John Pearson's Buckets Blog

Top-10 Books of 2011

Issue No. 239 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features my annual Top-10 list and my Book-of-the-Year pick.  In 2012, remember to leverage your time and delegate your reading to team members. Ask for a brief weekly book review at each staff or department meeting. And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Top-10 Books of 2011

As you welcome in 2012, here's a recap of the books I reviewed in 2011 (Issues No. 207 to 238). To read all the book reviews featured in Your Weekly Staffing Meeting, visit the archives here at my Buckets Blog.  To download a PDF of the chronological list of book reviews from 2006 through today (all 238 issues), visit the Book Bucket at the Management Buckets website. In 2011, I posted 34 reviews: 32 books, one Harvard Business Review classic article (“Managing Your Boss”), and one DVD (Waiting for “Superman”).

Here are my Top-10 picks of the year. It's a tough assignment to narrow it down to 10, since all of us are at different levels of competency within the 20 buckets. But...maybe this will be helpful to you.  Other than my top pick, the other nine are listed in chronological order.

2011 Book of the Year

[  ] Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, Dr. Henry Cloud – Read the review.

Dr. Henry Cloud, a leadership coach to CEOs and business executives, and a clinical psychologist, has introduced a new term into the leadership lexicon: the pruning moment.

He defines the pruning moment as “that clarity of enlightenment when we become responsible for making the decision to own the vision or not. If we own it, we have to prune.  If we don’t, we have decided to own the other vision, the one we called average.  It is a moment of truth that we encounter almost every day in many, many decisions.”

The Other Nine:
 
[  ] The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan – Read the review.
An insider’s look at G.E. and why their top three executives are extreme students of the company’s top 600 people. Really…they know their top 600 people very, very well.

[  ] Chasing Francis, by Ian Morgan Cron – Read the review.
Disenchanted mega-church pastor finds solace from his uncle/priest in Italy and follows the footsteps and ministry philosophy of Saint Francis of Assisi. Caution! Reading this novel may require vast quantities of pasta and wine.

[  ] 15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations, by Joey Asher – Read the review.
I was very tempted to make this my top pick of the year—it’s that good. It inspired me to radically change my presentation/facilitation style. Perfect for both rookies and experienced speakers and presenters.
 
[  ] Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries, by Peter Sims – Read the review.
If your products, programs and services are stuck-in-a-rut, download the Kindle version today. The book focuses on five fundamentals: 1) Experiment (fail quickly to learn fast); 2) Play (a fun environment never snuffs out or prematurely judges the ideas—the case study on Pixar is amazing); 3) Immerse (get out with customers and learn from the ground up); 4) Reorient (make small wins and necessary pivots); and 5) Iterate (repeat, refine and test frequently).

[  ] The Third Conversion, by R. Scott Rodin – Read the review.
This very short novelette, by the author of The Steward Leader, quotes Martin Luther: “There are three conversions necessary to every man; the head, the heart and the purse.” It will change how you do fundraising and/or giving. One of my clients ordered 50 copies.
 
[  ] Smart Moves for People in Charge: 130 Checklists to Help You Be a Better Leader, by Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman – Read the review.
So smart and practical, I reviewed it twice this year.

[  ] The Company Culture Challenge, by Robert Betzel and David Russell – Read the review.
Gut check time! “Do you know that statistics prove it costs an average of one year’s compensation to replace an employee?” Stuck with team members who “were great actors during interviews, but poor performers on the job?”  The recruiting standards chapter is brilliant.

[  ] Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen – Read the review.
I titled this review “Jim Collins Lexicon 2.0.” For example: “First Bullets, Then Cannonballs.”  Discipline and creativity will push you to test, test, test—with low risk bullets, then re-calibrate, another low risk bullet, more re-calibration—then when the empirical side of creativity has honed in on the target—let the cannonball rip! One CEO’s mantra: Be “one fad behind,” never first to market, but never last.  Collins has six bullet points (sorry) on “The Dangerous Lure of Uncalibrated Cannonballs.” Brilliant.
 
[  ] The Cure: What If God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol and Bill Thrall – Read the review.
For many people, this will be the top book of the year. The wicked hoax, as the TrueFaced co-authors describe it, is the hopeless equation: “More Right Behavior + Less Wrong Behavior = Godliness.” (Not!) A colleague emailed me this week that he just ordered 20 copies for his staff. Visit their website to view the videos and download a free chapter.

