Throw Away Your Review Mirror

Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move - Andy Stanley – (Zondervan)

I knew right from the start that I was going appreciate the thoughts and advice that Andy Stanley puts forth in his new book, Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move. Stanley starts with a story about seeking advice from his father in which his Dad responded to a question, with a question.

While often that can be an annoying habit, it is one that I can totally relate to. I can’t tell you the number of times that my wife, my children or a business colleague has come to me asking for guidance and my response has come in the form of a question. More often than not, I know exactly what the right answer is, but I almost never serve up that answer. The reason is simple, I can tell you what I would do in the circumstance, but the answer would be the right one for me, which is not necessarily the case for the person seeking answers.

If you took the advice, and it didn’t work out, then it would be my fault. Not that I am afraid to take responsibility for my actions, I just don’t want to take responsibility for your actions, or often your inaction. Instead, Stanley’s Dad, walked him through a process, with a series of questions that helped to guide him to the right answer, for him.

In Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets, Andy Stanley boils things down to a series of five basic questions to use to help guide you through life and to live a life with fewer regrets.

1. "Am I being honest with myself, really?"

2. "What story do I want to tell?"

3. "Is there a tension that needs my attention?"

4. "What is the wise thing to do?"

5. "What does love require of me?"

I think we all have at least some regrets in our lives; things we would have done different, decisions we wish we had made differently, choices we would not make if we could get a do over. I often use the analogy of living life looking in the rearview mirror, seeing things that are behind us.

What Stanley lays out for us in Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets, is a process that will help not eliminate those regrets, but certainly help us reduce them. Think of it as an opportunity to toss out our rearview mirror mentality.

Going the Extra Two Inches

 Good Company – Arthur M Blank (William Morrow)

If you own a business, or aspire to start a business, you need to read this book. If you are in a leadership role at a company or aspire to a leadership role, you need to read this book. Even if you just aspire to just lead a better life, I suggest you read this book.

Why? You may be asking. The answer is simple, in Good Company, Arthur M. Blank, one of the co-founders of Home Depot and the current owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team, does the best job I can remember, of detailing how to live a life and run a business base on core values. Further than that he gives a perfect look at what living a life of abundance is all about.

Now you may be scratching you head and saying, “it’s easy to live a life of abundance when you’re a billionaire.” That misses the point; abundance is not about what you have or how much of it, it’s about your attitude and the choice you make to have an vision of the world that is based on whether you view the world through a lens of scarcity or have the vision of an abundant life.

While almost every company has what they call mission, vision and values; you know the faded poster hanging on the wall in HR or the one in the cracked picture frame in the lobby, in Good Company, Blank goes a step further by stressing that it’s more important than just having values, you actually have to live them.

The concepts he outlines are straight forward. They include:

1.   Put people first

2.   Listen and respond

3.   Include everyone

4.   Lead by example

5.   Innovate continuously

6.   Give back to others

I could delve deeper and spell out more, but this series of values are not difficult to understand, it’s the execution part that trips most people up. Blank offers multiple great examples of each of these steps in real practice and the outcomes they lead to. In a world where success and successful people are vilified, Blank truly raises the bar and sets the tone for how you can be wildly successful and still be a respected, caring citizen of your community. He drives home the customer-centric vision that each and every one of his business endeavors is based on. It’s not about going the extra mile once in a while, but going that extra two inches every single time. I can state without equivocation that I would love the opportunity to work with Mr. Blank, or any true servant leader who approaches business the way he does.

Think Different: About Creativity

 The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skill That Empower Innovation – Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff (Berrett-Kohler Publishers)

Creative. The word alone can get people nervous and shaky. Creativity, that’s for artists, writers or musicians…right? At some point, if not all the time, any business can need a shot of creativity, a new idea, a new way of thinking, a new way to solve a problem.

So, can you teach people to be creative? Probably not, but you can help to build a formula for understanding how being creative works. Jeff and Staney DeGraff have built that roadmap in the form of The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skill That Empower Innovation.

The DeGraff’s boil down their six steps to the acronym CREATE: Clarify, Replicate, Elaborate, Associate, Translate, and Evaluate. You will have an   A-ha! moment as you realize how much sense these steps make. Here are the steps spelled out with my input:

Clarify – Understanding, and most importantly, you have to communicate clearly the challenge at hand.

Replicate - Mimic and build on your new ideas. This can set the creative tone for your team/business.

Elaborate – You may have the kernel of a great idea, but don’t be afraid to take that idea and add new alternative tweaks or ways of thinking to help build on the idea.

Associate - Connect ideas with analogies to help others clearly understand a concept and in what direction we are headed.

Translate - Stories are priceless tools and help drive ideas home within your team and to your customers. Create stories based on your ideas.

Evaluate – Consistency is import here; select the best ideas to fit team expectations and it will help aid buy in and keep everyone is on the same page.

There isn’t a lot of over-technical science involved in this. We are talking actionable steps that you can put into practice with your team and in your business pretty quickly. I recently facilitated a leadership, team building session where I rolled out some of these steps to the group and you could almost see the lightbulbs turning on above their heads as the grasped concepts and then carried them forward into the next exercise. It was really that easy to connect to purpose.

Coach in a Box

Career Rehab: Rebuild Your Personal Brand and Rethink the Way You Work - Kanika Tolver (Entrepreneur Press)

It used to be you’d choose a career path; go out and get the tools you need, (education, training, etc) and set about applying for jobs with either an application or a resume. Once you landed a job, you would settle in and spend the next 40 years working your way to that fateful day when you would either reach retirement or drop dead from the career stress if you weren’t.

To say that things have changed is a complete understatement. Today careers take a completely different look; while job hopping was once viewed dimly, now people in charge of hiring start to wonder about you if you hang around one place for too long. Marketing has become a skillset that every job seeker needs to have in their toolkit and the product you market, is you. If you tell someone from a prior generation that you have hired a job/career coach, you’d likely have to explain exactly what that is and what they do.

No matter where you are in your career arc and are considering utilizing the skills of career coach, I’d like to recommend that a good first step is grabbing a copy of Kanika Tolver’s new book Career Rehab: Rebuild Your Personal Brand and Rethink the Way You Work. Served up in useful, digestible chunks, Career Rehab offers easy action steps that you can implement today.

Tolver truly helps you to reexamine the entire process of having, growing and may I say enjoying your career. She helps you to treat your career like it’s a product not your whole existence. In one of the best sections of the book, Tolver actually discusses...wait for it...MONEY. Yep, getting paid, one of those things the old school says you should not talk about. Tolver tackles this by helping you to understand your value and actually get paid what you are worth.

Career Rehab isn’t one of those books you have to read cover to cover; it’s set you so you can pick and choose those sections that help you tackle the issue(s) you are facing today and need to tackle tomorrow. You don’t need to hire a coach, you literally got a coach in a box, in the palm of your hand.

Well Brewed Advice

The Coffee Bean: A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change - Jon Gordon and Damon West - (Wiley)

Bestselling leadership and personal development author Jon Gordon teamed with talented newcomer Damon west to serve up a handy, little, book version of West’s presentation The Coffee Bean, which details the challenges and stresses faced by a young student named Abe.

A teacher gives Ab a life-defining insight which asks the simple, if albeit confusing question; are you a carrot, and egg or a coffee bean? Without giving away too much of the story; think about those times when you feel like life is on full boil and how you react to those situations. Now think about what happens to a carrot, and egg and a coffee bean when they are brought to a boil. The analogy, while a first is not obvious, soon becomes striking in its simplicity.

At 112 pages, with illustrations, The Coffee Bean, is a quick read – think of it as a kicked up Powerpoint in a handy to access format. Some may squabble over the brevity or the perceived lack of depth in delving into the subject or it being too simplistic in its approach. While I would never quibble with your right to complain, I think in this case you’re missing the point.

The Coffee Bean, parable is really based on guiding the reader/student – in the book, the character Abe – to see that there are three paths that you can choose in life. The goal in my estimation is not to smooth all of the bumps in those paths, but to help you better understand what goes into the choices we all make and the outcomes or consequences of the choices we make.

In the end, isn’t that a message that is suitable to anyone at any age or personal/career development level? The fact that Abe is a student signals that basic fact. I am not sure how seriously I would take a book that somehow promises a one size fits all solution.

