Stuff…Doesn’t Make You Happy

The Minimalist Home – A Room By Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life – Joshua Becker – (Waterbrook)

I have often said that there is a thin line between collector and hoarder. Over time I have come to believe that line between collector and compulsive gatherer is even more narrow and that we have created a way of life to feed that compulsion. The older I get the more I have come to believe that stuff and more stuff, can’t make you happy and that most of the things that we cling to because “we might need it someday” is almost certainly misguided.

With basements, garages and backyard sheds overflowing into countless and multiplying storage sheds and lockers; a new innovation/movement has sprung to life – minimalism. While minimalist acolytes come in a variety of forms and approaches; one of the leading progenitors of the movement via blogs and books is Joshua Becker. Becker sets his sights on your home space in his latest book, The Minimalist Home – A Room By Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life. Some may complain that there is nothing new here that Becker hasn’t covered in prior books/blogs or he doesn’t offer specific enough strategies.

I liked the fact that Becker offers an overview of minimalism, without feeling the need to drill down and tell what to do or what to chuck. Some will take minimalism to an extreme – stuffing a minimum of necessities into a duffle and lead a vagabond life in a succession of AirBNBs, worldly possessions in tow. Becker’s approach strikes me  to take a more thoughtful or thought provoking path, so you can develop your own processes and checklists.

Becker has even been slagged for assuming his readers live in houses and not apartments and injecting Christian principles into his writing. Sorry, but you have to be a nitpicky pinhead if you can’t gain value from the insight Becker offers into simplifying, downsizing and focusing on real joy in the freedom offered by minimalism. 

The Road To Joy

Chief Joy Officer – How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear – Richard Sheridan – (Portfolio)

“Joy – a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.”

So, how’s your work place/work life? If you’re a leader, what’s your perspective? What would your staff/employees say? Does the definition of joy apply? If the concept of joy and work in the say thought seems like a foreign concept, then it might be time to re-evaluate where you are at.

One starting point on the road to re-evaluation would be the guidance offered by Richard Sheridan in the form of Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear. Sheridan takes what you think might be a daunting task and boils it down to a simple, focused step by step process.

One of the best places to start is with developing a level of self-awareness as a leader. What is your purpose? If you can’t clearly articulate the answer then how can you expect your team to. The root of joy stems from leaders defining purpose, aligning people to “get real work done” by inspiring, motivating, and developing your team.

I loved Sheridan’s sentiment that joy cannot be found when people lead with fear. If you have been working for any length of time, you have likely encountered this type of “leader.” They seemed to be inordinately fixated on things that don’t move the needle other than what they deem as a hot button issue.

One of the best (worst?) examples I can think of was an over-weight, sloppy, CFO who was fixated on the company dress code of all things! The failure of leadership was compounded by a weak CEO who could have cut off the discussion to return focus to what really mattered, instead of allowing the senior leadership team to be dragged through countless hours of discussion and policy drafts only to end up with an over-long, confusing mess that the front-line staff found onerous and off-putting; it was a soul-sucking, nightmare that engendered no joy as they feared making the wrong choices.

GM CEO Mary Barra simplified things with a two word policy; “dress appropriately.” This is an example of a leader engendering trust, a building block of joy, and keeping focus on much larger and more important things. If your dress code is an issue, it may really be a people issue rather than the way you lead them.

Sheridan correctly makes the case that leaders make more leaders. It no surprise that leadership guru Tom Peters, who made that a cornerstone principle of his teaching, authored the foreward to Chief Joy Officer.

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.