And finally, these reminders for 2012:
C.S. Lewis said, "It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

And I would add: 1) Delegate your reading. Assign books to other team members and ask for mini-reports at staff meetings. 2) Read relevant chapters only. Don't feel guilty for not finishing a book. 3) Hold high the value of sharpening the saw and model it yourself and reward others who read. 4) Budget for books. Invest in your people by investing in books. 5) Discover whether your people are readers or listeners. Audio books might be helpful to some.

I have some fantastic books coming in 2012! 

P.S. Weekly Insights on ECFA Governance Blog
ECFA recently asked me to post a weekly commentary on good governance on their blog, “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations.” Check it out  and add a comment at my first post on “10 Questions to Ask Before Joining a Board.”

P.P.S. Download the Master List of Book Reviews
Click here to download my chronological list of 238 book reviews from 2006 through this month.

Happy New Year!...and thanks, as always, to our eNews sponsors: Christian Community Credit Union and Mission Print.

The Cure

Issue No. 238 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a hot-off-the-press book from the authors of TrueFaced and Bo’s Café. It’s a powerful book to share with your staff in 2012.  Merry Christmas! And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

The Room of Good Intentions

Ruth Haley Barton says that “the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self.”

But…what if you or the people you work with are stuck, plateaued or going south in their walk with God?  What if you can smell the dysfunction, but can’t quite label it? What if working harder and smarter still doesn’t cut it? What if sin (big sins and little sins—prioritized within your precise theology) is the perpetual obstacle to personal health and corporate health?

What if (and here’s the kicker)…God isn’t who you think He is and neither are you?

As you reflect on your own spiritual journey—and the spiritual journey of your colleagues, your boss, your board members, your volunteers, your spouse and/or family members—sometimes defining reality is the first big step. Trust me—this hot-off-the-press book defines reality, perhaps like no book you have ever read.

The Cure gently describes (in story and commentary) two profound fork-in-the-road choices.  One fork: a “Pleasing God” sign points me to a giant building labeled “Striving Hard to Be All God Wants Me to Be.” The door has a title, “Self-Effort.” Inside, I’m drawn to the Room of Good Intentions. It’s downhill from there as the co-authors invite us into the richness of the story—and the futility of this choice.

The wicked hoax, as John Lynch, Bruce McNicol and Bill Thrall describe it, is the hopeless equation: “More Right Behavior + Less Wrong Behavior = Godliness.” (Not!)

The clarity of the Good News jumps off the pages in all seven fork-in-the-road chapters: Two Roads, Two Faces, Two Gods, Two Solutions, Two Healings, Two Friends, and Two Destinies. Down the other path, gratefully, is the Room of Grace.

They write: “You’re in the Room of Grace! Grace! That word appears 122 times in the New Testament. The Judaizers in the Apostle Paul’s day hated it. They feared what it would do if it got loose. ‘Paul, you can’t tell them this!’ they said. ‘These people are immature, lazy and have little religious background. They’ll abuse as soon as they can. They’ll live Christianity-lite. These people are weak and want to do whatever they want. And believe me, what they want is not good.’”

We’ve been suspicious of cheap grace all our lives—so many of us hustle back to the Room of Good Intentions where we’re more comfortable with a book of rules, disciplined striving and serious sin management.  Eventually though, some of us—because of Jesus—strip off our masks. “No one told me that when I wear a mask, only my mask receives love.” Wow.

Using themes from their other books, TrueFaced and Bo’s Café, these amazing friends and humble leaders (I’m privileged to be on the TrueFaced advisory council) have given us a precious gift—a roadmap to grace. 

The Two Healings chapter oozes with fresh insight and descriptive markers. “If you haven’t been here yet, you will. You’ll be wronged, hurt, then feel left for dead in an environment promoting just the opposite. It’s a dangerous moment, because it causes us to wonder whether a place of safety, authenticity, grace, and love is actually possible this side of heaven. It’s here that many of us make the choice to return to our self-preserving ways.”

Reflect on a recent relational conflict and maybe you will identify with this: “Suddenly, in a fight you never wanted, you discover you’re not only the victim but the issue.”  Then notice how the 11 escalating responses (what…not 10?) are uncomfortably too familiar. Example: “You become intent on telling ‘your side of things’ to as many as possible.” (How did they hack my emails? Yikes.)

Some readers trust me way too much when I pontificate, “Read this book!” One size (one book) doesn’t fit all.  Except this one. This one is waaaaay different and way too important. You must read this book—and share it widely.

To order direct from TrueFaced (single copies or bulk discount), click on the title: The Cure: What If God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol and Bill Thrall. You can also download a free chapter and view the videos at the TrueFaced website.


Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) The Cure’s fictional character complains, “Soon, I was back to trying to impress a God I imagined was growing more and more impatient with me.” Can you relate?
2) The authors write, “Believers in Christ additionally are tempted to wear a mask when we think we’re in competition with others, graded on a spiritual curve.” Do you have colleagues, or family members, who grade themselves?

Eliminate the Fog Factor! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Printing Bucket, Chapter 19, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to combat the fog factor in your written materials. Does your audience understand what you’ve written? There is an objective way to measure the fog factor.

Run your newsletter—or a story on your website—through the “Readability Statistics” in your spellcheck software. For example, the Flesch-Kincaid grade level for this eNews issue is 7.1.  And the Flesch reading level is 68.3 on a scale of 100. What are your fog factor scores?

For more resources, visit the Printing Bucket webpage.

 

Invisible Neighbors

Issue No. 237 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a book/DVD and powerful website about the poor, the homeless and the addicted—and what Jesus might have to say about the poor if he showed up physically in your Sunday service and at your church’s Monday night board meeting! Why this book now—just before Christmas? Read on. And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Race to the Bottom

Wow. Let me say that again. Wow.

I’ve waited until a few weeks before Christmas to tell you about an extraordinary book, DVD and website.  If you read this review, you might be tempted to think “guilt trip.” But it’s far from that. It’s a journey I’m guessing you’ve been longing to take. Maybe you just didn’t know how.

Author John Ashmen has delivered a road map for Christ followers who know all the Bible verses about the poor—but don’t know the poor. “If you don’t see them, you’re not looking,” says Ashmen in his 100-page gift. Serving in soup lines during the holidays is OK, he says, but he has more ideas for you.

Ashmen is the president of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions but—amazingly—he doesn’t reveal his vocational passion until page 94. That’s stunning. Lesser leaders would trumpet the organization and be Chief Huckster for the Brand in the first chapter. Ashmen’s integrity and intellect focuses the microscope, instead, on the person in need.

He writes, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted that in the story of the Good Samaritan, the first question the priest and Levite each asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”

Ashmen tackles the problem—and the opportunity—of the poor, the homeless and the addicted with a crisp writing style (almost lyrical at times).  He delivers a book that is part inspirational, part historical (his sweep of evangelicalism is brilliant), part theological, part sociological, part political, and oozing with creative Christ-centered solutions to poignant problems. If there’s any guilt, it will be self-inflicted. Ashmen doesn’t go there.

And he writes insightfully to all four socials styles (see my People Bucket). Analyticals will love the statistics. He mentions the popular adage, “Torture data long enough and it will confess to anything.” Drivers will appreciate the creative To-Do ideas—dozens of them to fit any level of growing passion; featured at the end of the 18 sections in six chapters. Amiables will be warmed by the stories—real people, real lives in peril.  And Expressives will love the forward-thinking opportunities (how will the church respond?) and the remarkable DVD and the book’s website brimming with phenomenal stuff (video, music and more).

God’s value system, asserts Ashmen, “turns everything on its head. Fully following God’s value system is a race to the bottom, to lift up those who are there.” 

Full disclosure: Ashmen is a good friend and the book/DVD/website and small group materials package have been creatively produced by CrossSection (led by Doug Martinez and my son, Jason Pearson). So I can say this with confidence—trust me on this one: it’s a very important book for you, your small group, your pastor, your church and your family. And if you’re a ministry leader—seeking innovative ways to tell your story, you’ll quickly discover that when you minister to the reader/listener with authentic resources, you’ll capture hearts.

To order your copy or request a free preview kit for your church or organization, click on the title: Invisible Neighbors: If You Don’t See Them, You’re Not Looking, by John Ashmen

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us.” But…what do you think he really meant by that?
2) If you read Same Kind of Different As Me or Under the Overpass, maybe it touched your heart, but not your head, hands and feet.  Invisible Neighbors gives dozens of possible next steps for engaging with the poor, the homeless and the addicted. What might be a next step for you?

Why Most Small Businesses Fail - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Systems Bucket, Chapter 18, in Mastering the Management Buckets is that while most small businesses and organizations have a high failure rate, “franchise” operations have much greater staying power. 

The Systems Bucket core competency reads: “We are passionate about systems thinking and process management. We encourage systems people to use their gifts and mentor others for the benefit of our Cause and our Community arenas. We are careful not to tinker or over-tweak, yet we are tenacious about tickler systems. We have a heart to create systems that serve people, not the bureaucracy!”

For the classic book on systems (and franchises), visit the Systems Bucket webpage and order the book, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber.