Get On The Bus

Move Your Bus: An Extraordinary New Approach to Accelerating Success in Work and Life – Ron Clark – (Touchstone)

For whatever reason, a Bus is a popular metaphor of authors of business and leadership books. Bestselling business author Jim Collins most famously utilized the bus in his book Good To Great when he wrote about getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and the right people in the right seats on the bus as a way for businesses to make the often difficult transition for being good to being great.

Now educator and leadership trainer Ron Clark is trying his hand at moving from training educators to taking his unique leadership principles to the business world in the form of Move Your Bus: An Extraordinary New Approach to Accelerating Success in Work and Life.

Clark breaks his bus passengers down into four categories:

·         Runners – those workers who consistently go above and beyond for the good of the organization

·         Joggers – workers who do their jobs without pushing themselves

·         Walkers – the workers who are just getting pulled along

·         Riders -  those who actually hinder success and in the process drag the team down

The trick is for the bus driver; you, the leader to recognize those qualities in your workers and then integrate the strategies to bring out the best in your team. The goal isn’t to have a bus full of runners who often can’t balance work and life, but to balance the team and if necessary kick those who aren’t pulling their weight out at the next stop.

Groundbreaking? Probably not, but Clark’s track record of success combined with workable strategies you can implement quickly and mostly painlessly make this one worth the price of admission. It’s accessible and easy to develop a plan of approach based on the tool Clark presents.