John Pearson's Buckets Blog

Protected!

Issue No. 399 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features an inside-the-camper-van look behind the Iron Curtain—and a two-minute video from Charlie “Tremendous” Jones on why “Nothing Works!” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and visit Issue No. 397 for my 2018 Book-of-the-Year and my Top-10 books of 2018.

Banking, Beer, Bibles, and Books!

This week in North America, we’re fixated on a wall—while in the UK and Europe the focus is on Brexit. Hey, everyone! Take a deep breath! Just step back for a minute and let the extraordinary wordcrafter, author Bob Kelly, remind you about another wall—The Berlin Wall—and what we called the Iron Curtain and what true freedom looks like today (with or without walls or Brexit).

Protected! by Bob Kelly has a very intriguing subtitle, and—get this—a verse from Psalm 91 on the front cover!
   • Subtitle: A True Life Story of God's Word Smuggled Behind the Iron Curtain—and the Influence of a "Tremendous" Man
   • Psalm 91:2 – “I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’”

Have you ever felt unprotected? Fearful? Anxious? Sleepless? Worried? Second-guessing—“why-did-I-say-yes-to-this?”

Bob Kelly’s short book packs a punch (dozens of punches!) as he bobs and weaves the Psalm of Protection through page-turning stories while smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s. You think you’ve had a few zig zags in your career? Read why Bob, the East Coast bank president, signed on with a Bible-smuggling ministry in California—while his car ended up near El Paso, Texas! (Read Chapter 8, “A Hard Decision.” A miracle story!)

Oh…did I mention his short stint selling life insurance? One interviewer’s assessment, “This applicant is confirming definitely a real lack of interview getting and closing capacity.”

But that fortuitous, albeit brief insurance career opened the door to a lifelong friendship with a “Tremendous” man—Charlie “Tremendous” Jones—and you’ll be quoting Charlie, like Bob does, the rest of your life.

Oh…did I mention that besides banking, Bible smuggling, and beer branding (you gotta read Chapter 3!), Bob is a book guy? As “Resident Wordsmith” at WordCrafters, Inc., Kelly has authored or co-authored nearly 20 books and ghostwritten 40 books. His dad was sports editor of the New York Times for 21 years—so writing, apparently, in in his genes.

Oh…did I mention that Bob also has one of the world’s largest collections of quotations (nearly two million)? His sideline career as “Quotemeister” delivers, gratefully, dozens and dozens of powerful quotations in Protected! Some of my favorites:
   • “Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.” (Daniel Defoe)
   • “Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires.” (Sir Isaac Newton)
   • “Lord, make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road. Make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.” (Jim Elliot)
   • “We are trying not so much to make God listen to us as to make ourselves listen to Him; we are trying not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what He wants us to do.” (William Barclay)

So…what does banking, beer, and Bibles have to do with Charlie “Tremendous” Jones (1927-2008)? You’ll laugh-out-loud at the insights and world class wisdom of this one-of-a-kind motivational speaker and Christ-follower. (I was privileged to host him at a gathering in the 1970s.) Charlie’s book, Life Is Tremendous, has sold more than two million copies. Wow. Click on the two-minute YouTube video below for a taste of Charlie on “Nothing Works!” (or read Chapter 16 in Protected!).

Protected! is published by Tremendous Leadership—and, trust me, every minute on this website will encourage you in your leadership and management journey. You can also order The Tremendous Power of Prayer, by Charlie “Tremendous” Jones and Bob Kelly on the website or here on Amazon.

And this reminder from Bob, quoting Charlie: "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read." Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager, endorses this book. You will too!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Protected! A True Life Story of God's Word Smuggled Behind the Iron Curtain—and the Influence of a "Tremendous" Man, by Bob Kelly.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Bob Kelly quotes Oswald Chambers: “Be ready for the sudden surprise visits of God. A ready person never needs to get ready.” So…is our team and our organization ready for the sudden surprise visit of God? If not, how do we get ready?
2) Bob Kelly doesn’t preach a sermon (thankfully) in Protected!—instead he tells stories and weaves Psalm 91 throughout the book (I rated Chapter 9 with five stars. It’s a must-read!). As you share your organization’s story—or your personal story—is it evident that God’s sudden surprise visits are common, or has your work become routine and mechanical and not God-breathed?  

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Church/Nonprofit Financial Mistake #7
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

If you serve as a board member, staff member, or volunteer of a nonprofit or church, don’t miss the 400th issue of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (coming next week), with my review of two very helpful annual updates:
   • Zondervan 2019 Church and Nonprofit Tax & Financial Guide for 2018 Tax Returns, by Dan Busby, Vonna Laue, Michael Martin, and John Van Drunen (Order from Amazon)
   • Zondervan 2019 Minister’s Tax & Financial Guide for 2018 Tax Returns, also by Busby, Laue, Martin, and Van Drunen (Order from Amazon)

Here’s a teaser: what’s Number 7 on the list of the 10 biggest tax and financial mistakes made by churches and nonprofits? The answer: “Inadequate controls over disbursements, leaving the ministry at risk for embezzlement.”

Jason Pearson and I quote Will Rogers in the intro to the Budget Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson: “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing is to stop diggin’.” For more financial wisdom and tools, visit the Budget Bucket webpage here. Click on the graphic below to order from Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Does the Budget Bucket come up empty when you need a branding refresh? There are cost-effective alternatives to traditional communication strategies. Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It

Issue No. 398 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting warns—your meetings stink! But—good news—read this five-page HBR article for solutions. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and visit Issue No. 397 for my 2018 Book-of-the-Year and my Top-10 books of 2018.

Your Meetings Stink!

At your next meeting, does your team need to make a quick decision—so discussion doesn’t drag on and on and on? Schedule the meeting in the elevator. “Okay, team…enjoy the ride, but we’re not leaving until we have a decision on the Nelson Project.”

No elevator? Take a team walk and don’t turn back until you’ve made the big decision! Once made, celebrate the decision—immediately!—with Starbucks or Chick-fil-A gift cards for everyone.

Those two ideas from the Hoopla! Bucket reminded me that a new year is the perfect time to refresh your weekly staff meeting. (You do have a weekly meeting right?) And just in time, is a brilliant five-page article from the Harvard Business Review. This poke-in-the-ribs for meeting facilitators is perfectly titled:

“Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It”
by Steven G. Rogelberg

Ever heard of “meeting recovery syndrome?” The “stink” article reports that “one recent study found that the effects of a bad meeting can linger for hours in the form of attendee grousing and complaining—a phenomenon dubbed ‘meeting recovery syndrome.’” Yikes!

Another yikes: “One study found that despite the prevalence of meetings today, 75% of those surveyed had received no formal training in how to conduct or participate in them.”

That’s not you, I know, because you’ve read many of the Meetings Buckets books I’ve recommended over the years:
   • Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business, by Patrick Lencioni
   • Read This Before Our Next Meeting: The Modern Meeting Standard for Successful Organizations, by Al Pittampalli
   • The Secret to a Good Meeting Is the Meeting Before the Meeting: Lesson 18 from Leadership Gold, by John C. Maxwell ($1.99 on Kindle!)
   • The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

So we all agree that most meetings stink (right?), but note Rogelberg’s findings—and his solutions:

THE PROBLEM:
• A survey found that managers reported high productivity in meetings they led—but lower productivity in meetings they didn’t lead—“clear evidence of an ‘I’m not the problem’ attitude.” Ouch!
• People who lead meetings talk the most. Ouch!
• Leaders who run ineffective meetings—and “thereby failing to make the best use of the talent around them”—will likely lose good people.
• Most organizations don’t train their leaders and managers in meeting self-awareness—what they do well, and don’t do well, when leading meetings.

