The Enlightened Manager

Friday Bookshelf - What I'm Reading

Is is pathetic that I've been so busy lately that I've left a stack of business books in various locations around my house to "prompt" me to read?  I've got a book in the kitchen, one next to my bed, and (as horrifying as it is to say it) one next to the john! :)

Drastic times call for drastic measures I suppose.

Here are a few of the books I'm enjoying:

Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break the Success of Leaders and Organizations

This book is an interesting look at how relationship problems (particularly between managers) can really sink an organization.   The author (Diana McLain Smith) does a nice job of diagramming the challenges in relationships, which is something I'd be interested in trying the next time I mediate an interpersonal conflict.

This book is written simply but addresses some deep theoretical concepts.  I'm enjoying it, and it's definitely bending my brain. 

Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

I bought this book for the pictures!  :)  Seriously!  It's a very neat look at how to generate business models, and it uses doodles, sticky notes, and visual methods to show how business models can be developed from basic building blocks.  It also shows several successful business models (like Google) put into that same format, as examples. 

I'm not trying to be an expert in business models, but this has been a very fun way to stretch my thinking on the subject.

So those are a few of my fun ones.  What are you reading? :)

A Couple Good Books for Leaders

Hey Enlightened Managers,

Most of you know that I'm a big reader - I have to purge my books regularly or I run out of room in my four large bookcases.  Well, here are a couple books I won't be getting rid of any time soon:

Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age
By William Powers, 2010

In a world that seems divided between the viewpoints of "being connected 24/7 is awesome" and "being connected 24/7 is horrible" I think that Powers has done a nice job of stepping back, presenting the complex issue of digital overload in a fresh way, and providing a new way of thinking about it.  Besides, you'll love reading about how classical philosophers (Plato, Shakespeare) have some wisdom we can apply to our "digital" lifestyle.

A great read for anyone who feels conflicted about their smartphone/facebook/twitter addiction. :)  Link

Turbulent Times Leadership for Sales Managers: How the Very Best Boost Sales
by Tom Connellan

This is an interesting one since it's not particularly about turbulent times, and it also doesn't talk much about sales.  It is a very high quality book on managing employee performance, with a tiny bit of a sales twist.  I suppose the title is the marketing department talking, but don't let it dissuade you even if you are not a sales manager, because this is some excellent content for any manager.  I particularly enjoy how Connellan describes how to manage roller coaster employees, those who are great one day and terrible the next, and his advice about using continuous feedback is spot on.  In a way, what Connellan shares isn't new, these are the fundamentals of good managing, but what he does particularly well is taking those concepts and making them fresh and easy to apply.  Link

So that is what's on my book shelf these days.  What are you reading?

Win-A-Book Contest on Facebook (Friday Only)

Well, after writing and re-writing, I finally finished "Advice for New Managers" - a great and concise booklet covering the basics of supervision and the common issues that new managers run into.  Woo-hoo! 

To celebrate the launch, I'm going to give two booklets away today.  Here is how to enter the contest:

1. Log onto Facebook

2. Search for the "Emergence Consulting" fan page.

3. Enter your own "advice for new managers" on the Wall.

I'll select two winners based upon the advice at the end of today.

Our Favorite Leadership Books (Survey Results)

The survey from last week produced a list of 14 books on leadership from our readers.  Click below to check them out and add them to your own reading list.

Download FavoriteLeadershipBooks

I know I'm looking forward to discovering something new. :)

 

 

Leadership Books You Can't Live Without

I love the bookstore, but I hate the bookstore.  It seems like there are too many options, and it's hard to decide when it's worth your time and money to purchase and read a book on leadership.

What if each of us listed just one of our absolute favorite books on leadership?  With all the smart readers of this blog, I know we'd be able to create an outstanding list of books that educate and inspire.

Click here to list your top choice for "Leadership books you can't live without."   I'll post all the results here on the blog in one week.

Take the Survey

More on Strengths and the SET Tool

After reading the introduction to Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham, I followed the instructions to use the code provided in the book to take the SET or Strength Engagement Track.  It is a short list of questions designed to assess your core beliefs about strengths.