The Coffee Bean, for me, is one of those go to books I like to keep within reach and share with family, friends, mentees, clients, and colleagues who may be struggling with difficult questions or challenges, that can offer clarity, a sense of direction or purpose.

A Lifeline for the Overwhelmed

Free to Focus - A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less - Michael Hyatt (Baker Books)

If you are anything like me, then you on a seemingly never ending quest (no, quest is not too strong a word) for the right system to organize your schedule, collect your important notes and research, and your big ideas.

I have a leaning tower of of notebooks, journals, planners and binders in a variety of shapes and sizes teetering on the corner of my desk; each chock full of brilliance. Be it great research, winning ideas, and tons of executable plans all in search of a direction. On the floor next to the desk is the oversized, multi-pocketed, back pack that I need to haul it all around.

What's missing is a coherent way to organize and focus all of the myriad stuff into a real plan and EXECUTE on this stuff. One of the biggest issues is often actually finding what is where. The leadership stuff in in one black journal, book research is in an identical book, then there is the marketing stuff in the leather bound notebook and the communications plans in the Moleskinne. Oh, and I am drafting this review in the green canvas bound journal. In short, a mess.

While the term productivity can conjure the image of guys in cheap suits, with pocket protectors and a stash of red pencils all looking to chop staff; in reality-productivity is about making the best use of your time. This kind of productivity i snot about just doing stuff, but doing stuff that matters. While many folks have taken a stab at developing a productivity system, it is my belief that leadership guru Michael Hyatt and his team have clearly put time, energy and experience into the development of the Full Focus Planner. This not something that looks or feels like a first take on a planning system.

Now Hyatt has taken things to the next level with the release of Free to Focus - A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less, which not only fleshes out how to maximize the impact of the planner, but also everything that goes on around it in both your business and personal life. This is not to say that the book wouldn't have an impact as a stand alone - without the planner.

I was struck by the amount of emphasis Hyatt rightly placed on cutting, eliminating and setting boundaries around your time and how to better hone in on only the most important stuff. Hyatt does not sugar coat the fact that for this to work to it's full potential it will take some heavy lifting. If you accept and buy into the change process at the heart of this, the results will speak for themselves.

I think that while there is some flexibility - this is clearly not a pick an choose proposition where you can take the bits you like and leave the rest. Like I said, this is a system based on experience; if it's in here it is based on proven practice. If nothing else, the system will help bring a focus to some of the roadblocks - real, imagined or self-created that are standing in the way of your success.

Inevitablity is Built In

Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great - Jim Collins - (Harper Business)

Jim Collins' seminal bestseller, Good to Great is not what I would normally consider a traditional business/leadership book; I think it set out to expound on the elements that went into separating good companies, from great companies and along the way it drew not so much a map but a set of guideposts that companies/leaders can put to work on their journey to greatness. It is one of the few books in the category that I find myself re-reading/listening to and one that I regularly buy copies of for friends, colleagues and clients.

So picking up on this monograph was a natural step.Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great, takes the concept of a business flywheel, first espoiused in the book, and clarified by time and practice and is expanded by the efficacy of countless proven examples of success. What once was a chapter, is now expanded to to the proper depth and breadth in the form this monograph.

Collins details some of the companies that have put the flywheel concept into successful practice. I think the clarity with which he writes about the built in inevitability that is part of a successful flywheel. It is not just a list of steps companies can take put in some random order or a circular pattern. That inevitability comes when nail a step leads naturally to the next and the next to build the momentum of success.

That success is built in the developmental stage and Collins explains the steps you can undertake to "capture your flywheel." Collins, along with the examples that lace this monograph suggests that four to six elements is a workable number and more will make things too complicated to build the momentum you need. He also makes solid suggestions on how to avoid what he dubs the "doom loop."

While I think it's perfectly clear that there is no one size fits all, plug and play flywheel that you can adapt to your business and it's unique drivers (markets/competition), I think there are certainly transferable pieces in the examples that dot the book that may make sense to put into play in your flywheel. My marked up copy has copious notes and sticky notes littering the 40 pages.