THE SOLUTION:
• Ask your meeting participants to regularly evaluate the meetings you lead. Use surveys, one-on-one short conversations, and include meeting productivity assessments in your 360-degree feedback surveys.
• Define your meeting goals. “If you don’t have a clear mission or a list of agenda items, you should probably cancel.”
• Use a timed agenda.
• “For high-stakes meetings your preparation should go even further. Try having a ‘premortem’ (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.”

Here’s the deal—I’m trying to inspire you to read a measly five-page article (not a 300-page book) as your first assignment in this new year. If you have a meeting scheduled—and you don’t have time to read this article—cancel the meeting. Or…ask another team member to read the article and facilitate the meeting!

MORE MEETING MORSELS:
• “Facilitation starts the moment attendees walk into the room.”
• “…the key to successful facilitation is understanding that you’re primarily playing a supportive role.”
• “To prevent groupthink, consider incorporating periods of silence throughout the meeting…”
• Instead of verbal brainstorming, use “brainwriting.” (A must-read paragraph!)
• Shave five or 10 minutes off your normal one-hour meeting—“to create a bit more urgency and focus.”

And Rogelberg’s final recommendation in the Meetings Bucket: “If your organization isn’t training you in this key skill, it’s time for you to develop it on your own using these strategies.”

[ ] OPTION 1: To purchase and download the five-page article, “Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It,” by Steven G. Rogelberg, (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2019), visit the HBR website here.



[ ] OPTION 2: To read on Amazon Kindle, you can subscribe to Harvard Business Review and immediately download the full January-February 2019 issue. (See the 30-days free offer, currently available.)



[ ] OPTION 3: Note to meeting zealots! The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance, by Steven G. Rogelberg (192 pages), was published on Jan. 2, 2019. Click here to order from Amazon. (Note: I have not yet read this, so I am not yet recommending it. If you read it, please pass along your feedback. Thanks!)


YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Rogelberg writes, “…when you’re a steward of others’ time, you owe it to them to make some modest upfront investment” as you plan your meetings. How much time do you invest in meeting preparation? Is it enough?
2) My 2018 Book-of-the-Year, Scaling Up, notes: “At the heart of a team’s performance is a rhythm of well-run daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings.” Who will you assign to read “The Meeting Rhythm: The Heartbeat of the Organization,” chapter 11 in Scaling Up? Order from Amazon.

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The Meeting Begins When the First Person Arrives
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

Do you facilitate “WOW” meetings? Click here to download a one-page PDF from the Meetings Bucket: “Create a Welcoming Environment for Every Meeting: The Meeting Begins When the First Person Arrives.”

This “W.O.W. Factor Meeting Evaluation” measures three key elements of effective meetings:
• Welcoming
• Organized
• Warm

Inspire a team member to become your meeting evaluator—and suggest ways to improve your meetings and your stewardship of everyone’s valuable time. For more resources from the Meetings Bucket, click here. And try this: present a "I Survived Another Meeting That Should Have Been an Email" coffee mug or t-shirt to your new meeting guru! Click here.



TRY THIS! Amazon's Jeff Bezos often begins a meeting with a “silent start,” according to Jason Pearson’s commentary in the Meetings Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon and read more about effective meeting management.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. So…you and your team just had a meeting (that didn't stink!)—and you're oozing with ideas? Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Top 10 Books for 2018

Issue No. 397 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting delivers my Top-10 book picks from 2018 (and my Book-of-the-Year) and three master lists of over 400 books I’ve reviewed since 2006. Also, Happy New Year! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my 2017 Top-10 picks.

Top-10 Books for 2018

James Mustich, the courageous author of the new 960-page book, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List, notes: “Readers read in so many different ways, and any one standard of measure is inadequate. No matter their pedigree, inveterate readers read the way they eat—for pleasure as well as nourishment, indulgence as much as education, and sometimes for transcendence, too. Hot dogs one day, haute cuisine the next.”

My goal in 2018 was to deliver both fast food and great food—along a diverse continuum of books for every leader’s and manager’s appetite. I don’t speed-read my book picks (shocker—I actually read entire books!).

This last issue of the year features books I reviewed in Issues No. 376 to 396. To read other 2018 book reviews from Your Weekly Staffing Meeting, visit the archives here at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. To download a PDF of the chronological list of book reviews from 2006 through today (all 397 issues), visit the Book Bucket on my Management Buckets website. Another list, with more than 400 books categorized within my 20 buckets, is also available. You’ll also find my updated 2018 personal list (not necessarily prescriptive for you) with my Top-100 books (I add a few and drop a few every two years or so.)

In 2018, I published 22 issues. (But I thought “Your Weekly Staff Meeting” was published weekly? Not!) Certainly not all 10 books will have popular appeal—because all of us are at different levels of competency across the 20 management buckets. What were your Top-10 books in 2018?

2018 Book-of-the-Year

[  ] Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t – Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0, by Verne Harnish (Read my review.)



BEST QUOTE: “Senior leaders know they have succeeded in building an organization that can scale—and is fun to run—when they are the dumbest people in the room! In turn, if they have all the answers (or act like they do), it guarantees organizational silence, exacerbates blindness (the CEO is always the last to know anyway), and means the senior team ends up carrying the entire load of the company on their backs.”

Scaling Up is one of the most complete books I’ve ever read. The alignment with the great leadership/management experts (Drucker, Collins, Lencioni, Gerber, Blanchard, and many more) is stunning.

The Other Nine on My 2018 Top-10 Book List
(With brief excerpts from my reviews, these nine are listed in alphabetical order by author or publisher.)

[  ] Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby (Read my review.)

Even if you’re a Chicago Cubs fan like me (I survived 21 winters in Chicago), you can’t put this book down. It’s absolutely fascinating—and there’s something in this gorgeous coffee table book for everyone: fans, CEOs, marketing/branding teams, church leaders, parents, fundraisers, and team builders! Read my eight water cooler conversation starters.

[  ] Joy Giving: Practical Wisdom from the First Christians and the Global Church, by Cameron Doolittle (Read my review.)



Cameron Doolittle says all of us fall into one of three categories: 1) Listening to God is new to me. 2) I listen to God, but not about money and giving. 3) I listen to God about money and giving. Joy Giving describes a church in Beijing that was blessed with resources—but seemed to have a blind eye to community needs. Keung, a giver in the church, noted “The church wasn’t a conduit for giving; it had become a reservoir.”

[  ] ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 4: Succession Planning – 11 Principles for Successful Successions: “Every CEO is an Interim CEO.” (Read my review.)



This toolbox (four videos, viewing guide, and facilitator guide) quotes William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird who caution that one size doesn’t fit all. “As the variety of successions in Scripture illustrate, our universal recommendation about succession is that there is no universal recommendation. Healthy succession is more art than science. The plan and details must be tailored to each situation. It is also a deeply spiritual process that calls for prayer and recognition of God’s leading.”

[  ] Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande (Read my review.)



This book changed—totally changed—my thoughts about end-of-life decisions. Whew. On one level, I agree that this New York Times bestseller (7,000 reviews on Amazon!) is a brilliant and deep look at the “…still unresolved argument about what the function of medicine really is—what, in other words, we should and should not be paying for doctors to do.” Yet on another surprising level, this writer (four bestsellers), surgeon, and public health leader—delivers fresh management and leadership insights in every chapter.

[  ] The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, Eugene B. Habecker (Read my review.)



Habecker says all leaders have blind spots. The problem: we’re blind to our own blind spots—and that creates frightening situations. He quotes Henri Nouwen in the important chapter, “Welcome Self-Discovery Learning.”

Nouwen: “…the house I had finally found had no floors…. It seemed as if a door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life… The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.”

[  ] Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals, by Michael Hyatt (Read my review.)