You then get two scores, how engaged your strengths are, compared to a national sample (in percentile format) and how engaged your strengths can be if you continue on the trend you are on.

I believe the notion being presented is that you retake this assessment once you have completed the book, and see what has changed.  While I fully support the Strengths Movement and Buckingham's work, I think this metric is a bit deceptive.

The trouble is that the questions on the SET assessment are about your beliefs.  They ask you what you believe, because beliefs generate our actions.  However what I wonder about is this: once you've read this book, and you are TOLD that certain beliefs are wrong and others are right, it would be pretty simple to retake the SET assessment and get a much higher engagement score simply because you are entering in information that the book told you to.

I think that many of us (myself included) have a desire to "get the right answer."  Thus, when asked if I will work on X or Y, (I'm purposely not listing the SET questions here, you can get the book to check them out) and the book told me that X is right, I can retake the test and choose X pretty easily.

Okay, but just because I've intellectually grasped the idea that X is correct (according to the book) it does not mean that I've ingrained this belief deeply enough in myself to make it truly my own.  Nor does it mean that I've found a way to cope with all of the external or internal factors that may make acting on this belief difficult.

Here is an illustration.   If I take a test, and it asks me how important exercise is in my life, and I say moderately important, let's say I get a score of five.  Then I re-read a book saying that if I want to get the benefits of good health and thinness, I simply MUST believe the truth - which is that exercise is of ultimate importance in my life.  So I retake the test, select "ultimate importance" and I can now point to this metric that says my score got better.  But I may not be exercising.  The metric is just a number.

I suppose that is my concern with the SET tool.  It's a simple enough way to benchmark reading comprehension, and the beliefs it is measuring are empirically important ones.  But I wonder how organizations are really using this tool.  I think any organization that crows "we went from being 60th percentile engaged to 80th percentile engaged in just eight weeks!" may be oversimplifying matters.  That is all I am saying.

The book is full of practical information beyond the SET assessment.  I'll check in with you to let you know how the rest of it goes.

Event: Go Put Your Strengths To Work

Today I had the opportunity to meet Marcus Buckingham and listen to him speak about his new book Go Put Your Strengths To Work, which is about harnessing your strengths in the workplace.  Marcus was an engaging speaker and an appreciative guest.  I was volunteering at the event as part of the Pacific Northwest Organizational Development Network, and before his talk began he came down to shake hands and thank the volunteers for helping out with the event.  A nice guy, if you haven't had the chance to meet him.  I'll be reading his book this week.  It includes a free strengths assessment using his SET personal development tool.

Because I operate from a strengths-based consulting approach, I was very interested to hear him talk about the fact that organizations are even less likely to focus on strengths than they were seven years ago.  Note, this fact ignores overwhelming evidence that strengths are a key leverage point for organizational success.

Buckingham referenced a study reviewed in the Journal of Applied Psychology four years ago.  This study demonstrated that work teams that focus on strengths outperform teams that don't - and in several areas.  Productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction ALL increase when teams are connected to strengths.  Focusing on fixing "problems" simply doesn't have the same effect.  And yet overwhelmingly, companies choose to focus on problems.

Are you interested in moving your organization or team from a problem-focus to a strengths-focus?  For many, this requires not just a shift in practice but a significant shift in perception.  Reading the book is one way to begin to change your perception.  Looking into Appreciative Inquiry is another.

I'm an "Appreciative Inquiry Consultant" because I believe that it is a relatively rapid way to mobilize an organization around it's strengths in a way that is motivating and easy to implement.  As much as I know Appreciative Inquiry works, it always still amazes me the rapid transformation that can happen through the simple process of asking different questions. 

If you are interested in the empirical evidence that supports the "Strengths Movement" I encourage you to check out the following links:

The Appreciative Basis of Organizing - This information is pretty dense, but it gives the theoretical underpinnings of "why Appreciative Inquiry works"
Appreciative Inquiry and Culture Change at GTE - A case study of AI in action. (PDF)

One of the "perks" of using AI in your organization is the fact that it is largely employee-driven, that is it is your own staff that is doing the majority of the heavy lifting.  This builds skills and accountability.  If you're interested in learning more about how you can bring strength based approaches to your organization, let's talk about it.