one thing” it can start a series of dominos tumbling that lead to extraordinary results. The process that leads to those results starts with the work of trying to identify your one thing. Keller and Papasan detail the plan for “time blocking” a daily, four-hour, appointment with yourself used to focus on your one thing. They also spell out the three commitments you must make to make that block as productive as possible.

They cite the effectiveness of the practice of the One Thing; the challenge for rank and file workers is the inherent expectations of the work place. Like many business planning programs, The One Thing may be easier for those entrepreneurs and solo practitioners who can guide their own fates.  

A Look Back…to the Future?

Flashback to September 26, 1960, 70 million Americans witnessed a first in U.S. political history when the Presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon aired on broadcast television. Prior to that point, the candidates for President had debated only on radio and political observers of that era spoke about JFK appearing calm, cool and collected and Nixon profusely sweating and looking generally uncomfortable. JFK was proclaimed the clear winner, yet those who chose to listen, rather than watch the debate said on content alone, Nixon was the clear victor.

Television had changed the face of politics seemingly forever. Flash forward to today and we see the face of not only politics, but of many layers of our society being forever altered by the internet and the way public perceptions are shaped and changed.

Enter self-described futurist Nicco Melle and his new book, The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath (St. Martin’s Press.) Mele posits that this new found “radical connectivity” has impacted business, politics, the media, education and many other facets of our life. For a futurist, Mele seems to spend an awful lot of time and ink looking in the rear view mirror.

Mele’s credits as webmaster for the ill-fated Howard Dean presidential campaign, working with the Clinton Global Initiative, and being on faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government coupled with a blurb from Howard “The Screamer” Dean had my antennae up looking for political bias. Mele tries to draw some interesting political parallels; including one between the so-called Arab Spring and the Tea Party movement. Mele praises the radical connectivity of the Arab spring movement, yet for the Tea Party…not so much. Certainly the Arab Spring has radically altered the landscape of the Middle East; whether or not it’s for the better, the jury is still out. Radical connectivity likely hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with radical extremists.

Malcolm Gladwell has created a wildly successful cottage industry out of using anecdotal evidence to make his case about what he think causes movements and business to reach the proverbial tipping point. I’m not quite sure that Mele’s anecdotal examples of the radical connectivity concept as a game changer is quite ready to leave the starting gate.

John Mattone – Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential (Amacom)

What makes a great leader? A simple question to ask, a complex set of variables; some intangible many critical, to actually answer. In a day and age when there is a critical dearth of great leaders, John Mattone, a veteran, global leadership consultant tapped into his years of experience advising, consulting, and coaching Fortune 500 leaders to help them achieve next level success has set out to draw a road map that answers the question. The result is his new book, Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential.

 

Mattone tackles the problem from many perspectives using a multi-faceted, layered approach. Others have used charts, graphs and pyramids to approach the answer; Mattone takes a swing with The Wheel of Intelligent Leadership. The layers come in the form of inner and outer core principles that drive leaders.

The outer core competencies consist of:

1.       Critical thinking

2.       Decision making

3.       Strategic thinking

4.       Emotional leadership

5.       Communications skills

6.       Talent leadership

7.       Team Leadership

8.       Change leadership

9.       Drive for results

Mattone contends that the hidden inner core is critical to drive the outer core because people don’t observe the inner core values of self-image, beliefs and values.

The critical advantage that Mattone uncovers comes when he lays out the road map of the nine types of leaders and puts your leadership skills to a self-test. It is my belief that truly great leaders have the ability to distinguish themselves by being able to adapt and maximize the impact they have by being able to play well in most if not all of the nine leadership types. Mattone identifies them as:

1.       Perfectionists

2.       Helpers

3.       Entertainers

4.       Artists

5.       Thinkers

6.       Disciples

7.       Activists

8.       Drivers

9.       Arbitrators

While I will leave the details of Mattone’s definitions of those broad categories, if you are a leader, think about your day-to-day duties and just how many of those roles you may be cast in a varying times and situations. Truly great leaders have the ability to wear all of those hats when called for by a given situation. With Intelligent Leadership, John Mattone gives you the tools needed to maximize and make seamless, your ability to not only do it yourself, but to help bring it out in your leadership team.

Bernard B. Kamoroff - Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble (Taylor Trade Publishing)

So you’ve taken that great idea, brilliant concept or winning product or service and you’re ready to take the leap and start your own business; now what? What are the steps you need to take? Do you need a license? How do you write a business plan? How do you use a business plan? What the heck is a business plan?

There is an old cliché that goes something like this; “businesses don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.” There are plenty of great ideas; the question is how do you make the transition from the drawing board to the execution of actually starting a business. Bernard Kamoroff provides some of the answers to those questions in Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble.

Now in its 13^th Edition, Kamoroff walks you through the basics of startup and offers sobering advice about the realities of starting a business. While many small time operators are focused on their products, services, marketing and selling, all too often they don’t spend enough time to focus on the basics of bookkeeping. A CPA by trade, Kamoroff offers easy to understand and implement guidance for tracking cash flow, keeping track of and paying taxes, and how best to avoid running afoul of the IRS.

No matter what path you take to starting your business, be it; solo practitioner, freelancer, at home, online, franchise, or buying an existing operation, the book offers great advice and interesting insights notably for those who are dipping their toe into the business waters for the first time.

Michelle Rhee- Radical: Fighting To Put Students First (Harper)

The cliché is to judge a person by the company they keep. In the case of Michelle Rhee the saying may need a shift to judge a person by the enemies she makes. Rhee is either a heroic education reformer or an evil villain controlled by big corporations and out to get teachers and break unions depending on whom you ask.

In the book Radical: Fighting to Put Students First Rhee chronicles her path from being a short term teacher in the rough and tumble inner city Baltimore school district to the evolutionary process that moved her from teacher recruitment, to education policy and on to education reformer. Along that craggy path she has won friends and fans and stepped on some powerful toes in teachers unions.

While the problems with the U.S. education system are multitude and systemic, Rhee clings to the seemingly pie in the sky notion that every student deserves a first class education. While many decry the “lack of funding” or alleged cuts in funding, on average we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on every student in the public school systems. Rhee identifies many of the roadblocks that prevent the delivery of a first class education as being systemic issues that have built up over time and the difficulty of trying to eliminate those roadblocks as interest groups ranging from administrators to unions and even politicians cling to their turf and strangle reform.

While at times in the book and in real life Rhee can come off as a shameless self-promoter, she has also been successful in offering substantive solutions to try to reform what is all too often a lackluster education system that delivers a sub-par product. While her detractors are legion in the teachers unions, it is safe to conclude that unlike the unions Rhee truly has made a noble attempt to put students first.

The Managers Phrase Book – Patrick Alain (Career Press)

Do you manage people? What Kind of a manager do you think you are? What kind of a manager do you think the people you manage think you are? Do they think that you’re firm, but fair? Do they think you’re a pushover? Or do they think that you’re just a plain old @#$%^!

At some point every leader needs to take the time to step back and look at how they do their job and at how they are perceived. And maybe one of the most important things that they can consider is the words they use when managing a wide array of leadership and management scenarios. What do you say and how you say can make the difference between being a boss that everybody loves and one that everyone hates! It can make the difference between keeping key staffers and losing them to your competition.

To help with that process is a clever little book that every manager should keep handy on their credenza; The Manager’s Phrase Book by Patrick Alain. Alain breaks the book down in to a wide range of everyday business scenarios that managers must confront and deal with on a regular basis. He also shows you responses that range from the good to the bad to the downright ugly!

I think at one point or another in our careers we have come across that boos that always said just the right thing at the right time; and by contrast one that drove a nail in your heart while pulling the knife out of your back. The Manger’s Phrase Book covers everything from motivation and personal situations to bad behavior and dealing with problem employees.

While you’re not likely to commit the over 3000 powerful phrases to memory, what the book does is to get you thinking about how to do a better job of communicating with your staff. You may see any number of things that might turn on the light bulb and have you thinking how you could have handled a situation more appropriately if you had simply said things in a different way. Aside from being a handy tool in your management tool belt; it will also provide great food for thought.

Work Like A Spy: Business Tips From A Former CIA Officer - J C Carleson (Portfolio)

If the title conjures up images in your mind of you decked out in a slick black tux, sipping a martini, shaken, not stirred and utilizing snappy repartee on you business competition with a hot babe on your arm, sorry to ruin the delusion.

Yes, author J C Carleson did depart a private sector career path with Starbucks and Baxter International to spend eight years as an undercover officer with the CIA, Work Like  Spy: Business Tips From A Former CIA Officer, is not a recruiting tool the Agency. In Work Like a Spy Carleson makes a case that the techniques utilized by spies to develop new assets and gather useful intel are transferable to the private sector.

Carleson illustrates the techniques by utilizing laundered, real world examples of from her time spent undercover; then places similar circumstances that occur every day in the business world. The case can certainly be made that a multitude of successful businesses have been built on a foundation of having critical information about not only the competition, but of other successful ventures. The most difficult part of that equation is how to go about developing the sources and resources to gather that information.

While  Work Like a Spy provides a variety of techniques and tactics for developing businesses information sources, the devil is not in the details, but in the execution. Carleson can’t make you a smooth operator, but she may help you hone critical skills like intuition, listening skills and developing an attitude for action.