My favorite and most practical take-aways:
   • The dramatic difference between achievement goals and habit goals.
   • 10 very practical pages of sample goal templates (pages 237-246)
   • Myth-buster: you can perfect new habits in 21 days (research says it's 66 days).
   • The calendar chain concept. I’ve started using it.
   • “We share our goals, but not with everyone.”

[  ] The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders, by Steve Moore (Read my review.)

When I joined Steve Moore’s trek for leadership gold, wondering what themes made his Top-10 list of leadership conversations in the Bible—I started with “Chapter 8: Humility.” Powerful!
   • “Pride hides from the consciousness of leaders behind a mask of overconfidence. Overconfidence isn’t just annoying to followers. It is dangerous for leaders.”
   • Did you ever read this parenthetical note in Numbers 12:3? “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.)”
   • “I find it easier to admit my lack of patience than my lack of humility.”

And this quote from Larry Osborne: “The journey to accidental Phariseeism begins with a blind spot, not a sin spot.”

[  ] Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy L. Nelson (Read my review.)



On the back cover is a nickel-sized head shot of Eugene Peterson (1932-2018), along with his endorsement of this special, special book. Wow! The candid photo captures Peterson laughing his head off—and Nancy explains their connection and her deep appreciation for The Message.

She quotes from Eugene Peterson’s introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel in the Old Testament, “…as we submit our lives to what we read, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” Then Nancy adds, “And like 1st and 2nd Samuel, these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying.”

[  ] Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box (Second Edition), by The Arbinger Institute (Read my review.)


Trust me—read and study this book with your team (and family) and you’ll be using the “box” metaphor within an hour. The second edition of Leadership and Self-Deception (over two million copies sold!) includes a short section on how to maximize the book’s impact. The authors list stunning (stunning!) examples of how the principles have transformed organizations (nonprofit and for-profit) and even police departments. In Japan, a word-of-mouth movement has launched “out-of-the-box” clubs.

The business novel/fable/story format makes for an easy read (about three hours) with memorable characters, but—warning—it’s not a comfortable read.

Happy New Year and Happy Reading in 2019!

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“A Good Book Is the Opposite of a Selfie”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition) 

James Mustich, the author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List (just published last fall and just 960 pages!), writes:

“A good book is the opposite of a selfie; the right book at the right time can expand our lives in the way love does, making us more thoughtful, more generous, more brave, more alert to the world’s wonders and more pained by its inequities, more wise, more kind.”

Click here to watch the C-Span interview with James Mustich and whether or not he’s actually read all 1,000 books. Click here to visit his website and his list (and short blurbs) on all 1,000 books. Amazing!

REMINDER: Visit the Book Bucket webpage here to download three lists of books I’ve reviewed since 2006, including my updated list of Top-100 books. And, if you’re a listener—and not a reader—visit the audio books available from Libro.fm, including Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box (six hours). I have some fantastic book reviews coming in 2019!

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. So…you and your team just read a book—and you're oozing with ideas. Need an in-the-trenches one-stop partner to help you communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Trust for Today and More Gift Book Ideas

Issue No. 396 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features last-minute gift ideas, including six books, a desk calendar, and a LOL coffee mug! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews. Merry Christmas!

Do Angels Laugh?

Quick! Here are some gift options for your last-minute Christmas shopping needs. This potpourri (or maybe mishmash) of books, coffee mugs, gift cards, New Yorker calendars, and other tempting purchases will help you find gifts for team members, board members, colleagues, spouses, grandparents, and your pastor. And check out my last-minute gift list from 2017 here.

[  ] Trust for Today: 365 Days of Encouragement – A Year With the Trueface Team. You’ll chuckle when you read the short, one-page devotional thought for February 24, “Do angels laugh when we say something funny?” and “In heaven, will we be able to make God laugh?” I’ve reviewed numerous books by the Trueface Team (their best: The Cure). Your gift recipients will have appreciative thoughts of you every day for a year—wow!

[  ] This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See, by Seth Godin. “There are two ways to do your work. You can be a cab driver. Show up and ask someone where they want to go. Charge them based on the meter. Be a replaceable cog in the on-demand transport system. You might be a harder-working cabbie, but it won’t change much. Or you can be an agent of change, someone who creates tension and then relieves it.” (Watch for my 2019 review.)

[  ] The Secret Lives of Color, by Kassia St. Clair. You must order this for your graphic designer/marketing colleagues! John Ruskin wrote, “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.” So the author paints—with words and swatches—a 320-page gorgeous book of 75 colors “with particularly fascinating, important, or disturbing histories.”

[  ] Leaders: Myth and Reality, by Gen. Stanley McChrystal (U.S. Army, Retired), Jeff Eggers and Jason Mangone. If you enjoyed Team of Teams in 2016, you’ll appreciate Leaders. “Don’t scan the text for new leadership checklists. We will use stories to challenge traditional leadership models, but we stop short of prescribing how to lead.”

Over a dozen leaders are profiled including Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Harriet Tubman, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The authors contrast and compare founders, geniuses, zealots, heroes, power brokers, and reformers. I read the last chapter first—“Redefining Leadership”—insightful! (Watch for my 2019 review.)

Weekly staff meeting idea: assign the 10 sections to 10 staff members and each week ask one team member to share a 5-minute review and a 5-minute discussion question. To listen to this book at Libro.FM audiobooks (17 hours, 2 minutes), click here.

[  ] Coffee Mugs: “I Survived Another Meeting That Should Have Been an Email.” Raise your hand if this week you “survived another meeting that should have been an email.” I thought so. Thanks to my son, Jason, we’ve created an entire product line of coffee mugs, t-shirts, travel mugs, mouse pads, coasters, and more with this eye-catching and very convicting catchphrase:

“I Survived Another Meeting
That Should Have Been an Email”

Order today from Café Press. Click here.

[  ] Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God, by Ruth Haley Barton. What if—and I know this sounds crazy—you’re so busy that you should drop everything and focus on soul care? Ruth Haley Barton’s new book will guide you along. Jesus reminds us, "Come away and rest awhile." Barton writes, “Jesus invites us to be with him, offering our full and undivided attention to him. When we choose retreat we make a generous investment in our friendship with Christ. Truth is, we are not always generous with ourselves where God is concerned.” (Watch for my 2019 review.)

[  ] Cartoons from The New Yorker: 2019 Day-to-Day Calendar. One of my favorite gifts each year: LOL cartoons every day to tear-off, tweet, tease, and/or toss. One of my favorites from 2018: two lab-coated scientists filling a classroom chalkboard with algebraic theories—“You’re right—the shipping isn’t free. They’ve folded the expense into the cost of the item.”

[  ] 42 Seconds: The Jesus Model for Everyday Interactions, by Carl Medearis. “Forty-two seconds: That’s the average length of Jesus’ conversations as recorded in the Bible.” The author suggests you read this 151-page book for inspiration or as a “four-week devotional that teaches you how to be like Jesus in your everyday interactions with those God has placed in your life.” (See also my review of his book, Muslims, Christians, and Jesus: Gaining Understanding and Building Relationships.)




[  ] Amazon Gift Card. Can’t decide? Order an Amazon Gift Card. (One-day shipping!)

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) What’s one of the most treasured books you’ve ever received as a gift? Why?
2) Is it time for you to take time for soul care? 

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2018 Book-of-the-Year Announcement!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition) 

Watch for the December 31 announcement of the 2018 Book-of-the-Year and the updated books list to be posted on the Book Bucket webpage here.

For more ideas on books to give your team members, CEO, board members, and colleagues, visit the archives on this webpage at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog—featuring more than 400 book reviews. Or see the master list on pages 197-230 in Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook.

FOR MORE HELP ON UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMERS and which gifts certain customers would appreciate (example: "Info-Sponges" will appreciate Gen. McChrystal's book while "Share-Meisters will enjoy coffee mugs and New Yorker cartoon calendars), check out the free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Scaling Up - Rockefeller Habits 2.0

2018 Book-of-the-Year!
Issue No. 395 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features an anonymous letter I received from a reader with his pick for 2018 book-of-the-year. Oh, my! It looks good. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

Sloppy Execution and Lack of Discipline

We received this anonymous letter today:

Attn: Book-of-the-Year 2018 Awards Committee
Your Weekly Staff Meeting

Dear John,

As you and your team gather in your plush executive offices (or perhaps at your gourmet dinner meeting) to discern your pick for the 2018 Book-of-the-Year Honors, please give this gem your serious consideration. I have 12 reasons why your readers would thank you profusely—should you name Scaling Up as your top book of 2018.

If you pick this book, you’ll have to write the summary (all that unnecessary filler stuff you write that goes on and on and on). I think your readers, however, would prefer just getting to the good stuff, like these 12 reasons:

Reason #1. $20 AWARDS. Read about the Colorado company that required every manager—every month—to submit three ideas “for increasing revenue, reducing costs, or making something easier.” Managers who submitted the top 20 ideas—as determined by the CEO who responded to every idea submitted—received $20 cash per idea at the monthly managers meeting. (See page 166.)

Reason #2. BEST QUOTE. “Senior leaders know they have succeeded in building an organization that can scale—and is fun to run—when they are the dumbest people in the room! In turn, if they have all the answers (or act like they do), it guarantees organizational silence, exacerbates blindness (the CEO is always the last to know anyway), and means the senior team ends up carrying the entire load of the company on their backs.” (See page 5.)

Reason #3. THE WEEKLY MEETING. John, I know you’re a big fan of weekly meetings (duh—your eNews name), but you never convinced me of the value of wasting everyone’s time weekly. But Verne Harnish, Scaling Up’s brilliant author, has totally convinced me! The “Rockefeller Habit #3: Meeting Rhythm” chapter gives amazing detail on four types of meetings: the daily huddle, the weekly meeting, the monthly management meeting, and the quarterly and annual planning meetings. I’ve become a born-again-meeting-rhythm-freak! (See pages 175-190—the most helpful 15 pages I’ve read all year.)

Reason #4. “EVERYTHING IS FINE!” As an example of the helpful detail on meetings, Harnish drops in frequent warning icons. “What’s the rock in your shoe?” is a high priority meeting agenda question for the daily huddle (Where are you stuck? What constraints are you facing in the next 24 hours?). And this wisdom/warning:

“WARNING: Anytime somebody goes two days without reporting a constraint, you can bet there’s a problem lurking. Busy, productive people who are doing anything of consequence get stuck pretty regularly. The only people who don’t get stuck are those who aren’t doing anything or are so stuck that they don’t know it!! So, challenge the team member who reports, ‘Everything is fine!’” (See page 183.)

Reason #5. ROCKEFELLER HABITS. John, I’ve noticed that “Oh, my!” is one of your frequent and favorite filler phrases (could you dial that back a bit?). But, “Oh, my!”—am I the only leader or manager that has never heard of the Rockefeller Habits? I was blown away to learn about the leadership habits of John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) and to see how Verne Harnish’s consulting company, Gazelles, has systemized these 10 habits into a one-page, 40-item checklist. (Download here.) Brilliant! And read this warning from the author:

“WARNING: You’ll drive everyone in the organization crazy if you implement all of these habits at one time. The key is focusing on one or two each quarter, giving everyone roughly 24 to 36 months to install these simple, yet powerful routines. Then it’s a process of continually refreshing them as the company scales up.” (See page 15 and read why habits are “routines that set you free!”)

Reason #6. THE QUESTION WE DO NOT KNOW. The graphics, icons, and format of this visually-appealing book are amazing (“Oh, my!” amazing, to be honest.) Like this call-out: “We have the answers, all the answers; it’s the question we do not know.” To help organizations achieve results, the author delivers detailed (detailed!) processes in four major areas: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. And—get this—he says it’s OK to start reading anywhere you want in the book. John, I'll send you a Starbucks card if you can resist NOT reading about weekly meetings first!

Reason #7. GUT-CHECK ZINGERS. Oh, my! These one-liners are convicting:
   • “NOTE: The cost of a bad hire is 15x his or her annual salary, according to Topgrading, so it’s important to get the recruiting and selection process right.”
   • “Good managers play checkers while great managers play chess, according to researchers Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.”
   • “The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle,” noted Peter Drucker.
   • “It’s time to break apart a 50-year-old business term—strategic planning—and think about it in terms of two distinct activities: strategic thinking and execution planning. Each requires two very different teams and processes.”

Reason #8. BIG, BUT NOT BIG ENOUGH. Read why you must conquer complexity. “Expanding from three to four people grows the team only 33%, yet complexity may increase 400%,” writes Harnish. He says optimal employee counts include: one to three; eight to 12; 40 to 70; 350 to 500; and 2,500 to 3,500. “Any company with an employee count between these natural clusters is likely feeling a bit stuck—“…‘big, but not big enough’ syndrome—even in making minor decisions like what size photocopy machines you need next.”

Reason #9. GARBAGE UNIVERSITY. John, you’ll love the insightful business stories—in-the-trenches examples—of how organizations are building the Scaling Up system into their DNA with training and education (normally about 2% to 3% of payroll).
   • The City Bin Company in Ireland created an internal learning academy, “Garbage University,” and provides “three hours of training every two weeks from September to May.” (Their CEO, by the way, never learned how to drive a garbage truck—and thinks the company is better for it!)
   • “At MOM’s Organic Market, in addition to executive education, produce managers will typically read four to five books together every year.”
   • Great companies start growing their people on day one. When they don’t, “…the first days on the job often feel more like waterboarding than onboarding: no desk, no computer, no phone…” (John, that reminds me of your 2017 book-of-the-year, The Power of Moments.)

Reason #10. RENAME “HR.” Verne Harnish mentions a company that “renamed its HR Department the Employee Experience Department.” Core values are not taken lightly in Scaling Up. He suggests you “organize your employee handbook into sections around each Core Value.” And—so insightful—“Every time you praise or reprimand someone, tie it back to a Core Value or Purpose.” Read his eight ways to reinforce culture on pages 102-106.

You’ll also appreciate his flexibility on terms: should we use “mission” or “purpose?” He says pick the term you prefer, but “use the terms consistently.” He likes “purpose” (more heartfelt). And to illustrate…here’s another “Oh, my!” I'll send you another Starbucks card (or maybe Chick-fil-A), if you can read—without getting teary-eyed—about the company that asked how they could become more like Make-A-Wish Foundation for their employees—per their core value, “Take care of each other.” (See page 100.)

Reason #11. ONE-PAGE STRATEGIC PLAN. John, I realize I’m stepping on your strategic planning toes—but honestly—the “One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP)” in Scaling Up is so, so good. And the detailed instructions for the downloadable 11” by 17” template give step-by-step directions. In preparation, Harnish suggests that managers work on the SWOT analysis, but senior teams should focus energies on SWT (Strengths, Weaknesses, and Trends). Example: “Forget about the competitor down the street. Is there a company on the other side of the globe that might put you out of business?” (See pages 123-140.)

Reason #12. SLOPPY EXECUTION. So (and with this I’ll end—and now I see why your reviews are so long: these books are powerful!)…what’s the downside of not reading this book? Harnish says if you don’t execute the Rockefeller Habits, “It just means you’ve been leaving massive amounts of money and time on the table. And if you have a killer strategy and/or heroic people willing to work 18-hour days, eight days a week, these will make up for the messes created by sloppy execution and lack of discipline.” (As you often say, John—“Yikes!”)

Sincerely yours,

An Anonymous Reader

P.S. John—Please give Scaling Up very serious consideration when you announce your Top-10 books of 2018 (and your book-of-the-year) on Dec. 31. (And please note I am not the author nor have I met the author!)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t – Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0, by Verne Harnish.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) At Amazon, according to Scaling Up, Jeff Bezos asks his team each week what competitors have entered their market in the last seven days! So…is anyone tracking trends in your organization? (Reminder: Eternity magazine, ironically, published its last issue in 1989!)
2) In Scaling Up’s “cash” chapters (one of four key topics,) the author notes that Costco’s bold move in charging customers a membership fee now accounts for 75% of Costco’s profit ($3 billion of the $4.04 billion in pretax earnings in 2017). When was the last time your senior team had serious and strategic conversations about cash and your ability to fuel the growth of your organization? 

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Mark Cuban Reads 3 Hours a Day!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

Scaling Up is one of the most complete books I’ve ever read. The alignment with the great leadership/management experts (Drucker, Collins, Lencioni, Gerber, Blanchard, and many more) is stunning. Faith-based organizations will enhance their study of Scaling Up with occasional dips into the 20 core competencies in Mastering the Management Buckets, including the Book Bucket. Reminder: leaders are readers! According to Verne Harnish:

“Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, reads three hours per day. His goal is to find just one idea he can use to give him and the over 150 companies in which he’s invested an edge in the marketplace.”

Watch for the December 31 announcement of the 2018 Book-of-the-Year and the updated books list to be posted on the Book Bucket webpage here.

For more help on understanding customers (a weekly discussion in Scaling Up), check out the free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Being Mortal

Issue No. 394 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a MUST READ book on end-of-life issues that also oozes with leadership and management insights. The author notes, “People die only once!” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

Pick One: Custer or Robert E. Lee

Apparently, I’m a slow learner.

You would think that when your daughter-in-law encourages you to read a book—you would read it. Ditto book recommendations from your wife.

Melinda and Joanne—sorry it took me a year to read this. But thank you. Because Being Mortal is now on my Top-10 book list for 2018.

In this riveting book, Dr. Atul Gawande reminds us: “People die only once.” So when facing fork-in-the-road sick and dying decisions, “They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and escape a warehouse oblivion that few really want.”

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End changed—totally changed—my thoughts about end-of-life decisions. Whew. On one level, I agree that this New York Times bestseller (7,000 reviews on Amazon!) is a brilliant and deep look at the “…still unresolved argument about what the function of medicine really is—what, in other words, we should and should not be paying for doctors to do.” Yet on another surprising level, this writer (four bestsellers), surgeon, and public health leader—delivers fresh management and leadership insights in every chapter.

Custer or Robert E. Lee? The author says that medicine’s job is to fight death and disease—the enemy—but that the enemy eventually wins. “And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.”

Yet Gawande admits, “More often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, ‘You let me know when you want to stop.’ All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families we are asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve.”

By the way, watch for my review of Leaders: Myth and Reality, by General Stanley McChrystal (US Army, Retired), which includes a 30-page chapter on Robert E. Lee, and why this Civil War general’s picture no longer hangs in McChrystal’s office.

What should families do? My suggestion: ask your doctor (like I did this week) if he or she has read Being Mortal. (He had.) Gawande notes that medical school taught him two styles of doctor/patient interactions: paternalistic and informative.

The “paternalistic relationship” is the “priestly, doctor-knows-best model, and although often denounced it remains a common mode, especially with vulnerable patients—the frail, the poor, the elderly, and anyone else who tends to do what they’re told.”

Doctors make the critical choices. “If there were a red pill and a blue pill, we would tell you, ‘Take the red pill. It will be good for you.’ We might tell you about the blue pill; but then again, we might not.”

The “informative relationship” sounds good, at first. “’Here’s what the red pill does, and here’s what the blue pill does,’ we would say, ‘Which one do you want?’ It’s a retail relationship. The doctor is the technical expert. The patient is the consumer.”

The down side? Doctors become “ever more specialized” and “We know less and less about our patients but more and more about our science.” He writes, “In truth, neither type is quite what people desire. We want information and control, but we also want guidance.” In his medical school, there was also the brief mention of a third type of doctor-patient relationship often labeled “interpretive.”

“Here the doctor’s role is to help patients determine what they want. Interpretive doctors ask, ‘What is most important to you? What are your worries?’ Then, when they know your answers, they tell you about the red pill and the blue pill and which one would most help you achieve your priorities.”

Makes sense right? Gawande notes that this relationship is also called “shared decision making” and added, “It seemed to us medical students a nice way to work with patients as physicians. But it seemed almost entirely theoretical. Certainly, to the larger medical community, the idea that most doctors would play this kind of role for patients seemed far-fetched at the time. (Surgeons? ‘Interpretive?’ Ha!)”

But two decades later, the author describes a meeting with his father (also a surgeon) and his father’s neurosurgeon. The task: review the MRI images of his father’s giant and deadly tumor. The neurosurgeon “saw himself as neither the commander nor a mere technician in the battle but instead as a kind of counselor and contractor on my father’s behalf. It was exactly what my father needed.”

To get the conversation going in your family, maybe insert a reminder into your Thanksgiving prayer next Thursday that everyone around the table will die only once! Then, mention this book as required reading for at least one family member. (“Grammy—please pass the turkey and that Being Mortal book.”)

Dr. Gawande is an amazing writer. The poignant stories are page-turners. The innovative solutions—inspiring and encouraging. I’ve already re-told many of the memorable fork-in-the-road stories (tears will flow) to friends and colleagues and ordered the book for several friends. Be sure to read the hilarious story of the very creative nursing home that added two dogs, four cats, and 100 parakeets! (Memo to Purchasing: Next time, order the cages before the birds are delivered!)

I should have jumped on this 2014 book much, much sooner—because I still rave about Gawande’s 2010 insightful bestseller, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (read my review).

I had no idea that there were checklist connoisseurs! The Checklist Manifesto moves eloquently through medicine, aeronautics, and sky-scraper construction—noting why checklists will make or break a venture. For example, Boeing’s checklist expert uses “pause points” when designing checklists for pilots in crisis. Within each pause point, he limits the checklist to between five and nine items.

As a staff writer for the New Yorker, Gawande’s latest article, “Why Doctors Hate Their Computers,” was published on Nov. 12, 2018. Click here to read or listen to the article online. (Customer Bucket Pop Quiz: Are computer systems for the doctors or for the patients?)

And—get this—Gawande is also CEO of the health care venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to deliver better outcomes, satisfaction, and cost efficiency in care. Stay tuned!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande. To listen to this book at Libro.FM audiobooks (9 hours, 3 minutes), click here.


 
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) What is your management style? How do you relate to your customers, clients, or donors? A) “Take the red pill—it will be good for you.” B) “There’s a red pill and a blue pill—you pick.” C) “We have some pills, but first, tell me what is most important to you?”
2) Custer, Lee, or Jesus? Read 1 Corinthians 15:57 in The Message and then discuss the ultimate fork-in-the-road end-of-life issues. “…In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal.” Who will have the last word? 

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Is Your Marketing Sick or Dying?
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

Speaking of medicine, if your marketing or fundraising is sick or dying, here’s a reminder from The Customer Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets. Leaders, managers, fundraisers, and marketing specialists must use the right tools for the right people at the right time. One size doesn’t fit all—so if you’re trying to shoehorn all of your messaging to all of your customers and prospects with just one message—you will fail or die.

If you need help moving customers from ignorance to purchase—contact Pearpod Media and they’ll help you craft the right message for the right audience within these six distinct levels of awareness:
   • Level 1: Ignorance
   • Level 2: Awareness
   • Level 3: Interest
   • Level 4: Trial or Consideration
   • Level 5: Preference
   • Level 6: Purchase

For more help on messaging, check out the free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Living Your Strengths

Issue No. 393 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a faith-based StrengthsFinder book—integrating biblical wisdom with the strengths movement.  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

Don't Handcuff Your Brain or Heart!

Mark Cuban invests three hours every day—not in shooting hoops with his Dallas Mavericks, not in sizing up Shark Tank deals, and not in other typical entrepreneurial endeavors—but in reading! According to Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (watch for my review coming this month), the most important routine/habit you can develop is reading.
 
And John Baillie (1886–1960) shares this wisdom in A Diary of Private Prayer (31 morning prayers and 31 evening prayers):

“Leave me not, O gracious Presence, in such hours as I may today devote to the reading of books or of newspapers. Guide my mind to choose the right books and, having chosen them, to read them in the right way. When I read for profit, grant that all I read may lead me nearer to Thyself. When I read for recreation, grant that what I read may not lead away from Thee. Let all my reading so refresh my mind that I may the more eagerly seek after whatsoever things are pure and fair and true.”

So…this issue encourages you to keep reading—to keep “refreshing” your mind by reading; to honor God in your reading. Thus here’s a StrengthsFinder niche book that you might have missed, written by the father of the strengths movement and two others:

Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community, by Albert L. Winseman, Donald O. Clifton, and Curt Liesveld

“Our coauthor, Don Clifton [1924-2003], was always fond of saying that each person can do something better than 10,000 other people. The key is for individuals to discover what that something is, and then do it.” 

Winseman and Liesveld add, “Indeed, developing our talents into strengths requires risk. We must step out, try new things, or take a chance by doing something we may fail at—at first. But if we do not take some risks—emotionally, physically, and spiritually—we will never grow. God expects no less from us and from the Church.”

How’s this for a “before and after” testimonial from a church board member?

“After serving almost four years on the church board, I had yet to fully know or understand those with whom I was working. The extent of our personal knowledge about one another went little beyond being asked to ‘share your favorite movie.’ 

“At the initiation of a new church board chair and a new executive pastor, we underwent strengths coaching, both individual and team. Everyone engaged in the process, and I learned more about my teammates in one evening than in all my previous years on the board. It was the most meaningful and significant times we’ve spent together.”   

If you work or volunteer in a faith-based organization, you will deeply appreciate how Living Your Strengths integrates the StrengthsFinder assessment with biblical insights. Example: my Top-5 strengths according to the Gallup assessment are: Focus, Responsibility, Significance, Belief, and Maximizer. So Living Your Strengths suggests three Scriptures that relate to the Focus theme:
   • Luke 9:51 (“…he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”)
   • Philippians 3:12-14 (“…I press on toward the goal…”)
   • Hebrews 12:1-2 (“…let us lay aside every weight…”)

Similar to the other StrengthsFinder books, Living Your Strengths includes two- and three-page summaries of all 34 talent themes—plus Scriptures for each theme. The book also includes chapters on “The Power of the Right Fit,” “Creating Strengths-Based Congregations,” and “Discovering a Calling.” Each book also includes one unique access code to the Clifton StrengthsFinder online assessment.

If you’re leading a team of staff or volunteers in a faith-based ministry or church—and blindly leading without understanding strengths—you have handcuffed half your brain and half your heart. Delegate your reading today and invite a team member to check this out.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community, by Albert L. Winseman, Donald O. Clifton, and Curt Liesveld. 



Click on the title to read my 2009 review of Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow, by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie.

Click on the title to order StrengthsFinder 2.0, from Gallup and Tom Rath (Discover Your CliftonStrengths).

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Why strengths? The authors of Strengths Based Leadership write, “The odds of an employee being engaged are a dismal one in 11 (9%). But when an organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of its employees, the odds soar to almost three in four (73%).” What’s our level of staff (or volunteer) engagement here?
2) Rath and Conchie note that “While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the best teams are.” Here’s a Starbucks card for the first person who shares how a team member has helped you leverage your strengths recently (which requires, of course—that both of you know your strengths!). 

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Visualize Your Strengths!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Team Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages leaders to “laminate your strengths” with wallet-size cards listing your Top-5 strengths from the StrengthsFinder assessment.

High performing teams go one step further: tent cards. My son, Jason, the creative guru at Pearpod Media, loves working with clients who leverage and visualize their strengths by bringing their strengths tent cards to every meeting. Try it!

In addition to strengths, learn how to leverage the four social styles when communicating with your team (and with your customers). So click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Stories of Sheer Pure Grace

Issue No. 392 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks—should you write a book? Read how Nancy Nelson answered that question. Powerful! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

You Should Write a Book!

“You should write a book!” As my clients, friends, and family know—I’ve repeated that mandate to colleagues hundreds of times over the years. It’s often in response to my hearing a truly original leadership thought, a management nugget, or a poignant story. 

Another favorite line: “That would make a great chapter title in your book!”

Several years ago Nancy Nelson shared a personal story during a brief conversation with Makoto Fujimura, the noted artist and author, who asked her, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” Nancy admitted she had been praying about it, but was reluctant, so Fujimura inspired her with this:
 
“…these stories are a sacred trust from God. They are not to be kept to yourself but have been given to you to be shared.”

Thus Stories of Sheer Pure Grace was born—and trust me—heaven came down and emboldened Nancy to share 50 stories (50!) of remarkable insights into God at work in her life and the lives of others. This book is now on my Top-10 Book List for 2018.

Nancy (a long-time friend and fellow presenter in a board governance training program), writes “This collection is the result of sitting at the keyboard each morning for two months and praying, ‘Holy Spirit, wordsmith through me these stories so they bring honor and glory to God.’” He did and they do.

“…these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying,” notes Nancy. Whew! Just a few chapters in, I confessed to being a spiritual midget. Nancy prays! Friends pray! Co-workers prayed! The board prayed! Her children prayed! Her grandchildren prayed! The results—stunning!

Nancy headlines each story of sheer pure grace with a unique characteristic of God: The Revealing Wordsmith, The Master Planner, The “Wooer,” The Hijacker, The King of Hoopla, Prazable, The Territory Enlarger, The Strategic J.J., The Dog Catcher, The Culture Changer, and The Promise Keeper. (There are 39 more!)

These powerful three- and four-page narratives of God’s grace will touch your soul—and your tear ducts—as you walk through this humble and gifted woman’s span of numerous professional careers, including nearly 40 years at Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center in Washington State. Nancy has the chops to be a CEO, but she opted for making other CEOs look good as the key leader in food service, HR, and fund development. 

When reading books, I read with a pen (to slow me down) and make notes in the front of each book—noting memorable phrases and page numbers. I made 25 notes—but I could have made 200. Some of my favorites:
   • Nancy’s favorite name for God: Abba. Read why.
   • Quoting Dutch Sheets, “We humans are into microwaving and God is into marinating.”
   • Hosting a charitable foundation staff for lunch at Warm Beach Camp, Nancy directed them to the downstairs restrooms—sadly in need of renovation and relocating upstairs. (The grant proposal followed!)
   • How Mrs. Lemke (second grade teacher to Nancy’s son) responded to Thad’s appreciative comments four years later. “Don’t thank me, Thad, thank God. You don’t know how many times I sat in your chair before and after school and prayed for God to help you learn how to read.” 
   • When Warm Beach Camp agreed to serve children of incarcerated parents, Nancy noted, “…I found myself crowded into a tiny living room with a handful of plain, ordinary people who seemed to have dreams out of proportion to their means.” (Surprise: God answered their prayers.)
   • After the camp staff read The Prayer of Jabez, Nancy realized: “God funds what HE wants done!” (Read Amos 5:22-24 in The Message. It begins, “I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes…” Yikes!) 

One More:
• To complete her master’s degree at UCLA in dietetic/nutrition, Nancy conducted a research project with expectant mothers in Tijuana, Mexico. Enjoy this must-read story on God as “The Stage Director,” and LOL when you read the response of the faculty committee when they learned Nancy’s research had been published in the Mexican Journal of Nutrition!

They say you can’t tell a book by its cover—but I disagree. Makoto Fujimura’s striking work, Charis-Kairos (The Tears of Christ, 2017), graces Stories of Sheer Pure Grace. Amazing—on two levels: 1) That this artist would gift his work for a paperback cover (the original is Japanese Nihonga art—mineral pigments and gold on Belgium linen), and 2) That Nancy would have the chutzpah to ask for the gift. (Attention Fundraisers: This book is a short course in the art of asking.)

Example: In Chapter 23, “The Rescuer,” Nancy notes that King Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20) called for a nationwide time of fasting and prayer. That inspired the Warm Beach team to truthfully alert donors to a financial crisis. The donor appeal came to be known as the “Jehoshaphat Letter” and Nancy notes, “It was the kind of crisis letter an organization can only send out once in its history.”

On the back cover is a nickel-sized head shot of Eugene Peterson, along with his endorsement of this special, special book. Wow! The candid photo captures Peterson laughing his head off—and Nancy explains their connection and her deep appreciation for The Message.

She quotes from Eugene Peterson’s introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel in the Old Testament, “…as we submit our lives to what we read, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” Then Nancy adds, “And like 1st and 2nd Samuel, these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying.”

And here’s a gut check: Eugene Peterson notes in his introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel, “We do violence to the biblical revelation when we ‘use’ it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives. That results in a kind of ‘boutique spirituality’—God as decoration, God as enhancement. The Samuel narrative will not allow that.” 

Oh, my. I wish I had space to chronicle another dozen bullet points of powerful answers to prayers—but that would require a holy spoiler alert! Order two books and inspire a friend or colleague to experience sheer pure grace. 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy L. Nelson. 


   (back cover)

 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Nancy is so, so transparent. She credits the TrueFace team (Bruce McNicol, Bill Thrall, and John Lynch) and their book, The Cure, for helping her understand deep insights. Nancy writes, “…it’s love, usually applied by others, that is the solvent that helps us remove our masks so that our faces can become radiant.” Have you read The Cure?
2) So...should we write a book? Should you write a book? Is there a creative way (per Nancy Nelson’s approach) to tell our organization’s story—yet infuse the narrative with page-turning drama, vulnerable stories, powerful answers to prayer, and inspirational insights? If you’re in—we’ll meet at Starbucks tomorrow to map out the plan.

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Don't Be Like Brian's Grandpa!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages leaders to be readers and to avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome” and to mentor your team members with niche books (like Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy Nelson).

Brian Ogne, one of the most enthusiastic camp and conference center directors I’ve ever met, once asked his grandfather if he’d like a special book for Christmas. His granddad replied, “Why would I need another book? I already have one!”

Don’t be like Brian’s grandpa!

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Once you have your book written, you may need a sales and branding strategy. If so, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Barna Trends 2018

Issue No. 391 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends Barna Trends 2018, a must-have resource for updating your Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan. (You do have a rolling plan, right?) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

What Barna Trends Will Impact Your Strategic Plan?

Yikes! It’s almost October and you’re way, way behind on updating your Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan. You do that right? Your team, your board, and key volunteers look ahead at least three years, and every fall, you update the plan by one year. Yes? So your plan for 2019-2021 is due soon.

Warning! “Sameness isn’t strategy. It is a recipe for mediocrity.”

That’s the cautionary wisdom from Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin. They note: “Every industry has tools and practices that become widespread and generic. Some organizations define strategy as benchmarking against competition and then doing the same set of activities but more effectively. Sameness isn’t strategy. It is a recipe for mediocrity.”

Which brings me to today’s resource, Barna Trends 2018: What's New and What's Next at the Intersection of Faith and Culture, the annual update from the editorial team at Barna. 

In the S.W.O.T. section of your updated strategic plan, are you simply refreshing last year’s revision of the previous year’s inadequate research—or are you seriously addressing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats with current trends, wisdom, and discernment?

Barna Trends 2018 will help! I was privileged to be part of a board planning retreat earlier this year that leveraged this invaluable book. Facilitated by Rick Bee, a board member at Christian Community Credit Union, the planning session looked at dozens of trends from the Barna book. (And…my deep thanks to Rick for sharing his notes with my eNews readers!)

MEDIA TRENDS:
• Only 6% of Americans say celebrities are a credible source for news.
• What news outlets do we trust? TV news: 69%; local newspapers: 50%; national newspapers: 44%.
• Podcasts are watched by 23% of Americans (Millennials: 42%, Gen X: 30%, Boomers: 10%, Elders: 5%).

MOBILE PHONE TRENDS:
• 70% of parents sleep with their phones, but only 10% say that social media is the last thing they do each night.
• 62% of parents check their phone in the first hour of the day.
• Of the above group, 74% are checking email first thing in the morning, 51% are reading or sending texts, 48% are on social media, and 36% are reading the news.

WORLDVIEW TRENDS:
• Only 17% of Christians who consider their faith important, and attend church regularly, actually have a “biblical worldview” (as defined by Barna).
• 33% agree that if you do good—you will get good; and if you do bad—you will get bad.
• 28% agree that all people pray to the same god or spirit—no matter what name they use for that spiritual being.
• 23% agree that many religions can lead to eternal life; there is no “one true” religion. Of that group, Millennials and Gen X agree with that view more than others.

HOW WOULD YOU GIVE $100?
• 64% would give $100 to a domestic child in need—not a child living overseas.
• However, Millennials are the most interested age group in giving to international needs.

PASTORS AT RISK OF BURNOUT
Barna assessed burnout risk for pastors using 11 factors. “A pastor is low risk if they do not meet any of the factors, medium risk if they meet criteria for one of the factors, and high risk if they meet three or more of the factors.” Here are five of the 11 risk factors:
   • “Their primary day-to-day tasks do not fit their calling or gifts.”
   • “Tenure at their current church has been a disappointment.”
   • “Less confident in their calling today than when they began ministry.”
   • “Have suffered from depression sometime during their ministry.”
   • “Frequently feel emotionally or mentally exhausted.”

Similar to Barna Trends 2017 (read my review here), the book spotlights trends in culture, life, and faith. This 2018 edition adds a feature, “The Truth About a Post-Truth Society.” (Shocking stats! Just 36% agree that the church “…has my best interest at heart.”)

As you—truthfully—document trends for your 2019-2021 Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan, you’ll want to read the following articles/sections—or delegate them to your Strategic Planning Task Force (you do have a task force, right?):
• Glossary—Theolographics (defines a “post-Christian”)
• The “Fake News” Phenomenon (and what’s to blame)
• Who Prays for Donald Trump?
• The Pastoral Credibility Crisis
• Gen Z Views on Sexuality
• One in Three Teens Is Cyber Bullied
• What Do You Hope Your Child Will Obtain From Their Education?
• Degrees of Preparation: The top three things pastors wish they had been better prepared for
• Busyness: A New Family Tradition

Barna gives us a LOT to think about, but allow me to add more complexity to your planning process. Donald Rumsfeld always used four planning steps whether at Fortune 500 companies or in government. Read more about his second step: “Identify your key assumptions.” In Rumsfeld Rules, he notes that “It is possible to proceed perfectly logically from an inaccurate premise to an inaccurate and unfortunate conclusion.” How do these new trends impact your old assumptions?

MORE BARNA TRENDS
• Workplace Romance
• Eight in 10 Parents Say Their Job Has Never Been Harder
• Volunteers View Volunteering as an Act of Generosity
• Barna Identifies Five Reasons the World Is No Longer in Agreement About Anything
• 29% of Pastors Don’t Attend Conferences
• Prayer Is a Rarity Among Church Teams
• The Myth of the Lazy Teen
• The Ultimate Financial Goal for Life (segmented by generation)
• The Dechurched: America’s Greatest Mission Field

FINALLY…
• A Q&A on Team Leadership With Gen. Stanley McChrystal (read my review of his 2015 book, Team of Teams)
• More Than Clever Sermons, by Francis Chan
• American Ideas About Islam

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Barna Trends 2018: What's New and What's Next at the Intersection of Faith and Culture.

 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Does our strategic plan have at least 10 assumptions that have been affirmed by our customers (and donors)? Are these assumptions based on the latest trends or outdated trends?
2) Barna Trends 2018 notes that “eight in 10 parents say their job has never been harder.” How might that new statistic impact our work with staff, volunteers, customers, and donors? 

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Strategic Insanity
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Strategy Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages teams to be strategic about strategic planning. As Einstein preached, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So buy two copies of Barna Trends 2018—and delegate your reading and research! And this reminder from the authors of Playing to Win. Lafley and Martin write that that there are five ineffective ways that many leaders inappropriately champion when defining the strategy process:
   1) “They define strategy as vision.
   2) They define strategy as a plan.
   3) They deny that long-term (or even medium-term) strategy is possible.
   4) They define strategy as the optimization of the status quo.
   5) They define strategy as following best practices.”

Once you have your strategy nailed down, you may need a re-branding process. If so, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the the hot-off-the-press second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Before and After Babe Ruth

Issue No. 390 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a colorful baseball book (with management insights) by Dan Busby, a self-described “ticketologist.” You can’t put it down! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for more summer reading list nominees.



Management Through the Lens of Baseball

Hey, baseball fans! The 2018 World Series begins on Oct. 23. Will your favorite team be there? (Go Cubs!)

Today, the New York Yankees are 11 games out of first place in the AL East, but it hasn’t always been this way. The Yankees have won 27 World Series championships—an MLB record. But their most recent Commissioner’s Trophy has been collecting dust since 2009.

So…what’s up with these fascinating factoids? And why should you care?

Hot-off-the-press is Dan Busby’s amazing book, Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes. Even if you’re a Chicago Cubs fan like me (I survived 21 winters in Chicago), you can’t put this book down. It’s absolutely fascinating—and there’s something in this book for everyone: fans, CEOs, marketing/branding teams, church leaders, parents, fundraisers, and team builders! Enjoy these eight water cooler conversation starters:

1) HEADLINE SAVVY. The Yankees were once called the “Highlanders,” but that 11-letter moniker crowded newspaper headlines, while “Yanks” and “Yankees” were a better fit. The name, “Knickerbockers”—a plug for a popular beer from Owner Jacob Ruppert’s brewery—was also rejected due to length.

That reminded me of Charles Handy’s autobiography that notes Management Guru Peter Drucker “once quipped that journalists only came up with the word [guru] because ‘charlatan’ was too long for a headline.”

2) FUNDRAISING SAVVY. During World War I, “...in an attempt to positively influence public opinion about professional baseball…the Ball and Bat Fund was established to provide baseball equipment to soldiers serving overseas.” Across America, every baseball fan was asked to donate “25 cents for the purchase of equipment and to forward a copy of the appeal to four other fans.” (When’s the last time you asked your most loyal donors to recruit other donors?)

3) PR SPIN. Quoting Peter Morris on the Yankees at Hilltop Park for their 1903 to 1912 seasons: “The best player may have been throwing games, their chief scout was a bigamist, the owners skirted the law, and maybe the best thing you could say about the ballpark was that it never burned down.”

So…why a book about baseball through the lens of baseball tickets? My friend, Dan Busby (we co-authored a governance book last year), has a very serious day job as president of ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability). In off-hours though, he describes himself as a “ticketologist.”

In the 1950s, Busby began collecting World Series programs (the mail order company attached actual World Series tickets!). Inspired, Dan upped his game and in 1962 began collecting opening day tickets from every major league baseball team. This ticketologist now consults with the National Baseball Hall of Fame concerning memorabilia acquisitions. I tell friends, “Dan is in a league of his own—he’s a walking Wikipedia!”

This gorgeous coffee table book features baseball tickets and season passes on every page—and the remarkable colors, shapes, sizes, fonts, and advertising (yes—advertising was alive and well in the early 1900s) are outdone only by the page-turning narrative on owners, managers, players—Babe Ruth, of course—and Yankee and MLB history, in all its virtues and vices. You can’t put it down!

More fascinating factoids:

4) 1 COOKIE OR 2? I was reminded of the “One cookie or two cookies?” marketing lesson I gave my son Jason (at age four)—when I read Busby’s account of Babe Ruth’s salary negotiating skills when the Sultan of Swat was still with the Boston Red Sox:

“Before the 1919 season began, Ruth gave [Owner Harry] Frazee a choice of two proposals:
     --one year at $15,000
     --or three years at $10,000 each.
Frazee reluctantly accepted the latter.”

Parents: Inspire your kids to play baseball. In 2014, L.A. Angels center fielder Mike Trout signed a six-year contract extension for $144.5 million. Yikes. Compare his 2018 salary of $33.25 million to The Great Bambino’s 1919 salary of $10,000 per year. Yikes, again.

5) SUNDAY BASEBALL. According to Busby, “At the start of the twentieth century, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati were the only major league towns that allowed Sunday baseball.” It’s interesting that today, MLB doesn’t complain when churches conduct services on Saturday.

6) FLOP WARNINGS! Busby describes Boston Red Sox Owner Harry Frazee as a “clever theatrical promoter” (his day job) and his biggest hit, No, No, Nanette, ran for 321 shows on Broadway. Riding that wave, Frazee produced Yes, Yes, Yvette—which flopped after just 40 shows. (Memo to Marketing: conduct flop analysis on all products, programs, and services—especially when the CEO thinks he or she has a home run idea.)

7) NFL: BLAME BARROW. Baseball Hall of Famer Ed Barrow (1868-1953), the “de facto general manager” of the Yankees for many years “was the first executive to put numbers on player uniforms.” He retired the first player’s uniform numbers (Lou Gehrig’s), and was the first executive “to allow fans to keep foul balls that entered the stadium.”

And NFL execs may want to note this: Barrow “was the first to require the playing of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ the United States’ national anthem, before every game, instead of only on holidays.”

I gotta stop…but how about just one more!

8) HOT DOGS ON THE FIELD? What’s more American than hot dogs and baseball? But in the 1921 World Series between the Yankees and the Giants (nine games at the Polo Grounds), concessionaire Harry Stevens “was selling 21,000 hot dogs and 3,000 bags of peanuts per game”—but—“he complained that the drama of the games was hurting his sales, because the fans were so focused on the action that they were not eating enough food. (Memo to Management: identify your measurable goals first—then play ball!)

This beautiful book is a treasure. It’s the perfect gift book for baseball fans and your organization’s front lobby. Nicely done, Dan!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) “For the next four weeks, I’m asking four people to borrow this Yankees book for a week and present one fascinating factoid and one management insight at our next four staff meetings. The first taker earns a Starbucks card!”
2) The announced opening day attendance at the new Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923 (the “Souvenir Programme” cost 15 cents) was 74,217. One problem: seating capacity “was really around 62,000.” How accurate are our stories and statistics—and what drives our need to exaggerate?

P.S. GO CUBS! And read my other two favorite baseball books, The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse, by Tom Verducci (2017), and A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred (2014), by George F. Will.

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Major League Branding
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Printing Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets notes Fred Smith’s pithy book, Breakfast With Fred—and this wisdom, “I learned to write to burn the fuzz off my thinking.”

If it’s time for you to burn the fuzz off your branding, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the the hot-off-the-press second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.